UK will reserve subsidies for farms that protect the environment

UK will reserve subsidies for farms that protect the environment
Spinach harvesting at a field near Dorchester, southern England, June 5, 2020.

The “post-Brexit” agricultural policy of Boris Johnson’s government is causing growing concern among British lawmakers and the agriculture sector, which is facing the biggest turmoil in its sector in fifty years. On 6 January, the Ministry of Environment and Agriculture, DEFRA (for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) finally clarified its position. “Climate and Environmental Ambitions” For a system of subsidies to replace the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) very slowly (but surely from 2024) from 2022.

The system includes three support schemes: “Reconstruction of local natural places”, restoring wetlands and peatlands, to replant trees on a large scale; an aid “Landscape Restoration” Support farmers and landlords willing to undertake large-scale ecosystem restoration operations; Finally, help “sustainable agriculture” Must support farms that reduce pesticide use, improve biodiversity or reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.

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It aims to eliminate direct subsidies of CAP, which have been sequestered on exploited surfaces and blamed in favor of intensive agriculture. From now on, public money (about £2.3 billion sterling annually) will go only to the maintenance and improvement of “public goods” (waterways, forest areas, hedges, etc.). “Farming in England will move away from the field-based system and bureaucracy that characterizes EU membership. Make way for schemes that ultimately recognize the efforts of operators, true custodians of our environment”Defra insists.

Change in green subsidy system

Ministry wants to fund by 2024 ” least ” Ten landscape restoration projects, covering at least 20,000 hectares. By 2030, 60% of agricultural land will have to be cultivated permanently. and by 2050, peatland surfaces (very effective at trapping CO.)2) is expected to occupy 200,000 hectares in England. The move towards a completely green subsidy system is not unfounded at all. “One in four bird species in the UK are on the Red List of Threatened Species, 26% of mammals at risk of extinction. Only 14% of rivers are clean, mainly due to agricultural pollution”, remembers the NGO Green Alliance. Forest area has certainly tripled since 1900 to settle at 13% of the national territory, but “Half the gardens don’t have enough variety”The charity condemns the Woodland Trust.

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