NATIONAL FARMERS UNION OF CANADA 

Reading Worth Sharing during COVID-19

NFU members are deep thinkers and great writers.  This email highlights some of their work as well as insightful writing from the NFU office.

The NFU continues to speak on your behalf on daily update calls with the AAFC Minister's office.  We are providing information about Federal programs as they are made available. And -- we continually publish op eds, media releases and other documents to help both the farming community and the general public  understand the critical need for a strong farming sector and local and regional food systems that focus on food sovereignty. 

Contents

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Coronavirus: Another layer of anxiety for farmers

In an article in the Journal Pioneer, NFU-PEI District Director, Douglas Campbell, 

"challenges all Islanders to think of ways to engage government and others. We need to stop the viral threat of the industrial model of agriculture to farmers and to the land. Let’s stop saying, “when we get back to normal …” The normal is pretty disastrous for farmers and the land. We can do better than the ‘normal’. Let’s find new ways together."

We extend that challenge across the country.  Thank you, Doug, for your strong writing that captures the unease of farmers "trying to produce food within an impossible model." 

You can read all of Douglas Campbell's article here.  It is good reading and a strong call to action!

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Food and Agriculture – Lessons from the Pandemic

The emergence of viruses in intensive livestock operations over the last 40 years is detailed by NFU member Jean-Eudes Chiasson in his insightful piece published in Acadie Nouvelle presented here.

NFU's Jean-Eudes seeks to:

"raise awareness at this point when quarantine is required, as so many of us have more time to read, to inform ourselves, to consult computerized databases available at our fingertips in order to ask questions about the food system, to discover its mechanisms, and to begin to reflect about the foods we eat, their composition, and where they come from.

Let’s also take this opportunity to think about the use of crop protection products, about their effects on consumers, about the people tasked with applying them, about the composition of fertilizers, their health impacts, as well as on animal health, about soil degradation and, on a broader scale, about everyone’s health.

It is just as important to ask ourselves about methods of production, how animals are treated, and about the farmer’s income so as to subsequently define what we really wish for: how should the food on our plates be produced and who should be the players at the base of our food chain. Let us not forget either to take a serious look at the effects of our food system on the climate.

Jean-Eudes Chiasson, Vice-President of “Ferme Terre Partagée”

This article was originally printed in French in Acadie Nouvelle. Read it in French here.  Thanks to Ronald Fournier for the professional translation.

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Letter to Ag Minister – NFU request for AgriStablity program changes

NFU VP-Operations Stewart Wells calls on AAFC Minister Bibeau to make changes to AgriStability in this letter.  As Stewart says, "Returning to a 15% margin loss trigger and reference margin cap are improvements that can be accomplished and implemented quickly..."

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Cuts to physician funding devastating for rural Alberta

NFU VP-Policy Glenn Norman issued this media release highlighting that rural family practices will lose their doctors under Alberta's April 1 funding cuts.  Indeed, doctors are also speaking out about this looming crisis in this CTV news coverage. 

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In the News

NFU members are in the news while Canada (and the world) wakes up to learn how our food system works. Eaters everywhere are filled with renewed gratitude for farmers who grow/raise/produce the food and a desire to support their local & regional food systems. 

Here are just a few of the recent highlights. 

CBC story on "the next TP": locally grown seeds, which are critical for seed and food sovereignty.  NFU seed farmers, Greta Kryger, Manish Kushwaha, Katherine Rothermel and Annie Richard share the crunch they are under to keep up with orders. (Nice NFU ballcap, Annie!)

The National Observer interviews smaller-scale farmers from across the country re: COVID & Canada's food system. NFU-O's Sarah Bakker speaks hopefully from her farm: “I feel like we're going to come out of this in a new world.”  "“I want to talk about making people able to afford food, not making food affordable.”

An Ottawa Citizen story covers the uncertainty felt by Ottawa direct-to-market farmers as they lose their restaurant contracts.  NFU Youth President Stuart Oke works to have Ottawa-area farmers markets opened and the NFU sends a letter calling for OMAFRA's help to support all farmers markets as they face COVID.

You can follow more news updates on the National Farmers Union (Canada) Facebook group.  You'll be asked a few questions before you can join so we aren't plagued by spammers and trolls.

UK

Opinion: The fight for farming's future has only just begun

FARMERS ARE LANDOWNERS

Zoe Leach

NFU
Sat 23 November 2024 

Zoe Leach, East regional director for the National Farmers' Union (NFU) (Image: NFU)

The day of action in London was spectacular – but the fight for farming’s future has only just begun says Zoe Leach, NFU regional director for the East of England.

This week I had the pleasure of attending a very special day in London in which farmers and the public united to fight for the future of the farming industry.

On Tuesday, the NFU (National Farmers' Union) held a mass lobbying event where 1,800 of our members, including many from East Anglia, met with their MPs at Church House, Westminster, and in parliament, to highlight why the government must reconsider its planned changes to inheritance tax.


At the same time, thousands of farmers, including many NFU members, joined the public and marched through Westminster to make their feelings clear that the ill-thought-out changes to Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR), announced in the recent budget, must be reconsidered.

Farmers at the protest rally in London on November 19 (Image: Chris HIll) These changes are based on bad data and with no consultation with the farming industry.

They threaten the future of family farms and the entire rural economy, which is so vital to this region.

The fact that there is such a huge gap between the Treasury’s calculations that 27pc of farms in England will be impacted by the changes and Defra’s own figures, which state that more than 65pc will be hit, show just what a mess they have made of this.

In reality, we believe the changes to APR and BPR could severely impact more than 70pc of farms in England.

The government’s changes to inheritance tax, which are due to come into effect from April 2026, mean farm businesses will need to pay a tax rate of 20pc on agricultural assets valued over £1m.

