On Tuesday 6 September GWCT Chief Executive Teresa Dent was invited to give the organisation’s verdict on the government’s progress with its Environmental Land Management Scheme to the EFRA Select Committee in the Palace of Westminster.
Alongside witnesses from the NFU, Tenant Farmers Association, CLA, National Trust and National Parks England, Teresa was questioned by MPs on the plans for post-CAP funding and what they might mean for both farmers and the environment.
“The first rule of conservation is to protect and maintain what you have.”
Asked by Derek Thomas, MP for West Cornwall, whether nature recovery plans can put at risk those areas that have already done a good job of developing biodiversity, Teresa has keen to highlight the importance of recognising good work that has already been undertaken.
“I think there is a risk that those farmers who have done really good habitat provision and biodiversity work in the past end up being rewarded less as part of some of the current opportunities, than those who haven’t done as much”, she said, before calling that potential situation “iniquitous and a bit unjust”. “I think it is very important that the government scheme which is there to cover the perceived market failures does look at that very carefully. For instance, environmental trades which some farmers are beginning to look at are very much about additionality, but the first rule of conservation is to protect and maintain what you have”.
Making reference to the GWCT’s Allerton Project demonstration farm, Teresa highlighted those farms that have very little headroom for further biodiversity net gain, so will have very limited opportunity to benefit from future biodiversity net gain trades compared to farms that have little wildlife habitat at the moment. “We’re not the only ones who have very good existing levels of habitat provision and I think government needs to be careful to ensure that those farmers are rewarded under the new schemes”, she added.
Sir Robert Goodwill, MP for Scarborough & Whitby, moved to focus on the uplands, asking if there is there any work we the GWCT had done on management of moorland and heather that would help moor managers and farmers to manage that environment.
Teresa raised the important issue of wildfire, calling for wildfire mitigation policies for upland landscapes and a better discussion on the role of prescribed burning as part of wildfire mitigation. Later Teresa was asked about wildlife mitigation by Barry Gardiner, the Labour MP for Brent North, to which she gave a precise and robust response:
“The concern that exists is that if you do not manage the vegetation then you build up a fuel load. In the summer when it’s hot (out of the formal burning season) you can have a layer of dry peat even on the deepest, probably wettest peatland area, then you can then get a wildfire that burns into the peat. That is very damaging from a climate change point of view, as it will release a great deal of carbon dioxide. Some quite careful calculations have been done which show you would need to manage about 3% of your vegetation in order to protect 97%.”
Discussing the potential to deliver biodiversity goals at scale, GWCT’s experience in working with groups of farmers through Farmer Clusters came to the fore. Teresa stated “the thing that we would be looking for in the future within these schemes, is the opportunity for farmers and land managers, possibly collaboratively at a greater scale, to put forward cohesive conservation and species recovery plans that cover quite big areas in the uplands and the lowlands.
“I think there is, in Defra’s mind, scope for that to happen in Landscape Recovery, but I think it would be helpful for it to be brought into Local Nature Recovery as well. So often to achieve the type of reversal of species decline that Defra has as its target, you have to have a cohesive plan and that has to have scale. The more you can get farmers to collaborate, the better.”
Highlighting the success of Farmer Clusters in the lowlands, Teresa presented the example of a group of farmers on the lower Avon in Hampshire who have collectively reversed the decline of lapwing and have achieved a level of breeding success that will maintain or expand the population. “There are not many places that has happened, so we’re very much in favour of this collaborative approach and very keen to see that embedded in Local Nature Recovery”, she added.
“You have to have a base layer payment for habitat provision otherwise you’re asking a farmer to bet the business on a curlew and that’s really quite a rash thing to do.”
Sir Robert went on to ask if farmers should just be rewarded for the biodiversity on their land rather than the habitat measures put in place. “These payments to reward farmers for public good of nature recovery are going to be a really important part of the resilience of the farming business. As other panelists explained, farmers have to look for certainty, particularly in these periods of serious economic volatility, so I think you have to have a sensible level of payment that is rewarding them for the habitat provision, but you could have some additional payments for elements of species recovery and productivity.”, noted Teresa, before putting the reality of the situation in very clear terms - “you have to have a base layer for habitat provision, otherwise you’re asking a farmer to bet the business on a curlew and that’s really quite a rash thing to do.”
Asked by Labour’s Ian Byrne about a simpler way forward, Teresa cited the GWCT’s 55 years of research into farmland ecology and nature conservation on farmland, all of which has focused on fitting nature alongside viable food production. “There has been a lot of research done into how much nature you can deliver from relatively small amounts of unproductive, uncropped land”, began Teresa. “We can generate these nature conservation outcomes that we are looking for on farmland that is still used for food production, but we do have to manage both bits of it with great care and intelligence to get the best from both productive and uncropped land.” Teresa then suggested simplifying the Sustainable Farming Incentive (using the existing evidence correlating the amount of uncropped land on a farm with increases in pollinators, butterflies and birds) to create a basic payment for the amount of habitat that is on a farm, based on a simple habitat assessment.
We will continue to have input into the development of ELMS as it progresses.
You can watch the video of the meeting here >