Reeves could leave farmers with Diddly Squat

The powers that be at Amazon seem to have an uncanny talent for releasing each new series of Clarkson’s Farm just as British politics descends into fresh farming chaos. The new series is no different. At the exact moment that I am watching Jeremy Clarkson and the cast of Diddly Squat farm get their government-funded agri-environment schemes in order for the year, over in Whitehall, Rachel Reeves is plotting how to cut the budget that pays for them. 

Kitty Thompson | Head of Campaigns

A recurring theme so far in the show’s fourth series has been the jibes directed at the government for paying farmers for seemingly non-food things, like establishing wildflower meadows. Initially, this does seem strange. That is, until you realise that farming is not just about the end product. It is about ensuring that the land that grows this food is stewarded well. Other options he discusses, like planting herbal leys, benefit food production directly, by providing forage for livestock, alongside improvements to soil health. 

Government schemes now pay farmers public money to farm in a more environmentally-friendly way. This approach not only delivers a public good for the taxpayer footing the bill, in the form of cleaner water and healthier soil, but it is also good for the farmer. As the devastating clips of the deluged Cotswolds can attest, British farmland is no longer resilient to the impacts of flooding and drought. By prioritising the health of the soil – a farmer’s most important asset – these schemes are helping to build resilience back into the land. 

You may be wondering where our resilience went. The answer lies in the perverse incentives set by the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy, by which farmers received subsidies based on the amount of agricultural land they managed. This resulted in 50 per cent of the budget going to just 10 per cent of farmers. 

It also meant that farmers were incentivised to remove nature from their land to maximise the area in production. By removing hedgerows, ploughing right up to the margins of a field, and making fields into more perfect rectangles to accommodate modern machinery, farmers were responding to incentives that would deplete the land. 

In the wake of Brexit, English farmers are now paid to deliver a service, not subsidised merely on the basis of the amount of land they farm. This subtle distinction is lost on some, but it is an important one. Our new environmental land management schemes (ELMs) will deliver far better outcomes for the countryside, for taxpayers and for farmers, who want to continue farming the land for generations to come.

As has become abundantly clear in recent months, Labour – and especially Rachel Reeves – are less fussed about these things than the Tories were. Labour’s changes to agricultural property relief (APR) demonstrate a lack of care for the vital intergenerational mindset of family farming that had allowed farmers to keep the long-term picture front and centre. With no APR u-turn on the horizon, Reeves has now set her sights on the farming budget. 

This budget has remained essentially unchanged since before Brexit. After years of high inflation, it means that this £2.4 billion budget has actually decreased in value. This has led to an unlikely alliance of the NFU and environmental NGOs calling for it to be increased. But instead of listening to them, Reeves is rumoured to be cutting the budget in her upcoming Spending Review. 

Jeremy Clarkson’s engagement with the new schemes fits with the experience of farmers across England. Farmers were gaining confidence in them and over 55,000 ELMs agreements were in place. With a £100m reduction in funding meaning 239,000 fewer hectares of nature-friendly farmland supported by ELMs, this move be disastrous for the environment and for farmers.

In defending ELMs, I am not saying that the schemes are perfect. Largely because they are new, teething problems are inevitable. Minutes into the first episode of the latest series, Clarkson is inspecting some big bags of wild bird seed mix wondering what on earth is going on. The likely answer is that one of his team was responding to a perverse incentive within ELMs which saw the government making the payment to plant wild bird seed too generous. This saw some farmers planting whole farms with wild bird seed mixes. Prior to the general election, the Conservatives spotted this abuse of the system and stopped it.

The initial rollout of ELMs was imperfect, but ultimately it was carried out, by successive Conservative ministers who were passionate about delivering this fundamental shift in how the government distributes public money to farmers. ELMs are a genuine example of politicians saying they would do something positive and then actually getting on with it. 

If this farming budget cut goes ahead, Reeves won’t merely be trimming some fat – she will be betraying a genuine Brexit dividend, and further undermining her government’s supposed commitments to both farmers and the natural environment. 

As I watch Clarkson wrestle with new tractors and attempt to plough his sodden fields, the parallel with Whitehall feels inescapable. He is trying to make a complex new system work, just as Reeves is on the cusp of tearing it down. The greatest tragedy of this cut would not be that something went wrong, but that it was finally going right. Somehow Labour still chose to break it.

First published by The Spectator. Kitty Thompson is CEN's Head of Campaigns.