The transformation of England’s farm payments system has been a bonafide Brexit boon. And yet, the Conservative Party has consistently downplayed this great achievement as if it is embarrassed by it. With Labour now on the cusp of cutting the budget underpinning these reforms, there is no time like the present for Conservatives to start championing their legacy.
The European Union’s much-maligned Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was a disaster for nature in our countryside and did not help British farmers to create financially sustainable businesses. By handing farmers public money based solely on the amount of land they managed, CAP disproportionately benefited larger landowners and undermined the UK’s long-term food security by incentivising the removal of nature and the resilience it provides to flooding and drought.
Brexit created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change this. With food production already rewarded by the market, our new, but admittedly rather banal sounding, Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMs) direct public money towards the provision of public goods. These are things that the market does not already reward, such as soil health. This vision is delivered using the same pre-Brexit budget (£2.4 billion), making the bang for the taxpayer’s buck much greater than what came before under the EU.
We have just faced the wettest 18 months on record, causing huge damage to our yields. By building up our natural resilience through improvements to soil health, ELMs are helping to protect farmers not just against flooding but also biodiversity loss, the biggest medium to long-term threat to our food security.
This is not some fanciful policy idea consigned to the pages of a think tank report, never to survive contact with reality. It is real. This transformation has happened. There are over 55,000 ELM agreements already in place across England. This is not just something Conservatives said they wanted to do; it is something the Conservatives did.
But, it is not only good for farmers and our environment – new polling the Conservative Environment Network has commissioned from Stack Data is clear ELMs are also a vote winner.
This should not be a surprise. Previous research has shown that the British public likes protecting the environment, and likes political parties that do too. And yet, despite this intuition, the Conservative Party underplayed its environmental hand during the recent general election campaign.
This is reinforced by our latest polling, which shows that 67 per cent of people agree that damage to our natural environment harms our food security. Even 47% per cent of rural voters think we should pay farmers to protect our natural world, even if we grow less food.
However, 46 per cent of those polled said they were not at all familiar with the reforms to farm payments. For those that did have some level of self-reported awareness, this did not translate into the Conservative Party receiving anywhere recognition and acknowledgment for delivering them.
When asked which party they most associated with the principle underlying ELMs, only 12 per cent said the Conservatives. Meanwhile, 25 per cent said Labour, and 37 per cent opted for “none of the above”. Voters do not know about this thing the Conservatives did and they do not suspect it’d be the Conservatives to do it. This is hardly surprising.
Even when Labour’s paltry 87 manigesto words on farming presented a political opportunity, the party did not think to point to its success story to win over voters that care about the natural environment and back British farmers.
By choosing to make environmental achievements a taboo topic, the Conservative Party shot itself in the foot. While championing ELMs more would not have won the Conservative Party the election, telling voters what it did would have at least helped to show that the party has many accomplishments to show from the last 14 years.
While the election is over and that particular opportunity is missed, all is not lost. The new Labour government is reportedly planning to cut this farming budget by £100 million. This cut would equate to approximately 239,000 fewer hectares of farmland under ELMs. If the budget is cut, it would be bad for farmers and bad for the environment. For a wannabe Leader of the Opposition, however, this represents a political opportunity.
Having been the party to deliver this, the new leader can go on the offensive. The Lib Dems can certainly talk the talk, but Tim Farron’s repeated pleas to delay or dilute the environmental ambition of ELMs show they cannot resist the temptation to play short-term politics when others try to walk the walk.
Meanwhile, with its undiscerning aversion to all things “green”, according to its manifesto-not-a-manifesto, Reform wants to return to the EU system. So much for protecting Brexit and sticking up for the little guy, when 50 per cent of the pre-Brexit farming budget was spent on just 10 per cent of farmers. As the natural party for rural Britain, it must be the Conservative Party that steps up to defend these reforms and the money it affords to the countryside.
For those that don’t see red when confronted with green policy, there is much to like about ELMs. It is not just a significant win from Brexit, it is a boon for farmers, our long-term food security, and the environment. With the budget on Wednesday, rather than wait for the £100 million to be cut, candidates vying to be Leader of the Opposition should not be shy about coming forward with their defence of ELMs.
First published by ConservativeHome. Kitty Thompson is CEN's Senior Nature Programme Manager.
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