Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: The future of England’s uplands
Thursday 10 September 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 10 September 2026.
Members present: Mr Alistair Carmichael (Chair); Sarah Bool; Charlie Dewhirst; Sarah Dyke; Ben Goldsborough; Terry Jermy; Henry Tufnell.
Questions 51-118
Witnesses
I: Baroness Aglionby, Executive Director, Foundation for Common Land; Lisa Bennett, Member of Westmorland Agricultural Society's Management Committee and Farmer; and Adam Day, Managing Director, The Farmer Network.
Written evidence from witnesses:
Witnesses: Baroness Aglionby, Lisa Bennett and Adam Day.
Q51 Chair: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this meeting of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. We meet today in the conference room of the Westmorland Agricultural Society, and we will be attending the county show here later today. I formally put on the record our thanks to the officer bearers and staff of the Westmorland Agricultural Society, who are hosting us here today, as well as to our Committee staff, who have gone to exceptional efforts to make this meeting possible.
Today, we return to our inquiry on the future of farming; in particular, the future of England’s uplands. I am delighted to have local witnesses here with us. For the official record, and the benefit of those following these proceedings, could you introduce yourselves, starting with Adam?
Adam Day: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Adam Day, and I am the managing director of a not-for-profit farmer support organisation called The Farmer Network. For my entire career, I worked as a land agent and an auctioneer, mostly across the county of Cumbria.
Baroness Aglionby: I am Julia Aglionby, and I am here in my capacity as executive director of the Foundation for Common Land. I have other hats—I do not know whether you need those to be on the record.
Chair: Only if you think they are germane to the evidence you will be giving.
Baroness Aglionby: I work as a land agent, specialising in negotiating schemes on common land. I am also a professor of practice at the University of Cumbria’s Centre for national parks and protected areas.
Chair: And in the not-too-distant future, you will be joining us in Westminster, at the other end of the building.
Baroness Aglionby: I will be as of 2 November. I have not yet been introduced to the House.
Chair: We look forward to seeing you when you get there.
Lisa Bennett: Good morning, everybody. I am Lisa Bennett, and I am an active hill farmer in the Lake District.
Chair: Thank you all very much. In the interest of transparency, I remind Members of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I own and operate a hill farm in the west of Scotland. Do any other Committee members have interests to declare?
Henry Tufnell: My dad is a non-executive director of Natural England.
Q52 Chair: The organisation of which we might hear a little more about later. Let me give you a free hit to start: we are here in Cumbria; we are at the county show, which is a big part of your local farming calendar. Can you briefly give me a thumbnail of how important farming is to a community like this, and a few of the threats to and opportunities within it?
Adam Day: Cumbria is a rural, agricultural county. We are the second largest producer of red meat and milk out of all the counties in England, which will surprise a lot of people; we produce nearly a billion litres of milk a year. The fulcrum of society and communities in Cumbria is probably based around farming. In the Lake District—and we must not forget the Pennines, either, further to the east—much of our society revolves around the value and benefit that the farming industry delivers to our county in terms of food production and the local community and what it delivers to our local rural economy. It cannot be stressed enough how important the role that farming plays in this county is.
Baroness Aglionby: I endorse what Adam said. The Foundation for Common Land is a national charity, and I am interested in uplands across England. To remind people, the places people go on holiday are generally the uplands, whether they are going to Dartmoor, the Quantocks, the Yorkshire dales, the North York moors or Cumbria. If we look across all protected landscapes, those landscapes make up about 24% of England. Common land is at the heart of those landscapes; it is managed by 3,900 commoners.
I remember saying to a Member of Parliament, when he was visiting Cumbria, that commons need to have commoners managing them—they need to be lived, worked landscapes. It is rather like saying that we will continue to have cathedrals but have no cathedral choirs; you would have no soul to the land. They need to be inspired and run by people on the land. I should add that the Foundation for Common Land is not a membership organisation; we are an independent charity and have no members. We are there to deliver public benefit on the natural and cultural heritage of common land and the system of commoning.
Q53 Chair: I like the cathedral analogy. Do not be surprised if you hear me use it at some time in the future.
Lisa Bennett: I totally agree with what my colleagues have said. The landscape in Cumbria is like it is because of the way that it has been managed and farmed. It attracts a lot of tourism to our area, which is another great source of income that we rely on heavily within the agricultural industry to help us go forward. We need to promote what we do here as hill farmers.
Q54 Chair: You have given us all the opportunities. Lisa, you are an active hill farmer. What are the pressures on your farm business at the moment?
Lisa Bennett: A lot of the pressures on the farm business at the moment are because of the income streams and restrictions on what you can do—everybody seems to want to make us take livestock off the hills and plant trees and so on. Within the valleys, taking sheep off the hills means there are less people working there. In the hefting system, the sheep create their own boundaries—there are no fences on the hilltops. If you take off the heft that is next to you, your sheep move into that heft so you have twice as much area to cover to gather them, and the manpower is not there to do it.
Q55 Chair: You are into a downward spiral then. So what are the influences that are making you take sheep off the hills?
Lisa Bennett: Basically, people are offered money to take sheep off the hills. At times, it maybe looks easier to do that; it is an easier income. You never know until the back-end sales how much your livestock is going to make, whereas if somebody comes and says to you, “We’ll offer you this much money to go into that scheme,” your cashflow is quite a lot easier; you know how much you are going to get.
Q56 Chair: It is a guaranteed income.
Lisa Bennett: We all have to remember that there are generations farming and the average age of the farmers. If you are getting near retirement age, it does look quite a good incentive to take things off—less work—and it just makes it easier for everybody, but it is creating an imbalance. It is also creating a question of when that next generation is going to come in. When are they going to be able to get their foot in the door to come in? A lot of the skills out there are traditional skills. We need to keep them. As we are going at the moment, we are losing all that.
Q57 Chair: Critical mass.
Lisa Bennett: Yes.
Q58 Chair: Adam, as a land valuer and auctioneer, I am guessing that you will have access to and will see a lot of farm books one way or another. What is the financial health of it at the moment in terms of profitability? Land prices are good and beef prices have been good. Are the farmers around here selling a store, a finished product or a combination of both?
Adam Day: Very definitely a combination of both. From the higher fell areas, obviously, those firms very often cannot finish stock through to final slaughter, so we have a very strong store market system here across Cumbria. We have to remember that there are very many different farming systems. We have no grade 1 land in Cumbria, but we have got a tiny bit of grade 2. However, the grade 3 land that we have is very productive grassland, and we are really good at growing grass in Cumbria. That is why we have traditionally had the livestock that we have.
In very general terms, I am hearing from farmers that cash flow is a concern at the minute. There is not a lot of spare cash about, particularly in the hills—others may have more detailed information about that. I was talking to one of the farming charities just this morning and having a cup of coffee. They were saying that the evidence across the country is that one in five farming families are now classed as living in poverty. Their suggestion is that might easily be heading to one in four. If that data is correct, that is absolutely frightening because, particularly in challenging upland areas, there is no real way to get out of that. Farmers can diversify and the Government are always saying, “You must diversify.” But there is a limit to how much diversification you can do in certain areas. All the while, while the schemes are there for the reasons that they are, invariably, for those better payments, as Lisa said, it will involve reducing your farm production business. That is a concern and leads into other issues about lack of clarity in policy as well. Certainly, cash flow is a concern.
Depending on what happens in the autumn sales this year, we could see that being a problem. We have had bluetongue. We have not realised the level of bluetongue in Cumbria. We are behind the curve because we are further north and the testing system so far behind. I think that is going to become a problem. There are issues with winter feed through the drought issues in certain areas of the north. All those things are going to play into that pressure on cash flow in the future. It is a concern.
Q59 Chair: We have now moved to a system where such public support as is available for farmers is based on environmental activities rather than food production. Is that system working for upland farmers? Julia, I will come to you first.
Baroness Aglionby: First, a bit of context. In my written evidence I provided some figures on the percentage of farm business income that comes from environmental land management payments as a whole: that is environmental stewardship, countryside stewardship and SFI altogether. I have since done some updated figures, and I have presented that as evidence to the Committee.
Chair: We have that in front of us.
Baroness Aglionby: The colours are the same as in my written evidence: the yellow bar is basic payment, grey is diversification, orange is agri-environment schemes and blue is agriculture.
Q60 Chair: We will publish this, but bear in mind that we can see it, you can see it, but nobody who is watching this can.
Baroness Aglionby: It is very similar to what is in the written evidence that anybody listening online can access, however, it is just printed larger for the Committee to see.
Chair: Okay.
Baroness Aglionby: You will see agricultural production as a cost centre. Those are DEFRA figures for the first, then the second three bars are projected by myself. We see that agricultural production, as in beef and lamb, loses money as a cost centre—it has traditionally done that and that is completely accepted. Previously the basic payment has comprised 104% of farm business income prior to its reduction. What we are seeing now is this increasing dependence on environmental land management.
We are now at a point where, on average, about 60% of a farm business’s income comes from agri-environment schemes. If you cannot access agri-environment schemes, think what your bar would look like. An average hides a wide range of figures.
Some people are doing incredibly well out of agri-environment. We know that often, larger landowners who are not tenants have easier access to large sums of money, but we are in a position now where, with the loss of BPS—the last financial year was the last of it; we got £600 this year—I am increasingly concerned, particularly with regard to commons and the amount of money that people have become dependent on.
I should stress that common land, and the uplands generally—half of all SSSIs in the country are in the uplands and 21% of all SSSI land is common land, but it is only 3% of England—are critical for nature recovery, climate resilience and recreation. It is very good that farmers are rewarded and paid for delivering public benefits, but the system has to work. At the moment, the system is not working; we are actually at a very serious cliff edge.
