This is a game-changing investment for our wildlife at a time when the UK is rated one of the most nature-depleted countries on the planet. More than 40% of species in the UK are in decline and over 15% are threatened with extinction. 

This fund will invest in projects across the UK, including Atlantic rainforests and a coast-to-coast nature corridor following Hadrian’s Wall, bringing nature back into people’s lives and providing communities with ‘nature-based solutions’ like flood resilience, clean rivers and seas, and access to green space. The programme is also designed to help the UK achieve its existing target of protecting at least 30% of land and sea by 2030. Currently just 10.6% of land in the UK is protected for nature, and more than half of that area is in poor condition, so it is clear that some land not managed for wildlife will need to be 'rewilded'. 

But, is this compatible with ensuring our food security? Some commentators fear that placing land in recovery for nature will reduce food production in the UK, and offshore our environmental footprint to other countries. Such concerns can fuel division across the farming and land management spectrum, but it is wrong to suggest that there is a binary trade-off between food and nature. 

Sustainable food production in the UK needs nature – it needs healthy soils, clean and plentiful water, and thriving insect populations because they are the foundation of farming. The UK Government’s own Food Security Report in 2021 found that the main threats to UK food security are climate change and ecological breakdown. These are no longer abstract threats confined to a post-apocalyptic future, but are already having a significant impact on food production in the UK. The long sweltering summer of 2018, the warmest on record, saw onion yields down 40%, carrot yields down 25% and potato yields down 20%. The summer of 2022 was as hot again, with areas of the UK receiving less than 50% of their typical summer rainfall.  

It is important to note this is not normal. Four of the five warmest summers on record for England have occurred since 2003. The increasing effects of climate change will pose ever greater risks to agriculture. A healthy and thriving natural world is essential to support a resilient food system. For example wildlife-rich wetlands which hold water back to prevent flooding in times of heavy rainfall as well as keeping water in the landscape during periods of drought, or bees and other pollinators which provide crop pollination benefits of £1.8 billion each year.  

Without urgent action to address the dual climate and biodiversity crises – by  making more space for nature and reintroducing missing keystone species which actively restore habitats –  these risks will only increase. Pitting food production against nature is a dangerous distraction and will slow progress towards nature recovery alongside sustainable farming systems.  

Using agricultural land wisely 

Instead, more focus must be placed on how we can best use our limited land resources in the UK – particularly given the UK’s international obligation to protect 30% of land for nature. The UK Food Security Report states that “Food security rests ultimately not on maximising domestic production (which is market driven), but on making best use of land types”. But are we really making the best use of our agricultural land at the moment? 

Around 40% of arable land is used to grow crops to feed animals, which could instead be fed to people. This conversion of arable crops to animal products is grossly inefficient and serves to reduce rather than shore up food security in the UK. This land could instead be used to produce crops and vegetables for human consumption, while also freeing up land that could be used to restore nature. This presents a huge opportunity to both reduce the environmental impact of intensive livestock production whilst increasing self-sufficiency. 

To take another example, is it justifiable that we currently use 121,000 hectares of agricultural land in the UK, an area half the size of the Lake District, to grow crops for bioenergy? This land accounts for 2.1% of the total arable land in the UK and is used to grow crops such as wheat, maize, and sugar beet which, rather than feeding people, are burned for large-scale electricity production, fed into anaerobic digesters, or used as biofuels for cars. 

Together, these crops make up nearly 2 million hectares of land in the UK that could otherwise grow food to feed people. These figures are thrown into sharp relief when compared to land proposed for the UK Government’s new Landscape Recovery scheme in England, which garnered significant backlash for its perceived threat to food security. This new scheme currently proposes just 45 thousand hectares for nature’s recovery – less than 1% of agricultural land in England – and will focus on areas of low productivity value. 

Food waste is also a major issue –  between 33-40% of the food we produce globally is wasted. In the UK, around 9.5 million tonnes of food is wasted, valued at over £19 billion, each year. This represents a colossal amount of food, which requires a huge amount of resources to produce. When this food is wasted, the land, water and energy that went into growing this food is also wasted. 

Clearly, the real issues facing UK food security are less to do with beavers and trees, and more to do with the systemic failings in the way that we produce food. These are complicated issues which require system-wide changes, but we cannot continue to farm under the current doctrine of maximising output from the land if we expect to put nature into recovery and secure sustainable food production into the future.