Just because a farm business has valuable assets, it does not mean that farmers themselves are wealthy. The average farmer’s return on capital invested is less than 1pc.

Their farmland is merely the means for farmers and growers to produce food for the public.

These assets only become profit when farmland is sold off, making farms less viable and jeopardising farmers’ ability to grow traceable and affordable food.

So, if the changes go ahead, many small and medium-sized family farm businesses will have no choice but to sell up, just to pay the tax bill, and that will have repercussions for future generations.

The Labour government declared in its manifesto that "food security is national security".

But farmers’ ability to deliver this will be severely compromised by the changes to APR and BPR.

They will also devastate rural economies, which are so reliant on farming, and remove some of the fantastic work being done by farmers to support the environment and protect the great British countryside.

This is clearly not what the government intended when it announced this policy, but there is still time to reconsider and work with the NFU and its members to put things right.

If the government was in any doubt about the strength of feeling from farmers and the public in opposition to these plans, the spectacular day of action in London on Tuesday has surely put an end to that.

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) held a mass lobbying event with MPs in Westminster on November 19 (Image: NFU) There is so much anger and so much passion to protect our great industry, but the behaviour of everyone who took part in the NFU’s mass lobbying event and the rally was exemplary.

Everyone made their case in a passionate, respectful and dignified way.

To be there and witness farmers and growers fight for their industry in such a way was a pleasure to see, although we wish it wasn’t necessary.

I am also very proud of all the NFU staff, including my NFU East regional staff team and the group secretaries for the huge amount of work that went into organising the mass lobbying event and ensuring that it ran smoothly.

But the government should be in no doubt that this does not end here.

Tuesday’s day of action in London was not the culmination of everyone’s efforts, merely the start.

Farmers, by their nature, are determined and resilient and, with a huge amount of public support behind them, will continue to show to the government how they have got things so badly wrong and must reverse this damaging policy.

All our futures depend on it.


Treasury didn’t consider real working farms when assessing tractor tax, NFU says

Emma Gatten

THE TELEGRAPH
Fri 22 November 2024 

On Tuesday, more than 10,000 farmers took part in a protest in Westminster 

- Paul Grover for the Telegraph

The Treasury failed to consider real working farms when assessing the impact of its tractor tax, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has said.

The Government claimed just 27 per cent of estates will be hit by the 20 per cent inheritance tax on farming assets worth more than £1 million.

It cited data from HMRC on the number of claims for agricultural property relief, the existing exemption, for estates worth more than £1 million in 2021-2022.

But it has not given a figure for how many working farms will be impacted by the policy, referring only to estates that claim the tax break.

In a new analysis, the NFU said the true figure is more like 75 per cent.

It added the data used by the Treasury underestimates the figure because it includes a significant number of plots that would be too small to constitute a working farm.

It pointed out that it is possible to make a claim for inheritance tax relief “on a single field that has been let out”.


More than a quarter of claims in the Treasury data are for estates valued at less than £250,000, which based on land prices would make them just 12 acres in size on average.

“This is clearly too small to be a ‘working farm’ in the conventional sense,” the NFU said.

Working farms produce the vast majority of British food.

Another 23 per cent of the claims are for land just 50 acres in size on average, the NFU calculated, likely to be very small working farms, but mostly let land.

Land can currently avoid inheritance tax if it is used for agricultural purposes, which include trees planted and harvested every 10 years, and stud farms for breeding and rearing horses.

The NFU said the Treasury figures of the impact of the tax in 2026 also fail to take account of the increase in asset values, in particular farmland, in the five years since it took the data.

On Tuesday, more than 10,000 farmers and their supporters took part in a protest against the tax in Westminster.

A petition by the NFU to reverse the tax had gained more than 250,000 signatures by Friday.

The Government has said the effective tax threshold is £3 million for a farming couple and that the tax can be paid back over 10 years.

But the NFU said that low farming incomes mean few farmers will be able to afford the tax bill even over a decade.

“The majority of estates protected by the £1 million threshold are too small to be viable commercial family farms, whereas the majority of medium-sized working farms that will be hit by the liability will not be protected by the 10-year payment window because the resulting payments would still be unmanageably large relative to the economic returns they earn,” the NFU said.

A government spokesman said: “We have been clear since this change was announced that around 500 claims of agricultural and business property relief each year will be impacted – this is based on actual claims data – and even when inheritance tax does kick in, it is effectively at half the rate paid by others.

“It is not possible to accurately infer inheritance tax liability from farm net-worth figures as there are different circumstances affecting each farm, such as who owns it, the nature of ownership, how many people own it and how affairs are planned.”

Rachel Reeves standing firm against U-turn on inheritance tax for farmers

Rowena Mason, Helena Horton and Peter Walker

 THE GUARDIAN
Fri 22 November 2024 

A Whitehall source said they believed if any U-turn was likely it would have happened before the farmer’s protest this week.

Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock


Rachel Reeves is holding firm against a U-turn on inheritance tax for farmers, despite the Treasury analysing ways of softening the impact.

The chancellor is understood to be determined not to drop the policy even though some Labour MPs – and even ministers – are worrying about the political fallout that has led to farmers protesting in Westminster this week.

The Treasury has been assessing ways to mitigate the impact of changes, including amending gifting rules for those aged 80 and above so they can pass on their farms to their family without having to live for another seven years.

Officials have also been looking at the impact of changes announced in the budget in October on active small- and medium-sized farms compared with smallholdings.

But one Labour MP said the messaging from the Treasury about a U-turn was “absolutely no, not happening”.

Despite the Treasury’s insistence, some Labour MPs still believe the policy will be softened. A Whitehall source said they believed any full U-turn would have happened already, before the farmers’ protest, but that any future mitigation would be more likely at a fiscal event or spending review “when some of the heat has gone out of the issue”.

Asked about the research into exempting those aged 80 and above from the policy, a No 10 spokesperson said: “We’re committed to implementing the policy as set out in a budget. We’re not considering any mitigations. It was obviously a difficult decision, but the economic situation the government inherited has required us to make tough choices.”

Some in Downing Street continue to argue the backlash from farmers will not present a major problem for the government because Labour voters are largely unaffected. However, other senior Labour figures are concerned about the political and media attention being taken up by the row.

Images of tractors chugging around Parliament Square have dominated the news, while Steve Reed, the environment secretary, was confronted by a farmer at a countryside conference this week arguing his best way of preserving his farm for his children was suicide before it comes into force in 2026.

Keir Starmer has also not escaped a grilling on the subject. He was asked by BBC Radio Lincolnshire: “Do you have a problem with Lincolnshire? Have the people of Lincolnshire upset you in some way?”

Pressed on those who say family farms will be put out of business by the budget, the prime minister said: “Firstly, I do understand their concerns … In the budget, we allocated £5bn over two years to farming. That’s the single biggest amount of money into sustainable food production, plus money for dealing with flooding and the outbreak of disease … On the IHT, obviously, what farmers want to do is make sure the family farm is preserved … In a typical case … the threshold before IHT is £3m. It means the vast majority of farms are completely unaffected.”

Reed has been taking a conciliatory tone with farmers and defending the policy on the airwaves. He met the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) on multiple occasions over the last fortnight, most recently at their mass lobbying event on Tuesday, in an attempt to soothe tensions.

Related: Starmer v farmers – will the government have to backtrack? – podcast

Nevertheless, the NFU has complained that Defra has no real powers over this policy. Downing Street sources confirmed that Reed was only told about the policy on the eve of the budget – in common with many other cabinet ministers who learned about tax changes in their area at the last minute.

Now, the president of the NFU, Tom Bradshaw, is understood to have decided there is no point dealing with Reed over this policy as his department has no decision-making capabilities. The organisation is demanding to meet Reeves, who has so far not seen its representatives personally.

A new Treasury analysis this week showed its workings for how it calculates that 500 farms a year out of about 200,000 will be affected by the policy.

The NFU released its own impact assessment on Thursday finding that small- and medium-sized farms would have their incomes wiped out by tax payments, even if the cap was set at £2m which it would be if the holding was owned by two spouses.

One Labour MP who represents a heavily rural constituency which was Conservative-held until the election, said they had spent much of the last few weeks sitting at the kitchen tables of local farmers who were certain they would be affected by the tax changes, even if they were not caught by the new rules.

Related: What are the key arguments in the farm inheritance tax debate?

“This isn’t the case for everyone, there are some of my local farmers who will be affected, and I don’t think we should hide from the fact of that,” the MP said.

“But what really struck through to me was the confusion caused by people getting information from social media. In part this is because we barely have any good local newspapers any more. In the past, even if you disagreed on policy, there was a shared idea of what the basic facts were. That doesn’t exist now.”

The MP said they felt the Labour government had in part become the conduit for wider anger over issues such as haphazard government support and subsidy schemes, and badly negotiated post-Brexit trade deals: “If you’re a farmer, of course you’re going be angry, because for last 14 years, the government has promised things and not delivered them.”

There was, they accepted, real anger about the inheritance tax changes, with the MP saying it was vital for Labour to be “in full listening mode” to farming voices if they wanted to keep many rural seats at the next election.

“I’m making sure all the time I spend around kitchen tables gives me a message I can take back to the government. And it has struck me how often I’m being asked for my feedback – it does feel like we are listening.”

New polling shows that the general public – including half of Labour voters – support the farmers over the government.

The research, by More in Common, found that 58% said they support the protests, with 24% of Labour voters saying they strongly support them. Just 6% of Labour voters said they strongly opposed the protests.

The director of More In Common, Luke Tryl, said: “Our latest polling suggests further evidence the government may have ended up on the wrong side of public opinion in the row with farmers.”

Elderly farmers pressured into ‘suicide window’ by inheritance tax changes

Camilla Turner

THE TELEGRAPH
Sat 23 November 2024 

Farmers in protest at the Houses of Parliament over inheritance tax raid


Ministers have been accused of creating a “suicide window” for elderly farmers who feel staying alive is a “burden” on their families because of inheritance tax changes.

Farmers have told The Telegraph that their older relatives feel the “honourable” thing to do would be to end their life before April 2026, when the Government’s tax raid comes into effect, so they can pass on their estate intact to the next generation.

Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, sparked a backlash in the farming community by placing a 20 per cent inheritance tax on farmers’ assets worth more than £1 million in her first Budget.

Previously, tax breaks designed to allow family farms to pass down the generations were exempt from the 40 per cent duty.

Farmers argue that many will now have to sell part of their land to release the cash to pay the inheritance tax bill, making the farm commercially unviable, which would mean having to wind up the business altogether.

Oliver Harrison, a fifth generation arable farmer from Prescot, Merseyside, and one of the organisers of last week’s London protest, said he has spoken to multiple farmers who now feel like they are placing a burden on their family by staying alive.

“It’s horrendous, what government incentivises people to be dead?” he said.

“If you are getting on in life in your 80s, you’ve worked all your life to build it up for your children, and then someone makes it so that it’s got to be given up for a tax bill – a lifetime’s work or several generations’ work can all be undone with one careless Budget.”

He urged Sir Keir Starmer and Ms Reeves to “own the problem you’ve started and look for a solution”. He added: “Have a look at the unintended consequences of incentivising old people to be dead. Be human here.”