If the Committee will allow me to move on to the next page, which is new evidence that I will submit in writing afterwards, we have done an analysis. I have downloaded, over the weekend, every single HLS scheme in the country from the DEFRA portal, and I have looked at which ones are commons. There are only 117 commons agreements nationally, under high level stewardship. At the moment, you may be aware that there has been an issue where the computer said no. The Rural Payments Agency had this. The Foundation for Common Land has run a campaign with a number of organisations called #IncludeCommons, and what is really good news is that the Rural Payments Agency has now developed a team and a system that it is trialling with 12 commons this autumn. I was in a meeting with them on Tuesday, and we have their team coming out on site. That is really good, but the next barrier is that Natural England says it does not have the capacity to process it, so these schemes are at risk of running out.
Q61 Chair: Forgive me, but it sounds more like the process is designed for the people who administer the process, rather than for those for whom it is designed to produce outcomes.
Baroness Aglionby: Yes, because you could just use a piece of paper—lots of people here have a pen and a piece of paper; we do not have to use AI-enabled portals. For 117 agreements, you would get 148,000 hectares of land into agreements, which is very good value.
Just to remind the Committee—I am sure you are well aware of this—Natural England has a permanent staff of 2,804 people, and that is full-time equivalents, according to its annual report from ’24-25. What we are asking it to do is allocate a proportion of those people to ensure that the most precious lands in the country do not fall off a cliff edge. Even if you put two people on every one of those commons agreements, you would use less than 10% of Natural England’s staff, and it would get 21% of its land—
Q62 Chair: And that would be good for the environmental outcomes that we are seeking to achieve with all this, because you are bringing in people who are low-input, nature-friendly farmers.
Baroness Aglionby: Absolutely. The Foundation for Common Land, as I said, is here to deliver public benefits around natural and cultural heritage and the sustainable system of commoning. We see this as a can-do; we very much want to be cup half full. We work closely with the Rural Payments Agency, DEFRA and Natural England, and we are very keen to make sure that people are enabled to do this.
I say, and we say as the Foundation for Common Land, that this is perfectly possible. We should, as a nation, be able process those 117 agreements. The one thing that is absolutely critical is that Natural England has said, in a public webinar last Thursday, that it will not be processing any new agreements. If you want naked hectares, take Brant Fell, which you can see from here, just above Sedbergh: there are roughly 3,000 hectares of land with 20-plus commoners; they fell out of a scheme—it ended—and have been told there is no new scheme and that they cannot apply until 2029, because Natural England does not have the capacity to process a new scheme. Bampton Common, where I am taking the RPA next week, have already applied; they want to do 500 hectares of woodland, and they have been told that they cannot apply until 2029.
Q63 Chair: So what happens to these people between now and 2029?
Baroness Aglionby: They are the people who Adam was saying will have severe financial problems. I was with one tenant yesterday who rang me at the weekend and said, “Julia, if I cannot get a scheme on my common and on my land, I will have to consider handing in my notice.” He is about 30 years old. He comes from five or six generations of farming and took on a tenancy four years ago. It is desperate.
Q64 Chair: To come back to the point that both Lisa and Adam made earlier, this is about community and social cohesion in upland communities as well. You touched on your written evidence. The Committee received a substantial number of pieces of written evidence, not just from the organisations, the lobbying groups and the rest, but from people like you who live, work and farm in upland communities. I will lead you slightly on this: that is an indication that people have something to say. Do you feel, as an industry in upland communities, that you are being heard by Government and Government agencies?
Lisa Bennett: I do not feel that we are being heard at all. This has been ongoing for quite a lot of years, and we are still on the back foot. They are talking 2029 before they get these schemes sorted so that we can move forward with what we are doing. To put what Julia said into perspective, we have two open commons, Kentmere Dale Head and the Seathwaite common, which we are on, and neither is in a scheme. Our sheep heaf ends at the top of the fell. The other side of the fell is in a scheme. There is no boundary to stop anything moving either way. They are getting paid for it and we are getting nothing.
Q65 Chair: That is the on-the-ground reality, which surely has no benefit to the taxpayer in terms of value for money, let alone to the farmers, who are supposed to be benefiting from this, or to nature recovery.
Baroness Aglionby: We find that the farmers absolutely want to do more for nature. As I said, Bampton common, which is very close to here—just up the road and over Shap—has offered 500 hectares, or 20% of the common, to be planted for scrub. They have worked really well with their landlords and put in a section 38 consent.
It is perhaps a bit tedious for the Committee, but the nuts and bolts are really important. If you want to fence on a common, you have to have something called section 38 consent under the Commons Act 2006. The Planning Inspectorate is under a lot of pressure. It takes over 14 months from submitting to getting the consent. It takes at least six months, maybe a year, before you can submit to do the negotiations. The RPA has changed its rules, so you now have to have that consent in place before it will make your new ELM agreement live.
Chair: Worry not: no level of detail is too tedious for the Committee in relation to this, so thank you for that. You are leading us naturally on to the next area I want to look at, which is the environmental land management schemes and legacy schemes.
Q66 Sarah Bool: Welcome, and thank you very much for your time. We want to drill a bit more into the lived experience and the detail around the ELM schemes. We have had the transition from CAP. The idea is that it is supposed to be a “public money for public goods” approach. It is devastating for us to hear how difficult this is. We all know the concept that cash is king, but you are being faced with an impossible situation. I appreciate that we are moving away from HLS, so how meaningful is the support that the ELM schemes will give to farmers? Do you think the schemes are good?
Adam Day: I will talk in broad terms. As a farmer support organisation, we have spent the last four or five years holding many meetings with farmers to try to introduce the schemes to them and build confidence. Embracing change is always difficult, especially in an industry that has worked the same way for so many years, and that, through Government policy—we must not forget this—has been led down the path of produce, produce, produce. When I went to agricultural college in the ’80s, it was all, “Bang on as much fert as you can, get rid of those hedges and plough your land. Come on—we need to produce food.” What we see coming in now will not take place in a seven-year transfer process; this is generational change.
We have been having these meetings for four or five years to build farmers’ confidence and knowledge, and to say, “It will be different, but the principles of environmental land management are really good: cleaner air, cleaner water and better soil—what is not to like about that?” What we have seen in the last three or four years—the stop-start mechanism, the changes, having one pricing structure that was then made higher, and then some of the offers being taken away—has destroyed that confidence and taken us a long way back from where we were. Most farmers I know would say that the principles are very good, but they would also make the point that they want to farm as well. A lot of them feel that they are being led towards environmental land management, but they are saying very clearly, “We are still production farmers. We are proud to produce food, and we think that you will need our food production a lot more in the future, for various reasons.” We want to do that in balance. In principle, ELM is along the right lines, but my goodness, the first four or five years have been very challenging.
Baroness Aglionby: The stop-start issue is interesting. As you say, a lot of people are currently under higher level stewardship, and we have this transition. I understand why the Rural Payments Agency wants to switch off Genesis, the computer system that runs environmental stewardship. They wish to switch that off by December 2028.
Another thing is that there is this stop-start. Generally, a bit of moorland received about £63 from BPS and about £64 from HLS, so you are getting about £130. That £63 from BPS has gone, so the only way you could top up was via a scheme called SFI MOR1, where you did a survey. The Government brought this in very successfully. I should declare an interest: a test and trial by the Foundation for Common Land was funded by DEFRA. We produced an app, and farmers could get an extra £17 per hectare on commons. We now run that service across the country. That is used for 194,000 hectares of moorland, and the data is being collected. We had farmers and land managers collecting data and information, doing peatland surveys and getting to understand the public benefits that they are being asked to deliver.
Then, this year, a decision was suddenly made to pull that option. They said that it did not directly deliver public benefits, but it is not all about direct delivery. As Adam says, we are asking farmers to change the way they approach their job of looking after the land. If we suddenly take away something that was putting money in their pockets and meant that they were going out to take photographs, and understand what sphagnum moss and other vegetation is, we destroy their confidence in their role in land management. It is a huge shame that it has gone.
Also, we are quite excited by AI, because we have three years of photographs of 194,000 hectares that we are hoping to feed in. We can use farmers as citizen scientists to collect ecological assessments, because another problem we have is that the nation does not have enough ecologists. To go to CS higher tier, you have to do a PA2 survey—a planning application. You can get a grant for it, but you have to get three quotes. You cannot get the grant if there are not enough ecologists to quote for it, and there is a huge delay. The stop-start issue is hugely problematic. Also, SFI has come in, but the moorland options are not really suitable. It is quite hard to combine that with farming, and it is not available on common land. That is how it is, as things stand.
Q67 Chair: For reasons of computer software engineering?
Baroness Aglionby: Yes. We are really hopeful that the RPA team—hats off to them—will try it on CS higher tier. That uses ABACO Agri, which used to be called SITI Agri but has now rebranded. We hope that is the same system for SFI and for CS higher tier. If we can get it to work on one of those, maybe Birmingham will be my favourite place to go in the country, and I can go there to meet the team and encourage them to expand their service. It is about working with people, isn’t it? This is a collective endeavour. We all want to make this work, don’t we? Nobody wishes to be in an adversarial position. It is a partnership between those who manage the land and DEFRA staff, environmental NGOs and the public at large, who are the taxpayers funding this.
Lisa Bennett: At home, basically, the schemes we were in got a roll-over. We have not had to move into any other schemes. I would add that, from experience, you tend to find that they come and have a look at your land, find something magnificent like an orchid and decide, “Right, let’s fence that off.” The reason the orchid is there is because it is suited to the way it is being managed. Everybody has to be mindful of that. It is how it is because of the way it has previously been managed and has been for generations, so do not go in, bulldoze and make a mess, because you create a total imbalance.
