Lack of joined-up thinking leaves UK farmers at risk - Emma Ryan
A phrase used a lot this year to describe politics and planning in relation to farming has been “working in silo”.
Food security, food production, house-building, climate change, greener energy – all issues being bandied about like a game of pass the parcel – and in the middle of it seem to be the farmers.
Yet increasingly, it appears there is no joined-up thinking.
It is well-documented that should we rely solely on the food produced in this country, we’d run out by September, and the issue of strengthening food security is spouted by politicians on a daily basis.
So why do we take productive farmland out of action to meet targets in other areas?
The Sturdy family, for example, from Malton, are just trying to get on with a tenanted farming business they are incredibly proud of while raising their young children.
Coincidentally, their children’s early memories will be dominated by seeing the devastating effect taking on corporate landlords in the High Court has had on their humble parents just trying to continue a family farming legacy.
But a significant part of this farm is now set to be covered in solar to meet – what you don’t need to be an energy analyst to figure out – an impossible target of clean power by 2030.
For Adele and Andrew Riddles, the farm they resurrected from dereliction in Sheffield back in the 1980s could make way for authority-led house-building.
There are government targets for 1.5m new homes to be built by 2030.
Across the region these are being squeezed and packed into open countryside, towns and villages where the permanent population has been completely overtaken by holiday lets and Airbnbs, which, as an aside, often don’t require local authority permission.
Even when local planners do refuse an application (as they did when Harmony Energy applied for the solar farm on land managed by the Sturdys), it is more than likely to be overturned by government inspectors anyway.
George Dunn, chair of the Tenant Farmers’ Association, says public money is being used to encourage landowners to take farmland out of use.
Meanwhile, government statistics show that in 2025, food, feed and drink imports cost £67.8bn, having increased by more than £3bn the previous year.
It is an incredulous situation to be in, but one that a succession of previous governments have got themselves so far into that it is impossible to get out of.
The brunt of these decisions, targets and plans is felt by ordinary farming families being forced out of work – without whom we wouldn’t even be able to make it to September to put food on the table.