A genuinely good idea. Honestly the entire CAP should transition to this. Better for domestic environments, better for developing nations, and good for farmers. If we can make “protecting and restoring the environment” a viable industry it’d do wonders. I’d love to see a uk baded carbon credits scheme to pay for it all tbh.
I believed that this was already happening, purely from my viewing of Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon (I admit not necessarily the most accurate source of information) but he mentioned on there that there was already incentives to rewild farm land.
I wonder if this has anything to do with a shortage of people to work the fields. No fields -> no need to hire foreign workers who have become scarce due to Brexit.
Won’t do any good with regards to the amount of food imports the UK has to rely on to feed the population.
Great idea. Should be paired with vertical farming.
Is this more likely to just be leaving land fallow or actual active rewilding? There’s a lot of ‘could’s without a huge amount of details of how they expect farmers to actually do it
Why do I feel like this will most benefit Tory landowners with huge amounts of unused land, who can now get funding to do nothing?
Does nobody want food to be grown in this country? We have some of the most productive high yielding land in the world here, and we are exporting our environmental damage to countries that are less able to cope or bother. Not to mention keeping at least some semblance of food security.
Production and good stewardship can go hand in hand but that doesn’t usually happen when you completely rewild the landscape.
The issue with this is that ‘rewilding’ tend to mean abandoning any productive use of the land, with the article stating ‘will lead to vast tracts of land being newly managed to conserve species, provide habitats for wildlife and restore health to rivers and streams’. This in turn will require unending tax payer funding, which tends to ultimately be unsustainable.
Obviously on the face of it restoring habitat and improving biodiversity is a good thing, but it need to be done in partnership with farming, rather than an alternative to farming. If COVID, Brexit and all the supply chain issues has taught us anything, we should be growing more of our own food rather than importing it.
For farmers to play a new and improved role as stewards or nature, carbon and public health, there needs to be some profound changes in farming. A strong start would be a return to mixed farming. Instead of fertilising crops with synthetic nitrogen (the price of which has tripled over recent years), fertility should be built with crop rotation with a regenerative phase, ideally grass or clover (though certain cover crops are also suitable) followed by several years of crops for human consumption – then rinse and repeat. There should also be renewed investment in woodland management and hedgerow grants – though the UK is already rather good at this.
The issue is that undergoing this farming transition puts a lot of financial strain on farmers. As an example, a 1000 acre all arable farm in the fertile east of England with fences rather than hedgerows, could become a diverse enterprise through the reintroduction of livestock to utilise grass for fertility building phase from crop rotation. Wire fences should be removed where possible and replaced with natural hedgerows. This however needs investment and if farmers are not paid to work sustainably, they will not be able to make the transition.
The alternative to the above method, as the article describes, is basically more intensive farming on the best land and leave the less desirable lands to be rewilded and unused for any form of agriculture. I think this is the wrong approach, not that I am against improved biodiversity and conservation, or rewilding (in moderation – plus the term is still so undefined and chucked about by the media and politicians that’s is basically meaningless), but the key challenge is to feed people using farming systems that work in harmony with nature, rather than one or the other, thus preserving the biodiversity we have lost and creating a more sustainable and eco-friendly system going forward.
All for this but I’ve got my doubts. Where I live three huge wild meadow fields (the type they get paid for provided they cut once a year for haylage, pretty ‘countryside’ fields full of wild flowers and animals), have been treated with weedkiller, had huge amounts of feetiliser plowed in, and turned over to crops thus last year. The suspicion is that they have become economically viable due to the effects of the b word.
Oh great, more money to keep farmers in big cars and private schools for their kids.
Yes but they are paying for good quality land, in Wales they are leaving the barrens mountains and planting up good fields.
Whilst complaining about the number of slag heaps that are at risk of land slip in the rainy season
Perfect! Finally the UK will actually have natural wilderness!
Farmers to be paid. Whether they do anything for the money isn’t clear. Given how badly previous programs performed at anything other than throwing money at farmers it not very likely…
Hang on, I thought the government was against paying people money to do nothing. That’s why they cut benefits so much for people looking for jobs.
Now they’re trying to tell us that actually, doing nothing and getting paid is cool and good, but *only* if you’re the type of landowner who votes conservative already?