Q68 Sarah Bool: I think you are right. There is a danger that, in trying to achieve good things with the environment, we end up pitting the farmers against it. They need to make money and operate as a business while respecting the heritage that we have. If we had the Government in front of us, what would be the one takeaway for which you would say, “Do this and it will make life much easier”?
Baroness Aglionby: A universal offer so that all farmers are not having to stop-start. This is what we used to have under HLS. You applied monthly. People were not in a panic. It was not like buying a Taylor Swift concert ticket—literally, it feels like that. The people we work with, and who Adam works with, are very busy. They are running businesses on a fine margin. They are under a lot of stress and do not have the capacity necessarily to be there on 22 September and then panic that, by 28 September, there is no money left in the pot.
Adam Day: If I were sat in front of the Government—this goes back to the Chair asking, “Are you being heard?”—I would mention how SFI feeds into nature recovery. I hear frustration from many farmers that they would like to work more closely with Natural England officers. They would like to have officers on the ground—on the farm. They would like to show them the good bits of the farm that they are proud of, where there is biodiversity and good things happening, but that is not happening to any great extent.
Also, I talk to many farmers who would like to have that nature knowledge from organisations—conservation organisations, per se—to help them learn those greater skills. There is a frustration that that is not happening. When we talk about nature recovery, very often, as Lisa just said, there is a focus on one thing. That leads to frustration, especially if you are on a really hard hill farm where you need your hay fields to make your winter crop, but you are being advised that you need to plant trees on there or turn them back to nature, or there may be a hay meadow scheme but you cannot cut your hay until the middle of August.
The point is this: we need proper co-design. In a lot of schemes, it says, “This is co-designed, working with farmers.” Very often, it is not. It is farmers being told, “These are your options. Pick your favourite.” Genuine co-design will recognise farmers saying, “This is what I’ve got for nature that is good on my farm, but hey, I am a farmer, and I am here to produce food. I want to farm this land, and I need to farm this land.” That co-design is a bit of give and take on both sides, but we have to find that sweet spot. We are not finding that in many cases at the minute.
Baroness Aglionby: There could be more people on the ground. There are 2,800 members of staff, and 53% of SSSIs are in the uplands. We could have a significant number of staff there. There are some excellent Natural England people locally in Cumbria and other areas. This is not about the individual staff. We are saying to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and its executive agencies and arm’s length bodies collectively: “We could deliver so much more by putting people in the right place.” We run training courses. On 24 September, 12 Natural England staff members are coming, and we will be training them with two farmers, who will teach them how to draft sheep, how to dose them, how to do some dry-stone walling and how to understand the economics. They are often coming from quite a low base level. We had an accountant giving a talk about farm economics in this training course, and a Natural England staff member quite innocently said, “Why does a farmer need an accountant?” We are starting at a low baseline—there is no such thing as a silly question.
We would love to work with more Natural England staff, and I know Natural England staff would like to be able to spend more time doing it. A Natural England staff member said to me that when she visits a farm, she has to report back on the visit through three different computer systems and portals. Is that the best use of precious civil servant time?
Sarah Bool: I know. We will shortly come back to Natural England, but as you said, every farmer knows their farm incredibly well, and we need to have greater integration. During the summer, across South Northamptonshire, where I am, there was a worry about all the fires that were coming. A lot of my farmers were saying that they wanted to cut down some of the vegetation but that they would be penalised if they did, so the fuel was left there. It is that balance. It is a real strain for them.
Chair: We will also come back to that. We now move on to future funding.
Q69 Henry Tufnell: We have had the farming road map, which focuses, until 2030, on improving the application process and, as you said, preventing it from becoming like a Taylor Swift concert and providing more stability. From 2030 onwards, there is an ambition to move towards a model where the Government pay for public goods, with that being more of an emphasis in ELM schemes as a whole. Can we focus on the term “public goods”? When we think about designing future schemes, should we be considering what makes up those words and what should be included in them that is not currently?
Baroness Aglionby: It is a very strict economic use. I trained as an environmental economist. If something is paid for at the till, it is not considered a public good. That is where we have got a bit trapped, and it could definitely be broader. We know, and the Joint Intelligence Committee has said, that nature and biodiversity are absolutely at the heart of future national security. This is a matter of what is in our national interest. It is in our national interest that most people wish to eat three times a day, and therefore, providing food is really essential. We need to have a stable landscape, we need to have enough water, and we need to have climate resilience. Nature and our biodiversity are at the heart of that.
There is a matter of what we include in that, but there is also the quantum. I have noticed over the last 30 years of working as a land agent that the quantum is about the same. We have had this magic £2 billion figure, and that is now worth perhaps less than half of what it did. I think a group of environmental NGOs wrote to the Government only yesterday and said that they need at least an extra £2 billion a year—an extra £30 billion in total. Yes, let us broaden the term “public goods”. I suppose what you are trying to get at is whether food is a public good, and should we be expanding it? That is a leading question, and I should not be asking the questions.
Henry Tufnell: It is your evidence.
Chair: Fill your boots.
Baroness Aglionby: It is about producing the right food in the right place and making sure that we have a balanced land production system and a land use framework. I am also a commissioner of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission and am really pro a land use framework. As Adam says, it is not either/or; it is both. We can produce lots of nature in a farmed setting with a resilient landscape that ensures communities are healthy, thriving and protected from climate change.
Chair: And it must be sensitive to the local environment. To go back to Adam’s point, we do not want people to go back to piling as much fertiliser on the ground as possible. We are not looking to have pedigree Charolais or Limousin herds in upland moorland, but there are breeds that are sensitive and appropriate for areas like yours, which is ultimately good for nature recovery.
Q70 Henry Tufnell: Lisa and Adam, I am curious how you view this term, and whether there has been a narrowing of what is included in it.
Adam Day: The road map was welcome. I think the farming community probably hoped for far more than it actually delivered. It centres on a direction, but that direction has been to a series of tunnels that are not lit. There is not enough in the road map to allow any forward-thinking farmers and farm businesses to say where they are going to be in 10 years. Farmers do not business-plan for next year necessarily or the year after; it is a much longer-term commitment, especially if you want our land to be managed correctly. So it has given us a direction of travel but, my goodness me, we need a heck of a lot more information.
We must not get away from the fact that nearly every farmer I know in this agricultural county wants to produce food, wants to farm livestock, is proud to do that and believes that they are delivering an essential public good. I have heard people say, “Well, yes, but not much of your hill stock goes for prime,” but we are here now in Cumbria at the time of year when we are having our big autumn sheep sales. Here, this week, next week and next month, farmers from Cornwall to Caithness are coming to Cumbria to buy replacement stock that has been bred from our hill sheep and our hill suckler cows—a tradition that has gone on for generations. The stratified sheep industry is the backbone of farming, and it is so important. Although we struggle and we want to embrace farming and enhance nature in our environments, it should not be a crime. Farmers should not be castigated for wanting to be farmers and food producers.
We need clarity on the future and a set of guidelines with which farmers will be comfortable. We have not used the most important word, which is “trust”. There is not a lot of trust out there at the minute. Yes, a road map is welcome, but we need a heck of a lot more clarity in the future.
Lisa Bennett: I totally agree with what Adam says. I am a farmer and we are a hill farm; we cannot change anything really in what we do because of the way our landscape is. As Adam says, we produce breeding stock, rather than prime stock, to go down country. That is what we do.
Chair: You take pride in what you do.
Lisa Bennett: Yes. My partner has been busy for the last fortnight doing what they call a mule gimmer—which is a Swaledale x Leicester that goes on for future breeding—up ready for the sales. It is a case where everybody will judge you when you go with them. There is so much pride in taking things to the livestock markets and in what the end product actually is.
Chair: That sounds like a public good.
Q71 Henry Tufnell: Do you feel like the Government have lost sight of that cultural heritage?
Lisa Bennett: Totally, yes.
Baroness Aglionby: Cultural heritage is a public good. Going back to the example of cathedrals—this is an intangible cultural heritage. You are here in the Lake District world heritage site and that is recognised by UNESCO. Nobody is going to say that Westminster Abbey does not have value. We are talking about a landscape that has enormous value and has been recognised as such. The very system that Lisa uses—and which 3,900 commoners across England use—is part of our cultural heritage. We risk it at our peril.
Like Adam, I was really pleased to see the road map published but I had two concerns. First, it was a little bit warm words and cold comfort, because how does it help you day to day? Secondly, there was a hint there that, as a nation, we are looking to corporations to fund the delivery of public goods. The clue is in the name: public money for public goods. Why would a private corporation wish to finance a public good, because they cannot capture it for their shareholders’ benefit? We are really proud in this country of our national health service, our public education system and our libraries, and we do not expect private companies to fund those.
Chair: The private finance issue is one on which we are sighted; we will come to that again in a few minutes.
Q72 Henry Tufnell: Lisa, can I just ask about the length of the contracts—three or five years? On the ground, in terms of the delivery of these schemes, do you feel that that is a sufficient length of time to be able to do what you do best?
Lisa Bennett: No, not really. You need longer to actually see and deliver that change. For example, a lot of years ago, they brought in the ESA scheme, and a lot of farmers around here delved into that. Historically, what you did to farm was that your sheep were in the meadow, so basically they took what would be classed as the first cut, and then you would traditionally spread it with 20-10-10 fertiliser, because that is what you did. Natural England came and looked at the meadows and saw all the flowers and grasses that it wanted; 10 years later, once the scheme had ended, it went back and revisited the site, and all that had gone. That is what I mean about how you can create change that does not—things are there because of how it has been done.
Q73 Henry Tufnell: Do you think there is a loss of focus on outcomes rather than processes? I see you nodding, Adam.
