How can we harness our Brexit farming freedoms?

Brexit has provided a once-in-a-generation opportunity to boost food security, restore nature and make farming more profitable. However, inflationary pressures on products and squeezes on farmer finances due to supermarket practices show that further action is needed to harness our post-Brexit farming freedoms to support farmers to become more sustainable.

So can farmers become more sustainable, while also increasing their profit margins? Will the Conservative government’s alternative to the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, the Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMs), effectively reward farmers for their stewardship of our natural world without undermining food security? And should the taxpayer foot the bill for sustainable farming or should we ask more of the private sector?

Following the publication of CEN’s farming manifesto, ‘Ploughing Ahead’, and the positive announcements about extending inheritance tax relief to farmland inside ELMs and permitted development rights to speed up the conversion of agricultural buildings to farm shops, join…