Farming in the Uplands - ARCHIVE: Defra

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.
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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