Adam Day: I absolutely believe that is the case. Looking at the outcomes of the schemes as they are now, I question whether due diligence has actually taken place. In other forums, I have managed to talk to people at a high level in DEFRA, and it was clear to me that those outcomes were not under consideration.
We are talking about the trade in sheep and cattle that we have at this time of year. As we lose more and more sheep from the hills for various reasons, predominantly through the schemes, what effect is that having on the local economy and the community? Behind every farmer, you can count 40 other businesses that support that farm business to a greater or lesser extent. Of the money that farmers like Lisa will reinvest in their businesses when they have sold their lambs this autumn, probably 80% will be spent within 20 miles of the farm. That is the ethos, the essence, of the local circular rural economy.
I do not think that due diligence is being done to work out what the effect will be if we take 50% of the sheep off that fell, 25% off that fell, or, in some cases, entire flocks. What is the knock-on effect of that on the community and the economy? I do not think that that due diligence is being undertaken. We are focusing entirely on the outcomes for nature, and, hopefully, possibly a bit on the farm business, but what is happening more widely to communities?
If you go on a website like Rightmove at the minute, there are valleys in this county where you will see four or five farmhouses on the market for £800,000, £900,000 or £1 million. The land is being taken back in hand by the estates; it is being planted with trees, rewilded or rewetted—it is in schemes—and the house is on the market. There are numerous examples of that taking place right now. Is that an acceptable outcome of an environmental scheme or a tree-planting scheme? I do not think that is being taken into account enough, and particularly the effect that it is having on the local community, some of whom class themselves as the indigenous people.
Baroness Aglionby: It is about trust, but it is also about power. Cumbria is not as feudal as some upland counties, but a lot of the uplands are very feudal and remain so. Power can be used by many people in different ways. There are some brilliant landowners, and then there are other landowners, whether corporate or private, who are using the opportunity that has been provided through public money for public benefits to say that they do not require tenants any more in order to extract a rent from the Government.
There was an article recently in The Guardian, “The business of rewilding” by Patrick Barkham on Nattergal and Boothby, where investors had bought an arable farm for £13.8 million; it is no longer being farmed but it is a business. I know that that is not in the uplands, but we are finding similar things in the uplands, where boutique land agency advisers will tell you how to maximise your return from purchasing something like that. That is different from—there is a range. Clearly, we have an open free market for property, thank goodness, but at the same time, where is the incentive from Government, potentially leading to unintended consequences?
May I just go back to the issue about time? It is really important that agreements are long enough to deliver change, so three years is very short. I know the idea was to help tenants, but there are other ways to do that. The other thing about the new CS in the uplands is that a lot will be 10-year agreements, yet I do not know whether the Committee is aware of the unilateral, one-way six-month break clause, so that the Government can at any time just give six months’ notice. You might have committed to plant pasture, to change your whole system and perhaps to buy a herd of Luing cattle—to have native breeds there—but suddenly, in two and a half years’ time, you could find you have your notice served, and that is that.
Under the landscape recovery scheme—we have some good new landscape recovery schemes coming forward; this is not universal, but there are some good examples—the Government, or DEFRA, have increased the break clause. It was one year and is now two years, but still, when talking about landscape-scale change, the length of certainty for farmers is two years. That makes it really hard to plan their business. Farmers have said that to me. One commons in the south of the county, the DSTC from around Coniston, have done an amazing scheme on their 4,000 hectares. They put in 600 hectares of wood pasture a few years ago, but they said that they would have done more had it been a 20 or 25-year scheme, because they knew that they could have committed for a generation. You do not want that after 10 years, having trees that are half grown. What do you do with the fences? Where is the income coming from? Collectively, therefore—this is what you were saying about co-creation, isn’t it, Adam?—if we can have that co-creation, we can collectively deliver more at better value.
Adam Day: Leading on from Julia’s point, I am having conversations right now with farmers in the Lake District who are being persuaded to go into schemes, and commons agreements as well. They make the point that even at 10 years—although I think probably most would settle for 10—there is a lack of trust in the longevity of this situation. The farmers are saying to me, “What happens in 10 years’ time? If I am down to 25%, 30% or 40% of the sheep that I used to have, what happens if the public money runs out? Where do I go? I will not have a farming business in 10 years. My kids are small now, but I’d like to think they would have the opportunity in future. What is going to be left for them?” That trust in the longevity of the schemes is not there, and that is a barrier.
Chair: I am notoriously bad at keeping the Committee to time, but we have time pressures today, because you need to be back judging. I am not going to get on the wrong side of the show committee. Henry, as you are done with that, we will move on with Charlie. We are at the point where the rubber hits the road on the role of regulators and regulation.
Q74 Charlie Dewhirst: Natural England has been mentioned a couple of times already, so perhaps it is worth exploring that theme a little further. The Tenant Farmers Association has described Natural England as anti-farming, and it was mentioned constantly in the responses to our calls for evidence. Adam, I will start with you. In your experience, how transparent are the processes by which Natural England makes decisions on stocking rates, site conditions, scheme access and so on?
Adam Day: That is a crucial point. There is huge frustration among hill farmers, not just in Cumbria but further afield. We have discussed co-design, and farmers are really frustrated that negotiation with Natural England is not happening. Even in this part of the world, Natural England has produced its idea of a set stocking rate of 0.05 livestock units per hectare, or half an AU per hectare or something like that, and in some parts of Cumbria, in the most challenging areas of the Lake District—where Lisa farms—that might be right. But in other areas of the Lake District, in higher, drier fell areas, the farmers believe that land can carry far more stock, but they are not getting that message through. The co-design does not seem to be there. Even peer-reviewed projects that have stated that no scientific evidence can be found to say that a set stocking rate will be universally effective have been immediately challenged by Natural England.
Where is the red line? Where does it stop? At what point does somebody somewhere say, “Actually, on this common”—or in this area—“enough sheep have gone”? There are no red lines, and this is a huge concern for farmers and a very great frustration. Where does it stop? When are we happy that we have got rid of enough stock and we are doing enough for nature? It is a real worry for many farmers that I know.
Baroness Aglionby: I should declare, just for the record, that I was on the board of Natural England from 2014 to 2019 and I chaired the uplands committee. I have a lot of time for a lot of people in Natural England, but we are finding that there is a gap between what they are seeking to achieve and what is happening on the ground. Part of that is, as we have said, about the staffing constraints among local teams, and there is not enough time, but I think it is partly about how these schemes are constructed. It goes back to something Henry was saying: what is the breadth of public goods we are looking for? If you are looking only for particular vegetation outcomes, you will inevitably go down that line.
In the document that Adam is referring to, the 0.05 livestock units per hectare is an average. It is true that if you are looking for ecological outcomes, you rarely get them above 0.06, but what we are saying is that we are looking to conserve and sustain a system of farming: the cultural heritage and the natural heritage. The issue is a lack of attention to the whole.
One of the reasons why commons are so highly designated—seven times more designated for nature than enclosed land—is that they have these multiple outcomes. That means that you do not have one person who has only got a single agenda. We feel that it is really important to maintain that. Sometimes you can do things—on Bampton common, they want to have 500 hectares of planting. So you can have a bit more intensive grazing here, and then you have areas that are fenced off.
If Natural England had the staff on the ground and we as a nation committed to supporting farmers to develop schemes that really work locally—I think Natural England staff would be really happy to have more people there. I know that, as a community, we would be very pleased to have that. In my work in private practice as a land agent, I have been doing some of these schemes and working with these farmers for 30 years, yet with the numbers of staff changes that we are seeing, the continuity—it is really hard for staff when they are changing regularly.
You are in Cumbria, but if you don’t mind, I will take us to Dartmoor, where 23 commons agreements are due to run out in the next year—mostly in the next year and a lot of them in the next six months. Natural England does not have enough staff there. There is work through the Dartmoor Land Use Management Group, and we are finding that people are attending meetings, but are people collectively really working for a common good? Rather than people feeling defensive, what we are seeing at the moment is—farmers are feeling their identity as farmers is threatened, and ecologists have a strong and equal passion towards delivering for ecology, and we are seeing a diversion rather than a coming together.
Q75 Charlie Dewhirst: The staffing thing is very interesting because the annual report shows they have 427 senior managers; 15% of their entire workforce is senior management. They have a chief exec who gets paid more than the Prime Minister. You are saying they are completely under-resourced on the ground. That view is shared by a number of people who have responded to the call for evidence. We are saying either that Natural England need to get a grip on their structures, or would they be better off back in-house, in DEFRA, where we would have better political oversight?
Baroness Aglionby: It is also worth remembering that the headcount of core DEFRA has gone up by 3.7 times since 2016. In 2016 DEFRA had about 1,600 core staff and there are now over 7,000. I have added together all the staff at DEFRA and all the ALBs, and there is one civil servant for every five farmers in this country now. I don’t think it really matters where they sit. I personally am in favour of a statutory conservation agency. I am in favour of Natural England being a separate, independent body, because I think nature is really important—the Joint Intelligence Committee says it is. Having that independence is important.
But at the same time, it is always about the “how” as well as the “what”, isn’t it? We are not seeing delivery on the ground. It is not for me to tell Natural England how to organise their staff count. All I can talk about is what we see in terms of how commons are managed and the risk to the future of common land and the most precious places. Whether you are on the tors of Dartmoor, in the New Forest, on Ingleborough and the Yorkshire Three Peaks, or on the North York Moors, these are the places that lift the soul; when you want to take a weekend break, those are the places you go to. You are not going to go to the cauliflower fields of Lincolnshire, however wonderful, are you? I love cauliflower cheese—it is my favourite food, I hasten to add—and I love Lincolnshire for producing that.
