Blueprint for a rural recovery
Blueprint for a rural recovery
By Johann Tasker
THE governments rural advisers have warned that radical changes are urgently needed to secure the future of the countryside. The Countryside Agency issued the warning at the launch of its Strategy for Sustainable Land Management in England on Wednesday (June 27).
Agency chairman Ewen Cameron said: "If we are to save agriculture from becoming a sunset industry, we need to take action now." He added: "We need to bring farmers in from the cold. It is time to re-engage farmers in a new contract with the public."
The strategy recommends that farmers should be subsidised to deliver a wide range of benefits beyond food and fibre production. Local authorities would draw up contracts with farmers to promote beneficial practices such as conservation, biodiversity, landscape character and recreation.
Even before the foot-and-mouth crisis, British farming was in its worst recession since the 1930s, said Mr Cameron. Farmers have also found themselves increasingly marginalised from a society suspicious of their produce, he added. But consumers had to realise that they, too, had a part to play in reviving the rural economy.
"Consumers need to understand the relationship between the products they buy and the maintenance of an attractive, economically vibrant countryside, so that they can make informed choices while farmers are paid for producing in a sustainable fashion what the public want – high quality, reasonably priced food and a quality environment."
Mr Cameron acknowledged: "It would be impossible to regulate to achieve many of the benefits which society expects, and it will be impractical, we believe, to have individually negotiated contracts with every farm." But broad support among a wide range of rural stakeholders and the government could build a consensus for Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform so the new strategy could be introduced.
The CAP must be transformed into a new system of aid encouraging sustainable management, said Mr Cameron. Subsidies should be reoriented so that only one third of Britains £3bn annual CAP budget is spent on farm income and market support by 2010, he added.
The remainder should be split equally between agri-environment schemes and rural development. *