Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360
- 379)
WEDNESDAY 18 MARCH 2009
MR ANDREW
WOOD
Q360 Paddy Tipping:
Who should judge those trade-offs?
Mr Wood: Society has to find ways
to judge those trade-offs and ultimately it elects you to take
the final decisions on that, and that is entirely appropriate.
We hope always that you do that with the benefit of the best advice
that you can get from us or from anybody else.
Q361 Paddy Tipping:
Can I ask you more specifically about the Higher Level of Stewardship?
How do you rate it as a programme?
Mr Wood: We rate it very highly
as a programme. We think it is visibly beginning to make a difference
and it is an absolutely critical tool in achieving better conditions
for our most vulnerable sites, but beyond the SSSI[34]
series or European designations, if we are going to deliver on
our ambitions to restore and protect a biodiversity action plan
for priority habitats and to a lesser extent species, then HLS
is absolutely fundamental to that.
Q362 Paddy Tipping:
Can everybody get into it who wants to?
Mr Wood: We are not oversubscribed
as things stand.
Q363 Paddy Tipping:
Why is that? If it is such a good scheme why are not farmers and
landowners knocking on your door?
Mr Wood: Because a farmer will
quite properly make an economic calculation at a point in time.
Lots have made the calculation and applied for the scheme, lots
are in the older, so-called classic schemes and we are working
with them to look at renewal.
Q364 Paddy Tipping:
Could you just explain that to me a bit more, what is a classic
scheme? It sounds like a car to me.
Mr Wood: The classic scheme means
any form of environmental stewardship pre HLS and ELS[35]
and my reference to BAP[36]
is that we have got about 65% of BAP habitats in good condition,
overwhelmingly because we have land managers in so-called classic
schemes. To sustain that and improve upon it we need them to transfer.
Q365 Paddy Tipping:
This is a very naive and simple point but somebody in the HLS
can protect the environment in a very rigorous kind of way but
would be able to increase production too.
Mr Wood: Yes, absolutely.
Q366 Dan Rogerson:
Briefly on HLS, a lot of things have been raised with me by some
farmers in my constituency—and we have a lot of SSSIs and
so on—about HLS and the amount of work that goes into the
application for it and the engagement with consultants or whatever,
and advisers, all sorts of things, and that the process is as
much a disincentive as the actual operation of the scheme. Do
you think that is a fair criticism and what could be done to change
that?
Mr Wood: It is probably a fair
criticism now and I will defensively say that part of that is
to do with European scheme rules and so forth where we simply
have to follow a book of rules. We have taken steps at the payments
end of the process to make our processing times much, much faster,
so we have a target set by the scheme of making payments within
30 days, and we make them within two and a half so we have done
that bit of the job. The other bit of the job is the application
end. We have a series of changes in hand that will come to bear
in 2010 that will make application forms easier, that will make
the application process as a whole easier and, critically, quicker.
One of the slightly hidebound arrangements that we inherited was
the making of maps and, coupled with that, the assumption that
you had to strike a deal with the farmer that was going to exist
for the lifetime of the agreement. We would like first to move
away from absolutely mapping every last dot at the point you make
the agreement to relying on something that was broader brush and
then move back to do more accurate mapping subsequently—that
would speed things up—and we are very keen to get people
into starter agreements and then build them as their own confidence
in managing the scheme grows and as they see further opportunities
to have a scheme that can evolve over two or three years instead
of having to get it right in all its details first time out.
Q367 Lynne Jones:
You answered yes to Paddy Tipping's question about increasing
productivity within the context of higher level stewardship and
in your submission you make comments like "improving the
environmental performance of agriculture and increasing food production
is potentially possible..." and "There are many opportunities
for improving and restoring the quality of soils in England which
would support agricultural productivity..."[37]
but can you tell us how we can, if you like, have our cake and
eat it, have improved agricultural production whilst maintaining
the quality of the environment? You have said we could do it but
can you give us some ideas of what in practical terms we should
be doing to achieve that aim?
Mr Wood: We have to consider this
at a range of scales, so the precision targeting of fertilisers
that we talked about earlier works well on a large scale in arable
prairies in East Anglia and the East Midlands, there is no doubt
about that. That is an easy win and lots of farms already do that.
On a much smaller scale in other places we could look to a change
of systems and my piece of jargon here is agro-ecology—agro-ecological
farming systems pursue farming through something that fits with
a standard ecological system and, typically, that can involve
growing more than one crop in the same place and if you look for
an easy but, I confess, slightly glib example of that the under-grazing
of orchards is something that used to happen in this country a
great deal—I can remember my grandfather doing it—so
you can have apples and pears and you can have sheep or pigs[38]
around the roots of the trees. That is comparatively easy. At
almost all scales you can look at things like integrated use of
pesticides—that can make a difference—and we should
look at much more sensitive use of natural pest control which
is proven to work with even relatively intensive farming. None
of these are panaceas across the piece and again we need to do
lots of work, and the farming industry and environmentalists together
need to do lots of work to see how you could best deploy those
sorts of solutions.
