The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has become the latest influential group to call for fundamental change in public funding for agriculture after Brexit.

The body, created under the 2008 Climate Act, advises government on the risks associated with ongoing climate change, and on actions to mitigate and adapt to it. In its latest report, released this month and dealing with the implications of Brexit, the Committee warns that “Many aspects of EU-level policy will need to be preserved or replicated at the UK level in the longer term in order to meet the UK’s carbon budgets.”

It goes further, and notes that in some areas the UK will have to improve on EU rules, and one of the prime examples given is agriculture. The Committee wants the UK government to “link farm support with actions that would reduce emissions,” a request similar to those being made by green groups and countryside charities who have called to an end to the area-based subsidy regime.

More generally, the CCC said the UK needs to develop new policies to help meet its commitments under the fifth carbon budget, which will require a reduction in emissions of around a third from 2015 to 2030 (and a 57% reduction relative to 1990). The Committee warned, “Current policies, including those agreed to by the UK at the EU level, would at best deliver about half the required emissions reduction.”
 
Farming groups often claim that total greenhouse gas emissions from the sector have fallen by 18% since 1990; while this is technically true, it hides the fact that virtually all of that reduction took place between 1990 and 2008, and there have been practically no further reductions in the nine years since the the Climate Act came into effect. Elsewhere, power generators have cut GHG emissions by around 50%, and the waste industry has slashed its emissions by 80% over this nine year period.

The Committee also notes that, although the EU Common Agricultural Policy does deal directly with emissions from farming, reductions in polluting gasses from farmland have largely been the result of EU-Level legislation (like the Nitrates and Water Directives). CCC believes a 15% reduction of agricultural emissions is possible between 2014 and 2030, based on its ‘cost-effective path for agriculture,’ this path would involve reforesting by up to 15,000 hectares per year in the UK, which currently has one of the lowest levels of forest cover in Europe.

The Committee’s Director has said that if the current voluntary approach to cutting farming emissions does not deliver, other steps will be needed, and Lord Krebs, Chair of the CCC’s Adaptation Subcommittee has highlighted the need to see more sustainable management of soils. He said that any new support for farming post Brexit should ensure that public subsidies ‘bring to the fore’ incentives to save carbon.
 
Commenting on the Committee’s paper on Thursday, Soil Association Policy Director Peter Melchett said “The ambitious new targets agreed at the Paris climate summit, which comes into force on 4 November, will require further cuts in UK emissions (from 56 gtCO2e to 40 gtCO2e) if we are to keep global temperature changes below 2 degrees centigrade, with zero carbon emissions from farming after 2050. Government scientists have long recognised this will require a revolution in farming, and it is vital that any post-CAP payments to farmers start to encourage that transition”.