It is also really important that there are well-rewarded staff. The pay for Natural England staff at the lower end is shockingly poor, and that has been the case for many, many years. I know that from talking to staff; I know lots of people who work for Natural England. We have not got it quite right yet.
We need to ensure that there are lots of staff. To give an example, at home my mother farmed—it is now a charity and there is no financial interest. The first time we went into a stewardship scheme, a Natural England member of staff spent the whole day on the farm. We gave him lunch. He ate our home-made shepherd’s pie made with our own lamb. It was a great day. He gave us wonderful recommendations, and we fenced off all sorts of rivers. Ten years later, Natural England came round and they did not leave the kitchen. They did not walk a single field. They said they did not have the time. They were giving us £21,000 a year to do more for nature, and not a single field was visited, because they are under pressure. Think what more could have been done if they had the staff on the ground.
Chair: We really need to keep things short.
Q76 Charlie Dewhirst: Do you have anything to add from your experience, Lisa?
Lisa Bennett: From my experience, when they came to do a site visit at the farm, they did spend the day outside looking at everything and did a tremendous report. But Kentmere Dale Head Common came out of the scheme. It had been in for 10 years. We had had to heavily reduce stock to get it in for that 10 years. It was up for renewal, and we went back, but they wanted to halve the stock yet again. They came and looked at it. Their assessment was that, on the top of the fell, there had been no regeneration of anything. It’s 2,000 feet high; sheep don’t tend to graze up on the top there. They never came to the people who farm it and understand it to have a joined-up conversation about what is actually going on. They basically give you a bit of paper and say, “Right, these are the stocking numbers.” So it has not gone back in. Any good that was possibly done will have been undone. Yet all the neighbouring farmers have put their inside land into schemes and planted trees. So all the sheep that were in the allotments, as we call them, are now back out on the fell.
Charlie Dewhirst: Chair, I could go on all day.
Q77 Chair: Let me bring it down to one question. My experience across Government is that the relationship between the regulated and the regulators works when it is a relationship of trust and respect. Do you feel you have that relationship with the regulators, particularly Natural England?
Lisa Bennett: No.
Chair: Okay. I suspected that that might be the case, but I felt it was worth getting it on the record.
Baroness Aglionby: It does vary; it varies a lot from place to place. We have some really good schemes with really good staff. There is good practice, and we would like to have more good practice consistently across the country, and also to enable it. It is quite a complex relationship. Who makes the rules? Between DEFRA, Natural England and the RPA, this is not about anybody getting at anybody. It is about collectively having a scheme that enables Natural England, the Rural Payments Agency and DEFRA to do their job better.
Chair: I am hearing that there is room for improvement. We are going to move on to protected sites and landscapes. Sarah, you are going to start, and Ben will follow.
Q78 Sarah Dyke: Covering about 24% of land in England, protected landscapes status allows quite a lot of opportunities. Here in the Lake District, the national park authority has supported 302 FiPL-funded projects, distributing approximately £5.9 million in grant funding. Obviously, there are those additional restrictions as well. For example, Friends of the Lake District said that designations have had “a significant impact on decision-making, land management and outcomes. However, this is not always the positive impact one would expect or desire.” To what extent do these designations affect the ability of farmers and landowners to operate viable businesses?
Lisa Bennett: For instance, if you have to reduce your stocking numbers on the fell, if you have not got as many, and you have not got as many lambs, you have not got as much to sell. It reduces your income. Yet because of the heafing imbalance, we have twice as much area that we have to cover to do the same job, basically.
Baroness Aglionby: There are lots of forms of designations, as you are probably aware. There are the sites of special scientific interest. Only 8% of England is in a site of special scientific interest, but we have a huge proportion of that in Cumbria and the uplands. As I said, common land is highly designated. I think it is about 1 million hectares of England.
This could be an opportunity, if we can get the schemes working well. I would like to be “cup half full” about this. A designation can be a fantastic opportunity. Where the charity that I am a trustee of farms, we are not in a protected landscape. It is very beautiful in the Eden valley. We have no access to FiPL. It is actually quite hard. There are pluses and minuses to being in a protected landscape. FiPL has been great, but it does not give revenue. People have done lots of hedging schemes, they have done up their barns and they have done other things, but it is not helping farm businesses’ income on a regular basis.
I am really in favour of designating areas for nature. I am really in favour of protected landscapes. I think the Glover review was fantastic. Some things have been implemented, but more could be done. But we need to support people, and we need to say that this is a collective endeavour. At the moment, we do not charge anybody to come to our protected landscapes. That means we need to invest sufficiently. We know that national parks and national landscapes are run pretty much on a shoestring. My view is that this is actually a really good source of wellbeing for the nation.
To go back to that £2 billion figure, that is 0.2% of Government expenditure. You will probably know more than I do, but the Government spend roughly £1.3 trillion a year, and that £2 billion is 0.2%—and that is for all food, not just for the uplands; this is for 70% of England. If we are saying that it is part of our national security to have healthy biodiversity, a resilient landscape and good-quality food production to have a healthy public, then I would suggest that 0.2% is very much on the low side.
Adam Day: As a farmer support organisation, we have close relationships with the national parks and the protected landscapes areas, and FiPL has been really good. It has been one of the successes for many of the farmers I know. It is proceeding now, and hopefully for another two years after this one as well. It has done some good for sure.
We also have to remember that a lot of farmers fall through the cracks. If they are not in those protected landscapes, there is very little for them. We support various cluster groups of farmers who do fall through the cracks.
There is a willingness to work and to embrace, but—it comes back to the same old thing—as long as there is recognition that farmers want to farm that land as well. There will have to be a little bit of give and take on both sides.
Q79 Sarah Dyke: To what extent do you think those existing designations, whether they be national parks, national landscapes or SSSIs, are achieving their intended environmental objectives in the uplands? What do you think the conflicts are, and how can they be resolved?
Baroness Aglionby: If we go back to the Dower report, which underpinned the National Parks Act—John Dower produced a report, and then there was the Hobhouse report—it was rather broader. I think there has perhaps been a bit of a shift and a bit of goalpost moving around what our national parks and national landscapes are for.
The Dower report was very much about having places for the whole nation in terms of wellbeing. We had just had world war two, and they were landscapes of beauty. That word “beauty” is perhaps not used enough. Clearly, underpinning that beauty is our natural environment. Over the last few years, Governments have very much led with the 30 by 30 target, on top of that 24%. I would suggest that we can deliver 30 by 30—to remind, that is for 30% of the country to managed for nature by 2030. I would suggest that that should be a national target so that we can have farming with nature across the whole nation, not simply say, “These are the pockets.”
It is land sparing or land sharing, and in a highly populated country such as England, a land-sharing approach is more appropriate, particularly in such precious landscapes as the Lake District and the Yorkshire dales where we are looking at that cultural heritage.
I would like to go back to the roots of our national parks and landscapes in the 1949 Act. It is not either/or; it is both/and. It is both nature and culture and food and recreation. They are places where the 60 million to 70 million people in this country can go and learn about farming and our cultural heritage, enjoy squishing around in the sphagnum moss, and relish the orchids that are there. We need to do much more to connect people with food, with nature and with place.
Q80 Sarah Dyke: Adam, do you want to add to Julia’s comments? I saw you nodding.
Adam Day: I was nodding in total agreement. I hope you enjoy the landscapes that you see around you here in Cumbria as much as us locals and the 20 million visitors to the county every year—they make 40 million visits in what is upwards of a £4 billion visitor economy. It would be good to accept that those landscapes are predominantly predicated around the work that farmers and their livestock do. We are proud of that, and as a county we should be proud of that.
These are managed landscapes. Can they be managed better? Yes, of course they can, and our farmers are up for that challenge. But is Cumbria, which is a large county but a relatively small area, the right place to start thinking about large landscape change, when a lot of livestock would be taken off those areas? Nobody knows because the data is not there and the science has not been done. The projects are being looked at now, but it is about achieving balance. We cannot get away from the fact that we need managed landscapes in this county.
Baroness Aglionby: It is optimising those numbers. There is quite a lot of work done. There was a whole system in common law called levancy and couchancy. It is a medieval term, and the idea was that the number of stock you had on the fell was the number you could hold at home in the winter. As Adam said, we went through intensification with the post-world war two drive for increased production, beyond what were probably the limits of some of the upland areas. We are now in a system where farmers need support. In the old days, someone from the Min of Ag sat in your kitchen and supported you doing that. That is what I would love to happen. I am delighted for DEFRA and its family to have so many staff, but let’s get them on the farm rather than in the office.
Q81 Sarah Dyke: Farmers are the proud custodians of some of the most beautiful parts of the country, whether it is up here in Cumbria or down in the Somerset levels and moors. Being in that protected landscape should not mean choosing between nature and livelihoods. That has been very much outlined already today.
So often, farmers are left to absorb the cost of public good. What can be done to improve the balance of incentives and the current constraints between supporting farm businesses producing food and delivering environmental improvements?
Baroness Aglionby: You need schemes that have delivering multiple outcomes as their targets. A challenge for Natural England staff, many of whom do appreciate the cultural heritage of these areas, is that they are being asked to deliver a nature-only focus. Nature is really important and climate resilience is really important. We have heard from the Copernicus report how hot Britain has been. We must absolutely ensure we address climate resilience and climate change. People here in Cumbria have huge opportunities to do that, but let’s have cultural heritage going alongside it. At the moment, people just try to sneak it in. Natural England staff often do their best within a system that does not allow them, and is not empowering them, to pay for hefted flocks and a system of intangible cultural heritage.
Q82 Sarah Dyke: Do you think there is enough emphasis around food production? Do you think we have the balance right?
Baroness Aglionby: I think that we need the right food being produced in the right place. We are brilliant at producing red meat; that is our area. We particularly need grass-fed meat. I am personally an advocate for Pasture for Life, and we are Pasture for Life-certified at home. There are opportunities to have lower input systems that are more resilient to geopolitical shocks.
