Greener Pastures: 9 recommendations for sustainable farming future

A new study endorsed by former Defra secretary George Eustice has made nine key recommendations to put farming in England on a more sustainable footing.

The Greener Pastures report by the centre-right think tank Onward offers ways the government can help farmers tackle their twin economic and environmental problems.

The study notes that agriculture faces three main environmental issues: carbon emissions are “stubbornly high”, contributing 11% of the UK total; farming pollutes 40% of England’s rivers and lakes; and farming intensification has caused biodiversity decline.

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Agriculture also faces four major economic challenges: low and volatile profits, with more than 40% of farms making less than £25,000 a year; low growth and productivity; a demographic crisis, with 30% of farmers aged 65 and above; and a lack of resilience to extreme weather which can hit crop yields by 40% in bad years.

The study finds five root causes are driving these problems.

Farmers faced the “wrong incentives” under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, which “encouraged farming at the expense of nature”.

Private finance to fund nature recovery and lock up carbon “has yet to be released”, and low investment in machinery and technology “has kept productivity down”.

Meanwhile, aspiring young farmers “can’t secure the experience, land or finance to get started”. Supermarkets are “squeezing” farmers and trade deals “aren’t being harnessed to support British agriculture”.

Onward’s paper makes nine key recommendations to put English farming on a sustainable footing (see panel).

The report warns Defra that if it wants to attract farmers into Environmental Land Management (ELM), it needs to be “more generous and less bureaucratic”.

It also recommends offering bonuses to the most ambitious farmers undertaking green action on most of their land, restoring farms’ inheritance tax exemption, and trialling a new regenerative farm subsidy that would encourage greater environmental ambition and boost farm profits.

Failure to address farmers’ frustrations with farm subsidy reform and public concern over water pollution could threaten the Conservative Party’s electoral dominance in the English countryside, the study says.

It predicts the Conservatives are on course to lose 35 seats in the next general election, with Labour set to win 33 seats unless the party can restore trust in rural communities. 

Writing in the foreword of the report, Mr Eustice says Onward’s new publication “is a great contribution to that vibrant debate now taking place about agriculture, food security, land use and nature’s recovery.”