opinion


Brexit, climate change and the evolution of farm policy


When the last issue of this publication entered the public domain, the UK was scheduled to make its departure from the EU on 31 October. This date followed the original exit date of 29 March 2019. Despite Boris Johnson’s best efforts, the House of Commons, while it accepted the principles of the agreement negotiated by the Prime Minister, rejected the short space of time allocated to discussing what was, and is, a portentous piece of legislation. Final agreement on the terms of the UK’s departure from the EU were thus left to the House of Commons to be elected at the General Election on 12 December. In one sense, the latest delay to the legislation giving legal form


to the UK’s exit from the EU is welcome in that it gives UK firms and businesses the opportunity further to refine the provisions that they have adopted for post-EU trading with both the EU and the wider world. As this publication has observed on previous occasions, one critical aspects of the debate will be over the future shape and scale of British agricultural policy. The debate can be represented by a continuum with, at one


extreme, an agricultural policy largely defined by the Common Agricultural Policy in its currently applicable form in the UK. At the other extreme is the view that the UK should assign


agriculture to those areas of the world’s land mass which are most suited to practising it. Examples might include the world’s great grain growing areas or those where local conditions particularly favour the raising of beef cattle – these will be readily identified by agricultural practitioners in the UK – particularly by those who advocate the UK moving to what may be described as a ‘minimalist’ view of agriculture’s future role in the UK’s rural economy. It will be immediately evident as to which side of the livestock


feed industry’s bread – and, indeed, that of the agricultural supply trade industry as a whole – is buttered. However, the fact remains that the current dimension of agriculture in the UK confers a substantial and quantifiable economic benefit upon the UK’s rural economy. Agriculture offers substantial employment and capital investment opportunities to the countryside, not just in terms of agricultural activities but also the activities of the agricultural supply trade, of which the livestock feed industry constitutes a major, arguably the most important contributor. The passage of time since the Agriculture Act of 1947 and its successors, including the measures adopted within the overall framework of the Common Agricultural Policy, has obviated memories of the rural desuetude characterising the British countryside during much of the years preceding World War 2. For this and other reasons, the further delay in the formal departure


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from the EU is to be welcomed in that it will provide additional time to consider the future shape and role of agriculture in the UK. It is to be hoped that this will include, to some degree, the opportunity to avoid overly hasty negotiations as regards trade arrangements with future trading partners including the United States. In particular, it is to be hoped that any future trade negotiations with trading parties will include a determination to maintain measures reflecting current UK standards regarding food and farming, and which are not to be bargained away in the overall context of determining future British food and farming policy. As one national newspaper put it, perhaps overly pessimistically, ‘sustainable British agriculture will most likely be sold down the river in any quick free trade agreements’. The UK’s livestock feed sector will necessarily be paying close


heed to the evolution of farming policy, but there is a further area to which the sector will be obliged to pay increasing attention as we move into the post-EU era. Many farmers are, as one farming journal put it, ‘baffled’ as


to why they have come under what was described as ‘sustained assault’ from much of the media for farming’s contribution to climate change. Ruminants, it is true, are a source of greenhouse gases; they emit methane. What one doesn’t hear is the fact that permanent pasture, accounting for an estimated 70 per cent of farmland in the UK, is also a greenhouse gas ‘sink’. As grassland grows, it absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, sequestering it in the soil as organic matter; the more it’s grazed by livestock and regrows vegetatively, the more it absorbs. One source estimates that, in the UK, 10 million hectares of grassland hold 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, sequestering another 2.4 million tonnes per year. It has been calculated that while agriculture in the UK as a whole contributes some 10 per cent of the UK’s overall emissions of carbon dioxide, this takes no account of the UK’s ability also to act as a ‘sink’. As a matter of priority, it would seem evident that the agricultural


sector – farmers, their customers and suppliers, including the agricultural supply trade – should be concentrating their collective attention upon the form and shape of agricultural policy in the UK during the coming years. Nevertheless, and as it emerges that global warming presents


the planet with a growing challenge, farmers and their suppliers need to consider the extent to which their activities contribute to the constituents of climate change, whether negatively or positively. Simply to ignore it, given what is at stake, would be the height of irresponsibility.


Comment section is sponsored by Compound Feed Engineering Ltd www.cfegroup.com


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