Farming in the Uplands - ARCHIVE: Defra

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Ev 18 Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Evidence of the rules on management control to ensure that any agri-environment money went to working farmers on the ground as opposed to landlords. Mike, would you agree with that? Mike Keeble: To a degree I do. George is, quite rightly, accepting the status quo, but it is rather perverse if you realise that most of the uplands are tenanted mainly because of large shooting estates and landowners like the National Trust and the MoD. The ELS on the whole is really about the capital of the land; it is about improving the land, the walls and woods and making the shooting better. It is doing all those things; it is not doing anything for production. Yet it is production that the tenant has to be in. All the capital that he has involved in his business is in livestock; it is on four legs and the equipment that goes with it. Until we get back to something that accepts production on the hills and the uplands, we will still have problems. A lot of the environmental grants are all very well if you are an owner-occupier farmer because you are appreciating the capital of your property, but as a tenant you have two rents to pay annually. The agents ain’t being very kind about that at the moment because of what they think of land prices and that sort of thing. We must get back to focusing on production and not the land. Q73 Tom Blenkinsop: Some landowners have been advised to consolidate smallholdings into larger enterprises. Would that be suitable or sustainable for tenant farmers? George Dunn: From our perspective it would not be a “one size fits all” policy. Obviously, there will be circumstances where amalgamation of holdings makes sense for a number of reasons. What is behind your question is probably the Upper Yewdale case in Cumbria and the Beatrix Potter farms in which the National Trust were involved a few years ago. From my perspective as representative of the tenanted sector I could see that the National Trust took a pragmatic, sensible approach to amalgamating two units to make it more sustainable for the long term while protecting the farms in perpetuity. In other circumstances there are quite sizeable holdings where the landlords have taken the opportunity to take the capital out of the centre of those holdings, be it the buildings or the house, sell it or put it on a different basis and then look to amalgamate over a wider area. We would not necessarily be so keen on that because those are viable holdings that are being lost in the marketplace as opposed to taking quite smallholdings and making them more sensibly viable in themselves. It is not a “one size fits all” policy. We would accept it in some cases and not in others, but we need to look at them on their own merits. Q74 Chair: To follow up what you said about the Uplands Entry Level Stewardship schemes, in your written evidence you say that 70% to 80% of farmers who receive the hill farming allowance have not been able to get into the ELS. Is that still the case? George Dunn: We have been trying to get some figures just to understand where we are currently. We get slightly different stories from Natural England compared with Defra. I am slightly more inclined to 10 November 2010 George Dunn and Mike Keeble believe Natural England’s rather than Defra’s figures. Natural England indicates to us that at the moment there are about 9,000 potential applicants. If you take out those who are in what we call legacy schemes— countryside stewardship and ESAs—and therefore not yet eligible to get into uplands ELS, about 9,000 individuals should be potentially eligible. The most recent figures I have seen for uptake is that 3,500 individuals are now in the scheme, so from the figures we have tried to concoct a little less than two-thirds would appear to be outside the scheme. I am quite happy to share with the Committee the email correspondence I have had, if it would help to explain it. 2 Q75 Chair: That would be helpful. You prefer the UELS to focus on food production and the active farmer. Is there scope within the existing CAP rules to allow that, and should there be scope for mediation where there are disagreements? George Dunn: We would say there is absolutely scope. The European regulations do not use the phrase “management control” that Defra employs. The European regulations say that potential participants in agri-environment schemes should be those carrying on an agricultural activity or other land managers. We don’t believe that really means having two people on a single piece of land who are potentially eligible to get into the same scheme. We believe that within the European regulations there is scope for the Government to be able to say that “management control” means that the individuals are in day-to-day management control of the land, are making the decisions about the management of that land and are taking risk. Our concern is that landlords do not take risks, are not in day-to-day management control and simply passively manage through the tenancy agreement but are still able to access the scheme money. One of my quick wins is that I think there is scope to look at the issue of management control and point it more to those who are actively farming the land. Chair: That is helpful. EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: Not to be published in full, or part, in any form before 00.01am GMT Wednesday 16 February 2011 Q76 Neil Parish: Talking still about agrienvironment schemes and stocking rates in particular, I come from the South West where you need higher stocking rates than perhaps in Cumbria and so on. Would you be keen to see these being dealt with much more on a local basis? Do you feel that the agrienvironment schemes at the moment are far too prescriptive on stocking rates? Mike Keeble: You have opened a big can of worms, haven’t you? Neil Parish: Yes, I know. Mike Keeble: The first thing to say is that Single Farm Payment has supported an awful lot of farming that, frankly, should not be going on. In terms of how the environmental payments try to prescribe stocking rates, there is no doubt that the number of cattle and sheep going out of the dales and off the hills particularly in the North—I do not think it is quite the same in your part of the world—is increasing phenomenally and quickly. Once those cattle have 2 Not published
