Farming in the Uplands - ARCHIVE: Defra

Ev 12 Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Evidence
27 October 2010 Dr Stuart Burgess and Professor Mark Shucksmith
bringing to the farming community more generally.
They want to be inspired, and we need to help them
to be so inspired.
Q47 Chair: Could I also press you? A couple of
times you’ve mentioned, and it’s a theme throughout
your report, both carbon and water storage in upland
areas. Now, I found that immensely attractive, but the
only scheme that I’m aware of is the one in my own
constituency of a flood protection project at Pickering.
They’re going to work with the railway line. They’re
going to create bogs, if you’ll pardon the expression,
peat bogs. They’re going to plant trees and they’re
going to put bungs along lakes and dams along the
railway line. Do you think there is more scope for
that, particularly when we come on to discuss the
CAP reform at the moment? I’m a little bit concerned.
If the Forestry Commission is going to go, and
obviously we wait to see the details, they’re heavily
involved in this scheme, because the Forestry
Commission will be planting the trees. Trees, as we
know, retain water. Do you have any other examples
like that, because it is a very powerful theme
throughout your report? I wondered if you had any
examples that you could use.
Stuart Burgess: I go back, if I may, to the answer in
which I referred to the University of Nottingham and
the work they’re doing there. Again, I’m no expert in
this, I’m no scientist, but I was really taken by the
work that they’re doing in the university. My
understanding is that the upland and peatland areas
have to be mapped to find out their potential in terms
of carbon storage. Now, that process is just beginning,
but they have to do that piece of work first, before
they can then say that this is a particular area that is
going to be valuable to us. All their research is
showing at the moment that there is huge potential out
there, around carbon storage, in upland areas.
Q48 Chair: Water storage also? The University of
Durham I know does this.
Stuart Burgess: Water sequestration, absolutely. I
think the two go together, but I think we’re at the early
stages of this, in its development, but I personally am
very excited about it.
Professor Shucksmith: The point you asked first was
for a specific example. On page 90 of our report, we
have a small case study of the sustainable catchment
management programme in Bowland and the Peak
District, which has some of those objectives to it.
Q49 Amber Rudd: On CAP reform, what outcomes
would you like to see to benefit the uplands?
Professor Shucksmith: There are several things to say
here. The first and most important would be higher
remuneration for hill farming, such that hill farmers
are able to continue looking after the valued assets.
The likelihood is that would be either through the
agri-environmental schemes in Pillar 2 or through
some change to the Single Farm Payments in Pillar 1.
In a sense, it doesn’t matter to us which of those it is.
That’s very clear, and I think we said in our report
that other European countries have been able to use
the existing CAP mechanisms to reward hill farmers
rather more generously and more effectively to keep
them in business. There is work that has been done
on that, which we were citing, by the IEEP, the
Institute for European Environmental Policy, by David
Baldock and his colleagues. We could say more about
that, if you like.
Apart from that measure, there are other aspects that
are equally important. In our report, we’ve tried, as I
said at the outset, to emphasise the importance of
upland communities as the society and the economy
within which land managers exist. There’s a question
about how will upland communities be supported
through the CAP. There are measures at the moment
within Pillar 2. I’m thinking particularly of Axes 3
and 4. Those are measures that we would look to see
expanded in the future, with a broader menu of
possible measures. You could envisage much more
support for upland communities coming through that.
Whether that will happen, I don’t know, because
clearly those are aspects of the Common Agricultural
Policy that tend to be squeezed, because they don’t
have interest groups lobbying quite so strongly for
them. Indeed, I think those are the very areas that are
likely to be squeezed in our spending review, in the
announcements that were made last week, with the
Rural Development Programme for England, I think
I’m right in saying, being cut by 33%, but the Uplands
Entry Level scheme having enhanced funding.
Presumably Axes 1, 3 and 4 are going to be squeezed
in this country in the next few years.
Q50 Neil Parish: The Single Farm Payment: I’m
afraid I’m a bit of an expert on these matters, as I
spent 10 years in the European Parliament and chaired
the Agriculture Committee for two and a half years.
The Single Farm Payment is very much an English
hybrid. There is nothing stopping us really because,
as far as I can see, the new CAP reform ain’t going
to amount to a hill of beans in the end, if you look at
it, to use an American expression. It’s not going far
enough. We can take this existing Single Farm
Payment if we wanted to. We could combine the nonseriously
disadvantaged areas and the seriously
disadvantaged areas in one, and give them an average
payment. Then you would shift money back towards
the hills.
Margaret Beckett didn’t mean to do it in many
respects, but one of the things that did happen when
she averaged these payments was that potato-growers
in East Anglia, who previously under the old system
never got any payment at all, suddenly got a payment,
and she took away monies that were on livestock, like
the sheep premium and the suckler cow premium.
Lots of those came off the hills, and they lost out
significantly. There is a way of pushing that back
again. My own NFU would probably shoot me for
these comments, but there is a fairness in this. If you
are having a Single Farm Payment that’s looking after
and managing the countryside, nowhere in many
respects is more deserving than the uplands. Would
you be as radical as that or what?
Stuart Burgess: I personally would be as radical as
long as the policy is fair. That was the word you used.
I agree with you, if there is flexibility in the Single
Farm Payment, then why not?
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