Hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland are being lost to green schemes, new analysis has found.
More than half a million acres will be taken out of production temporarily to be used for projects which attract new subsidies for farming that improves the environment, according to analysis of Government data.
It amounts to around 2 per cent of all agricultural land in Britain, and could mean a 3 per cent drop in crop production, according to consultancy Strutt & Parker, which carried out the analysis.
The Sustainable Farming Initiative includes subsidies that reward farmers for boosting wildlife, which includes taking some land out of production, mostly on the edges of fields.
The government now caps the land eligible to a quarter of each farm, after it found some farmers were taking as much as 80 per cent of their land out of production.
Only around 40 per cent of farmers are currently part of the SFI subsidy scheme, and full takeup could increase land taken out of production to around 5 per cent, said Jason Beedell, the head of rural research at Strutt & Parker.
But he emphasised that the schemes meant that farmers could “revert back to arable cropping grassland very, very quickly”, if necessary.
A ‘necessary trade-off’
“The farming industry may express concern over such a decrease in production, especially considering this year’s challenging weather, which has resulted in the lowest cereal and oilseed rape area in Great Britain in two decades,” said Jonathan Armitage, head of farming for Strutt & Parker.
However, Mr Armitage suggested that the figure may be a “necessary trade-off” for nature recovery, given declines in wildlife habitats and soil health.
Since 1970, nearly 1 in 6 species is threatened with extinction, partly as a result of farming practices, and partly because of the impact of climate change, according to Government-backed research.
A spokesman for the environment department said they did not recognise Strutt & Parker’s figures on drop in crop production and did not expect changes to farming subsidies to impact food security.
“We will restore stability and confidence amongst farmers and optimise our schemes and grants in an orderly way, ensuring they produce the right outcomes for all farmers, while delivering food security and nature recovery in a just and equitable way,” the spokesman said.
Rural concern over Net Zero
David Exwood, the deputy president of the National Farmers Union, said: “It’s vital that the Sustainable Farm Incentive works to support food production alongside protecting and enhancing our environment, and sets out to achieve a greater balance between the two.
The new figures on farming come amid a debate over changes to land use in the countryside for eco schemes, including new solar farms to meet Net Zero goals.
The Countryside Alliance is calling for new Government planning guidelines to ensure new homes include solar panels on the roof, and guidance limiting solar farms on productive agricultural land, amid concern over how much rural land is being used for Net Zero.
“We need to have that balance of feeding the nation and providing energy for the nation,” said Sarah Lee, head of policy at the Countryside Alliance. “So we need to look at this sensibly. There will be some appropriate areas to put solar panels on farms, but we just don’t want to see it on productive farmland.”
The Government points out that even under its most ambitious targets for solar, panels would take up less than 1 per cent of the UK’s agricultural land.
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