Environmental Land Management schemes seem to be all about the environment with no thought for food production - Sarah Todd

Something had made me think he wore dungarees, or bib and brace as they used to be known. But it must have been his under-strain braces that had sprung to mind. This set off a tangent of thinking about an old farmer from 40 years back who had a pick-up full of sheepdogs and referred to the front pouch in his old overalls as “the office”. Everything he needed to keep up with the paperwork to run his farm was contained within this small square of material.

Thank goodness, really, he is no longer alive to have to cope with all the online form-filing that now has to be completed by farmers.

As the gap in more general society widens, between those that have and those that don’t, the same is being played out in the countryside. All credit to National Farmers’ Union president Minette Batters for just recently pointing out that many large landowners are effectively living off the state, disproportionately benefited by new subsidy scheme benefits.

Ms Batters is right to flag up that the UK’s post-Brexit farming subsidy scheme has failed to improve on the old EU system, which has been overseen by seven different environment secretaries - whatever happened to a dedicated Minister for Agriculture? - since the country voted to leave the EU in 2016.

An ironic state of affairs as one of the biggest criticisms of the old subsidy scheme run as part of the Common Agricultural Policy was that it also unfairly benefited large landowners. Farmers were told Brexit was an opportunity for the payment system to be overhauled, but its replacement, the Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMs), has been slow to be implemented and seems to be all about the environment with no thought for food production.

When the next crisis comes and there are empty supermarket shelves all those wild flowers and trees will be a right lot of good. Large landowners, with vast swathes of fertile arable land, can easily leave slightly less productive areas here and there to cash in on these schemes. But an upland farmer, the Seps of this world, probably need every square inch of grass to feed their sheep and keep their farms from going under. The balance just isn’t right and the other point is that all the big landowners have farm consultants and land agents on hand to fill in the mountains of paperwork. How is Sep going to afford any of that? Or our old friend with his bib and brace pocket? They are more farmers than those investing in land on behalf of pension schemes or foreign investors will ever be.

This incarnation of Gladys, Sep’s wife, ringing the knacker man about the dead ewe has tried and tried but can’t fathom the Government’s online system to register some land. And, of course, as a former magazine editor this writer-cum-farmer is hardly a complete newcomer to a computer screen.

If all we do is listen to the environmental brigade, we’ll end up with nothing but massive, soulless farms. All identikit, growing what men in suits who don’t own a pair of wellies tell them to grow to get the biggest cheque - sorry, electronic bank payment. The rich will get richer and traditional family farms - the likes of which form the backbone of Yorkshire’s green and pleasant land - will disappear; swallowed up by massive contract farming agreements.

No, this lot are more players of the payment game. Farm houses will be sold off as holiday homes and dissected from the land they have been connected to for centuries. Does it matter? Maybe not, but as sure as eggs is eggs once the land has been grabbed by big businesses there will be no buying it back. The likes of Clartiehole Farm are certainly thinner on the ground; buildings either converted or knocked down and all the clartie holes filled to form immaculately landscaped grounds. Thing is, the Seps of this world understand the land. They haven’t just got a degree in environmental something or other, they really know what they are on about. These young experts can buy a fleece gilet and maybe even a pair of boots but they will never know half of what was kept in that bib-and-brace front office pocket.

With the aforementioned Ms Batters due to step down in February from the top job at the NFU it’s hard to look at 2024 with much positivity. Hers will be very big boots to fill. Another blow has been farming’s biggest champion, King Charles, having to concentrate more on affairs of the state than championing farming. Although he is undoubtedly a big landowner, he has proved time and again that he has a small farmer’s heart.

Nobody cares about the environment more, yet His Royal Highness instinctively knows that the countryside is a balancing act that needs to be made up of local abattoirs, chats in the café at livestock markets and, above all else, generations of people who do it because it’s in their DNA. As Henry Brewis used to say, it’s a funny way t’mekalivin.

Sarah Todd is a journalist specialising in farming and country life. Read her regular column in Wednesday’s edition of T he Yorkshire Post.