Tolly’s Rambles on…

… future
For many people 2020 was a disruptive, difficult and, in some cases, a lonely experience.
At the farm we have seen a huge increase in people getting out and about and our business has thrived as a result of this exodus. Clearly, people wish to connect to their outdoor surroundings in a safe and comfortable space and farms have the ability to do that, at the same time providing food and a sense of food security for people who on many levels feel disjointed and detached from the natural world. It is only natural that towns folk should see the countryside as a place to visit and perceive the farmer as having an enviable job and ideal lifestyle.

Unfortunately, this sense of being disjointed and detached can also affect many farmers, particularly those that operate huge arable farms, where often 1,000 acres only provides one full time job. The products of these enormous commodity-crop farms are sold somewhere onto a global market and the farmer has no idea as to where it ends up and certainly no control over the price he receives for the products.

The reality of prices for farm products is that today’s price for cereals crops is in real terms less than half the price it was in the 70s. So, farmers have had to double yields in order to stay in business. This lowering of food prices has been at the expense of farm incomes and the wider environment. Loss of biodiversity, declining soil health, increased atmospheric carbon and farmers’ wives taking jobs at supermarket tills is the end result of a cheap food policy that this country has been pursuing for a century.

Many people would be surprised to hear that we have the second cheapest food in the World, comparative to income. Yet we hear this week that UNICEF is to support food parcels to the worst off in the UK. Something is desperately wrong with our food production and consumption system in this country. Farmers are not to blame for this mess, they have just been doing what they have been encouraged to do by government policy.

For the majority of farmers in the UK they are totally dependant on EU handouts to maintain income. More than 50% of farm income is attributed to these payments. The existing Basic Payment Scheme BPS is to be phased out and replaced by the Environmental Land Management Scheme ELMS. We also receive the BPS that all famers get, irrespective of how wealthy or otherwise they might be. In our case the money we receive from the Rural Payments Agency every year amounts to 0.3% of total farm income as we only have 7ha. So, to lose this would have no effect at all on our farm viability.

From 2021 farm support incomes will change, the payments will no longer be linked to land area but will be dependant on farmers delivering public goods. You may well be wondering what exactly these public goods will be? Carbon capture in soil, reinstatement of biodiversity, clean air and water, re-afforestation, rewilding, public access, improved animal welfare, crop diversification, maintenance of cultural and archaeological features, soil protection in winter and a host of other “public” interest features.

Farmers will have to demonstrate that they are delivering these public goods in order to qualify for payments. This is the biggest change of agricultural policy in my lifetime and really does offer hope for potentially huge environmental improvements and a better food production system. Farmers will be making some quite radical changes over the next decade as to how their farms operate. Farmers can only follow government incentives as their products need continual price support.

Our farm is largely isolated from many of the influences affecting conventional farms, we have always farmed in a way that delivers public goods and we are resilient to many of the pressures that big agri-business face. But it really looks as if we will receive the maximum possible support for our farm, as we tick just about all the boxes. At last, we are to be officially recognised for what we do, delivering a range of public goods and feeding people in a way that not only avoids environmental degradation, but actually enhances the natural world.

Leaving a Planet in a better state than we inherited has to be the long-term aim.

We look forward to exiting and hopefully new era of agriculture. But of course, the devil is in the detail!