Farming in the Uplands - ARCHIVE: Defra

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Ev 28 Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Evidence 10 November 2010 Dr Andrew Clark, Will Cockbain, William Worsley and Professor Allan Buckwell holding. The problem is that they need to have the money to do it. That is why support is needed for the uplands, but I do not see it as a conflict. Q122 Richard Drax: To push it a little further, on managing the actual assets I think your view is that you would rather get on with the farming side of it first and you think the priority is wrong; it has gone much more to the environmental side. Is that a fair assessment, generally? Will Cockbain: Farmers will respond to market signals. We have had a very depressed market for food products, even sheep, for several years. I will not go on, but a unique set of negatives came into play at once—currency fluctuations, FMD and BSE—which helped create that, but farmers will respond to market forces. The outlook for food production is reasonably good at the minute. We see farmers starting to reinvest in their businesses; they have confidence in that market for food production. You mentioned other markets such as planting trees. That is a very long-term commitment. The reality at the minute is that if there is not to be public money available, the amount of guaranteed private money that must come in is a long way off. There is a potential market for eco-system services and that type of management, and it may well happen. I do not think there is currently a market mechanism, and we are way off it. When that market does emerge it will be very volatile. For example, if Andrew has a company that emits carbon and it should not and he wants to do something about it he enters into contracts with farmers, or whatever, to mitigate it, but if five years down the line his company develops technology that reduces it for him, he will not want to pay for it. Therefore, it is potentially a volatile market. Q123 Chair: I am very conscious of the time. May I ask you to try to keep your answers a little shorter? Will Cockbain: Farmers will respond to what they see as sound and reliable market signals; they won’t respond to something they regard as airy-fairy and wishy-washy. Professor Buckwell: The key to land management is balance. We are talking about finding ways to reward a different balance of outputs from the hills, because if we simply carry on as we are we will not change the poverty in the hills. The other area we have not mentioned is renewable energy. There is huge scope for renewable energy in the uplands in wind, hydro and biomass. Again, it is a matter of balance, location, design and local acceptability. Of course we have to find the right balance; we will not smother all the hills in windmills. Chair: As long as we do not have wind farms all across North Yorkshire. Professor Buckwell: Exactly. Q124 George Eustice: Another area is public access and trying to monetise it. In its submission the NFU says we need to find a way to do it, but it goes on to say it is incredibly challenging because only 30% part with any money when they go to the hills anyway and about 2% of visits to the natural English environment involve going to the hills. Do you have any ideas about how you could develop income streams from that sort of tourism or public access? Dr Clark: We do not suggest that we put counters on each of the footpaths and toll them through, or even erect fences on LFA boundaries. Clearly, these are interesting and important tourist assets, and perhaps some of this is already reflected in the single payment scheme but is not logged as such. I know that you are to talk to the national parks in a moment or two. They take some interesting approaches. They look at a local tourist tax and divert that money into helping to manage land as well as repair the damage or conserve some of the landscapes around there. They even contract with farmers to do that sort of work. There are some ideas. Perhaps we should look at some sort of pilot to ask: how do we capture some of the tourist use that is made of this area in a more considered way than we do currently? Q125 George Eustice: Have you done any work in terms of what happens elsewhere in the world and what other countries have tried in this area? Dr Clark: The French seem to be quite good at this sort of approach. I don’t mind paying a bit of money on top of my bill when I am there. Q126 Chair: I do not think it is necessarily a Conservative approach to tax the business sector. I shall put the next question to each in turn, starting with the CLA. There have been concerns about applications for the Uplands Entry Level Stewardship where agreement has not been reached. What mechanisms have you considered to try to achieve dispute resolution between landlord and tenants or commoners in order to facilitate agreement in the UELS? William Worsley: I am aware that there have been one or two disputes, but we have no evidence that this is a problem of any scale. There is in place agreed guidance by the Tenancy Reform Industry Group (TRIG). On the whole, this is agreed on a case-bycase basis between landlord and tenant and seems to work satisfactorily. EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: Not to be published in full, or part, in any form before 00.01am GMT Wednesday 16 February 2011 Q127 Chair: I know of two areas of the country in North Yorkshire and Cumbria where there has not been an agreement, so what resolution mechanism is there? William Worsley: The answer is that there is in place TRIG guidance. I am aware but do not know the details of one of the cases you are talking about; indeed, in this particular case we have members on both sides of the fence. On the whole, it is a case of sensible people getting together to have a sensible dialogue and coming up with a sensible agreement. On the whole, this tends to work. In other property disputes there is the ability to apply to the President of the RSCS for arbitration, but on the whole I am not convinced this is particularly prevalent other than the two schemes you are talking about. Will Cockbain: We are concerned. We know there is plenty of good practice and that some very large estates have taken the view that the Uplands Entry Level Scheme is a replacement for HFA. They have taken a responsible attitude and are not trying to get