Producing good-quality, nutrient-dense food off the fells is something we can support farmers to do more often. The Farmer Network does brilliant work in peer-to-peer learning and site visits, and fantastic work is done among its members to support farmers to look at optimising the efficiency of their agricultural production business, and we need to do a lot more of that. But is it really up to Adam and his small team of part-time people to transform the rural economy of Northumberland, Cumbria and Yorkshire? Perhaps some of the many thousands of people in the civil service could be seconded. I think that some people will be seconded from DEFRA to the Cumbria combined authority, which is very exciting to hear. We are looking forward to that.
Q83 Sarah Dyke: Do you think we have the balance right between nature and food production?
Adam Day: Not at all, at this moment in time. I would maybe go a bit further than Julia has, because we have had many of these conversations over the years. Julia is right that it is about the quality of food and how we do that—I do not want to use the R-word, because it means different things to different people—in a regenerative way, but I absolutely believe that we need intensive agriculture as well.
When you understand the true effects of climate change and how that will play out over 20 or 30 years across the globe; that we have a rising population—we are about 67 million now, and we will be 75 million or 76 million by 2050, which will go in the blink of an eye; and the pressures that will be on this country and others, you realise that we will have to produce a lot more food. Low-input and low-output systems are brilliant in the right environment, but farmers will have to produce a lot more food quite intensively in other areas if we want to feed ourselves in the future. Food security needs to be on the agenda.
Baroness Aglionby: I absolutely agree with that.
Chair: Ben, do you want to pick up some of this and then move on to private finance?
Q84 Ben Goldsborough: I am happy to move on to private finance. One thing that stuck out to me is what you said early on, Adam, about the farming road map. I am paraphrasing here, but your quote was roughly that we have a road map that leads to a series of tunnels that are not lit, and that really stuck with me.
One thing that was in the farming road map and the land use framework, with much fanfare from DEFRA, was the idea that private finance can start plugging the gaps and providing more support to the farming industry. I am interested in your opinion, Adam. How mature and accessible are natural capital markets for upland farmers and land managers?
Adam Day: I cannot speak with any authority on that at all. I can say that the Farmer Network’s strapline is, “Whatever the challenge, whatever the opportunity.” We always say to farmers, “Look at the opportunities. You may or may not decide to go down that route, but you have to have knowledge of the opportunity.”
In terms of future green finance, a lot of farmers are sceptical at the minute about where that will lead them—the tunnel that will take them down, if you like—and what will be in it for them, as well as about the longevity of that funding. A lot of farmers I know are pretty sceptical about putting land into long-term schemes like 30 by 30, and nutrient neutrality, which is longer than that. There is quite a lot of scepticism at the minute and not a lot of trust in the system from many farmers I know in this part of the world. I always say to farmers, “Make sure you understand it and use the knowledge. If there is anything there that will be of benefit to you, your business or your family in future, we can help you embrace that.”
Q85 Ben Goldsborough: Lisa, obviously you are the one who is working the land. You are one of the people who is expected to be able to access these private finance markets. Is that something that you feel is actually achievable?
Lisa Bennett: I will be honest: we have never been approached with any of that, so at this time—
Q86 Ben Goldsborough: That is quite telling in itself. Do you think that is just because there has been no support from central Government to make you aware of these schemes, or do you think that it is too much of a wild west, where the private companies are allowed to set the rules of the game?
Lisa Bennett: From my experience, what I would possibly say is: have a lot of them been cherry-picked as to where they are focusing it, and that is why I know nothing about it? We have neighbours who have gone into a scheme to improve water quality. Surely all our tributaries flow into the same river, but we never got the opportunity.
Baroness Aglionby: Larger estates find it easier to access this, I think it would be fair to say. I am involved in a really good landscape recovery scheme: I am on the interim board of the Resilient Glenderamackin, which is led by the Rivers Trust. They were really confident about trying to get private finance. I am sure you are all aware that it is the pinnacle of the ELM 20-year schemes. DEFRA was hoping that maybe it would be an 80:20 split, or 75% public and 25% private money. I think they have managed to get maybe 2% to 3% of private money going in, and that has been really, really hard to get. They might get, over 20 years—say the budget is £120 million—£3 million or £4 million. Those are people who are working incredibly hard. The Rivers Trust nationally have access to all sorts. For an individual farmer, it is very, very difficult.
It is not only the regulatory framework, but also whether there is a demand. That will depend on accounting standards, and often international accounting standards. I do not want to pick on any particular corporation, but if you are a large corporation and you have to internalise those externalities—sorry; this is a bit of economic speak—if you are producing fast food, or running a mining company or an airline, you produce these externalities and then effectively you are buying in carbon credits or biodiversity net gain. Actually, if regulation is not requiring you to do that, then why would you? This is a global market, and there have been quite a lot of changes across the pond in terms of attitudes towards environmental requirements. You only need to have an announcement over in Washington DC and the market changes dramatically in the UK in terms of people’s expectations.
Q87 Ben Goldsborough: Lisa, some of the written evidence that we have received over time has highlighted a concern, especially up here, about private finance actually taking land out of being accessible to people like yourself. We had evidence from Friends of the Lake District, which said: “A further tension relates to farmland in the uplands and upland fringes being sold off by landowners for carbon credits”. We had the Lake District national park authority saying: “Green finance is also increasing pressure on land values”. We had the Campaign to Protect Rural England again saying that it was another risk. Is it something that you fear as well?
Lisa Bennett: When you actually travel and leave Cumbria—a lot of farmers don’t necessarily do that very often, do they?
Baroness Aglionby: Well, why would you?
Lisa Bennett: Yes. When you do, you then appreciate what we actually have here. As a farmer, I personally want to share that with people, as long as they come and leave it how they found it, and do not destroy it. That is a bit of a challenge of all these people coming. I am going to talk in technical terms, but when you take the sheep off the fells, etc, we have loads of footpaths. Now when you go to gather the fells, etc, the easiest place to walk is on a sheep trod. If you go off the sheep trod, it is hard terrain. People want to come and walk, and we want to share it with them. We do not want it to be closed. The majority of them do respect what we have here and look after it, and I think we should share it. Nobody wants to see the last of anything, do they? It is a balance.
Baroness Aglionby: It is. In terms of changes, I can think of one valley in the middle of the Lake District, Thirlmere Valley, where there used to be six farmers. I am an administrator for the common; there are about 2,500 hectares of common land there. There were four farmers around 10 years ago, and we are now down to one; that one farmer has been served a notice to quit on their farm. It is a matter under arbitration, but it is really tough. There is a plan and there is already a website talking about resilient Thirlmere and rewilding the whole valley. We know that there will be more flexibility for that landowner in terms of what they do, but that family is facing professional costs of a quarter of a million pounds to try to contest that. These cases are always complex—nothing is ever straightforward—but the intention behind that is not to have better farming on that site, because the other three farms they have back in hand have not been re-let.
Adam Day: I know exactly the area and farm that you are referring to. I was talking to a farmer just last week further down that range of fells, and he said to me, “If you look up at that fell there, Adam, my sheep are up there”—he is not in any commons agreement at the minute—“and my great pleasure in life is to walk up there every day. I see my sheep, and they are in great condition. There is plenty for them to eat, there is plenty of nature up there and I genuinely believe that I have got the balance right. If I want to go into a commons agreement, the first thing I will be told is, ‘You’ll have to downsize your sheep flock.’ But I think I have the balance right.” I do not think we are paying enough attention to those farmers who think that they have the balance right.
In terms of tenant farmers—he is a tenant farmer—there is pressure from some estates that are taking some or all of the land back in hand when they can. Farm business tenancies are always for a fixed term if they are not on an Agricultural Holdings Act tenancy. That pressure is definitely rising, not only in Cumbria but across other northern counties. That is a result of schemes and the possibilities, perhaps in the future, of forms of green finance. It is another pressure on farmers.
Baroness Aglionby: There is a strong incentive for landlords to do this. This is effectively what the ELMS do, but it is inadvertent, I would say, and unintentional. There are some great estates—good estates doing good things. The National Trust has 90 farms and a nature-led farming policy; it wants farms there. There are some really good examples of where we can do both, and we need to do more of that.
That needs to be encouraged through Government policy. One thing we absolutely know from world war two onwards is that farmers are very agile and responsible to the signals sent by Government through support. If we can get that right and build trust, which is hard won and easily lost, and have consistency and ensure that people can access schemes, farmers will be the first to deliver a balanced approach to delivering these designated landscapes.
Q88 Ben Goldsborough: My final question on this—a yes or no answer from each of our panellists, if you don’t mind—is: do you agree that private finance will deliver public good?
Baroness Aglionby: No.
Adam Day: I need to think about that, but my immediate go-to is no.
Lisa Bennett: My immediate go-to would be no.
Chair: Julia, you have been remarkably adept at bringing common land and tenancies into just about everything, but we have a few specific questions. Terry, you will be mopping up anything that Julia has not already covered, and then we will move on to wildfires.
Q89 Terry Jermy: As a Committee, we are very conscious that farming looks and feels different in different parts of the country. That is essentially why we are here; we have made a real effort to get out and about around the UK. The fields are green here—they are not in Norfolk where I am from, so that is a very strong difference at the moment. But even here there are more variances between owner-occupiers, tenant farmers and commoners. If I am feeling charitable, I do feel sorry for DEFRA sometimes, writing a policy that covers all of those different challenges.
Adam, you mentioned the word “co-design” a couple of times today. I think that is absolutely crucial. We are not going to write DEFRA’s policy today, but what does it look like around recognising the differences between owner-occupiers and tenant farmers, and how does that get captured in a policy? I will start with you, Julia, because this is your area of expertise.