14 comments
A genuinely good idea. Honestly the entire CAP should transition to this. Better for domestic environments, better for developing nations, and good for farmers. If we can make “protecting and restoring the environment” a viable industry it’d do wonders. I’d love to see a uk baded carbon credits scheme to pay for it all tbh.
I believed that this was already happening, purely from my viewing of Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon (I admit not necessarily the most accurate source of information) but he mentioned on there that there was already incentives to rewild farm land.
I wonder if this has anything to do with a shortage of people to work the fields. No fields -> no need to hire foreign workers who have become scarce due to Brexit.
Won’t do any good with regards to the amount of food imports the UK has to rely on to feed the population.
Great idea. Should be paired with vertical farming.
Is this more likely to just be leaving land fallow or actual active rewilding? There’s a lot of ‘could’s without a huge amount of details of how they expect farmers to actually do it
Why do I feel like this will most benefit Tory landowners with huge amounts of unused land, who can now get funding to do nothing?
Does nobody want food to be grown in this country? We have some of the most productive high yielding land in the world here, and we are exporting our environmental damage to countries that are less able to cope or bother. Not to mention keeping at least some semblance of food security.
Production and good stewardship can go hand in hand but that doesn’t usually happen when you completely rewild the landscape.
The issue with this is that ‘rewilding’ tend to mean abandoning any productive use of the land, with the article stating ‘will lead to vast tracts of land being newly managed to conserve species, provide habitats for wildlife and restore health to rivers and streams’. This in turn will require unending tax payer funding, which tends to ultimately be unsustainable.
Obviously on the face of it restoring habitat and improving biodiversity is a good thing, but it need to be done in partnership with farming, rather than an alternative to farming. If COVID, Brexit and all the supply chain issues has taught us anything, we should be growing more of our own food rather than importing it.
For farmers to play a new and improved role as stewards or nature, carbon and public health, there needs to be some profound changes in farming. A strong start would be a return to mixed farming. Instead of fertilising crops with synthetic nitrogen (the price of which has tripled over recent years), fertility should be built with crop rotation with a regenerative phase, ideally grass or clover (though certain cover crops are also suitable) followed by several years of crops for human consumption – then rinse and repeat. There should also be renewed investment in woodland management and hedgerow grants – though the UK is already rather good at this.
The issue is that undergoing this farming transition puts a lot of financial strain on farmers. As an example, a 1000 acre all arable farm in the fertile east of England with fences rather than hedgerows, could become a diverse enterprise through the reintroduction of livestock to utilise grass for fertility building phase from crop rotation. Wire fences should be removed where possible and replaced with natural hedgerows. This however needs investment and if farmers are not paid to work sustainably, they will not be able to make the transition.
The alternative to the above method, as the article describes, is basically more intensive farming on the best land and leave the less desirable lands to be rewilded and unused for any form of agriculture. I think this is the wrong approach, not that I am against improved biodiversity and conservation, or rewilding (in moderation – plus the term is still so undefined and chucked about by the media and politicians that’s is basically meaningless), but the key challenge is to feed people using farming systems that work in harmony with nature, rather than one or the other, thus preserving the biodiversity we have lost and creating a more sustainable and eco-friendly system going forward.
All for this but I’ve got my doubts. Where I live three huge wild meadow fields (the type they get paid for provided they cut once a year for haylage, pretty ‘countryside’ fields full of wild flowers and animals), have been treated with weedkiller, had huge amounts of feetiliser plowed in, and turned over to crops thus last year. The suspicion is that they have become economically viable due to the effects of the b word.
Oh great, more money to keep farmers in big cars and private schools for their kids.
Yes but they are paying for good quality land, in Wales they are leaving the barrens mountains and planting up good fields.
Whilst complaining about the number of slag heaps that are at risk of land slip in the rainy season
Perfect! Finally the UK will actually have natural wilderness!
Farmers to be paid. Whether they do anything for the money isn’t clear. Given how badly previous programs performed at anything other than throwing money at farmers it not very likely…
Hang on, I thought the government was against paying people money to do nothing. That’s why they cut benefits so much for people looking for jobs.
Now they’re trying to tell us that actually, doing nothing and getting paid is cool and good, but *only* if you’re the type of landowner who votes conservative already?