In anticipation of this week's government spending review, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust has joined forces with twelve leading organisations to warn the government of the negative impact that potential cuts may have for nature and rural businesses.
The letter, addressed to the Food Security and Rural Affairs Minister, Daniel Zeichner, can be read in full below.
Our organisations are deeply concerned about the rumoured cuts to the agricultural budget in the upcoming spending review.
Thousands of farmers and land managers, and our organisations, have worked with government to transition away from an outdated system of subsidies and complex grants to one focussed on investing public money in public goods. We are only part way through this transition and the progress must not be halted now.
There is universal support across industry for this direction of travel. Payments made under the Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes are not subsidies. They are a contract where government purchases land management interventions which clean up water, enhance biodiversity, produce sustainable food and timber, create spaces for people to enjoy, and combat climate change. The ELM schemes are critical to the government’s statutory targets on environmental improvement, including the overarching goal to halt the decline of biodiversity.
Farmers and land managers of all sizes are committed to helping deliver environmental good and it is important to understand the scale of participation. There are 77,000 live agri-environment scheme agreements according to Defra’s latest figures, with millions of hectares under environmental land management. So much good has been done by these agreements, the oldest of which have run for decades. Though the scheme is still being perfected, the unprecedented engagement in the Sustainable Farming Incentive is testament to the appetite of farmers and land managers to rise to the challenge and do more.
Farmers and land managers are rightly proud of their important role in environmental delivery, but as business owners, the majority will be unable to fund this important work out of their own pockets. Any reduction in the available budget to fund existing and new ELM schemes will be catastrophic to the government’s aims. Many of the environmental features present in the countryside and enjoyed by the public will be under threat and will disappear. This would be a poor legacy for this government.
The industry would like to have your assurances that this critical work will continue to be funded at the same level.
Yours sincerely,
Nick Von Westenholz, Chief Executive Officer, Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust
Victoria Vyvyan, President, Country Land and Business Association
David Exwood, Deputy President, National Farmers Union
Robert Martin, National Chair, Tenant Farmers Association
Beccy Speight, Chief Executive Officer, RSPB
Harry Bowell, Director of Land and Nature, National Trust
Martin Lines, Chief Executive Officer, Nature Friendly Farming Network
Jeremy Moody, Secretary and Adviser, Central Association of Agricultural Valuers
Helen Browning OBE, Chief Executive, Soil Association
Robbie Tuer, Chair, National Federation of Young Farmers' Clubs
Wendy Jenkins, Chair, British Institute of Agricultural Consultants
Robert Sheasby, Chief Executive, Agricultural Industries Confederation
CC Rt Hon Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer