It is among the most powerful drivers of environmental destruction in the
northern hemisphere. Because payments are made only for land that’s in
“agricultural condition”, the system creates a perverse incentive to clear
wildlife habitats, even in places unsuitable for farming, to produce the
empty ground that qualifies for public money. These payments have led to
the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of magnificent wild
places
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/21/waste-cash-leavers-in-out-land-subsidie>
across the EU.
It is also, arguably, the most regressive transfer of public money in the
modern world. Farmers are paid by the hectare for owning or using land, so
the more you have, the more you get. While in the UK, benefits for the poor
are capped at £20,000 <https://www.gov.uk/benefit-cap/benefit-cap-amounts>
(outside London), these benefits for the rich are uncapped. Some
landowners receive
£1 million or more
<https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2017/06/30/rich-list-billionaires-scoop-millions-farm-subsidy-payments/>.
You don’t even have to live in the EU to take this money: you just have to
own land here. Among the benefit tourists sucking up public funds in the
age of austerity are Russian oligarchs, Saudi princes and Texas oil barons.
It is hard to discern any just principle behind an occupational
qualification for receiving public money. Some farmers are poor, but seldom
as poor as rural people who have no land, no buildings and no jobs. Why
should one profession be supported when others are not?
Though we have paid enough money to have bought all the farmland in this
country several times over, we have not acquired any direct democratic
control over the land: farming, however it might alter landscape features,
remains outside the planning system. The system amounts to taxation without
representation.
So you might have hoped that this would be a hot topic, surrounded by
fierce debates about what should best replace this outrageous boondoggle.
But, as the Agriculture Bill
<https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/agriculture.html> receives
its second reading in the House of Commons today (Wednesday), there is
scarcely a murmur of either enthusiasm or dissent from the main opposition
parties.
The government’s proposals are a major improvement on the current system.
It intends that farmers should be paid for protecting wildlife and
ecosystems
<https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/684003/future-farming-environment-consult-document.pdf>,
rather than for owning land. It wants to use subsidies to improve the
health of the nation’s soils, the quality of its water and the character of
its landscape. It encourages collaboration between different land managers
– woefully lacking in our incoherent approach to environmental protection.
But there is plenty that should be challenged.
The evidence from New Zealand, where all subsidies were stopped in 1984, is
mixed. Since then, livestock farms have consolidated, but the number of
small horticultural farms and vineyards has risen
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15693430601108086>. I want to
see opposition parties press the government to do two things. First, to
promise that any US-UK trade deal will exclude food and agriculture
altogether, even if this means no deal. Secondly, to ensure that
supermarkets, which exercise monopsonistic power (too few buyers) pay a
fair price to the farmers they currently exploit.
I would argue that payments for environmental goods should be reserved for
those that didn’t exist before, while existing wildlife habitats are
protected through regulation. I also believe that farmers should seek
planning permission before changing a field boundary, ploughing a meadow or
felling an orchard.
But I’m less clear about whether there should be a special support payment
for small farmers, as some people argue. How would we distinguish between
those who owe their living to farming and those who have bought their land
as a hobby? Why should small farmers receive this money, when small
builders do not?
I don’t have all the answers, and I doubt anyone does. But I do know that
good policy depends on constant challenge and debate. And so far, there
hasn’t been enough of either.