We really do need to talk about land

At the Oxford farming conferences “welcome’ dinner this year, our guests enjoyed an inspiring keynote address from James Rebanks. In the country that imagined and then delivered a national health service out of the trauma of war, are we being radical enough, he asked, in imagining a new future for food and farming in the UK??

I’m not a great fan of the management speak ‘vision thing’. I’ve been in too many rooms, where people aspiring to be ‘visionary leaders’ give rousing speeches, often accompanied by motivational images (think skeins of geese moving as one like an arrow through a clear blue sky) only to see their words consigned to the corporate dustbin when circumstances change.?

I am however - like James - a BIG fan of talking a lot more about the version of the future we want to work together to co-create.? What kind of country do we want to be, and how - crucially - are we going to get there?

And for way too long, it has been nigh on impossible to talk about land and the choices we will need to make about this precious and scarce resource for a fairer and more sustainable future.

Reactions to yesterday’s announcement reveal exactly why this has been the case.? “You can’t tell people what to do with the land they own!” is one typical and well worn response.?

But there are two big flaws with this. ?

First of all - and I speak as a landowner myself - we are already told what we can and cannot do with the land and the assets in our stewardship.? I can’t just plough up old species rich grasslands or cut down important trees without permissions; I can’t damage a watercourse, or pollute land, without consequences. Just as - if lived in a national asset like a listed building - I wouldn’t be allowed to rip out the sash windows and replace them with some easyclean uPVC. Ownership of a national asset comes with responsibilities.?

Second, responsible and farsighted landowners already know this and feel it deeply. They want to be more involved in local and national conversations about how they can use their resources for the benefit of their communities. They want to talk about climate solutions, planting trees, protecting carbon sinks and community energy schemes; nature recovery, replacing hedgerows and creating important habitats; establishing flood mitigation schemes in uplands to protect communities down stream; and schemes for affordable rural housing and vibrant places to live and work.?

A well designed land use framework provides the mechanism for precisely these kinds of conversations.?

But the thing is this. We all have a stake in land use decisions. And for too long, those decisions have been piecemeal, or taken in unconnected policy silos, or in Westminster offices, far from the communities they most impact, or influenced by well resourced lobbyists, protecting their clients' interests. ?

A land use framework provides the mechanisms for shifting this profoundly suboptimal position.??

Of course, people are already making land use decisions all the time - and they want to know how to make better ones.? One unexpected result of our land use framework trials, in Devon and Cambridgeshire, was the number of places who approached us to join that group, who wanted to learn from colleagues in other parts of the country about how they are approaching difficult choices.? We work with ADEPT (the Association of Directors of Environment, Planning and Transport) whose members are tackling such dilemmas every day. They want processes that work better across policy objectives, and map boundaries, so that decisions in one place work more effectively and synergistically with others.?

The media’s treatment of Steve Reed’s announcement was also revealing.? “Labour land grab for housing and solar poses fresh blow for farmers”. “English farmland could be cut by 9% to meet green targets”.? These headlines misrepresent what is already going on in 'the countryside’, and reveal rather more about the london-centric perspectives of the headline writing sub-editors...

Some farmers next to towns will be considering the ‘hope value’ they could realise if they can sell some of their agricultural land for a housing project. More and more nature friendly farmers are working to establish essential biodiversity across their holdings, financed by ELMS payments. From Wildfarmed’s mission, working with farmers to produce wheat that restores nature, to James Rebank’s own river rewiggling and conservation projects, farmers everywhere are already trying to do the right things. In the North East Cotswolds farm cluster, 150 farms managing 42,000 hectares are working together for landscape regeneration and better local food networks. And some farmers are trying to work out how they can continue to produce food in a changing climate when they’re experiencing more frequent and disruptive weather and floods.

It’s too easy to make the simplistic assumption that making more space for nature by 2050 (an important target which is already a UK commitment) equals rewilding the uplands. Our own research, conducted by science think tank IDDRI, demonstrates how nature based solutions deployed appropriately and sensitively across the whole farmed landscape support carbon sequestration, habitat creation, species recovery, and healthier, regenerative food production on farms no longer having to rely on costly (and polluting) chemistry, instead working with the biology of natural processes.?

These individual and local choices work better when they are joined up, across landscapes and across communities. Habitat corridors work so much better when they’re designed across an ecosystem; smal,l well-designed affordable rural housing schemes all add up, bringing more people back to live and work in rural communities. And - crucially - a land use framework forces us to face the things we’ve not yet thought properly about; what food we want to grow, where and how - a critical component of national resilience and prosperity that does not, as yet, have a target or a plan. In our experience, farmers want to be involved, and they want their ‘ground truth’? knowledge valued, in the big strategic choices about land, decisions from which they have, too often, felt excluded.?

A lot of the reaction yesterday seemed to be about a land use framework people assumed was being announced, rather than the thoughtful and inclusive consultation that Steve Reed actually announced. Defra’s consultation acknowledges at last just how important land use decisions are, for national renewal. Instead of relying on the foresight, courage and tenacity of a small number of folk dotted about the place, it brings many more people - especially farmers and land managers - into the conversation. It invites us all to imagine the kind of country we want to be, and the land we want to live in. And it helps us resolve conflicts and optimise decisions for a serious delivery plan to get there. ?

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