England desperately needs a land use framework to best determine how land should be apportioned for the many competing priorities of farming, nature, carbon, energy, and housing, industry experts said on Thursday.

There is a growing call for a dedicated land use commission to monitor and advise on a land use framework for England, which should be implemented alongside the country’s transition to more nature-friendly farming, speakers told a webinar hosted by the Westminster Food and Nutrition Forum on land use in England.

The commission should draw on cross-governmental expertise to develop such a framework and work in cohort with local authorities to continually analyse land use in England and progress towards the climate and nature targets, said Ewen Cameron, a member of the House of Lords and former chair of the chamber’s Land Use in England Committee.

This framework should be flexible to allow landowners and land managers to decide on the best approach for their land, and should encourage multi-functionality of land for different purposes such as farming, biodiversity, protection, energy generation, and leisure, he said.

Some 70% of UK land is used for agriculture, so shifting the industry towards a more nature-friendly style of farming that can also support energy infrastructure is vital to achieve the government goal to protect at least 30% of land and sea for biodiversity by 2030, as well as achieving 100% clean power by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050.

The growing emphasis on nature protection comes at a challenging time for English farmers. Significant rainfall in the last year depressed yields in many places, as farmers contend with subsidy cuts following Brexit, higher energy prices, and inflationary pressures.

Webinar speakers highlighted the importance of recognising the day-to-day pressures faced by farmers when designing workable policies, which need to be clear and maintained in the long term to give farmers the support they need.

Following Brexit, farms in England are transitioning away from direct payments under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and towards more results-based income, such as the government-funded Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) and Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMs), which reward farmers for environmental measures taken on their land.

However, uptake of these schemes, together with privately funded natural capital schemes like biodiversity net gain (BNG) and the voluntary carbon market, is still relatively weak among English farmers, said speakers on a webinar in April.

England’s BNG scheme, in place since February, requires development projects in England to achieve a net biodiversity improvement of at least 10%. Conservation company Environment Bank recently partnered with Barclays to hasten uptake of BNG, enabling the bank’s clients to purchase BNG units from a network of habitat banks across the country.

ELMs are not currently invested in the areas of England with lowest calorie production and highest conservation value, said Lydia Collas, head of natural environment at the think tank Green Alliance.

Investment under these environmental schemes so far “is almost exactly opposite to what it should be in terms of the areas of the country that we know we really need to manage for nature and climate outcomes”. The land use framework would be a great tool to ensure that funding goes to areas of the country with the highest conservation potential, she said.

Source: Green Alliance

FOOD SECURITY

However, it’s important to ensure that conservation doesn’t compromise food security, said several webinar speakers including Roslyn Henry, interdisciplinary fellow at the University of Aberdeen.

She flagged a study which found that strictly enforced 30% and 50% land protection scenarios for conservation purposes globally caused additional human mortality due to diet- and weight-related changes.

“Radical measures to protect areas of biodiversity value may jeopardise food security and human health in the most vulnerable regions of the world,” wrote the authors.

They found that increasing land protection for conservation could drive up food prices, leading to high levels of underweight-related mortality, particularly in low-income regions of the world.

Source: Global and regional health and food security under strict conservation scenarios

However, this isn’t to say we should avoid conservation, but rather we should shift to better farming practices that use land more efficiently and encourage plant-based diets, said Henry.

“The preservation of biodiversity is crucial for our food security, for our wellbeing, and for the global economy – half of the world’s GDP relies moderately or heavily on nature and its services,” he said.

“But we really need to ensure that land change for conservation, both globally and in the UK, does not jeopardise food security or negatively impact our health,” she said.

The biggest threat to UK food security in the medium-to-long-term is biodiversity loss and climate change, said Jenna Hegarty, head of policy at the Nature Friendly Farming Network.

“Recent floods are the most recent visible example of that, and to respond to those challenges, needs a really joined up approach to how we use our land, including how we farm on it.”

The UK has a longstanding history of designing land management schemes and ELMs has a lot of potential even if it isn’t perfect, she said. There is lots of evidence to show that nature-friendly farming leads to better business outcomes, such as flower-rich strips of land boosting pollinators, and thereby supporting yields.

The government needs to give ELMs the proper focus it requires and also devote sufficient funding to it, she added.

“We need to invest between £2.6-3.1 billion in nature-friendly farming and nature-based solutions in England,” the latest research suggests, which is 17-25% less than England’s current agriculture budget, said Alice Groom, head of sustainable land use policy at the RSPB.

Evidence shows that at least 7-10% of a farm needs to be dedicated to nature-friendly options like tree planting or hedgerows to recover wildlife, yet only 3% of an average farm under the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) is currently dedicated to these options, she added.

To keep ELMs on track she recommended: providing a clear roadmap for environmental delivery, scaling up access to the most rewarding schemes such as CS Higher Tier and Landscape Recovery fund, establishing a Nature Positive Farm Advisory to support farmers, and establishing a regulatory baseline to create a universal standard.

The need to develop a natural capital baseline for the UK through monitoring and reporting tools was also flagged by Richard Pywell, science area head, biodiversity at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, who pointed to the AgZero+ tool, which could be incorporated into ELMs to provide farmers with a natural capital baseline for their land.

LAND USE CHANGE

For the UK to reach net zero by 2050, 2% of its land needs to change every year from intensive agriculture to “either semi-natural habitats or very low intensity agroecological type farming”, said Dustin Benton, managing director for sustainability, at consultancy Forefront Advisers.

This will also entail halving meat and dairy production compared to today’ levels by 2050, he said.

The alternative of not taking such action on agricultural land will lead to much worse and expensive outcomes than predicted in current climate change scenarios, including the potential collapse of the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre, which could lead to a potential reduction in crop growing seasons were colder temperatures to ensue, he explained.

Benton advocates for the growth of alternative proteins, which need three to 10 times less land than livestock, the adoption of precision breeding and hardy crops that can weather challenging weather conditions, and the avoidance of uncoordinated stockpiling and trade restrictions.

Other speakers on the webinar highlighted the challenges of shifting farmers over from one type of farming to another, such as livestock to vegetable production, including challenges with skills and livelihood risks.

Private market initiatives such as Nattergal, which raised $40 million in a seed round this week for UK rewilding and Agreena, which helps UK farmers generate extra income through the sale of voluntary carbon credits for regenerative farming, complement UK government schemes for nature-friendly farming.

By Bryony Collins – bryony@carbon-pulse.com