Unlock Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, editor-in-chief of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Britons rarely think about the vast expanses of land that form the backdrop to the soul of our nation. We city dwellers, who occasionally visit the countryside to look at the wheat fields, the grazing sheep and the hedgerows, think that these will always be there. But the current row within government over how many family farms could be affected by the recent budget measures raises a vital question. In a small, increasingly populated country, we must be clearer about the vocation of the land.
As desperate farmers debate whether or not to go on strike, their cause is not helped by the presence of multi-millionaire spokespersons. Sir James Dyson and Jeremy Clarkson are savvy entrepreneurs, but they are not born farmers (as Clarkson brilliantly recounts on his hit TV show). It’s not impossible to imagine that Dyson’s decision to amass 35,000 acres of farmland had less to do with his passion for the soil than with the tax loopholes the chancellor has just attempted to fill.
But in trying to hit what it considers to be the “rich”, the Treasury has failed to distinguish between workers who manage the land generation after generation, with no desire to sell it, and others whose interests are more cynical. Agricultural land is increasingly being purchased by hobby farmers and second home buyers seeking protected views, for whom the new 20 percent inheritance tax rate still exceeds 40 percent; and by the interests of businesses seeking to diversify their risk profile, “offset” carbon, or achieve the “net biodiversity gain” required for real estate development. In May, Royal London Asset Management Property purchased one of Britain’s largest collections of prime agricultural land, through an English limited partnership, as cover for a Jersey property unit trust .
The race for carbon credits has allowed agricultural land prices to reach record levels thanks to the massive arrival of national and foreign investors. By driving up prices, such measures also push asset-rich, cash-poor family farms into new tax brackets. Last year, half of farms made a loss or profit of less than £25,000, according to Defra. Land that is sold to pay potential inheritance tax bills could go to companies that do not pay inheritance tax at all.
Brexiters are partly to blame for farmers’ growing desperation. Just as they had no plan for the economy once we left the EU, they had no idea what to do once they removed the hated Common Agricultural Policy subsidies. The Johnson government has dithered and chattered, offering small, complicated grants. He touted animal welfare and the quality of British food, but introduced imports full of chemicals and signed a trade deal with Australia that was a triumph of doublespeak. He ultimately decided to pay farmers to improve soil and biodiversity. Today, the new government has frozen these subsidies, plunging the sector into an even more tormented situation.
What’s missing is strategic thinking about how we use land to achieve competing goals. How to reconcile food security and energy security? Ministers have approved a four-mile end-to-end solar farm on prime farmland in Lincolnshire. How prudent does the government think it is to shift food production, when climate change makes harvests increasingly uncertain everywhere? Where should we build the new homes needed to house a burgeoning population? Almost 300,000 homes were built on prime agricultural land between 2010 and 2022, according to CPRE, the rural charity. The Environment Agency says 5.2 million homes and businesses in England are currently at risk of flooding.
Add up all the government’s current commitments and you begin to see how we need to break down silos. The UK government has pledged to increase England’s woodland by one million acres – an area larger than that of Kent – and create new habitats for biodiversity by a further million. It aims to expand England’s protected areas (national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty) by around 1.8 million acres, build more homes and increase renewable energy – while maintaining the 60 percent food self-sufficiency. At the same time, floods and droughts threaten crops, which climate change will worsen. Some kind of planning framework is urgently needed to ensure, in the words of the Parliamentary Committee on Planning in England, that “we do the right thing, in the right place and at the right scale “.
I am all for net zero. But I’m not sure I want my tax dollars spent on the Forestry Commission’s impenetrable spruce forests and corporate greenwashing. I prefer to subsidize farmers who reduce our dependence on food imports, who can manage land to limit flooding, and who have spent the long years since Brexit learning to farm with nature rather than against it. People like James Rebanks, whose book The Shepherd’s Life chronicled the struggles of three generations of Cumbrian sheep farmers. The fact that it became an international success is a reminder that landscape has deep meaning for humans; it is much more than a commodity.
At the very least, we need a level playing field. If we want UK farmers to set aside land for biodiversity and phase out chemicals, we should tax food imports based on their carbon footprint. If we want them to manage the land and maintain food production, we must not give unfair advantages to corporations. We must end the naivety around agriculture that has characterized every government since 2016. It is dangerous to simply assume that people will continue to farm the land for the love of it.
camilla.cavendish@ft.com