Q368 Chairman:
Is that an explanation therefore for paragraph 4.24 where you
say "But, it is possible for biodiversity to have an agronomic
value by, for example, being part of an ecosystem that suppresses
pest and disease populations to below yield damaging levels"?[39]
Mr Wood: Yes.
Q369 Chairman:
You cannot quantify any of that for us? I understand with greater
clarity what the concept is but if you had, say, 500 acres or
whatever it is in hectares' worth of arable crop and it was grown
on strictly conventional means, and you came along and said to
the farmer, "We have got to improve the biodiversity of the
way that you produce your arable crop, and we want to change the
current situation so that the biodiversity regime we introduce
would have agronomic value and would suppress pests and diseases
below yield damaging levels"—can you perhaps write
to us and let us know what it actually means in reality?
Mr Wood: I would be happy to do
so, yes.
Q370 Chairman:
Just so I can get a feel for what it is that we are asking farmers
to do.
Mr Wood: Certainly, yes.
Q371 Chairman:
Having done that how robust are such systems because are you 1%
below or 2% below or whatever per cent below in terms of yield
damaging, what that says to me is you can take the edge off it.
In other words, an agrochemical may stop the pest dead in its
tracks but an ecosystem-based thing may diminish but not entirely
remove the yield diminishing threat. If you could just give feel
as to the difference, if you like, between the use of agrochemicals
and the system you have described in terms of yield loss, that
would be very helpful.
Mr Wood: We will put that in a
letter Chairman.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
David.
Q372 David Lepper:
If we assume that one of the overriding aims of government is
to tackle climate change, Tim Lang in one of our early sessions,
as you may know, was quite clear in saying Britain is producing
too much meat and dairy; we should lower it and treat meat and
dairy as one of the quickest and most fundamental ways in which
we can lower our carbon emissions. You say, on the other hand,
yes, that is so, but to reduce the dairy and meat sectors could
cause other environmental damage particularly to character of
landscape, biodiversity, et cetera. Can we square those competing
views about priorities? You seem to be saying landscape, character,
biodiversity, it is crucial that we protect, maintain and conserve
but there may be a price to pay in doing so.
Mr Wood: Sadly, there is always
a price to pay and the dilemma that you pose is not an easy one.
Taking the particular example of livestock and dairy, we feed
a significant proportion of our livestock on cereals currently;
therefore that use is in competition with human food and they
are cereals that are typically produced with lots of inputs. You
could shift a lot of that production to pasture and you would
get rid of a lot of the inputs straightaway; that is a win for
the environment. We know that a significant proportion of the
population eat unhealthily and Professor Lang is right: if you
are going to correct that then typically they would eat a bit
less meat, probably a lot less cheese and significantly more fruit
and vegetables, and there is probably some gain for the natural
environment in making that sort of switch. It has, plainly, economic
consequences for farmers and the market in part will determine
that. As for the climate change end of this, climate change is
happening now, lots of the impacts are locked in for the next
30 years and that is going to have an impact on species, on habitat
and ultimately therefore on land use for the sort of crops that
we can grow. Some of the impacts are beneficial, certainly in
agricultural terms. The British livestock herd is a contributor
to climate change: it emits greenhouse gases, we all know that,
and the notion that you would go to the ultimate point of getting
rid of that and we all go vegetarian is, I suspect, the sort of
draconian solution that no government in the foreseeable future
would be attracted to. Reducing the size of the herd might well
be desirable in those terms, but it is not an easy solution. There
is not a magic bullet here.
Q373 David Lepper:
With the sort of scenario that you have just described and, yes,
you are honest in saying there is no magic bullet obviously, you
have also suggested that in a way the market is the determining
factor in bringing about change if it is desirable to have change.
What about the role of government?
Mr Wood: Government plainly has
a role too and that is largely what we have been talking about.
The market will determine broadly how farmers are rewarded for
what they produce, that has to be the starting point. The Government
then needs to decide what it wants to incentivise, whether it
is particular commodities, particular forms of production, production
as a whole or looking after the environment. We have made big
choices about that in recent years and some of them were demonstrably
flawed. Draining the uplands to increase production was completely
barmy and we suffered the consequences of that 20 or 30 years
later. Government plainly has a role but it needs to play that
role sensibly against a broad range of considerations and not
be stampeded into a dash for production just because a lot of
people are calling for it today.
Q374 Dr Strang:
You circulated the position paper you produced last year on the
Common Agricultural Policy; to what extent do you think the current
Common Agricultural Policy should be about food production as
well as safeguarding the natural environment?
