Government will pay farmers more than just income lost to deliver on 'public good' - Environment Secretary

It comes after Neil Parish, the Conservative chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, said the farmer in North Yorkshire believed the compensation he was offered was "nowhere near enough" under the Government's flagship new land management scheme.

Setting out the new approach last month, Mr Eustice had said how farmers could be paid for allowing their land to be flooded at certain times of year in return for payment in order to reduce the risk of towns and cities downstream from bearing the brunt of heavy rainfall.

But Mr Parish told the minister he had been on a Zoom call with Floods Minister Rebecca Pow and Thirsk and Malton MP Kevin Hollinrake about an area of 15 acres in North Yorkshire that the Government wanted to flood.

He said: "But the trouble is, they're offering the farmer very little money and with a fairly flat land, even if it's only the 15 acres that floods, it does affect all the other land around him.

"And so, if he's cropping or whatever and if the flood was a certain time of the year as you will know, some times of year, it wouldn't matter, other times it would, you never know.

"And so his argument, this farmer, is that the compensation is nowhere near enough.”

He said the farmer had been offered "something like £3,000 in total" and added: "It's ridiculous if it's going to affect most of his farm, he's not going to sign up to that. It is something I think you have to get right because I want to take the farming community with us and I'm sure you do as well.

"I just make the plea to you that you can't make them overly generous but you will need to make them generous enough and you will need to incorporate enough land."

Speaking to The Yorkshire Post Mr Eustice said he did not know the specifics of the case, but he said: “Certainly the thinking behind our new Environmental Land Management scheme is that we would be seeking to change rewards away from an approach called income forgone, where you compensate the farmer for any loss of income, towards valuing what it delivers by way of public good."

He added: “So I'm very clear on this, that if some of these upstream solutions using soft defences or natural floodplains or nature based solutions, if those are really deliver for reducing flood risk down in some of those more urban communities, then it can be a really cost effective way of doing it.

“And yes, we're willing to pay more than just the income forgone, so we will be looking closely at these sorts of measures.”

The Environmental Land Management scheme is described as the cornerstone of the Government’s new post-Brexit agricultural policy.

Founded on the principle of ‘public money for public goods’, Ministers say it will provide a powerful way of achieving the goals of the Government's 25 Year Environment Plan and commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, while supporting our rural economy.

The scheme means farmers and other land managers may be paid for delivering public goods such as clean air and reduction of and adaptation to climate change. Tests and trials are already running before the full roll-out of the scheme in 2024.