Farmers who know they will live for another seven years can give their farm to their relatives tax-free. But those who are not certain they will live this long argue that the only way to ensure they can pass on their farm to the next generation would be to die before the changes come into effect.

Many older farmers fear the only way of preserving their family businesses could be suicide, campaigners say - John F Scott/E+

The Telegraph spoke to a female farmer in the south-west who said her own father had talked about ending his life in the next eighteen months.

The fifth-generation farmer said: “The Government has either deliberately or unwittingly created a suicide window where farmers are incentivised to kill themselves. I can understand a government doing this accidentally. But any government that is aware of it and does not act to close it is not morally capable of running the country.”

“My father has spent decades farming, he is out in all weather. He is now saying he should be dead by April 2026, because that is the way to protect his life’s work. It is just horrific.

“My father’s case is not unusual. This is causing anxiety for a lot of families out there. People are feeling pressurised almost, they are feeling that this is the honourable thing for their family, to protect their family, so as not to land their children with a huge inheritance tax bill.”

‘Horrible pressures and huge nerves’

Farming groups have been calling for it to be made easier for farmers aged over 80 to pass their estates down without landing a huge inheritance tax bill.

However, the Treasury has denied that it is considering this move, which would water down the Government’s inheritance tax raid on farmers.

Dominic Armstrong, a 59-year-old farmer from West Berkshire, said: “The suicide window is the talk among farmers from Northumberland to Hampshire down to Cornwall. Children are worried their parents will do something stupid to save them.

“Suddenly, there are horrible pressures and huge nerves about what people are considering. Can you think of any government in the free world forcing people to make that sort of choice? It is beyond despicable.”

Last week, Steve Reed, the Environment Secretary, was confronted by a farmer at a conference who said the “one sure way” he could avoid the Government’s “farm tax” was to “kill myself”.

Steve Reed at the Country Land and Business Association conference, where the Environment Secretary was confronted by a farmer who warned of suicides - James Manning/PA Wire

At the Country Land and Business Association conference, Tom Allen-Stevens, an Oxfordshire arable farmer, told Mr Reed he faces a £400,000 bill, which he “cannot afford”.

“If I was elderly, infirm or I had mental health issues and financial worries that is an option I would seriously consider,” he said.

“How many of the most vulnerable will have to take their lives before you and Rachel Reeves understand the wretchedness of the policy you have put upon us?”

A Government spokesman said: “We recognise the concerns among our farming communities. Our commitment to farmers remains steadfast – we have committed £5 billion to the farming budget over two years, including more money than ever for sustainable food production.

“Our reform to Agricultural and Business Property Relief will impact around 500 estates a year. For these estates, inheritance tax will be at half the rate paid by others, with 10 years to pay the liability back interest-free.

“This is a fair and balanced approach that protects the family farm while also fixing the public services that we all rely on.”

UK
‘We are angry’: green groups condemn Truss plans to scrap regulations


Nature protection rules in proposed investment zones would in effect be suspended

Liz Truss seems prepared to double down on her 

NEO-liberalisation agenda.

 Photograph: Maja Smiejkowska/Reuters


Fiona Harvey and Helena Horton

THE GUARDIAN

Mon 26 Sep 2022 

There was little room for doubt about the reaction to the prime minister’s plans to scrap environmental regulations this weekend. “Make no mistake, we are angry. This government has today launched an attack on nature,” tweeted the RSPB, its most forceful political intervention in recent memory.

Liz Truss’s proposals to create investment zones, where green rules on nature protection would in effect be suspended, represented a step too far for some of Britain’s biggest environment charities. “As of today, from Cornwall to Cumbria, Norfolk to Nottingham, wildlife is facing one of the greatest threats it’s faced in decades,” the RSPB went on.

Swiftly after came the Wildlife Trust, representing another million members and also “incredibly angry … at the unprecedented attack on nature”, and the National Trust, with more than 5 million members.

For veteran green campaigners, the strength and speed of the intervention was striking. “It’s a very strong reaction,” said Tom Burke, co-founder of the green thinktank E3G, and a veteran adviser to governments. “The government cannot have been expecting this strong a reaction.”

The list of anti-green policies from a cabinet just a few weeks old is already extensive:

New investment zones threaten a regulatory vacuum where developers can ignore rules on water quality, species conservation and space for nature.

A bonfire of EU regulations could put paid to more than 500 rules protecting the natural world, from wildlife habitats to water quality.

Fracking has been given the green light, and more than 100 new licences for oil and gas drilling will be granted in the North Sea.

A nod to onshore wind was the only low-carbon measure of any note in the “mini-budget” on Friday.

The environmental land management contracts for farmers are being reviewed. Championed as a “Brexit dividend”, Elms were meant to reward farmers for protecting nature, offering “public money for providing public goods”. Scrapping them would return the UK to subsidising intensive agricultural production at the expense of nature.

There has also been little engagement from the cabinet with key stakeholders, including green groups and farming leaders apart from the National Farmers’ Union, a supporter of scrapping Elms. Ranil Jayawardena, the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, has not yet met with green groups and stakeholders, a failure that Shaun Spiers, the executive director of the Green Alliance thinktank, described as “unprecedented”.

The government is still nominally committed to the UK’s legally binding net zero emissions target, and Truss had made senior appointments – including the levelling up secretary, Simon Clarke, and minister Graham Stuart – with green credentials. But green Tories are increasingly concerned.

Ben Goldsmith, the investor and chair of the Conservative Environment Network, said: “There are worrying rumours that the new Conservative ministerial team at Defra are toying with the idea of delaying or derailing the brilliant, groundbreaking new environmental land management scheme, which will link all taxpayer-funded farm payments to the stewardship and restoration of soil and nature. Losing this would of course be a disastrous backwards step, so we must hope that they are only rumours.”

