Three hundred and 40 British farmers have signed a letter to Conservative MPs criticising plans to scrap plans to pay them for their stewardship of nature.
The environmental land management scheme (Elms), a set of subsidies to replace the EU’s common agricultural policy, had been due to be rolled out this year. But last month, ministers placed it under review. A result is expected in the next week – within the seven days that Liz Truss has to remain as prime minister.
The policy, six years in the making, had been seen by some as one of the few promising Brexit dividends, paying farmers for “public goods” such as creating habitats for wildlife or preserving biodiversity. Under the old CAP system, payments were allocated in part by the amount of land being cultivated, which had disastrous impacts on wildlife, and also let to small farmers losing out to big agriculture. A newly reformed CAP system will come into force in from January 2023.
The letter is part of a huge backlash against the plan to scrap Elms, along with hundreds of existing environmental laws – including key environment protections for wildlife and habitats, as well as laws on sewage pollution into rivers, river quality and air pollution – which are due to fall off the statute books by December 2023.
In the letter, coordinated by the Nature Friendly Farming Network and sent to 148 Tory MPs in mainly rural constituencies, farmers say abandoning of environmental stewardship in favour of policies intended to promote economic growth would be a “false trade-off”.
“A thriving natural environment, healthy soil and a stable climate are vital conditions for productive and profitable food production,” the letter says. “We were promised agricultural policies that would make our farms the standard bearers for quality, sustainability and profitability.
“Returning to old, inefficient and inequitable subsidies like the common agricultural policy – which do not reward good practices, but merely enrich those with the largest areas of land – would be a poor use of public funds, and wholly against the direction of travel within the sector.”
Also on Thursday, thousands of members of the Women’s Institute signed a letter to Jacob Rees-Mogg, the business secretary, warning that discarding the regulations risks the UK’s target to halt the decline of nature by 2030 as set out in the Environment Act.
The retained EU law bill lists 570 environmental laws that will fall off the statute books by December 2023, as part of a Brexit transition. Rees-Mogg said the removal of the laws would “fully realise the opportunities of Brexit and … support the unique culture of innovation in the UK”.
The letter called on Rees-Mogg to withdraw the bill immediately. “Environmental laws … are there to benefit our environment, protecting it and the important wildlife that lives there. Together these laws protect every element of our natural environment keeping our air and water clean as well as providing vital safeguards for people’s health,” it said.
“These regulations play a key role in providing businesses with a solid basis on which they can make good environmental and investment decisions that are central to delivering economic growth.”
Signatories called for the government to talk to them. “We want a thoughtful and constructive conversation about how we reform, strengthen and improve the delivery of vital protections for climate, nature, air and water quality and more. But this bill isn’t the way to do that.”
