Amid the UK leaving the European Union, the UK Parliament has received an ambitious new piece of agricultural legislation. The lawmakers are intending to unleash an “agricultural revolution” set on restoring peatland and forests, as well as pollinator habitats and wildlife.
The farm subsidies in the UK and Europe are outdated, they are not what 21st-century goals call for. Instead, they are entirely focused on incentivizing production, which was the last century’s goals. The lawmakers now believe the best way to reform the EU farm subsidies, as they transition the UK to becoming an independent nation, is by focusing on ‘environmental and public goods’.
The UK’s agricultural spending is now at £3 billion ($3.9 billion) a year. The new legislation will have this money redirected to help farmers focus on improving their ecosystems and the environment at large instead of using it to increase food production.
Ian Bateman, a University of Exeter environmental economist, explained to Science Magazine:
It was just about production; it didn’t matter what you did to the environment.
As a result, the land across the entire continent was torn up by the plow, which caused massive soil erosion. Furthermore, rivers and coastlines were being heavily polluted by the excessive use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Still, this post-WWII model forms the foundation for European farm legislation, but the UK plans to change that! Its ambitious new policy will financially incentivize farmers to provide “public goods” instead. It plans to execute the tried and tested “payment for environmental service” (PES) model that has been highly successful in countries like Costa Rica.
England will test out the new agricultural revolution subsidies first. Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales will be allowed to determine their own farm policy. Over the next seven years, The Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in England plans to prioritize public goods while phasing out existing EU payment programs via the new legislation.
By public goods, DEFRA means aiding the recovery of pollinator species by planting pollinator-preferred species of flowers and providing payments for sequestering carbon by replanting forests.
Alan Matthews, an agricultural economist at Trinity College Dublin, says the rest of Europe will be observing. He said: “If it’s successful, that will be a very powerful argument for the Europeans to follow.”
Another possibility the government is considering for revenue is to restore heritage buildings to help increase tourism in the northern parts of the country.
