Farming and nature recovery
As the deadline for applications to the Landscape Recovery Pilot passes, Gain Director Colette Beckham mulls over the developing new system of agri-environment support.
Its fair to say that farming is in a major state of flux at the moment, subject to intense global forces and with the old system of agri-support under the Common Agricultural Policy being phased out. This involves the incremental reductions in Basic Payment Scheme over the next few years and the gradual roll out of the three tiers of the new system.
If we were to compare the new tiers to the old system, SFI could be seen as equating to a bit of Cross Compliance plus some entry level Countryside Stewardship and Nature Recovery looks like it will comprise more elements of Higher Tier Countryside Stewardship, supporting approaches around sustainable farming and regenerative agriculture. Landscape Recovery , on the other hand, is looking like it will be something not really seen before under the old system – support for really large scale collaborative projects, where numerous landowners come forward under a single legal identity to deliver nature recovery and other ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, at scale (over 500 Ha and up to 5000 Ha).
Here at Gain, we see the new system of payments needing to achieve a couple of things.
It needs to deliver a system of support that recovers nature in a transformative way (quickly)
It needs to adequately support farmers financially so that there isn’t a large scale exit from the industry
Ultimately, the success of both will depend on adequate budgets for all three levels of the scheme and scheme options valued to incentivise farmers to enter into SFI and Nature Recovery.
Current risks to success are many. At Landscape Recovery level, will enough schemes come forward, given the level of landowner co-operation needed and large area of land required for habitat creation/ restoration (i.e. land taken out of farming)? Will public funding be enough to support enough projects of this type and are we really there yet in terms of the private sector being ready to invest? What happens at scheme end and how will benefits be secured long term?
In addition, will Landscape Recovery incentivise projects across the country with good representation of the range of landscapes in the UK? The focus on habitat restoration at this level is likely to favour less productive land in larger scale landscapes, for example in the uplands, and may result in a geographical distortion at the expense of nature recovery in the more productive lowlands. Is Defra missing a trick by not also supporting large scale co-operative approaches in regenerative agriculture systems at Landscape Recovery level? A good example of this would be support for landscape scale wood pasture systems, an approach likely to be more available to farmers across a much broader area, by maintaining land within the farm rotation, while still delivering large scale tree planting and all the benefits that it would bring? Hopefully some of the Landscape Recovery Pilots will be able to answer some of these burning questions and deliver a scheme that will work for nature in all corners of the land.
More detail of Nature Recovery, as the main pillar of the new system, is now awaited with much anticipation, and to whether this will provide the right type and level of support to incentivise nature recovery across a broad spectrum of farm types. Hopefully through this pillar, it can be demonstrated that food production and nature recovery can go hand in hand.