walked they ain’t coming back, because that money will go into a bank account or somewhere. Nobody will invest back in stock. We have to keep such stock as is left there, and I believe that in order to do that we have to go back to some form of headage system. How you then relate that to a stocking rate that is effective within a differing landscape is quite a difficult thing to do, but I believe that if given the responsibility most farmers would take that on board and do it responsibly. They are only too aware that the spread of bracken, gorse and everything else will be controlled only by getting cattle in particular and possibly ponies back on to the hills. I am not against that, but I am not very keen on too many horses. Ponies can do a good job. Q77 Neil Parish: I think suckler cows in particular on the hills are a major problem, are they not? Mike Keeble: Yes, the lack of them. Q78 Neil Parish: Sheep do not always fulfil the same type of grazing? Mike Keeble: That is right. George Dunn: When the single payment scheme was introduced we were very concerned about the impact that would have on the uplands. Every suckler cow is losing a shed load of money on the hill. It was losing the suckler cow premium and the LFA supplement. Over the past five years of the single payment scheme we have lost a considerable number of cattle in the uplands because they simply lose money. We look very much to the return of a headage payment, of course with environmental criteria, that can put those employees, as one of our members in the North East describes them, back on the farms. Q79 Neil Parish: Have you heard of a wonderful thing called Article 68 of the Common Agricultural Policy? George Dunn: Yes. It is the washing machine into which you put money and it comes out slightly smaller, isn’t it? Q80 Neil Parish: That is right, but it can also target types of grazing that can be linked to suckler cows. George Dunn: Yes. We need to be very careful about thinking that Article 68 is the be all and end all. Certainly, the criteria within which Article 68 operates need careful thought before we allow any Government to run riot through that particular piece of legislation. Q81 George Eustice: Obviously, your document 20:20 Vision for agriculture is quite critical of decoupling subsidies from production. George Dunn: For the uplands, yes. Q82 George Eustice: You have talked about a headage payment perhaps coming back in. You have also explained how the Government could interpret the existing EU schemes differently to favour the uplands, but when all of it is reformed in 2013 is there anything specific that you think ought to be included, and realistically could be at that moment, that would solve this problem? Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 19 10 November 2010 George Dunn and Mike Keeble George Dunn: Certainly, when you look at the next reform of the CAP already we are led to believe that the Commissioner is very keen to put support for LFAs back into Pillar 1 and for Pillar 1 to become, in his terms, greener. We wait to see what the Commission’s formal position is on that situation later this month. However, the fact that the LFAs potentially could come back into Pillar 1 and that the Commissioner is also referring throughout the document to support for active farmers, as opposed to those who passively own and manage land, gives us hope that the uplands will be given fairer treatment next time round. As Mike said, we are very keen to see some form of headage payment coming back for suckler cows and breeding ewes in upland areas to get mixed grazing back on to hill areas. I was on a National Trust estate in the High Peak not so long ago where they are carrying out a wonderful heather regeneration project. All the animals have gone and yet they want animals to come back to graze it and manage it thereafter. My question was: where do those animals come from when they have gone off the hill—the hefts have gone—and how do you deal with the amount of money people will be losing by putting animals back? There was no answer to that question. We believe that you can unlock that only with a properly controlled headage payment scheme for breeding livestock in the uplands. Q83 Dan Rogerson: When we spoke to the Commission for Rural Communities they talked about other methods of rewarding farmers in terms of public goods, which is something this country has not really developed; it has all been about agri-environment schemes. What would be your response to exploring those kinds of options? George Dunn: I think you need to define what you mean by “public goods”, Mr Rogerson. Do you have a list of what you would include in that? EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: Not to be published in full, or part, in any form before 00.01am GMT Wednesday 16 February 2011 Q84 Dan Rogerson: It is more a matter of what the Commission meant by it. In past reports they have talked about unlocking the potential in the rural economy and looking for what might be called diversification, but all sorts of other things you can do to unlock potential in rural areas and how farmers can be rewarded for the good they do there and in the wider community and economy. Mike Keeble: We had “public goods” explained to us at the Uplands Land Management Advisory Panel in Ergon House on Monday. To me, it seemed rather ridiculous that in a world that will run out of food almost certainly in the next 25, 30 years the most essential public good was not food. There were all sorts of other things which were influenced by a lot of ornithologists and others, but it seems to me that, unless we are to eat the birds, food should be at the top of the agenda on public goods and, following on from that, energy, water and all the other things. But we must concentrate on food production because at the moment the factory that makes it is being sold and is going away. Q85 Dan Rogerson: Coming from Cornwall and representing Bodmin Moor and areas like that, I do
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