The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) has become the latest in a line of high-profile farming and countryside groups to call on political leaders to ensure that Brexit marks a step change for UK agricultural policy.

In a new report released this week CPRE said farming needs to become more diverse, environmentally resilient and publicly accessible to survive, and that Britain’s exit from the EU marks a major opportunity to introduce improvements that will see the sector take action on falling biodiversity and climate change. The report notes that “Brexit gives us the first opportunity in decades to better match policy and public funds to urgent farming issues in England – now we can shape a new national vision and policies for farming.”

The paper - New Model Farming: Resilience Through Diversity - argues that greater diversity in demographics, farm sizes and in terms of production Will secure a future that offers rewards going beyond food. The charity argues that a better thought out policy could secure beautiful landscapes, clean water, abundant wildlife, better flood management and improved carbon storage.

CPRE also said a post-Brexit settlement should ensure public benefits from a huge public investment in farming. The report comes just days after Chancellor Phillip Hammond announced that the government will commit to funding agricultural support schemes until 2020.

In response to calls for more responsible farming and wider-reaching food policy, the NFU has said “In our view, food security should be considered to be a legitimate political goal and public good,” however, sustainable farming groups have challenge the support for non-food crops, which they say carry hefty environmental burdens, relying on heavy doses of chemical inputs, and taking a toll on agricultural soils.

In its paper, CPRE warns that trends of industrialisation in British farming have been narrow in focus and short-termist, pointing out that as a result of these strategies, damage to soil is estimated to cost £1.2 billion a year (with no legal protection for soils and little monitoring of soil health in Britain), while populations of farmland birds in England have more than halved in the past 40 years.

Echoing calls made by the National Trust, which argued for an end to area-based subsidy payments and said all farm support must be linked to environmental performance at the beginning of the month, CPRE highlighted that around 80% of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payment goes to 20% of the largest businesses. The organisation wants to see more funding going to smaller farms and new entrants to ensure diversity in the sector (there are 34,000 fewer farms in the UK now than there were a decade ago). It also wants better rights for community projects and more transparency over who owns land.

Graeme Willis, a food and farming campaigner from CPRE, commented on the report’s release, “The Government has a great opportunity post-Brexit to determine what farming and the English countryside will look like. Do we really want to continue the pattern of ever larger agri-business, less connected to communities and out of kilter with nature?

“To forge a more resilient future, the Government should encourage a mix of farms that produce different foods for local people and varied, thriving landscapes. The obvious place to start is by redirecting funding to help smaller, more innovative and mixed farms, and by making land available for new farmers to enter the market.”

The paper has been welcomed by food policy experts, including prominent food policy writer and City University, London professor Tim Lang, who commented, “CPRE [is] absolutely right to urge UK and EU to focus policy attention on what a proper food and farm policy should be.”