Baroness Aglionby: I would put commoners in there as well.
Terry Jermy: Yes, commoners too—absolutely.
Baroness Aglionby: We have been working on this at the Foundation for Common Land since 2012-13, first in “Better Outcomes on Upland Commons” and then in “Our Upland Commons”, and we work with 25 partners, including Government, national landscapes and national parks. What we found is that if we have a facilitator, we have these ingredients of success—trust, integrity, valuing local knowledge, consistency: those areas—and also the stepping stones to get there.
The first of those is that social relationships are at the heart of all change. If you have strong social relationships within a community—if you have them between landlords and tenants, within a commons association, with Natural England, with the protected landscapes, with Friends of the Lake District and with other bodies—we are much more likely to deliver change.
The next stepping stone—these are prerequisites—is that the farm business must be thriving. That is an absolute prerequisite. If that is happening, we can deliver those environmental outcomes. We have roughly 86,000 commercial farmers in England. If we recognise that they are farm businesses, then they need to make a living—whether it is part time or with 20 members of staff—and they need to be solvent. Let’s look at this through that lens. We know that they can deliver in spades for the environment if we work with them and encourage that co-working.
Where we see really good practice, we deliver great outcomes, and that does happen. We have examples from really good work that we are doing—there is some good work in the Buttermere Fells that we have been doing for many years; there is good work on Kinniside. There are areas where we know that all these partners can work well together.
Q90 Terry Jermy: I often say that farmers are the best conservationists. If they are making a profit, most of them would invest back into the environment anyway.
Baroness Aglionby: Yes, and commons are complex. When you have a contract between the commons association and DEFRA, below that you have something called an internal agreement, which is a management agreement between all the parties—the landowners and all the commoners. In the forest of Dartmoor, they have 380 people signed into that agreement. These are complex agreements—it is my role to make that work with solicitors on the quasi-legal, economic side of things—but we really need Natural England at the heart of that.
If we go back a couple of hundred years, we had these things called manorial courts. A lot of tenancies and commons were managed through manorial courts, through the steward. We then lost that—it was all to do with universal suffrage, a rather good thing, coming in—but we then ended up in a rather chaotic position for the management of commons.
We now have some very good governance systems available. Elinor Ostrom was the first woman to win the Nobel prize for economics, and her initial work was based on managing commons in Switzerland. We know that if we can get it right on commons, we can get it right at a landscape scale, across estates and on the new landscape recovery systems.
There is a lot of good practice. Sometimes DEFRA can be a little frightened of entering wholeheartedly into that process—they go, “Oh, that’s nothing to do with us. If you give all the money to Terry to go to The Bahamas, that’s fine by us, as long as you deliver the outcomes.” But this is public money and we should be really clear about who is keeping it. We unfortunately see some really bad practice, where either one or two commoners, or one or two landowners, use their power to lever a larger sum of that money. Managing money is really important. Public money should be well spent, and my view is that DEFRA has a responsibility to make sure that the split between landlord and tenant, or between commoners and landowners, should be better managed, with more scrutiny placed on that.
Q91 Terry Jermy: Adam, with the work that you do, taking a broad look at the difference between owner-occupiers, commoners and tenant farmers, do you see similarities, or are there particular challenges for different groups?
Adam Day: There are particular challenges for different groups, but it is a huge frustration. We have talked a lot about the polarity between farming and conservation, which is pretty manifest in Cumbria at this moment in time, and it does mask the good work that is going on. But in real terms, taking what Julia has been talking about—down to grassroots, sitting round the kitchen table—in an ideal world what should happen is that the Natural England field person should sit at Lisa’s table and start the conversation with, “What’s important to you on this farm? What do you need to do on this farm for your farm production business?” Then, when that trust is built, they should walk round the farm, looking at features and whatever it might be, with advice being given, where trust builds up.
Instead, in certain circumstances, it is almost like a “them and us” scenario. That is never going to work. We have to build trust and we have to pull people together. Our ecologists and conservationists must learn about the farm business and know exactly what that is. That in turn will help our farmers to understand better practices in terms of nature, biodiversity and everything else. It is doable. It is not difficult, but it is being made very difficult.
Q92 Terry Jermy: Adam has just described what a good system would look like. Lisa, if the Government came out with a new grant scheme tomorrow, what would go through your head? What are the challenges for you to access that money? What is your immediate reaction about how it would work on the ground? Do you go, “Yes!” or do you go, “Oh God, not another form to fill in”?
Lisa Bennett: No, we’d get somebody else to fill in the form. [Laughter.]
You would go through it. We all want to work with nature; we all want to see everything there. So, if it is for the benefit of the good of the environment and the benefit of the good of our cash flow, you go with it. Nobody wants to see the last of anything and we want to protect what we have. For instance, in the Lake District, there are a lot of stone walls, etc. If somebody came and said, “You need to be planting hedges to get harvest mice, etc, to come back,” you would be keen to give it a go, as long as it did not go right through the best of your hay meadows. You would have to have a balance somewhere as to where you put it. That is what it is about. It is a bit of what Adam says—a kitchen conversation with everybody there is what it needs, and it all needs to be done on an individual basis, rather than a scattergun approach that fits everybody.
Q93 Terry Jermy: Do you think that tenant farmers have fair access to Government funding at the moment?
Lisa Bennett: I think we have equal access, as everybody else has really. It is there for us; it is just about getting the correct advice about where to go to move into it. We are actually National Trust tenants, so we might see it from a different point of view. A private—
Q94 Mr Carmichael: Equal entitlement, rather than necessarily equal access?
Lisa Bennett: Yes.
Baroness Aglionby: The National Trust have lots of staff who help their tenants go into things, but sometimes what we find is land being taken back in hand and let on shorter tenancies, or the landlord enters into the SFI and charges a rent. I can think of one example of a farm over on Shap. The farmer retired completely. No pressure or anything; he retired. The landlord kept the farm in hand. Previously, the rent had been £30,000; it was a large farm. Then they went into countryside stewardship—the old countryside stewardship—and the income was £300,000 per annum. They are expecting under landscape recovery to get £700,000 per annum; the landlords will get that and they will charge conservation graziers to graze that land.
That just shows where public money is flowing, and that £700,000—yes, it is a big farm, but it could be spread among a lot of things. This is the problem—there is no plan for this money. It is like these Taylor Swift concerts; if you want to buy 20 tickets, you can buy 20 tickets.
Lisa Bennett: I know of an example of a farm that was in private ownership that just recently has been rented. Basically, the landlord has gone and said, “If you get more payments than this, we want it.” He has capped how much they can actually take, and it is not a big farm. That is when it is unfair, but as I said, we are on a National Trust farm; we have not seen that.
Q95 Terry Jermy: Good. Lastly, Julia, the Government have tried to make access fairer by putting the 100k cap on SFI for example. Even so, it is a race to access that before the money runs out, because it will never be enough to cover all of the need. Do you think that approach has helped tenant farmers and commoners, or does it still need to evolve and change?
Baroness Aglionby: It is a very simplistic approach. If Brant Fell, which is 2,700 hectares, want to open up and go into a scheme, they would not be able to put their common into an SFI scheme because they would be above the £100,000 cap. That just shows that the system does not necessarily work, although it is well intentioned. We have written to DEFRA to ask them to please lift the £100,000 cap for commons. There are 23 active farmers on that common, so their share is less than £100,000. It varies a lot. A lot of farms will be going for only £5,000 or £10,000. A blog produced last week said what the average claim was under SFI—was it about £7,000 or something?
It is going in the right direction. This is nothing against Norfolk, but we have seen quite a lot of BPS money from Cumbria flow to winter bird food mix agreements in Norfolk. I know Norfolk farmers, who tell me that their average earning per hectare is over £560, while in Cumbria you are stuck on £80 for HLS. There are good payments available, as you can see in the column here—£164 for moorland under CSI tier—but you can’t actually get them at the moment. That is the problem. On paper, there is equal access, but in practice there is not.
Q96 Chair: Buckle up—I have a few questions on grazing and moorland management. We touched on this at the start, Adam. Julia, I want to come to you, because you have touched on this a few times already. Quite a lot of the evidence that we have received has been characterised as saying that Natural England often defaults to reducing stocking rates. As a farmer, do you feel that alternative management options are being given sufficient consideration?
Lisa Bennett: I would not feel that they are. For instance, with the system that we were looking at, it was a bit of a case that they were not willing to come back to the table, negotiate and meet in the middle; their figures had to be stuck to, but they weren’t prepared to go out and do a walk of the fell to see what there is and how it was beforehand. It was a case of, “No, we need to reduce it further to this.”
Q97 Chair: On the subject of the fell and livestock, if you are foolish enough to spend any time on Twitter—I really would not recommend it—you will see some fairly extravagant claims made about levels of mortality and animal welfare. Talk me though how you see it and how you manage your stock in upland areas, sheep in particular.
Lisa Bennett: Sheep?
Q98 Chair: Do you allow them to go lame?
Lisa Bennett: No, you treat them if they go lame. A lot of the reason why sheep now go lame is that everybody is encouraged to take them off the fells and winter them in the lowlands. The cows in the lowlands tend to have dermatitis in their feet, so when the sheep come back to the fells they fetch that with them from the lowlands. That is a bit of what happens. If they are up on the fell and they get foot rot, the flies are attracted to their feet. Basically, they have them under their body and they get maggots, and you can’t treat them on the fell. But you tend not to get as much of that on the fell as you do in the fields because it is colder up there and the flies don’t tend to thrive.
