Sponsored by
Farms call to be paid to save environment
Another report calling for farmers to be paid for environmentally friendly work, including producing less meat and more vegetables, was published this week, with backing from the country landowners.
The report, Public Goods From Private Land, was produced by a lobby body called Rural Investment Support for Europe (RISE), set up by a former Agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler, to deliver pro-rural messages in the right places. In this case, the UK's Country Land and Business Association (CLA) and the European Landowners Organisation (ELO) chipped in for a report on how environmental benefits from farming and forestry might be given cash value.
The task force which produced the report was led by Professor Allan Buckwell, respected chief economist of the CLA, in collaboration with Herr Fischler, who said: "The provision of European Public Goods, including food security, should, and I believe will, be a central role of the post-2013 Common Agricultural Policy."
The CLA's new president, William Worsley, of Hovingham, North Yorkshire, said the report "laid the foundations for the future of environmentally friendly farming in Europe".
Although he too made a point of mentioning "food security", the report was mainly about how farming could get paid for fighting global warming.
It said: "The under-provision of rural environmental services is a classic case of market failure. There are reasons to expect these failures and concerns to grow, especially if climate change is not slowed, and if farm supports are not suitably amended."
The report repeated the argument that rich western diets were doing more harm through methane from livestock than cars were through carbon dioxide.
On the same day it was published, the English Beef and Lamb Executive was unveiling its "road map" to lower methane emissions.
Last month, the environmental arm of Defra, Natural England, published a "vision" for the uplands which was mainly about taking the landscape back a hundred years to improve its performance as a carbon sink. Natural England will be working with farmers to find new funding for the process next year.
They all think they are recognising political reality – which is that subsidies for food are on the way out and the only funds which might replace them are for the environment.
But Mike Keeble, who farms near Masham and speaks on uplands issues for the Tenant Farmers Association, is among those exasperated by farmers' organisations joining the consensus while livestock production is worn down by economic pressures.
If methane production had to be tackled, he said, part of the answer was to have more animals foraging on the hills.
Will Cockbain, uplands spokesman for the NFU, commented: "There are so many reports, some of them contradictory, it is difficult to know what the future has in store, but what is clear is that we need to balance all these announcements with a healthy dollop of common sense."
Email to a friend
Print this page- Three-inch blanket of snow heading our way today
- Alan Shearer in list of favourites for Leeds and England jobs: Latest odds
- Barnsley’s Keith Hill invokes Fawlty Towers over link with Leeds job
- McCormack feels United search can be narrowed down
- Redfearn throws down gauntlet as queue builds at Elland Road
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Yorkshire
Friday 10 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -8 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: -2 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: South
