Pretty landscape comes at a price
Pretty landscape comes at a price
With the future of agriculture
currently a hot topic, Oxon
farmer Stephen Harts
proposal to pay subsidies
according to length of field
boundary is looking
increasingly relevant. John
Burns explains whats
involved
AT a time when there is much talk of restructuring British farming and reforming the common agricultural policy, it looks likely that small farms will come under renewed attack. Both by economists, who want them exposed to world market forces, and by others such as supermarkets who aim to "drive down costs" in the food supply chain.
But leaping to the defence of small farms is Stephen Hart, an Oxfordshire tenant farmer and countryman with a lifetimes experience of farming 500ha (1250 acres) of very varied land types.
He argues that small farms are deemed uneconomic not just because they are small but because they almost always have small fields. It is the extra costs of operating with small fields, as well as their disproportionately high boundary maintenance costs, which make small farms appear uneconomic by conventional measures, he argues.
"The public doesnt want mass production everywhere," he points out. "They want small farms to survive. But they dont realise that it is the small farmers who are in a sense subsidising the public, not the other way round."
Because the link between reduced yields and extra operating costs of small fields and the declining living standards of small farmers has not been highlighted before, those costs have tended to be ignored. But according to estimates by Mr Hart and former MAFF chief scientist Frank Raymond the cost could be as much as £1.7bn a year.
Their research and calculations suggest that for many years the nation has been getting an absolute bargain from those smaller farmers with smaller fields, in terms of countryside features provided at their own expense. Their estimates of the real costs of those features show that while field boundary maintenance is undoubtedly expensive, the effects on crop yields of those boundaries and headlands, and the reduced efficiency of machinery (and therefore labour) in small fields add up to extra hidden costs which are simply staggering. They feel they should all be included under the heading of countryside management costs.
In a detailed paper Messrs Hart and Raymond show that because support payments are paid per hectare regardless of field size, large farms with large fields have enjoyed a good margin over countryside management (CM) costs per ha, while small farms with small fields have made a loss.
For example they estimate that on a very large farm with fields averaging 25 ha (62acres), the average support payments (headage plus area ) of £230/ha (£93/acre) would leave a margin over CM costs of £220/ha (£89/acre). On very small farms with average field size of 3ha (7.5acres) comparable figure would be a loss of £198/ha (£80/acre).
"That is a difference of £418/ha or £169/acre – almost unbelievable – but it does start to explain why the smaller livestock farms in difficult terrain have fared so badly for many years now. And yet they provide the highest density of features and habitats, provide much more employment, and the real live working countryside which makes much of the UK countryside special and in many ways unique", says Mr Hart.
That contrasts sharply with the larger farms which provide less employment, fewer landscape features and less wildlife habitat. "They are productively efficient, but make a low environmental contribution in total. Some people feel large farms manage their countryside well, but the reality is that relative to their total farmed area they havent many features to manage."
In their paper they present detailed arguments to back up the cost estimates they have used.
There are tables showing length of field boundary per hectare for various field sizes. A 1ha (2.5 acre) square field has 408m of boundary/ha (542ft/acre), while a 20ha (50-acre)square field has only 91m/ha (121ft/acre). Rectangular fields of the same area would have more boundary length per ha.
He estimates that a 20% yield reduction on headlands of a 7t/ha (2.8t/acre) wheat crop at £65/t (excluding arable area payments) would result in income foregone of £24.70/ha (£10/acre) overall on a 2ha (5-acre) field, but only £6.50/ha (£2.63/acre)in a 30ha (74-acre) field.
Mr Hart found a surprising lack of research data on the effects of field size – apart from a 1977 study that looked at work rates with a range of implement widths in different-sized fields, all at a forward speed of 6kph (3.7mph). This showed that a 20m (65ft) wide implement covered 50ha (123 acres)/day in fields of 40ha (100acres), but a 3m (10ft) implement in 4ha (10-acre) fields covered only 6ha (15 acres)/day.
However, even if smaller farmers could afford such wide tackle and get it down their narrow lanes, any attempt to increase field sizes to accommodate it would meet vigorous public and legal opposition, Mr Hart points out.
Small farmers are thus trapped in an inefficient farm structure which nevertheless is producing what the public wants – facts that should be important issues for WTO negotiations, adds Mr Hart.
"These small farms, often in remote areas of countryside, provide riches we dont know how to value," he adds, "beautiful landscapes, habitats for a high level of wildlife, biodiversity and local employment for faithful hardworking stewards of the countryside who are also smaller farmers. They have looked after these areas for generations, often for less than the minimum wage even in good years, and were rapidly going bankrupt before the tragic foot-and-mouth outbreak"
Messrs Hart and Raymond suggest the solution might be to change support payments so there are three a field: a reduced area payment, a per-metre payment according to boundary type, and a payment based on total field edge length per hectare for each field adjusted so that small fields benefited most. (For example for each field allow £1 a metre for total field edge less 120m/ha.)
Such payments would clearly be regarded as decoupled from production under WTO rules. Big fields would get little or no support and a dramatic reduction in rents for such fields would soon follow, they predict.
Their paper concludes that neither countryside stewardship nor the England Rural Development Programme in their present forms have much relevance to the £4m a day cost of managing a countryside of small fields protected by hedgerow legislation.
Copies of the full paper The Real Cost of Countryside Management can obtained from Stephen Hart at Hammonds Farm, Checkendon, Reading. RG8 0NS. Price £5 (inc p&p).
Net cost of countryside management (CM)
after subsidy payments
Field size Very large Large Average Small Very small
Average ha/field 25 15 10 5 3
Ha per fulltime person 145 90 63 45 31
Full labour cost/ha
(@£16,500/yr) £114 £183 £262 £366 £532
Extra labour cost of
CM over productive
labour cost of £104/ha
for very large fields £10 £69 £158 £262 £428
Avge subsidy/ha
(IACS +headage) £230 £230 £230 £230 £230
Subsidy less CM
costs £/ha* +£220 +£161 +£72 -£32 -£198
* a range of £418/ha or £169 an acre.
What the public want
A landscape of small fields provides a high density of those countryside features which the public values highly, and most of Britains small fields are found on small farms. So small farmers are providing significant quantities of what the public wants.
And yet, according to this study by Oxon farmer Stephen Hart and former MAFF chief scientist Frank Raymond, those farmers are doing so largely at their own expense. They have estimated the costs (including lower yields) of operating with small fields compared with prairie-style farming and conclude that farmers in England and Wales are burdened with countryside management costs of £1.7bn/year, mainly because of their smaller fields.
Mr Hart and Mr Raymond also show that when those costs are set against total subsidies received it is clear that small farmers with small fields are having a raw deal. Meanwhile, the small percentage of farms which have large fields enjoy high total support payments and the economies of scale, while providing only a low density of countryside features.
To secure future provision of those features, a major shift in support payments will be needed to recognise the true costs of a landscape of small fields.