Brexit: Water & Farming  In the UK we have an excellent, world beating understanding of how farming and land-use affects the water cycle and catchment management and various programmes in place to address this. This theme will address how this theme is being addresses in Brexit debate; it now contains five articles (August 4^th) see below.

CPRE: New Model Farming: resilience through diversity.

We need a resilient and dynamic farming industry. When it comes to farming and the environment it feels like Governments have been tinkering at the margins for a long time. Public money paid to farmers through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has done a decent job in recent years helping farmers to make field edges places that can support wildlife: improving hedgerows, field margins and encouraging wildlife. Yet look to the field itself, to the expanse of land and its soil. Across far too many fields there is barely evidence of life. The abundance of nature that farmland used to, and still could, support – has been depleted. Soil biodiversity and organic matter barely gets consideration, though they are crucial to sustaining the food chain, recycling nutrients, locking up carbon, filtering and storing water. Industrialised farming has become increasingly specialised with fewer crops, more monocultures and loss of livestock from the countryside. Farms are growing in size and smaller farms disappearing: we have lost more than 30,000 during the past decade alone. With fewer people farming, fewer working the land and farmsteads converted to homes or business parks, farming is less and less at the heart of rural life. And the public are less linked than ever to the land that feeds them. Without connection why should people care about farms or farmers or what they do? – Some of these ideas are explored in a new report from CPRE: New Model Farming: resilience through diversity.

NFU launches biggest farming conversation for a generation

The NFU will launch the sector’s most significant conversation on the impact of Brexit and what a future domestic farming policy should look like. At an extraordinary Council meeting, NFU President Meurig Raymond said the government must not ignore the economic importance of the farming sector. It’s the bedrock of the UK’s largest manufacturing industry – food and drink – which is worth £108 billion and employs 3.9million people.

Introduction to the Brexit, Water, Farming & Land Use Theme

This theme of the Brexit issue will build cumulatively over the weeks with new articles being added to the list. The Environmental Audit committee have committed to a review of the Brexit decision on the environment and predominantly on the relationship with farming. This issue has enormous implications for many areas of the water industry and the general background to this is outlined below. The public pay for UK farming in three major ways:

1. By buying its products
2. By subsidising farming through the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) now to be redesigned by Defra and paid for directly by UK Government
3. By paying for the clean-up of pollution (nutrients, pesticides, colour), through poor land management enhancing floods and by having to respond to land use practices that damage wildlife and the wide environment.

It is in the third category that the water sector interacts strongly with farming and land use management. In the UK we have an excellent, world beating understanding of how farming and land-use affects the water cycle and catchment management and various programmes in place to address this. This theme will address how this aspect is being addresses in Brexit debate. 

Articles included:

• CPRE: New Model Farming: resilience through diversity.
• NFU launches biggest farming conversation for a generation
• National Trust Helen Ghosh sets out a vision from Britain’s largest farmer
• The Environmental Audit Committee review
• Brexit the Environment & Farming – 84 food, farming and conservation specialists send a letter to Theresa May 

National Trust calls for major reforms of farming subsides post-Brexit to reverse the damage to the natural environment. Dame Helen Ghosh, Director General of the Trust, will tell an audience at the National Trust Theatre at BBC Countryfile Live that the vote to leave the European Union presents an urgent opportunity to shape a new and better system for stewardship of the countryside.

• Brexit provides opportunity to reset entire system for subsidising farming industry
• Farmers should only be rewarded for managing land in nature-friendly way
• Current £3bn a year payments must deliver public benefit beyond food production
• 60% of species in decline partly due to intensive farming methods

The Environmental Audit Committee review

The Environmental Audit Committee has launched an inquiry into the Future of the Natural Environment after the EU Referendum. Issues include the future of funding for biodiversity and agri-environment schemes, the likely changes in the devolved administration, and the role that managed rewilding can play in conservation and restoration. Evidence is being sought Click here to read more 

Brexit the Environment & Farming – 84 food, farming and conservation specialists send a letter to Theresa May

Guardian: New subsidies paid to farmers under a post-Brexit government must be linked closely to environmental responsibilities, a large group of political and civil society organisations – 84 food, farming and conservation specialists – has urged in a letter to Oliver Letwin and Theresa May. Protection for birds, wildlife, waterways and other natural goods should come top of the list when any new payments are considered. Current subsidies of about £3bn a year, depending on the exchange rate, come to farmers from the EU. Ahead of the referendum, leading Brexit campaigners promised that farmers would receive substantial help from the government if the UK were to leave, but also pledged that regulation would be reduced. Click here to read more.