Farmers need control of their land and more support from the Government if they are to continue to produce food for the nation in the future. And joined-up investment in environmentally sustainable cropping will help them to achieve this goal, according to speakers at the Cereals Event in Lincolnshire on 11 June. 

“There are three big policy areas that worry me,” said Robbie Moore, shadow Defra Minister. These are the changes to agricultural and business property reliefs from inheritance tax, the Land Use Framework consultation – which proposes to take 18% of land out of agricultural production – and the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. This will give Natural England more power to compulsorily purchase land at agricultural value rather than a higher development value. 

“Collectively, this is actively using the state to free land up for uses other than food production. Private landowners and businesses are losing control.” 

The closure of, and likely future changes to, the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) will further compromise farmers’ ability to feed the nation sustainably, said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.

“The removal of the SFI was a bitter pill to swallow as it has become a key part of the rotation,” he said. The very principle of public goods is that they’re not paid for at food level – so they have to be paid for using public money. “The magic money tree from the private sector has been promised for 10 years and not materialised. It’s a pipe dream.”

Rumours of the new version of SFI, with capped payments and a social element, are particularly worrying, as that will not deliver what is needed for a productive, environmentally friendly farming system, warned Mr Bradshaw. “We need open, honest communication about their vision for farming, so we can help them shape it.”

Jamie Burrows, NFU Crops Board chair, said some people would stick with SFI-type options in the rotation because they’ve seen the benefits to soil health and the environment. “But keeping the bank manager happy has to be the reality, and my fear is that farmers will have to maximise production just to make ends meet. That’s a real backwards step.”

However, there are some real win-wins which could deliver for farming and the environment, he added. One example is improved investment in, and markets for, peas and beans. Not only are pulses good for the soil, they fix nitrogen, thereby reducing fertiliser use, and they replace imported soya for animal feed, cutting farming’s carbon footprint. “If the SFI is going to change then supporting pulses could be a great option.”

The £5.9m Nitrogen Climate Smart (NCS) project, funded by Defra in a bid to cut UK farming’s CO2e emissions by 1.5m tonnes a year, could help here. Working with a wide range of partners, the project is already delivering very exciting results, said Roger Vickers, CEO at project lead PGRO. “Even after just one year we’re seeing that, if 20% of UK arable land grew pulses, which were fed instead of imported soya, we’d save 3.4m tonnes of CO2e per year. That’s 7% of all UK agriculture’s emissions.”

Bringing together arable growers and livestock producers to create a sustainable domestic market, the aim is to collate all of the information to inform future farm policy, he added. “This initial work demonstrates the power of pulses for environmental good while at the same time producing a highly valuable product and delivering domestically sustainable vegetable protein for the supply chain.”