Contrast this with the scene in Liverpool, where Labour opened its party conference this week with the prospect of a clean power generation system by 2030, green public procurement, a low-carbon industrial revolution, and the promise to make Britain “fairer and greener”.

On environmental policy, from fracking to farming, new “clear green water” appears to be opening up between the UK’s two main parties. Spiers warned: “We have been very proud in this country of keeping environmental issues mainstream. This should not be a culture war issue. Conservative voters in middle England don’t want to trash the countryside.”

Despite the furious reaction from mainstream green organisations, which has rattled some backbench and green Tory MPs, Truss seems prepared to double down on her liberalisation agenda even if that means antagonising them further. The Guardian understands that a mooted mollifying statement from No 10, aimed at reassuring voters and MPs in marginal seats, was ditched.

Veteran green experts warned that Truss had misjudged the public mood in her haste to forge a new rightwing radical position. “There is a giant gulf between where Liz Truss thinks the British people are, and where the British people really are,” said Burke.

But he added that green campaigners should not assume that Labour would ride to their rescue. “What parties say in opposition is not always what they do in government. There will need to be firm commitments from Labour that they will restore what the Tories are destroying.”

Doug Parr, policy director of Greenpeace, called on Truss to change course. “[Her] government has launched an indiscriminate attack on environmental rules ignoring both their own manifesto commitments and very strong public concerns about nature,” he warned.


Government poised to scrap nature ‘Brexit bonus’ for farmers

“Voters understand that we need tougher laws to protect the living world. They see water firms getting away with pumping tonnes of raw sewage into our rivers and seas while raking in huge profits, supermarkets flooding our homes with throwaway plastic, and destructive fishing plundering our marine protected areas with impunity. They can tell the difference between so-called red tape and vital rules to stop pollution and environmental harm.”

For Labour, he added, the challenge was to match a strong slate of low-carbon policies with new proposals on nature and the countryside. “This should be a political open goal for Labour. They should get their act together, seize the opportunity and make their nature protection policy as strong as their climate ones.”

Farmers threaten to quit NFU as leader backs scrapping of nature subsidies

Prominent members of farmers’ union express dismay after comments by Minette Batters

Minette Batters said she believed private money should be used to pay farmers for wildlife recovery, rather than public funds. 

Photograph: Fototek/PA


Helena Horton 

Environment reporter

THE GUARDIAN

Mon 26 Sep 2022 

Farmers are threatening to quit the National Farmers’ Union after its leader said she supported the UK government’s apparent move to scrap post-Brexit nature subsidies.

This weekend, the Observer revealed that the government was poised to abandon the “Brexit bonus”, which would have paid farmers and landowners to enhance nature, in what wildlife groups have described as an “all-out attack” on the environment.

Instead of the environmental land management scheme (Elms), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) sources disclosed, they are considering paying landowners a yearly set sum for each acre of land they own, which would be similar to the much-maligned EU basic payments scheme of the common agricultural policy.

Minette Batters, the president of the NFU, said she welcomed the departure from Elms. “My absolute priority is ensuring that farmers can continue to produce the nation’s food – so I do support maintaining direct payments in order to build a scheme that really will deliver for food production and the environment,” she said.

She later doubled down on this point, telling the BBC that she believed private money should be used to pay farmers for wildlife recovery, rather than public funds. She said: “We have got literally billions and billions of pounds in green finance that is looking to invest in wild environments. We should be making the private sector work effectively.”

Prominent members of the NFU have spoken to the Guardian, saying they were minded to quit if the leadership failed to clarify its position and support payments for environmental protections.

Jake Freestone, a regenerative farmer and Worcestershire county chairman for the union, has won awards for his soil quality after practicing nature-friendly farming. While he said he is not yet at the point of quitting, he appeared disappointed with the NFU’s apparent views on Elms.

“We do need to focus on the environment as well as food production and what does worry me is if we are going to throw out a lot of environmental protection on the basis of food security. But we are quite happily farming productively here and also providing good environmental protection – if you don’t have wildlife and pollinators and farmland birds, what do you have?” he said.

“The challenge we have is the NFU have a lot of diversified members with a lot of different interests.”

Martin Lines, the chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), said many of his fellow farmers were leaving the NFU over its perceived anti-nature stance.

“I know of lots of NFU members who are very unhappy or have already left,” he said. “Unfortunately many farmers are members because they feel there hasn’t been any other farming body in the past that is a voice for farming. I know many farmers who are leaving the NFU and joining organisations like the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), NFFN and others, as the NFU doesn’t represent their views or voice.

“Many farmers are starting to realise the NFU does not represent or champion their voice or farming system.”

Mark Tufnell, the chair of the CLA, which represents 30,000 landowners, said he hoped the government would stick with Elms. He said: “There is concern that there might be a change in direction, it’s harsh to come in at a very early stage and say it isn’t working as it hasn’t been given a chance.”

On the NFU’s policy, he said: “You would have to ask the NFU. We have actively stated since about 2017 that we have always felt it is very difficult to justify a flat-rate payment to farmers and landowners just for the sake of owning land. The benefit of Elms is the more public goods you provide, the more you get paid, and you can stack the amounts you do in the public scheme with the private element.”

The NFU has been lobbied by some influential voices who are against Elms. Celebrities including the TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson, former Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey and former cricketers Ian Botham and David Gower have written to the government asking them to scrap environmental regulations.

Writing as “rural voices” who do “real work” that includes “cultivating the soil, looking after sick animals and bringing in the harvest”, they said environmental regulations on farmers “seek to appease the insatiable demands of a few self-righteous campaigners”.

