Viewpoint: “We cannot reward less productive organic farming” – A call for the reintroduction of science into agricultural planning

With global concerns over food security and rising food and energy price inflation, the UK government seems to have recognized the importance of having a productive domestic agriculture. But reports that one of Britain’s largest landowners, the National Trust, is taking back large tracts of productive farmland from long-term tenants to plant trees and regrow, and encourage low-yield farming on some of our most fertile soils, underscores the urgent need Need for a coherent land use strategy that recognizes the importance of food production.

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In my view, it is crucial to have an early idea of ​​what a science-based assessment of future land-use allocations might look like, before too much of our productive acreage of rewilding, tree planting, or low-yield management systems such as is classified as organic and before Too much public money is earmarked to reward less productive farming systems when the scientific evidence tells us to focus on high-yield farming.

In fact, the development of a coherent land-use strategy — which provides a science-based assessment of the competing demands and priorities for this valuable resource — should have preceded each of the policy options being developed by Defra under the Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMs). , be it in relation to low-input agriculture, local conservation or landscape restoration.

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