The welfare of the stock is in every farmer’s interest—for them to be looked after and tret right. Everybody can miss something in the field. Something can be taken ill after you have been round, but you treat it as soon as you find it. For farmers to sell their stock at the auction, they must either have a VAN number, which says that you have had a vet inspection to say that your husbandry is up to requirement, or they must be in Red Tractor or FABBL. It is displayed on the board that you are in those schemes. Some companies will not buy your products if you are not in them. They see it as a premium—that you are looking after things correctly.
Q99 Chair: We spoke earlier about the pride that you have as an upland farmer working in a traditional low-impact system. Is that reflected in the way that you treat your stock?
Lisa Bennett: Not at all; you just look after stock. You are basically a stock person, and that is what you want—you want the best of everything. It is an embarrassment if something is not right.
Baroness Aglionby: You may be referring to an article that was in The Spectator. There has also been quite a lot of publicity, hasn’t there?
Q100 Chair: There has been a degree of comment, but I do not want to get into that, because there is other stuff that I want to stick on.
Baroness Aglionby: Just very briefly, I think that what is important is that this is very unhelpful without going into the detail. Anything that polarises farmers from nature conservation is deeply unhelpful. Leaving aside the whole personal nature of that particular article, which I think is very unfortunate, all the work that we at the Foundation for Common Land are trying to do, and that I know that Adam at The Farmer Network is too, is about building trust and bringing people together. That sort of article, which was in The Spectator, makes our job 10 times harder. Why, as a farmer, would you want to come to the table to discuss nature conservation?
Q101 Chair: If that was how you were going to be met when you got there. Lovely point, well made.
Lisa, if I can come back to you, we have heard that constant reductions in stocking levels are now posing a threat to the system of hefted stock—which you work with, I think, if that is right?
Lisa Bennett: Yes.
Chair: How important is that hefted system for the whole farming community and the cultural heritage, and the way that you farm here?
Lisa Bennett: To start with the cultural heritage, you traditionally have what they call joint gathers, whereby on that particular fell you could have four different hefts owned by four different people. They all come together on a day—it has to be a clear day, when there is no mist on the top and the weather has to be correct—and they all gather them in and then, at the sheep end, sort off their own, and then they all go their separate ways. It is just so frustrating when you have to go so much further to gather your own heft, and it is the same for everybody.
Adam Day: I am hearing this constantly from upland farmers in the Lake District and the Pennines as well. Those sheep reductions—in some cases whole flocks, side by side by side on the top of a fell—are having a major impact in some areas. The shepherds are telling me that they are having to go miles and miles past the original traditional heft into other areas or other valleys. They are telling me that the bracken creep as a result of the reducing sheep numbers is making it impossible to gather the sheep hiding in the bracken. They and the dogs are worked to death. I have had farmers almost in tears, sitting in my office, telling me about this. It is the impact of the loss of the sheep on the remaining shepherds that is an equally important pressure that is building in some areas of the Lake District.
Q102 Chair: It comes to this whole idea of community. These gatherings in uplands, they are not just individual shepherds and farmers on their own; it is a community effort, isn’t it?
Adam Day: It absolutely is. That gather is a skill in itself. You cannot just set 10 people off on a hill and say, “Go there, go there and go there, and bring all the sheep with your dog.” Those shepherds and those families, some of whom are intergenerational, know every area of that fell. They know where the sheep will be hiding, because the sheep will teach their next generation that that is where they go. This is what hefting is: it’s acclimatisation. It’s mothers, ewes, teaching their young stock where they need to be on the fell. It’s so important and so valuable.
Q103 Chair: It strikes me that it is not just the sheep that are hefted; it is the farmers and the shepherds as well.
Baroness Aglionby: There was an excellent article in the Financial Times, just last week or the week before, about this, explaining how it works.
Q104 Chair: You are hearing that all the time, Adam.
Adam Day: All the time.
Q105 Chair: Why are Government and Government agencies not hearing it, do you think?
Adam Day: I would like you to ask that question to them, because there seems to be a stumbling block. We have said it frequently, there is this huge frustration. Farmers are trying to have that conversation and, invariably, habitat recovery seems to always be predicated on “Reduce the sheep”. I would like to know about that question.
Q106 Chair: Do you feel that there is sufficient transparency in the way that Natural England assesses moorland condition and what it sees as being appropriate management interventions?
Adam Day: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? Many upland farmers say to me that there are areas of the fells that they know they understand—they know better than anybody what is up there—and they do not seem to be able to get that message across. How that plays out in future, we will have to see. There is huge frustration that farmers are trying to say, “We know what is good on here and we know what could be done better.”
Lisa Bennett: As a farmer and a stock person, when you put your sheep out on to the fell, if they don’t come back in in the condition that you have hoped, you know that you have put too many out. It is about a balance. You have that understanding of a fell.
Q107 Chair: Then there are other, wider consequences for the way in which you manage moorland. This summer, we have seen quite dramatic scenes across upland communities and other moorland communities. Adam, I think you touched on this earlier. Do you feel that we have the balance right in terms of managing the land to mitigate the wildfire risk?
Adam Day: Not at all, and that is not me saying that; that is farmers saying that. Frankly, in Cumbria this year, we have dodged a bullet. There are areas—not all, but many areas—across the uplands in Cumbria that farmers say have been under-grazed for some time, and the burden of dead grasses and the build-up of combustible dry, dead vegetation—white grass, as we call it up here—is ever-increasing. There is real concern in the farming community across this county that at some stage one of the major fells is going to go, and when it goes, it will not stop. There is real concern about that.
Baroness Aglionby: Farmers can do a lot to help. In Dartmoor, my member of staff down there worked with 30 of the 34 commons associations to put together wildfire action plans. What do we do in the case of a fire? It is about ensuring farmers are trained. They can use their quad bikes. There are lots of ways that they can work with the fire service. It is a combination of things, such as being proactive in terms of fire breaks. It is making sure that we work collectively. We know that summers are likely to continue to get hotter, so how do we collectively ensure mitigations against fires happening in the first place?
Q108 Chair: Farmers can do a lot, but they have to be there in order to do it. Just a few minutes ago, you were talking about land being taken out of production.
Baroness Aglionby: Totally, and then they are not going to be there, and that is a real concern. Dartmoor and Exmoor and the Quantocks are further south. Sarah will know from her neck of the woods that there is more pressure in terms of the climate down there. There was a big fire in the New Forest, which is a common as well. We know that farmers could have been better integrated there.
Chair: We are running up against time now. We have spoken a lot today about social value and the community impact. Sarah has a few questions on that to round off our evidence session.
Q109 Sarah Bool: You said earlier that the Government seem to have lost sight of cultural heritage being a public good, and do risk losing skills. On the way here, we saw all the dry stone walling, which is absolutely beautiful. We have talked a lot about hefting. Is our key message back to the Government that we should not lose sight of that, and to make sure that there is support there?
Baroness Aglionby: Yes. Let’s have an integrated approach. You came to that event we did in 2019, where Adam and I said we wanted a culture-rich, nature-rich Lake District. We have the new Lake District partnership plan. It is not either/or. We can do both/and, but we have to support farmers to be there. We would like to have the same number of commoners there.
Going back to my analogy, if you are a choir in a cathedral, the back row only has one bass on each side; suddenly, you are not getting a great voice from that. What we want to have is healthy younger people and the back line of the choir—the commoners of all ages being there. If we can encourage that through public payments for the public good, and ensure that nature recovery and climate resilience are working alongside cultural heritage together, then it is through working together and valuing each other that we will get better outcomes.
Adam Day: May I add to that? I think it is absolutely imperative, and this is a plea to Government, that any and all impacts of schemes must be recognised. It is not good enough to say that nature recovery trumps everything else. Any and all impacts need to be assessed.
Lisa Bennett: Basically, just don’t take the finger off the pulse on the next generation; they’re the future. It’s all right us in our generation doing all this good, but it’s the next ones following on who can continue it.
Q110 Sarah Dyke: What might be the implications for rural communities if nature markets become a major source of upland income? For example, peatland restoration looks very different in Cumbria than it does down in Somerset, but both regions face a fundamental question of how we support farmers and land managers to deliver climate and water benefits without undermining their businesses’ viability. On that basis, how will that change impact rural communities?
Baroness Aglionby: You are talking about communities disappearing, because large corporations like to have simple transaction costs, which means it is much easier to deal with one person rather than 21 people on a common. So, commons are not really very attractive for this.
What we are finding is that our communities are literally disappearing. They are at risk of that because it is not financially viable for them to continue. You will not get the next generation coming through.
We need to ensure that there is a living wage, if people’s sons and daughters wish to come into a farming business, but the figures I gave you show that the risk is that farming really will not produce a living wage. Yes, we need peatland restoration, but alongside other things. Again, anything that is single-agenda has significant risks for rural communities.
Adam Day: Absolutely. We have already talked about the fact that there are a number of estates that are taking land back in hand and embracing every scheme that there is with relish. The knock-on effect, as we said earlier, is happening now. Communities are having pressure placed upon them. We have farmhouses now on the market as separate entities, with people buying them for second homes or for Airbnbs. This is happening now and communities in Cumbria are starting to feel that pressure already. Also, there is that circular rural economy to consider, because if that land is no longer being farmed, that farm is no longer buying goods and services from other people that support that farm business. It’s happening now.
Chair: I find myself wishing that we had started at 9 am instead of 10 am, because I could run this for the rest of the day. However, Adam, you have important duties elsewhere in the show field, and we are up against time.
Can I thank you? I said at the start that this was about making sure that people felt that they were being heard. I hope that, in small measure, people in a community like this today will perhaps feel that they are being heard, and that that might be a better direction of travel in the future as this conversation develops.
I thank you for your attendance, for your engagement and for your enormously important evidence, but for the moment, I am afraid that we are beaten by the clock.