The National Trust’s Director general Helen Ghosh has backed responsible regulation in environment and food safety post-Brexit, and urged the government to maintain its farm funding budget beyond 2022. She said, “Britain’s countryside faces a decade of damaging uncertainty unless the Government acts now to deliver on its Brexit promises.”

Speaking at the BBC Countryfile Live event this week, Ghosh revisited recommendations made in the wake of the Brexit vote a year ago, noting that EU farm policy is “broken” and highlighting that “The current system of support for agriculture has resulted overall in a dramatic decline in nature and species, soils and water.”

The National Trust is the UK’s second largest landowner, and is a significant beneficiary under the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Yet, in the wake of last year’s vote to leave the EU, the Trust was amongst the first voices in the UK to call for a fundamental restructuring of farm funding (though the charity remains firmly behind a market-based approach, both in its attitude to farm funding and its view of natural processes as ‘ecosystem services’).  One of the Trust’s proposals aired by the Director General on Thursday is for groups of farmers working together to sell flood protection and clean water to water companies and public authorities downstream.

Dame Helen said that it’s encouraging to see the debate over farm policy and farming subsidies being given top billing on news and current affairs programming, and welcomed Defra ministers’ commitment to producing a 25 year environment plan, which has been repeatedly delayed. 

However, she said that the government must extend its commitment to farm funding beyond 2022, arguing that the current rate of farm subsidies (around £3bn each year) will be needed for the “foreseeable future” to repair the damage years of CAP subsidies have caused, and keep farming viable. The National Trust director said it is “Particularly concerning” that the government hasn't provided clarity on a possible transition period; some ministers have hinted that there could be a transition after the March 2019 deadline in which some EU rules still apply, or the UK remains part of some EU bodies to ease the pace of change, but others have insisted that March 2019 represents a Brexit cliff-edge. In this case, Ghosh said she wants clarity on the UK’s participation in the CAP.

Responding to the debate around food safety and regulation as Brexit takes shape and UK ministers begin sounding out nations outside the EU with a view to future trade deals,  Dame Helen said EU environmental regulation, the precautionary principle and the concept of “Polluter pays” have served the country well, and advised that these “Should be transferred lock, stock and barrel in the post-Brexit world.”

Dame Helen said,“We are within touching distance of a vision for the future of farming that sees thriving businesses successfully meeting the needs of the nation into the 21st century and beyond.”

However, she said it could take up to 10 years for new support packages to fall into place, and added, “The longer we wait, the more we risk losing all the gains we have made over the last decade,” claiming that ongoing uncertainty is prompting some farmers to revert to intensive methods for short-term profits, damaging long-term agricultural prospects and dwindling wildlife. She said, “We have already seen examples of short-term decision-making, where farmers – in response to uncertainty about the future and income – have ploughed up pasture which was created with support from EU environmental money. It’s very understandable, but heart-breaking.”

She said, “The future of farming is bound up with the future of nature: without a healthy natural environment the long term viability of farming is in question.”

Reacting to the speech on Thursday, Kate Parminter, the Lib Dems’ shadow environment secretary, said, “The government’s refusal to guarantee subsidies beyond 2022 makes it impossible for farmers to plan, threatens the very future of the family farm, and could have devastating effects on the much-loved British landscape. Farmers have every right to feel betrayed by this government but ministers no doubt fear that their extreme Conservative Brexit will cause such damage to the economy that they won’t be in a financial position to guarantee subsidies for the family farm into the next parliament.”

Ecosystem services: What could possibly go wrong if we start paying for nature?

Commenting on the Trust’s recommendations, and the charity’s commitment to viewing ‘ecosystem services’ as potential new markets, Dr Martin Craig from the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) at the University of Sheffield, said, “This agenda is based on making sustainability profitable for those already endowed with that oldest of asset classes: land. But like all pragmatic solutions, it has political and ethical implications that on closer inspection may seem hard to swallow.

“One concern is the question of whose values can be accommodated by the market for ecosystem services. The National Trust/Green Alliance report identifies a range of big industrial players with money to spend and an interest in particular land-management strategies. But these might not coincide with the preferences of the communities living in these areas, or the British people more broadly. Markets privilege the highest bidder – that is what they do.

“At a deeper level though, making sustainable practice contingent on profitability runs the risk of placing profit before principle. Much environmental regulation to date has been based on the principle that certain unsustainable practices should not be allowed because the community is entitled to the ecosystem services that such practices cause to be degraded. Think clean air, safe water, etc. In the market for ecosystem services, by contrast, landowners may continue with practices that contribute to degradation until satisfied with the price for not doing so.

"Of course, the National Trust is correct to point out that this isn’t an either/or proposition – one can have robust regulation and markets for ecosystem services. But the question of where the boundary between them should lie is not one that economists or technocrats of any kind can answer, and a too-enthusiastic embrace of market environmentalism risks drawing attention away from the important democratic question at stake here: how much, and in what ways, do we as a community value our natural environment?”

UK government needs an overarching food policy

Responding to recommendations made this week by Policy Exchange, one of the most influential think tanks on the UK right, Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University, London warned that merely shifting the subsidy regime to the equivalent of Pillar 2 funding (rural development and protecting ecosystem services) won’t be enough to protect the UK food system from the impacts of Brexit. Speaking to Farming Online on Tuesday, Professor Lang said, “UK governments of both hues have wanted to get rid of CAP subsidies for a long time. The Treasury and Defra economists under Labour made it clear they wanted rid of subsidies and to do a New Zealand. The current government… proposes retaining something like the Pillar two strand of the CAP but this is only 20% of the budget. And full subsidies are promised only until 2022. That’s a shake of a lamb’s tail.”

Prof Lang and his colleagues who contributed to the recent Three Professors report on A Food Brexit from the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex have criticised the government for failing to produce an overarching food policy, without which they warn that even a ‘soft Brexit’ will have major impacts for Britain. On Tuesday, Prof Lang said "Brexit is highlighting that Farming is a small part of the UK food system, which provides only 8% of the gross value added.” he said the process could be used as an opportunity to “change what farming and land use are for – to produce health-enhancing food sustainably.”

However, there seems to be growing agreement that, at present, the lack of a clear line in key policy areas, twinned with emerging revelations of battling factions within the UK Cabinet may be putting the future of food, environment and farming in Britain at risk.