Farmers would prefer to work in an unsubsidised market driven “environment” but would qualify this with a requirement to be on a relatively equitable footing with their competitors. Competition is the most effective stimulus to efficient systems. We should be seeking to move to a situation in which outputs that can be traded should not be subsidised, whilst those that have intrinsic as opposed to market value will be supported by tax payers, for example habitat or flood protection.

Farming has declined in the UK for various reasons. Firstly this has occurred because a succession of Governments have not valued it and in consequence have done less than Governments in competitive countries to be helpful in terms of issues such as regulation gold plating, cutting Research and Development expenditure and accessing EU funding. Margaret Thatcher’s rebate has resulted in the Treasury having a major disincentive when it comes to matching EU funding. Secondly until recently exchange rates have been unhelpful. Thirdly the “turf war” or more accurately the market share “war” between our major retailers, which by the way continues unabated, has been influential; these retailers are powerful enough to dictate market prices and thus override market stimuli. Single issue NGO, have had a disproportionate influence because they have been very good at promoting their relevant issue. Finally farmers have not helped themselves; they have not kept their consumers informed and have not behaved as businessmen and women. Few benchmark their enterprises accurately and few are prepared to forego their insularity and cooperate effectively with their peers.

Of all the contributions the one that caught my eye was Professor Harvey’s, particularly his point about putting emphasis on processes rather than merely debating outcomes. However flawed it is, the market should in principle operate whenever possible. All the “players” involved in rural policy, Government, Consumers (taxpayers), Retailers, Packers/Processors, Farmers, NGO’s should consider the processes required to achieve a balance between a thriving environment, social well being and rural commerce. Our existing environmental schemes are not perfect but have much to offer; they must be maintained whilst allowing greater flexibility in different geographical areas. We need to return to the pre 1980’s situation as far as Research and Development is concerned and recognise the importance of applied research. Whilst recognising that first generation GM crops have been a mixed blessing, the technique has enormous potential, subject to any outputs being carefully scrutinised. We must value, indeed treasure, the UKs productive land and recognise that the most important legacy we can give to our children is the maintenance of productive land in good condition.

‘In an interview with Public Service Review, John Watkins, Head of Garden and Landscapes at English Heritage, reflects on the value and importance of public parks and green space:
http://www.publicservice.co.uk/article.asp?publication=Transport,%20Local%20Government%20and%20the%20Regions&id=293&content_name=Regeneration&article=8897‘

I’d still suggest that the functionality/ies of the land is / are more significant than its location… i.e. the big question is, who are the major stakeholders?

It’s been a good debate, thanks!
Hilary

PRIORITIES

Metaphorical Island journeys

Solitude Island 1 is uninhabited. Our priorities on arrival, dependent upon the weather, are food, water, shelter, heat and calling home on the mobile phone.
Thousand Island 2 is uninhabited. We are hotly pursued by a tribe of cannibals. Our priorities on arrival are defence, food, water, shelter, heat and appearing unpalatable.
Refuge Island 3 is inhabited by a non-hostile tribe; we are hotly pursued by a tribe of cannibals. Our priorities on arrival are diplomacy with the islanders, defence, food, water, shelter and heat. Assuming effective defence, we must then earn a living and obtain land for long term sustainability.
Yum Yum Island 4 is inhabited by a tribe of cannibals. Our priorities are defence, food, water, shelter, heat and defence. Sleeping with the natives and lighting fires prove counterproductive.
Whatever Island 5 is inhabited by a tribe of cannibals; we are hotly pursued by another tribe of cannibals. Our priorities are prayer, defence and recipes for cooking cannibals.
Paradise Island 6 is inhabited by a sophisticated non-hostile tribe; cannibals were hotly curried a comfortable time ago. Food, water, shelter, defence and diplomacy are well organised and adequately supplied. Society provides opportunities for occupation dependent upon talent. We inherit and/or use earnings to purchase shelter. We pay taxes for defence and water and purchase food and heat. Organisation enables time for recreation. We have become familiar with indigenous monkeys and birds and protect surplus habitat for their survival. Many people prefer watching television. Size 0 is too small, drift into Size 1 and you are clinically diagnosed obese.
The next thrilling episode of Metaphorical Island Journeys will involve currency, exports, imports, regulations, balance of payments……… It is a sobering thought that had the occupants of Yum Yum Island been less effective at defence population would not be an issue in the twenty first century.
The successful provision of necessities over many generations can disguise their importance. Failure to ensure adequate indigenous supplies of food, water, shelter and defence would potentially leave a nation vulnerable to exploitation. These priorities apply to urban as well as rural land.