On Monday, Batters said: “We’re pleased the government is reviewing the framework for future farming regulation to help ensure farm businesses are supported through the current economic challenges and can make progressive decisions to boost growth and farming’s contribution to the nation.

“The NFU has always supported the ‘public money for public goods’ policy but we have called for a delay as the scheme was not fit for purpose and ready to roll out in its current form.”

This dash for growth represents the death of green Toryism

Boris Johnson was far more eco-conscious than recent Conservative predecessors. But this mini-budget is a reversion to type

Kwasi Kwarteng: no mention of net zero.

 Photograph: Jessica Taylor/House of Commons/Reuters

Phillip Inman
Sat 24 Sep 2022
The Observer

The dash for growth by Kwasi Kwarteng means unshackling City bankers and property developers from the taxes and regulations that prevent them from paving over what’s left of Britain’s green and pleasant land.

The humble concrete mixer will be elevated to exalted status. There will be more executive homes built on greenfield sites. More distribution sheds dotted along busy A-roads. And more urban renewal of the kind that involves tearing down buildings in a plume of dust and carbon emissions to replace them with something not much better, at least not in environmental terms.

At no point in the chancellor’s speech on Friday did he mention the need to reach net zero, or how his plans would help our ailing planet while doling out billions of pounds in tax cuts to richer households and businesses.

Boris Johnson’s administration at least put in place plans for achieving net zero, and Michael Gove considered ways of reversing 70 or more years of severe biodiversity loss.

As Fiona Harvey has documented in the Guardian, Johnson’s premiership brought “more major environmental legislation and arguably greater progress on tackling the climate and nature crises than either of his Conservative predecessors in the past decade”. That’s a low bar when David Cameron and his chancellor George Osborne did their best to kick almost all green initiatives into the long grass, but Johnson did put in place the Agriculture Act, the Fisheries Act, and the Environment Act, coupled with plans to phase out petrol and diesel cars, create a boom in offshore wind, and protect a third of the UK’s land and seas.

Johnson’s legacy, though, is largely rhetoric and very little action. That’s the message from those who attended committee meetings to put meat on the bones of his “10-point plan for a green industrial revolution” only to find themselves in nothing more than a talking shop. One member of Johnson’s Green Jobs Delivery Group, who preferred to remain nameless, said that if the discussion had ever broadened beyond how many millions of trees could be planted in the UK, a strategy might have emerged.

It didn’t seem to matter that senior executives from Siemens, BMW and E.ON were sitting around the table with the head of England’s further education colleges and representatives of the major industrial lobby groups – the discussion still didn’t go anywhere.

By the time Liz Truss sacked the minister in charge who chaired the delivery group, Greg Hands – whose green credentials were burnished when he resigned from a ministerial post in 2018 over plans to expand Heathrow – the group appears to have achieved nothing but an agenda for the next meeting.

Tree planting is indeed an important issue facing urban landscapes, as well as a countryside plagued by drought. Economically, there is also a good reason to talk about the subject: the UK imports 80% of the wood needed for items ranging from toilet paper to construction timber when well-managed forests could fill the gap.

A junior climate minister – well-meaning and well-connected though he is – is clearly only window dressing in a government that wants to bring back fracking

Still, it was one initiative among many, and a change that was poised to spread across major industrial and commercial sectors could not happen while the political focus lay elsewhere.

Green Tories want us to think the party still cares after Truss appointed Graham Stuart as junior minister for climate change. Stuart was one of the leading voices urging Theresa May to enshrine the net zero target in law. He has also been involved in the Globe group of legislators who push for laws mandating climate action to be passed by national parliaments.

But a junior minister – well-meaning and well-connected though he is – is clearly only window dressing in a government that wants to bring back fracking, produce more North Sea oil and rip up planning laws.

Maybe Truss will reveal herself as a champion of green policies: she spoke several times about the need to act on the climate crisis during her leadership campaign and has committed herself to attending Cop27 in Egypt and the 15th biodiversity Cop in Canada.

Except that the new prime minister, as environment secretary, cut subsidies to solar farms. She has also shown little appetite for accelerating an upgrade of the electricity grid to accommodate more renewable energy providers, or supporting major manufacturing industries as they transition to net zero.

Without a prime minister and cabinet that understands the risk of a dash for growth – one that generates yet more carbon – it will fall to fracking protesters and nimbys to prevent the UK going backwards. They will need to be on the streets in force to block what in most cases will be disastrous and unjustified initiatives.

 

