Part of this is inspired by walking around the Lakes landscape, where "Higher Level Stewardship" schemes (and the newer Countryside Stewardship schemes) are visible in areas where sheep numbers are reduced, trees and shrubs are planted, and cattle-only grazing can be seen being implemented.
However, I'm finding the motives being higher-level payments is often fairly sickening.
Firstly, it's a bribe. Our landowners - or, as can often happen, tenants holding the power over landowners - will get a 'basic' payment to farm the land. This means that every field corner, every square metre, is financially valuable. In theory, this subsidies the poor prices we all pay, as society, for food. I get that, especially in the lowlands, where more 'staple' crops are grown. But up here in the Lakes and other upland areas, this basic payment means that farmers and landowners will graze the land with livestock at what would otherwise be a financial loss simply because they get paid to do so. Lamb is not a staple food, so there really is no justification for it; without a simple payment, they wouldn't do it. Plus, the arguments about eating meat in light of climate change and public health aren't addressed.
So, the basic subsidy system ensures land is 'managed', to the detriment of biodiversity, water quality, soil health, carbon capture and many other ecosystem services, just... well, because. There's a tenuous cultural connection - people have done this for centuries - but then have a look at current farming systems and it's hardly true to past practices.
However, moral issues compound with higher-level payments. In light of this rather poor "stewardship" of the land, Governmental response via agricultural policy is to bribe better behaviour through even more payments to try and persuade landowners not to trash the land quite so much. And so, farmers and landowners demand higher payments on top of their basic payment not to graze every last square metre, to maybe plant a few trees or reduce stock numbers or leave field margins.
This sticks in the throat a little. Society is often shown this image of farmers as "guardians of the countryside", looking after it on our behalf. In actual fact, conservationists consider leaving a small field margin, or planting a small area, as a "success" compared to what it is, a minor concession that is temporarily rented from the landowner only whilst they remain in a scheme...
The root of this problem lies in land ownership inequality. A small number of people own the majority of land, and manage it to their own end and benefit, not a wider societal gain. They then hold out their hand, demanding payment not to continue to trash it. In effect, there's an element of holding the wider public, not to mention the landscape and biodiversity, to ransom.
Whilst Gove's recent ideas about shifting subsidies further to payments for ecologically-beneficial outcomes is a welcome development, it maintains this idea that if you own land, you can continue to ruin it to further your own objectives unless someone pays you not to. Where's the morality in that? Where's the often-feted "stewardship" and "guardianship"? Although not every landowner feels like this, there are many for whom there are no morals here, no desire to help society - just a desire to pocket the money.
Yes, we should as a society pay more for food, and this influences the debate in a myriad of ways. But ultimately, every time I see a relatively modest gain in small areas of land management, I get increasingly depressed by how temporary this potentially is, and how it has to be bribed out of the hands of often selfishly-motivated landowners.
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| "Higher level stewardship", or still sheep-wrecked? |
Surely it should be a duty to manage the land sustainably, for the good of wider nature (including, but not only, human society), instead of an optional extra for which one expects to be financially rewarded... after all, does land really 'belong' to anyone?
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| Sadly, this sentiment isn't often shared |