I attempt a brief definition to answer the question “What is Rural Land for?”.
Rural land is a resource to be owned and managed by the indigenous population to achieve the following objectives in priority order;
(a) Allocation to sustainable provision of necessities through market forces and essential intervention.
(b) Fulfilling livelihoods and a sustainable and excellent quality of life for landowners, occupiers and rural inhabitants.
(c) Restoration, creation and conservation of beautiful landscapes.
(d) Biodiversity through conservation of the environment.
(e) Variety in recreation for the responsible and not in conflict with objectives (a) to (c).
(f) Tourism at sustainable levels.

1. The UK does not currently have a sustainable food policy. We are currently only 60% self sufficient, declining from over 80% about 20 years ago. World food shortages insist that we set an example by targeting self sufficiency. There are overwhelming strategic economic and food security reasons for reversing this trend. The process of reversal has a three to four year time lag in some livestock sectors.
2. Keynesian analysis demonstrates that agricultural production is as close to the Perfect Market as any production system. There is therefore an inherent tendency for swings from overproduction and economically unviable price to under production and high prices. Such markets are vulnerable to oligopoly purchasing power.
3. Mechanisms are required for agricultural commodities to equate supply and demand at economic price for both producer and consumer. The CAP relied upon intervention buying. This was intended to have a “Gasometer” leveling effect on supply. However the system was operated inefficiently as the route into intervention became one way and surpluses were offloaded onto the world market.
4. The replacement of production linked subsidy by a Single Payment without rationale is an abdication of responsibility to both producers and consumers. Whilst we have experienced a prolonged period of overproduction and consequential break even prices for agricultural commodities, the demand for crops with energy production potential has demonstrated how quickly prices rise when demand increases against an inflexible short term supply.
5. There is currently no agricultural policy in the CAP. We have an illogical payment system, a partly competitive environmental subsidy policy, a bureaucratic desire to regulate rather than subsidize, and much talk about diversification. The objective of a level playing field in the CAP has been eroded and with it belief in the “natural advantage” distribution of land use.
6. There is an urgent requirement in the UK to provide market intervention to reverse the decline in self sufficiency and to iron out the fluctuations of supply, demand and price that are and will otherwise occur. There is an essential requirement to balance the percentage of production diverted from food to energy production. The UK intervention, quota and price support system prior to entry into the CAP provides a useful blueprint for an effective agricultural policy.
7. A voluntary code to prevent the exercise of oligopoly power is ineffective as evidenced by the recent fines to purchasers in the dairy sector. Fines do not redress the inequity to producers.
8. The beauty of the English countryside still delights and surprises quite regularly and unexpectedly. Farmland birds appear to be on the increase, their greatest threat a rapid growth in protected birds of prey. I share the concern at 100% removal of setaside without replacement with a patchwork of natural habitat particularly in predominantly arable areas. The RSPB survey advertised on the radio is not a very scientific method of determining bird populations.
9. There is very little natural environment in the UK, most countryside being the result of generations of land management. Our current landowners and farmers should be congratulated for the Countryside we enjoy today, despite economic pressure and development. I detect a short term tendency to undervalue inherited knowledge.
10. I note from reported cases that the principal actions for water pollution have been brought against water supply companies. Diffuse pollution does not appear to be an exact science. Nitrate levels in water have fallen significantly in the last ten years.
11. I am surprised that genetically modified crops are considered as a food production solution. The potential environmental damage from tampering with the natural building blocks of nature is extreme. The science is in its infancy and I believe that DNA will prove to be elusively complex. I can find no justification for their use in the UK, Europe or the developed world, and the greatest risks probably lie in the developing and third world. There is possibly a case for experimental research under rigorous scientific control for energy crops. I agree that agricultural research and development should be restored following recent dissipation.
12. The uplands and much of our Countryside is conducive only to livestock production. Landscape value and accessibility for recreation deteriorate if not grazed and managed. Meat was not sold to us by a clever advertising campaign; it is a part of our diet that has evolved naturally. Farm livestock are as much a part of our biodiversity as any other species. An agricultural system denied inorganic fertilizer will benefit from organic fertilizer produced by livestock to maintain reasonable vegetable, cereal and oil seed yields.
13. A population of 60 million does not equate with a return to “good life” living in the UK. I agree that children benefit from an introduction to gardening. I hope Cornwood Agricultural & Horticultural Show will forgive me for revealing that they have a class for the child at their local primary school who produces the highest yield of potatoes from a supplied tub and seed potato. The children learn about various husbandry considerations in the process of growing their potato. Yes, this is a prize coupled to production, and no consolation prizes for the greatest diversity of eelworm.
14. Sourcing cheap food from abroad conveniently ignores health & safety and welfare regulations in the UK. I am constantly surprised how a nation which insists quite correctly upon high standards of welfare for its farm animals can so readily buy products from Countries with no such restrictions.
15. Concern for the environment appears to have taken a vacation in the proposal that the remaining 30% of our coastline currently protected from human intrusion should be opened to public access. Science requires a control to validate an experiment, and estuaries and stretches of coastline without access should be preserved on a “game reserve” principle in the interests of bio-diversity. I was obliged one Sunday afternoon to watch a terrier not on a lead terrify a swan for over an hour near its nesting site on coastal mud. The owners were incapable of intervening as the mud would not support their weight.
16. The answer is quite emphatically no, and now is always the time to begin to redress the absence of agricultural policy.

