Chaotic policy and chronic underfunding – Dorset NFU’s Tim Gelfs calls time on the empty rhetoric behind the Government’s green aims
There are two phrases that spring to mind over the government’s ambition of 30 per cent nature recovery by 2030 – fat chance and no chance!
Despite Dorset Council’s early efforts, it seems that with every new move on rural policy, the government hammers yet another nail into the coffin of nature recovery. And now even housing policy seems set to sideline nature in pursuit of yet another unachievable target. It’s very easy for governments to come out with big headline statements, sounding great on the day … but generally there seems to be no plan or idea of how to get there.
So what’s going wrong with the UK’s nature? The natural world has been in steady decline for many decades – responsible for it are some agricultural practices, industry, loss of habitat by development and river pollution (mainly from our archaic and underfunded water industry). Sadly, the government’s ambition – admirable though it is – has been completely undermined by bad policy and lack of funding. When the policy was announced, the NFU estimated it would need a budget of more than £4 billion to succeed. Yet we remain stuck at £2.4 billion – unchanged for nearly a decade and actually shrinking in real terms year after year.
An optimistic start
We now have the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) which has taken over from the European Basic Payment Scheme – as Michael Gove said, ‘Public Money for Public Good!’
*sidenote, that statement really gets my goat! It has always been ‘public money for public good’. When the Common Agricultural Policy was launched, it was all about providing enough food. Then it moved on to providing affordable (cheap) food. Now it’s moving to providing food while looking after the environment and nature … so exactly which bit of any of that isn’t good for the public?
Anyway. Within ELMS we now have the Sustainable Farming Incentive – SFI. This was supposed to take over from all the environmental schemes that had gone before, changing management policy on farming to make food production more sustainable, better for the soils and the wider environment and therefore, for the UK’s nature.
Nobody expected it to work first time out, but with industry input there was a decent scheme that we could mould over the coming years for the benefit of all. Although farmer’s were initially fearful the new government would take us in a different direction, we were assured that they weren’t going to reinvent the wheel. How wrong could we be?
On the face of it, in the Budget we kept the commitment of £5 billion over the next two years (the government says it is more, but the extra is a clawback from the year before).
The biggest problem was the drastic overhaul of the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), which saw payments slashed and the scheme set to end abruptly this year. Unsurprisingly, this triggered a surge in applications to the new SFI, as farmers scrambled to replace lost income. I attended a meeting on the SFI in early February, and it was already clear that the sums didn’t add up – there simply wasn’t enough money in the pot to support all the agreements.
So the scheme’s closure came as no surprise. What was shocking was the way it was handled. Barely a minute’s notice, though the Government must have known for weeks (months?), that this was coming. And then they had the audacity to call it a success.
Should they have come to the industry sooner, rather than put their proverbial head in the sand? Damn right they should have!
They seem to have forgotten that they are there to serve. They have let the industry down and lost the trust of so many. Farmers who are coming out of old schemes or have new schemes planned for this autumn now have no idea which way to go.
Do they turn all the good they have done over the last ten, sometimes 20 years back into intensive food production, at the expense of all we have been trying to achieve?
It’s been nothing short of a disaster – for farmers, for nature and for the environment. I know many farmers who are rightly proud of what they’ve achieved. The last thing they want is to see all that progress unravel. A wildflower field margin in full bloom, alive with bees and butterflies, should be something we build on – not retreat from. The treasury look set to slash our budget in the spending review this month … you have to ask where the confidence or direction is coming from? It’s time for the Government to wake up and grasp the nettle – either admit they are falling short and manage accordingly, or else get the cheque book out, consult with industry and COMMIT!
