Big Blue goes for green farm policy

Liberal Conservative think tank Big Blue has produced the latest analysis of the future of agricultural support in Britain, A Greener, More Pleasant Land. It's certainly in tune with the emerging conventional wisdom. Read the full report here: Green and pleasant

It sets out a vision for a new market-based commissioning scheme for rural payments after Brexit, which would replace the EU’s Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) and fund ecosystem services, such as woodland creation, restoration of peatlands and removing invasive plant species. Under the scheme, ‘suppliers’ would bid to supply ecosystem services to paying ‘beneficiaries’ in specific catchments via online market-places. Suppliers would include farmers, landowners, and land managers.

Beneficiaries would include the general public (represented by central, devolved, and local government), private interests (such as water companies, other land managers, and insurers), and other groups (such as conservation NGOs, civil society groups, land trusts, philanthropists, local communities via town and village halls, or crowd funders). Contracts for supplying ecosystem services would pay quarterly based on results, potentially with incentives to encourage performance.

It calls for ensuring that as current CAP subsidies are phased out, public funding for market-based commissioning scheme and means tested livelihood support is phased in pound for pound.  It advocates the creation of a single rural payments budget from central government that identifies exactly and merges existing government budgets for production and land management support (under CAP), natural flood management, and payments for ecosystem services. Merging these current expenditures into a single rural payments budget would result in at least £3.1 billion being made available per year. It appears that prices for ecosystem services would be derived through an online market place designed by users for users. Striking a price may not be as straightforward as the paper assumes.

Three forms of income for farmers

The elimination of all production subsidies in agriculture would ensure instead that farmers have three forms of income available to them. The first from the new market-based commissioning scheme for rural payments, the second from a form of means-tested livelihood support, and the third from agricultural produce or other monetisable services sold at market prices without production subsidies. These sources of income are not mutually exclusive.

In my view means-tested livelihood support is a matter for the benefits system and not for specific policies directed at farmers. It seems that these are meant for small farmers, but there is a case for keeping area based payments in some form in marginal upland areas.

 

All things bright and beautiful

It is claimed that market-based commissioning of rural payments combined with a properly enforced system of environmental regulations, targeted livelihood support (particularly for smaller farmers), and consumer demand for high-quality UK produce will together drive higher environmental standards across the UK.

Senior Associate Fellow Ben Caldecott, who co-wrote the report, says: 'Commissioning ecosystem services efficiently and effectively using the dynamism of market-based approaches will bring significant public benefits, including a more sustainable farming industry, enhanced natural beauty and landscapes, greater biodiversity, increased carbon sequestration, improved natural flood defences, better water quality, better mental and physical health, and better air quality.'

Commenting, Zac Goldsmith MP, member of the Environment Audit Committee, said: 'The biggest opportunity by far [on leaving the EU] is the ability we now have to redesign the way we subsidise rural activity via whatever regime replaces the Common Agriculture Policy, something environmentalists have long dreamed of being able to do. Instead of simply paying people for owning land, no matter what they do to it, we can finally tailor that support to reward good stewardship of the land to boost biodiversity, minimise floods, improve water quality and access, and deliver food security.' Of course, it could be argued that one of the things that the current system does is support food security.

The usual targets

Press commentary on the report has inevitably brought up the £1.6m in subsidies going to Sir James Dyson. In a sense he is fair game, but he has been investing money in his farms and losing money on them.

No one wants to retain blanket area based subsidies in their present form, but we have little practical experience of pricing ecosystem services (there is one public-private scheme covering forests and peat bogs). As it is, area based subsidies represent the difference between profit and loss for most farms, so one has to be careful how one replaces them if one doesn't want to see a forced restructuring of the industry which might hit food production and would certainly disadvantage smaller farmers.