Animal farming dominates that damage.

The average British diet uses roughly three times the land, water and energy of a balanced plant-based diet. That’s because farmed animals use most of the calories from their feed to live and grow. Most intensive animal farming is actually a food destruction process.

To make UK land use sustainable, we humans need to eat lower down the food chain.

The Cabinet Office’s Strategy Unit Food Policy Review (due in April) should call for a major shift of funding. We urgently need to re-train our animal farmers in stock-free methods. The Government needs to help struggling stockmen break free into profitable crop farming.

It is vital that the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit consider the whole food chain, and all environmental aspects. For real food security and sustainable land use, the UK needs to move away from eating meat and dairy products.

Such planning looks at the capacity of each part of the system to support and sustain different types of land use while maintaining a view of the system as a whole. It is sensitive to the needs and particularities of different parts of the landscape at a detailed scale but never loses sight of the whole. It recognises that urban landscapes are part of natural systems as much as rural landscapes are part of urban systems.

Firstly, there is a complex interrelationship between arable and grassland, woodland and moorland, etc., that affects the healthy functioning of a range of systems, from hydrological and energy flows to access to the land for recreation and human wellbeing. A holistic view of these is necessary; it is not just about production vs. biodiversity. Although the scenarios described by Michael Pollan in ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ are largely North American, rather than European, they do point to the desirability of rethinking the relationship between arable production for animal feed and the use of grassland and woodland for animal and vegetable food production.

But the land is about more than food production and it is interesting to note that The Netherlands has a designated State Landscape Architect – Dirk Sijmons – to consider such matters. He has some fascinating insights into how, in a country where some parts of the landscape are entirely man-made, a vision for the future might be developed that takes a holistic approach. He has commented on the rise and rise of “horsiculture”, now a predominant land use in many areas, as well as what radical approaches are needed if climate change scenarios and associated changes in water levels are taken seriously in projecting the future for such a watery landscape.

Secondly, I want to underline the importance of children having the opportunity to experience growing food. There is growing research evidence of the importance of access to ‘nature’ for children’s healthy development. More than this, however, if we want future generations to understand both the challenges of food production and the relationship we all have with the environment that nurtures us, then children from an early age should have the opportunity to grow food that they can eat. This is a challenge for schools and housing developers, urban designers and city planners, and not just for farmers and conservationists, but one that we don’t take seriously at present.

The next point that we have to appreciate better is that land is a more-or-less limited resource, there is only so much to go around, and that whatever we decide to use it for means that there will be less for something or someone else. The idea of a ecological footprint is a useful one, i.e. the amount of land that would be required to sustainably support our lifestyles. In Britain, the average ecological footprint has been calculated as 5.5 ha/person, but the biological capacity is only about 1.5 ha/person (http://www.footprintnetwork.org/), which means we are running at a massive deficit (×3.7, to be exact). For comparison, the global biological capacity is 1.8 hectares/person and the ecological footprint is 25% more than this. How long can we go on at that rate? An interesting question that doesn’t seem to have come up in this debate (pardon me if I have missed it) is that if each of us were given our share of 1.8 ha of land, what would we do with it, given that it has to provide us with food, water, clothing, fuel, waste removal, recreation, biodiversity, carbon storage, and all the other things we take for granted? Could we survive in the manner to which we are accustomed?

A final point – any debate on land use needs to consider not just how land is used in the UK, but also the impact that this will have on land use elsewhere in the world. The recent biofuels issue is a case in point – while the US and Europe strive to meet their biofuel targets, what is it doing to land use in the rest of the world? Causing even more deforestation in Africa as farmers clear land to grow maize and sugar cane for biofuels? Or draining of the peatlands in Indonesia? A recent study suggests that clearing 1 ha of Brazilian rainforest to grow biodiesel would release enough CO2 for the carbon saving in biofuel to take 300 years to cancel out (Science 319:1235–1238). Is this the right way forward?