Mr Wood: There is nothing to suggest
currently that we should make that sort of retrograde step. Europe
feeds itself quite successfully and exports a bit; there is no
overwhelming driver for making that switch and if we made that
switch then we would lose things that we have gained over the
last 15 to 20 years.
Q375 Dr Strang:
There have already been some questions on this question of how
you reconcile or how you might reconcile increased production
in the UK with our environmental objectives. Would one way forward
be to maximise the production of the fertile land in order to
have more land uncultivated for natural reasons?
Mr Wood: It is a possible approach
but we would have to tread very carefully. Fertile land is itself
a competitive market, not only for food production but for other
things, and we have produced some of our most fertile land in
England by draining the Fens. The consequence of that is that
peat soil erodes, loses its carbon and will not last very much
longer. Again, I would advocate caution but I think it is clear
that the sort of technological and scientific progress we have
made in agriculture over the last 50 years can be pushed further
and, as we become more sensitive about that, can be pushed further
without necessarily harming the natural environment.
Q376 Dr Strang:
We are well down the road of designating areas of the farm that
the farmer has got with stewardship schemes and everything else
so it might be practical.
Mr Wood: Yes.
Q377 Chairman:
Can I just probe you a little bit about the statement you put
out because you said, "In the medium term the CAP needs to
develop into a policy that maintains multifunctional land use
and helps to build and maintain a new social contract between
farmers and the rest of society."[40]
I am interested in the terms of this contract and who is going
to set it.
Mr Wood: The contract is already
there in part through RDPE. RDPE means that we make agri-environment
payments not only for biodiversity benefit but also for access
for the protection of the historic environment and for resource
protection.
Q378 Lynne Jones:
Could you say what RDPE is, please?
Mr Wood: Sorry, the Rural Development
Programme for England, which, confusingly, is the successor to
ERDP[41]—you
simply need to reverse the words—which you had until a couple
of years ago. It is the agri-environment scheme money; it is £400
million a year of support to farmers for environmental gain. The
contract, Chairman, can be based around that. Farmers need to
be able to farm; they produce things that we all value. They farm
and have farmed for many years now, supported by the public, and
there is a legitimate expectation of some exchange because of
that; that exchange takes a variety of forms: biodiversity is
one of them and access is one of the others.
Q379 Chairman:
Some of the highly specialised farmers might wonder a little bit
about one of the points you mention where you say, "Farmers
would see managing the natural environment as one of their primary
roles and the public would see them as guardians of the environment
and be willing to pay for these `public goods' through general
taxation."[42]
I suppose some might argue that the public do not have much choice
because that is what they are doing at the moment and it is the
European Union, together with the government of the day, which
decide in more detail how that money shall be deployed, programme
by programme. In the context of food security some might argue
that the principal task of the farmer is to produce food and to
do it in a sustainable way but not to have it as, if you like,
a parallel number one responsibility in terms of what you say
here, "managing the natural environment". There are
some, for example, who might have put their farms into the old
"whole farm" set-aside scheme who you could say were
managing their land for the natural environment, but if there
is a push for food do you think that it is possible to run such
a parallel regime where both priorities of the environment and
food are seen in equal measure?
Mr Wood: It has to be possible;
the consequences of it not being pursued do not bear thinking
about. Across the course of human agriculture we have used around
7,000 species of plants and several hundreds of species of animals;
most of those no longer exist because we have farmed them, we
have bred them, out of existence. The natural environment around
that provides a bank that we can replenish that from, so we have
to have both. Agriculture takes 70% of England's land; that is
rather more than 70% of the natural environment because another
11% or so is in towns and cities. To suggest that farmers could
just produce and pursue food—which plainly is their business—to
the exclusion of the environment would be to throw the remnants
of the natural environment we have away, so we have to have them
pursuing both. Part of our argument rests on public appreciation
of what they are doing, so you are entirely right that the public
have no choice (or not very much choice) about where their tax
pound goes, but the public once upon a time were very happy to
support farmers to produce because the public had lived through
the last war and production was seen as absolutely essential.
The public became, gradually, over the 70s and 80s, disenchanted
with supporting farmers when most other industries were not supported—I
suppose bankers have helped to put that right more recently. We
need public support for farming, for farming for food, and one
way of getting that is public support for farming for a natural
environment—for landscape, for farmland birds, for places
that are nice to see for a better quality of life, all those trite
phrases.
34 Sites of Specific Scientific Interest. Back
35
Entry Level Stewardship. Back
36
Biodiversity Action Plan. Back
37
Ev 145 Back
38
Witness amendment: sheep or poultry around the roots of
the trees. Back
39
Ev 147 Back
40
Natural England Policy Position Statement on CAP Reform, January
2008 http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/capreform-pps-tcm6-5991.pdf Back
41
The England Rural Development Programme Back
42
Natural England Policy Position Statement on CAP Reform Back
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