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 29 10 November 2010 Dr Andrew Clark, Will Cockbain, William Worsley and Professor Allan Buckwell their hands on 50% of it, or anything. However, we all seem to know of one case. We now have a couple of other cases. In one case agreement has not been reached and it has been dragging on for an awfully long time. There are other recent cases of which we have heard, for which we do not have all the facts and figures, where we are told agreement has been reached on a common, but that perhaps a larger percentage of the agri-environmental monies than is justified has gone to the commons owner. During the development of the Uplands Entry Level Scheme we lobbied Defra quite hard about why the owner of a common needed to be a counter-signatory where the graziers could agree a management regime. Defra chose to go down the route of wanting the commons owner’s signature, but it is a worry. We agree with William that it is not, to the best of our knowledge, hugely widespread, but where we have such cases they could lead to dangerous precedents, put farmers off applying for agri-environmental schemes on commons and also attract very adverse publicity to the general public about how money is spent. Q128 Chair: To my certain knowledge, it is the small units and graziers with the right to graze who have not been paid a penny piece, which I think is regrettable. Will Cockbain: Commoners have these inalienable rights to graze animals. What is happening now is that to have an agri-environmental agreement the grazier must graze less stock. Professor Buckwell: I hope we will not make a big story out of one case, but the principles are that there must be a fair share of rewards according to risks, responsibilities and effort expended by the various parties. It would be wrong to try to prescribe a solution to this to fit all common land, or all grazing licensing arrangements, because the particular arrangements and rights and responsibilities of the parties vary enormously from one common to another and one part of the country to another. This area is a very complex one and the last thing we need is a prescriptive approach that tries to say what the solution should be. Get it down to the parties talking on the ground. Usually, the problem is noncommunication. Will Cockbain: I disagree. I think that at the end of the day there needs to be a bottom line. Chair: To be honest, I would like to see a dispute resolution mechanism in place. Will Cockbain: As to whether it is legislation or guidance, we have guidance and it is not being adhered to in a minority of cases. Chair: I am sure we can continue this conversation outside the room. Q129 Amber Rudd: I want us to address the issue of income forgone. I know the CRC report recommended that the definition be broadened to include the full cost of a farmer staying in business. Given the financial constraints we are under, how would your members respond if we applied that to the uplands alone? Dr Clark: In terms of income forgone, we have been quite critical of it for a long time because it sends the message to the farming communities that, no matter what they do and what the benefits are, they will be paid only to put them back to where they would have been had they not participated in the agreement. In those terms it is a very strange incentive regime. We think that a better approach, which would still be within the WTO rules, would be to take greater account of opportunity costs of participating in an agreement. You look not just at the costs of management and some of the fixed costs; you look at what farmers might otherwise have been doing. Other countries seem to be able to produce a much more generous payment as a consequence of income forgone using the same mechanism as authorised by the EU than we do in England. We think Defra need to be more imaginative about their use of that approach. It is also a great shame that under the 2000 to 2005 programme some incentive, a 20% top-up, could have been paid. To say there is an incentive here on top of income forgone for doing really well, or achieving something over and above just keeping to the rules, is a great idea. Surely, there are things that can be done in terms of income forgone that has far greater regard to that approach. Q130 Amber Rudd: And the particular aspect of separating out the uplands? Dr Clark: I think this approach applies not just to uplands but across the board in terms of environmental stewardship. I find it very difficult to justify saying that it applies only to the uplands. We have just talked about how lowland livestock farmers have some important environmental assets in their management. They also need access to that sort of approach. Q131 Amber Rudd: Professor Buckwell, the CLA, in particular said something about having a definition such as “best alternative occupation”, which is the same principle. Professor Buckwell: Yes; it is the same principle as Andrew said. I absolutely agree with what Andrew said. CRC have offered a solution. The key thing is to persuade the Commission that these can be fitted within WTO rules, because that is the problem with all of this. I think your specific question was: can it apply to the uplands alone? Amber Rudd: Yes. Professor Buckwell: It is a good question. My answer would be yes, because that is precisely why we have had this inquiry given the peculiarities and problems of the uplands. The way you do it is by defining the LFA payments in this way. I think this is what the Commission have in mind in their leaked communication by switching LFA into Pillar 1, in a sense giving more of the whole payment to people in certain parts of the territory who farm in these particular conditions. We need a different approach for them. I think there is an acceptable argument to make that case. EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: Not to be published in full, or part, in any form before 00.01am GMT Wednesday 16 February 2011 Q132 Richard Drax: Do you think the National Parks Authority’s interpretation of planning regulations prevents hill farmers in those areas from making a decent living?
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Farming in the Uplands - ARCHIVE: Defra

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