Alberta MLA and Quebec MNA showing leadership on farmland ownership, says NFU The National Farmers Union (NFU) applauds Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock United Conservative MLA Glenn van Dijken for bringing forward Alberta’s Bill 206, the Prohibiting Ownership of Agricultural Lands (Pension Plans and Trust Corporations) Act, and Québec Solidaire agriculture critic, MNA Émilise Lessard-Therrien who brought forward Quebec’s Bill 991 An Act to combat agricultural land grabbing. Both private members’ bills were tabled in their respective provincial legislatures this spring and attempt to curb farmland grabbing by powerful financial actors.  Ever since the rise of investor farmland purchases following the 2008 financial-food-fuel crisis, the NFU has been sounding the alarm, standing in staunch resistance to the trend, and working to document it.  Bill 206 would ban pension funds from owning Alberta farmland. Globally, pension funds control USD$56 trillion, and are some of the primary actors turning communities’ lands, waters, and social services into financial assets while making them inaccessible or unaffordable to the people who need them. While the effort to bar pension funds is a positive first step, we also need to put limits on other investors – wealthy individuals, hedge funds, and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITS) –  that are driving farmland prices above the land’s productive value by purchasing farmland as a financial investment. Quebec has legislation ensuring only Quebec residents and Quebec-owned corporations can own more than 4 hectares of farmland. With Bill 991, MNA Émilise Lessard-Therrien, proposes further limits on land grabbing by targeting private investment funds. Lessard-Therrien’s bill crucially limits not only direct purchase of farmland, but also “indirect” purchase, such as through ownership of shares of a corporation that buys farmland. However, Bill 991 seemingly would not limit public pension funds from purchasing farmland.   Bill 991 would also improve transparency by creating a public registry of agricultural land transactions. This would allow for a better-informed public dialogue about the future of farmland tenure. Although each province collects this type of data already, access to the information can be very limited. The NFU supports better public access to land titles data, particularly for public researchers. So far, only Saskatchewan has enabled researchers to use land titles data to develop a picture of investor farmland ownership and farmland concentration over time.  While many private members’ bills are never passed, the NFU hopes that Bills 206 and 991 will advance through their legislatures and spark further public debate. The fact they were brought forward reflects growing awareness and concern about the impacts of concentration of ownership by investment companies and institutions like pension funds. The NFU continues to push for laws and policy that will ensure the land can support farmer livelihoods, flourishing rural communities and healthy ecologies into the future.  Un député albertain et une député québécoise font preuve de leadership en matière de propriété agricole, déclare l’UNF L’Union nationale des fermiers (UNF) applaudit Glenn van Dijken, le député conservateur d’Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock United, pour avoir proposé le Projet de loi 206, en Alberta, Loi pour interdire la propriété de terres agricoles (par les plans de pension et les sociétés de fiducie), ainsi que la député Émilise Lessard-Therrien, porte-parole en matière d’agriculture pour Québec Solidaire, pour son Projet de loi 991, au Québec, Loi pour combattre l'accaparemment des terres agricoles. Les deux projets de loi d’initiative parlementaire furent déposés dans leurs législatures provinciales respectives ce printemps pour tenter de limiter l’accaparement des terres agricoles par de puissants acteurs financiers.   Depuis la montée des achats de terres agricoles par des investisseurs suite à la crise financière-alimentaire-carburant en 2008, l’UNF a sonné l’alarme, offrant une résistance acharnée à cette tendance et s'efforçant de la documenter.   Le Projet de loi 206 interdirait aux fonds de pension d’appartenir des terres agricoles albertaines. À l’échelle mondiale, les fonds de pension contrôlent 56  billions de dollars américains, et ils sont parmi les principaux acteurs qui convertissent en actifs financiers les terres, les eaux et les services sociaux, tout en les rendant inaccessibles ou inabordables aux gens qui en ont besoin.   Bien que l’effort d’interdire les fonds de pension soit une première démarche positive, il nous faut également imposer des limites à d’autres investisseurs – des individus fortunés, des fonds de couverture et les fiducies de placements immobiliers (FPI) – qui font monter les prix des terres agricoles au-delà de la valeur productive de la terre en achetant des terres agricoles comme investissement financier.   Le Québec a une législation qui assure que seulement les résidents du Québec et les corporations proprement québécoises peuvent appartenir plus de 4 hectares de terre agricole. Avec le Projet de loi 991, la député Émilise Lessard-Therrien propose des limites additionnelles sur l’accaparemment des terres en ciblant les fonds d’investissement privés. Le Projet de loi de Lessard-Therrien limite de manière cruciale non seulement les achats directs de terres agricoles, mais également les achats « indirects », comme par la propriété d’actions d’une corporation qui achète des terres agricoles. Cependant, il semble que le Projet de loi 991 n'empêcherait pas les fonds de pension publics d’acheter des terres agricoles. Le Projet de loi 991 aiderait également à améliorer la transparence en créant un registre public des transactions foncières agricoles. Ceci permettrait un dialogue public mieux éclairé à propos de l’avenir de la tenure des terres agricoles. Bien que chaque province recueille déjà ce type de données, l’accès à l’information peut être très limitée. L’UNF appuie un meilleur accès public aux données sur les titres fonciers, plus particulièrement pour les chercheurs publics. Jusqu’à présent, seulement la Saskatchewan a permis aux chercheurs d'utiliser les données sur les titres fonciers pour dresser un bilan de la propriété des terres agricoles par des investisseurs, ainsi que la concentration des terres agricoles en leurs mains au fil du temps.   Bien que plusieurs projets de loi d’initiative parlementaire ne soient jamais adoptés, l’UNF espère que les projets de loi 206 et 991 vont franchir les étapes dans leurs législatures et provoquer plus de débats publics. Le fait qu’ils furent proposés reflète une conscience et une préoccupation croissantes à propos des impacts de la concentration accrue de propriétés par des sociétés de placement et des institutions comme les fonds de pension. L’UNF continue à faire pression pour des lois et des politiques qui vont assurer que la terre puisse supporter les moyens de subsistance des fermiers, des communautés rurales florissantes et des écologies saines dans l’avenir.