Farming tomorrow

It's difficult to keep up with the flood of reports on the future of agricultural policy after Brexit. Many of them say rather similar things, which I suppose reflects an emerging consensus focusing spending on 'public goods', although there is still a lack of clarity on the policy instruments that would deliver these objectives. The latest report comes from the Policy Exchange: Farming Tomorrow

It argues that subsidies on food production should be phased out and in the words of Policy Exchange's director, Warwick Lightfoot, be directed 'towards more sustainable goals - the landscape and its appearance.' Tariffs should be lowered unilaterally, so farmers would face a double whammy.

It is argued that the UK should replace the CAP with a new British Agricultural Policy which focuses on payments for ecosystem services (or natural capital) and phases out production subsidies and income support by 2025. Any remaining subsidies should be redirected towards protection for natural and public goods, and increasing R&D to boost innovation and the sector’s long-term productivity. The difficulty is that no one has yet come up with a feasible scheme for pricing ecosystem services.

Professor Tim Lang has described the report on Twitter as a 'clear neoliberal farm Brexit call' while another tweeter commented 'Bye-bye, quality British food.

The need for resilience

Participants in the panel on Brexit and agriculture

The Agricultural Economics Society conference in Dublin in the earlier part of this week attracted a number of interesting presentations and a speech by EU agriculture commissioner Phil Hogan.

One point that he made was that any free trade agreement with the UK would have to cover food standards, food quality, food safety, animal welfare and environmental issue. The aquis wold have to be imported into a FTA. The UK could not be used as a backdoor mechanism for inferior goods.

One theme that emerged from the conference was the need for farmers to show 'resilience' in the face of changing conditions and uncertain circumstances. However, that may not be a quality they all have.

One poster presentation by Niall O'Leary investigated the personality traits of farmers. It showed that 'independence' was the most common trait, in the sense of 'I'll do it my way.'

Agricultural economist Alan Swinbank said that high tariffs were a relic of a 1980s CAP when there was a fear that imports would undermine the intervention price. If one lowered tariffs to ten per cent that would still give more protection than enjoyed by other sectors.

There was considerable discussion of ecosystem services, although I was still left uncertain about how this concept could be operationalised. In policy terms it was seen as a means of challenging the 'agriculture first' element in policy. The objective would be to promote the total social value of rural land resources.

It was uncertain whether we had identified all ecosystem services. How could a balance be achieved between marketed and non-marketed services? There was the question of trade offs between different ecosystem services. Local environmental governance organisations (LEGOs) could be a mechanism for coordination at a local level.

Treasury ups war on farm subsdies

The following report appeared in the Sunday Times yesterday (extracts only).

'A “25-year plan for nature” calling for UK uplands to be allowed to revert to forests and wetlands and tough new restrictions on commercial fishing is predicted to spark a Whitehall battle when ministers publish it in the next few weeks. The plan is being driven by the Treasury’s natural capital committee (NCC), a group of economists and environmentalists tasked by the former chancellor George Osborne with helping to fulfil the Conservative Party’s election pledges to reverse 60 years of environmental decline.

At the heart of the plan is a key radical idea: that Britain’s natural assets, including mountains, rivers, fields and forests, can be given a monetary value and incorporated into the country’s national accounts. Each element of those natural assets, from fish stocks to the recreational value of mountains, can then be periodically revalued.

The NCC’s latest report says: “Despite only accounting for 0.7% of GDP, farming utilises 75% of total land area . . . and can produce large external costs to society in the form of greenhouse gases, water pollution, air pollution, habitat destruction, soil erosion and flooding. These costs are not reflected in the price of food. As a result, farming is responsible for net external costs to society that have been valued at £700m per annum.”'

Leaving aside the journalistic hyperbole, all this in consistent with the Treasury's targeting of farm subsidies which is nothing new.

What this is also about is the notion of paying farmers for providing so-called ecosystem services, an idea that is gaining traction. It is not my main area of expertise, but my hunch is that any scheme of this kind could well benefit upland farmers at the expense of lowland farmers who have obtained the biggest subsidies up to now. It might not also be good news for sheep farmers who are attracting increasing environmental criticism.

Without seeing the report, it is difficult to comment on it. What I do predict is that there are stormy waters ahead in 2017.