The Government has broken its promise to reform farming post-Brexit. In its National Food Strategy published today, the Government’s commitment to provide a third of its farming budget for Landscape Recovery has been abandoned.
In the run up to the publication of the new strategy, Defra said: “We will not have fixed allocations (or ‘pillars’, as they were known whilst we were in the EU) of money ring fenced to different schemes.” In practice, this means that money will go towards meeting only the most basic of environmental standards instead of ring-fencing funds to reward landowners who want to take a more ambitious and large-scale approach to producing environmental and climate goods on their land.
The National Food Strategy also fails to address the threats to food security posed by biodiversity loss and climate change, despite these being identified as “the biggest medium to long term risk to the UK’s domestic production” in the UK Food Security Report 2021. Our global food systems are reliant on thriving natural systems to provide healthy soils, safe and plentiful water, beneficial pollinators, and a stable climate, and investing in nature-based solutions will be key to securing food security.