Farming in the Uplands - ARCHIVE: Defra

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Ev 22 Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Evidence let it on a farm business tenancy? I do not see why you are so against what is happening with farm business tenancies. George Dunn: What I would say, Mr Parish, is that we have gone from one corner solution to another corner solution. We do not advocate a situation whereby landlords have to let holdings for three generations. We are where we are with threegenerational tenancies and my members who have them are very glad of them and will use them to their full advantage. Nor do we ask for lifetime tenancies. Again, we also have members who are glad of those. When farm business tenancies were introduced the idea was that the market was seeing a downward trend in terms of new lettings and wewanted to improve that. We have seen more land come on to the market. It has been fairly stagnant probably for the past five years or so, but the average length of term on those holdings has remained doggedly static at about three and a half to four years. From our perspective that is not sufficient to give anybody a good start. There is a subset of statistics that shows that if there is a house and buildings the average length of term is about 10 years, but we do not know where the break clauses fall in those agreements. What we have been arguing for in 20:20 Vision is the concept of landlords being encouraged to let for a period of at least 10 years, which we think gives an individual a reasonable chance of making a little bit of money and moving on to the next thing. The other problem is that county council smallholdings have always been the place where individuals cut their teeth in farming and moved into the private sector, but there is now a dwindling number of such smallholdings, and getting people into 10 November 2010 George Dunn and Mike Keeble Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Dr Andrew Clark, Head of Policy, NFU, Will Cockbain, Uplands Spokesman, NFU, William Worsley, President, CLA, and Professor Allan Buckwell, Director of Policy, CLA, gave evidence. Q98 Chair: Good afternoon, gentlemen. I welcome everybody, particularly William Worsley, who is a constituent. We are delighted to see you here this afternoon. Perhaps I may invite William to introduce his colleague, and the other William to introduce himself and his colleague. William Worsley: I am William Worsley, President of the CLA. I am a farmer and landowner from North Yorkshire. With me is Professor Allan Buckwell, Policy Director of the CLA. Will Cockbain: I am Will Cockbain; I am a Lake District hill farmer. The family has farmed in the Lake District for 300 years, so it is fairly indigenous. I have been the NFU’s National Uplands spokesman for six years. I have with me Andrew Clark, who is Head of Policy Services and a senior member of NFU staff working on uplands. I would just like to say how much we welcome the opportunity to have a more coherent approach which recognises food production and the marketplace as well as environmental management in the uplands. starter farms is much more difficult. Further, the gap between the county farms sector and the wider agricultural scene has become wider because of the amalgamations and capital requirements that Mike has been talking about. The other problem is that if all you are offered in the private sector is a five- or sixyear FBT, and you are coming off a tenancy where you may have 15 or 20 years, is that a progression? Neil Parish: It does not encourage you to do that. George Dunn: Or is that a backward step? We need to have a fundamental look again at the farming ladder— there is a section in our 20:20 Vision about that—to try to improve farm business tenancies, not abolish them, and make them more fit for purpose. Q96 Chair: In their recommendations, the Commission for Rural Communities suggested that all the farm lead bodies like yourself and CLA should work together with the Government to develop proposals and facilitate the succession of upland farms and new entrants. George Dunn: Yes. Q97 Chair: Has that happened yet? George Dunn: Not as far as I am aware, but, as we said in our written evidence to you, we are up for that. I mentioned earlier the Tenancy Reform Industry Group that Defra sponsors and upon which the NFU, TFA and CLA sit, among other bodies. That would seem to be the most reasonable place for Defra to engage with us on those issues, but it has not yet reached our agenda. Chair: Thank you very much. We are very grateful to you. EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: Not to be published in full, or part, in any form before 00.01am GMT Wednesday 16 February 2011 Q99 Chair: If I may turn to NFU and CLA in turn, are we hampered by the fact that there is no definition of uplands? How would each of you define “uplands”? Dr Clark: I think there is a reasonably good definition of “uplands”, certainly the uplands that we recognise in an agricultural sense, in the form of the less favoured areas. There is, of course, an issue about the long-term future of that designation, which is something we may return to later in the evidence session. I am concerned about the reclassification exercise in which the European Commission is currently entrenched. William Worsley: I think we would agree with that. Q100 Chair: Are you convinced that the Government will come forward with a sustainable hill farming policy? Will Cockbain: Yes, of course we are! As I said at the start, we think that a more coherent farming policy that recognises food production, the marketplace and that farmers have to be responsive to that marketplace as well as deliver environmental management is