The National Farmers Union is a grassroots farmer organization advocating for farm families across Canada since 1969. Members work together to achieve agricultural policies that ensure dignity and income security for farm families while protecting and enhancing rural environments for future generations.  The NFU advocates for a food system based on the principles of food sovereignty, which calls for a food system that values farmers and what they grow; rebuilds relationships between food producers and those who eat; reclaims local decision making about food production and environmental protection; and strengthens connections between people and the land, empowering communities and citizens to make intentional decisions based on local needs and conditions to ensure a resilient and sustainable future.The NFU collaborates locally, nationally and internationally to research, educate and share effective solutions that lead to a better world for farm families and their local communities.  All farmers are welcome to join the NFU as full voting members. Non-farmers may join as non-voting Associate Members. All who support the NFU's goals are invited to donate to support our work. For more about the NFU please visit our website.   L’Union nationale des fermiers est un organisme fermier de base qui revendique et défend les familles fermières à travers le Canada depuis 1969. Les membres travaillent ensemble pour l’établissement de politiques visant à assurer la dignité et la sécurité du revenu pour les familles fermières, tout en protégeant et en améliorant les milieux ruraux pour les générations futures.  L’UNF plaide pour un système alimentaire basé sur les principes de la souveraineté alimentaire qui : valorise les fermiers et ce qu’ils produisent ; rebâtit les relations entre les producteurs de denrées alimentaires et ceux qui les consomment ; récupère la prise de décision locale en matière de production alimentaire et de protection de l’environnement ; et, consolide les connexions entre les gens et la terre, habilitant ainsi les communautés et les citoyens à prendre des décisions intentionnelles axées sur les besoins et les conditions locales de sorte à assurer un avenir résilient et durable. L’UNF collabore à l’échelle locale, nationale et internationale sur la recherche, l’éducation et le partage de solutions efficaces qui mènent vers un monde meilleur pour les familles fermières et leurs communautés locales. Tous les fermiers et fermières sont bienvenus à se joindre à l’UNF en tant que membres votants à part entière. Les non-agriculteurs peuvent également se joindre en tant que membres associés sans droit de vote. Tous ceux et celles qui appuient les objectifs de l’UNF sont invités à faire un don pour soutenir nos efforts. Pour de plus amples de renseignements sur l’UNF, veuillez visiter notre site web.

UK farming's 'net zero' climate target in doubt

Malcolm Prior

BBC
Rural affairs correspondent•@NewsMPrior

The NFU had set a "national aspiration" for farming to produce net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040

Ambitious plans to make farming ‘net zero’ by 2040 - 10 years ahead of the UK’s legally-binding national target – may not be achieved, the National Farmers' Union (NFU) has told the BBC.

Reaching net zero means no longer adding to the total amount of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. The NFU said a lack of investment in climate-friendly farming measures by the previous government had made doing that by 2040 “tricky” but insisted that the deadline would not be dropped.

Meanwhile, the Soil Association warned that UK agriculture would not be able to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions “without radical changes".

The government said it was “committed to reducing emissions in the farming sector”.

NFU president Tom Bradshaw believes farming remains a key part of efforts to decarbonise the UK economy


The UK has a legally-binding target under the Climate Change Act to be net zero by 2050.

In 2019, the NFU set its own target for agriculture in England and Wales to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.

Farming is currently responsible for around 12% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, predominantly nitrous oxide from fertilisers and manure and methane from ruminant livestock, as well as carbon dioxide - to a much lesser extent - from energy and fuel.

The drive to net zero in farming has focused on helping farmers to develop more efficient and sustainable production methods, changing how land is managed in order to capture more carbon in the soil and boosting on-farm renewable energy schemes.

When it was launched, the 2040 target was described as “a national aspiration, not an expectation that every farm can reach net zero”.

But, while work to reduce emissions is largely left to individual farms, the industry has pilot projects under way to monitor and record that work and help form a national picture of progress made towards net zero.


The NFU has called for the UK’s total agriculture budget to be increased from £3.5bn to £5.6bn


The government says it is helping farmers reduce greenhouse gases through the post-Brexit farm payments system, known as environmental land management schemes (ELMs).

But the NFU said that its target would now be “tough to hit” because the previous government had not put enough investment into “climate-friendly measures” under ELMs.

Tom Bradshaw, NFU president, told the BBC he still believed farming was “very much part of the solution to decarbonising the UK economy” but that more investment was needed.

“Net zero is never going to be an ambition farmers can deliver alone,” he said.

To mark Back British Farming Day on Wednesday, Mr Bradshaw called for the UK’s total agriculture budget to be increased from £3.5bn to £5.6bn.

He said that was what was needed for farmers to produce more food while “delivering for nature, energy security and climate-friendly farming”.


'Real urgency'


The call for greater funding comes amid fears the government is looking to cut £100m from its farming budget.

Both Defra and the Treasury declined to comment on any proposed cuts but the government has acknowledged there was a £358m underspend in the agricultural budget over the past three years.

Richard Benwell, CEO of environmental coalition Wildlife and Countryside Link, said any cut in the nature-friendly farming budget would “seriously endanger the transition to net zero in farming”.

Brendan Costelloe, the Soil Association’s policy director, said cuts would be a mistake “that would cost the environment, wildlife and the taxpayer more over the long-term”.

“British farming will not be able to reach net zero by 2040 without radical changes to how we produce and eat food”, he added.


The government's independent advisers, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), have already warned that progress in reducing emissions in agriculture has been slow and needs “substantial acceleration”.

The latest government figures show total agricultural greenhouse gas emissions have decreased, with nitrous oxide emissions down by 23% and methane down by 15% between 1990 and 2022.

Meanwhile, carbon dioxide from farming accounted for only 2% of total UK emissions in 2022.

Tom Lancaster, land analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), said there was a “real urgency” for government to help the sector cut emissions further and to support farmers in becoming more resilient to climate extremes.

A spokeswoman for Defra said the government was still “committed to reducing emissions in the farming sector and restoring confidence amongst farmers which is at a record low".

"That is why we will restore stability and confidence by optimising our schemes and grants, to ensure we protect our food security, assist nature’s recovery and drive down emissions.

“But we will go further to support our farmers by protecting them from being undercut in trade deals, making the supply chain work more fairly and preventing shock rises in bills by switching on GB Energy,” she added.