So that’s it, the new government doesn’t need farmers. They are antiquated, redundant, whingeing and muddy. We can buy in all our food, Tim Leunig, Treasury adviser and friend of Dominic Cummings, said in an email to the National Food Strategy last month.

Britain needs its farmers more than ever

Alice Thomson  www.thetimes.co.uk 

A second government adviser has suggested the return of lynx so we can rewild Britain and leave it to the big cats. Ardent environmentalists want to plant forests of native trees to replace crops, fields and hedgerows. Militant vegans are pushing for all domesticated farm animals in this country to be phased out.

Farmers can just pack up their diesel tractors and trundle off into the history books, along with wooden ploughs and oxen. They only make up 1.5 per cent of our 21st-century workforce, they moan about the weather, their hunting and shooting hobbies are dubious, and their barns make wonderful rustic conversions.

Yet they manage 69 per cent of the land and produce about half of food consumed in this country. And 60 million people need sustenance. Dr Leunig may insist that Singapore, with its population of five million, can import all its edible produce, but if the coronavirus outbreak has shown us anything it is the importance of food supplies. There may be a run on hand sanitisers and face masks, but as panicked shoppers stocking up in Wuhan and Milan know, all you need in a lockdown is food and water to survive. Even in Britain those with allotments and gardens are feeling relatively smug as they remember the days of post-war rationing.

Almost every tale about plagues and nuclear Armageddon focuses on the desperate search for nourishment, from Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

We are already too dependent on food imports. About 30 per cent currently come from the EU and 12 per cent from 160 different countries. A typical biscuit now manufactured in a British factory may contain salt from China, calcium sulphate from India, palm oil from southeast Asia, whey from New Zealand, milk and wheat from the EU, sugar from the Caribbean and cocoa from South America. This makes us highly vulnerable not only to shocks such as pandemics, but also to almost any other kind of global meltdown.

It is also environmentally insane to import so much food by ship and plane from less fertile countries when Britain’s climate provides ideal conditions for farming, as Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers’ Union, points out. We are able to produce in season the majority of our needs except chocolate, coffee, sugar and avocados for our toast. British farmers have already shown that they can go carbon-neutral relatively easily, but if you want an orange from Israel, it needs to offset its airmiles. British farmers also lead the way in animal husbandry, but if we phase out all livestock and poultry we won’t be able to monitor animal welfare abroad for the eggs to go on millennial brunches.

Rewilding is not the easy alternative. This is not land abandonment, “wilding” needs constant maintenance and subsidy, as the Knepp estate in West Sussex where it is being trialled proves. As does forestry. Planting a million trees is easy, the expense lies in their management. They need nurturing and protecting until they reach maturity or they will be attacked by squirrels and deer.

Astonishingly, food production was barely mentioned in the government’s original Agriculture Bill, it was all about improving air quality, access to the countryside, preservation of soil, encouraging wildlife and reducing flooding. They’ve had to revise the bill after this was pointed out, but farmers are increasingly bewildered. They have no idea what their purpose is any more. Professor Michael Winter, a rural policy expert at Exeter University, says farmers are “under attack from ministers, lobbyists, environmentalists and vegans” and are increasingly seen as pariahs rather than providers.

The newly proposed system of farm support moving from direct payments to “public money for public good” is in danger of becoming another universal credit-style fiasco, rushed in too quickly by those who have no idea of the hand-to-mouth existence of many tenant farmers and backed by those rich enough to see farming as a hobby rather than their livelihood.

But farming the land and protecting the environment aren’t mutually exclusive, in fact they could be natural partners. We need farmers to produce basic foodstuffs as well as manage the land. They should be urged while feeding us to diversify, nurture otters and beavers, manage moors and streams, restore biodiversity and encourage the return of nightingales. Experts should be helping them with their agri-environmental schemes.

Farmers are bound up in our sense of national identity. Shakespeare and the Romantics revelled in a countryside that has been cultivated by generations of farmers. They are providing the backdrop for ramblers, holidaymakers and tourists and creating serenity in a hectic world. Beauty, history and heritage are in danger of becoming relegated. It’s not just the wildlife that needs space to breathe.

George Eustice, the new environment secretary, needs to reassure farmers as well as revitalise farming. If they quit, we would have to find new custodians of the countryside and it would be far more damaging than if we got rid of government advisers like Dr Leunig.