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 23 10 November 2010 Dr Andrew Clark, Will Cockbain, William Worsley and Professor Allan Buckwell definitely needed. In my NFU role I come across the agri-environmental side quite a lot in Defra and the Government. I also worked as a sustainable food and farming chair with Sir Don Curry, which took me into another area of Defra. I have to say that the gap between the two was quite large. We are being told we have to be more market-responsive and competitive in the marketplace, so that side of it needs to be more closely aligned with the agri-environment, environmental management side and public good side, so a policy that recognises both of them equally and does not set one against the other—so that there is no contradiction—is very much needed and would be welcomed by the industry. William Worsley: We agree. We feel that the uplands are extremely important to society because their active management provides many vital goods. We have talked about food and food production, but there are also wood products, cultural landscape, natural resource protection, biodiversity, carbon etc, as well as leisure and tourism. We see this as very important. We also agree strongly with the broad thrust of the CRC report. Q101 Dan Rogerson: You agree with the thrust of the report. Both organisations, however, have reacted positively to the decision to disband the CRC and take back in-house some of these sorts of functions. Looking at the report and taking forward those issues, do you think Defra has the influence in Whitehall to be able to do that job? Dr Clark: We support the principle of moving policy back into Defra and Government taking ownership of setting a policy direction. We very much hope that Defra will produce a clear policy statement on the importance of uplands along the lines we have just set out. There are two risks to the abandonment of the CRC approach and taking it all in-house. One is: how will they listen? Who is listening to local farming communities and other local communities? CRC did a good job of listening. We make no bones about that. You cannot just make policy from Whitehall; you need to listen as part of that. The other issue is that if Defra takes ownership, which we understand they are doing, they have to be influential within Whitehall. The uplands are not led just from Nobel House; they have to be led from CLG, DECC, the Home Office and also the MoD, which has important landholdings. All these different groups need to be brought together, so we depend on the champion being able to influence all of those policy levers. William Worsley: Andrew has said a lot of what I would say. We were not lobbying for the abolition of the CRC. However, we have accepted that it has gone. It is vital that its function—the economic and community view and the rural-proofing—takes place and is not lost. We see a strengthened Defra policy unit is a way to do that. However, it is not just Defra that is involved with the uplands; it is far broader than that; it is cross-departmental, and that is where it could fall flat. We are slightly concerned about the loss of a rural champion as such. We would like to see a Minister with specific responsibility for the uplands as somebody to champion and co-ordinate. One of the really important points is co-ordination among government departments and agencies. Chair: I think they recommended a Minister of Cabinet rank to act as co-ordinator, did they not? Q102 George Eustice: One thing Defra said in their evidence to us was that it was less an issue about the viability of upland farms per se and much more about just the economics of upland or lowland livestock grazing. Would you share that analysis? William Worsley: I think livestock farming in the uplands is the bedrock. However, it is not that alone. If you go to different parts of the country there are different opportunities. If you farm in the Lake District there are tourism opportunities; if you farm in other parts of the world there may be environmental or renewables opportunities. There are things other than the importance of pure production farming. One thing that causes us concern is the high dependence that upland farms have on public support, which is under threat. Will Cockbain: What makes hill farming special, and is it just about hill farming? It is intrinsically linked to the lowland livestock system. It provides sheep that go down into the lowlands for production, but because it is at the end of the chain it is very vulnerable to prices. When the marketplace is down the lowland livestock producer can pass on some of his costs to the upland guy and the latter has nowhere to pass that on. He is also very restricted in the choices he can make in the uplands. It is pretty much beef and sheep farming, but—and this is really important—that system underpins just about all the environmental management in the uplands. If you look at the Lake District, Peak District or Dartmoor, huge tourist revenue is generated from that landscape and its maintenance, so I would argue that, as a percentage of the tax take, what is reinvested into the uplands represents pretty good value for money. William mentioned other opportunities, for example trees. We believe they are also there, but at the moment we do not see a market mechanism for quite a lot of it and there is still more work to be done on it. As to who benefits from it, again there needs to be more work done. EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: Not to be published in full, or part, in any form before 00.01am GMT Wednesday 16 February 2011 Q103 George Eustice: Is the difference that at the end of the chain it is still livestock farming whether it is upland or lowland? Will Cockbain: I have two sons at home who farm. One of them does a lot of stone-wall contracting, so he does quite a lot of maintenance. He could be termed as part and parcel of the maintenance of the Lake District. The other one also does some contracting. They see themselves as farmers and everything they do is farm-related, and it is on the back of that farming first that you get everything else; it is on the back of farming that you get environmental delivery. If you try to do it the other way round it will not work. Recently, I spoke to one of the National Trust’s land managers. He admitted that they had tried putting tenants in place who said all the right things about improving biodiversity and doing this and the other, but in practical terms they did not work because they did not know how to manage a flock of sheep; they
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