Farming contributes only 0.6% to the Gross Domestic Product of the UK and involves around 138,000 full-time farmers and around 150,000 part-time farmers. The huge proportion of the UK occupied by this very small number of people, the vast total cash value of that land, and the imbalance between the huge investment that this represents and the actual value of the goods produced, probably would not bear critical examination by any level-headed businessman, which may explain the assumption that we, you and me, through our taxation, should support some of the richest and most privileged people in the country via some form of farming subsidy. Maybe the BBC, showing either one or two farming programmes every day on their two main channels, are trying to give us value for our money while also acknowledging that we have some kind of moral stake in land that soaks up so much of our taxes. Then there are the regular farming programmes on the radio, at least two every day if you count the Archers. A lot of us must be tuning in to this stuff. Maybe all those children’s books about farms where the animals lead such unusually long and happy lives lead us all to see farming programmes as a source of comfort and reassurance.
The chances are, then, that you, dear reader, may be one of those people who love to curl up with a cosy farming programme. If so sit back and enjoy this one, which concerns the plans of some landowners in the Withywolds, a prosperous arable farming district in the heart of England, noted for its affluence, its stately homes and sporting estates. It lies within the catchment of the River Withywandle. Trains on the main railway through the valley between the industrial city of Mordor and the farming town of Borchester occasionally disturb the rural peace, and sometimes run over a few foxhounds. We start with the interviewer getting ready to record the programme.
{Interviewer: Morning Matt. Good to see you. What we’re going to do first, I’ll do a bit of an intro, we’ll pretend we are walking your farm – the engineers will add a bit of noise of crunching through dead leaves or whatever, and then I’ll ask you the first question. OK?}
Interviewer: The snow is still on the ground and I’m looking over a scene that could be on a Christmas card – rolling fields, the tops of trees through sheets of mist, lots of spaniels and pheasants. I’ve come here because this is part of a cluster of 50 farmers and landowners who manage 25.000 hectares of land here in the Withywolds, who have come together with big ambitions. So, Matt, tell me who you are and what you do?
Matt: Well. I farm just over 600 acres of arable right in the centre of this part of the Withywolds farm cluster.
Interviewer: So you’re a director of the cluster. What is the point of it? How did it start?
Matt: Well, we were getting a bit fed up with all the bad press about farming and decided to do something about it. We thought we might have a few wild flowers along the roadsides, shut the tree-huggers up a bit. What with all the uncertainty of the past two years it was really important for us to come together. We started talking about wild flowers but it was water that really got us going. And of course a lot of us played rugger together at the Cathedral School: Tim here and the other Matt, and Tristram of course, are on the hunt committee, and several of us run shoots, so it just sort of came about when we started to hear about the way the government funding was going.
{Interviewer: We might cut a bit of that – we might want to portray you as just ordinary farmers doing your bit for nature.}
Interviewer starting again: So you were all brought together because you were in the catchment of the River Withywandle and what was it that you wanted to change? I know the public are pretty outraged about what farming and the water companies are doing to our rivers…
{Matt: Wait a minute! We agreed to help you do this programme because we thought it would be good PR. I think you’re going to have to cut out that last bit, if you don’t mind, or everyone will think the place is polluted, and we don’t want that getting around. Can you ask the question again, without that bit?}
Interviewer: So you were all brought together because you were in the catchment of the River Withywandle. What was it that you wanted to change?
Matt: Well, the river wasn’t in the best state, to be honest. Agriculture isn’t absolutely quite perfect when it comes to rivers. Water and fertiliser and topsoil runoff is a very slight tiny bit of an issue. ..
{Interviewer: Tim, you ready to come in..? OK then, I’ll ask a bit about the way the cluster works…}
Interviewer: Tim, this farm cluster is not purely altruistic, is it, because it has now been tipped as a pilot project as part of the government’s Environmental Land Management scheme. This is a system of payments that are coming in in England to replace the EU Common Agricultural Policy. And the idea is to pay Public Money for Public Goods, for things like biodiversity, carbon sequestration and flood prevention. One aim is about landscape, err, all about large scale change to landscape, and this is what this cluster is a pilot for. And we have Tim with us - he organises the cluster. So Matt was talking about water. Tim, what public goods do you see your pilot looking to deliver?
Tim: Well, there’s flood mitigation, holding water back in the landscape so it doesn’t flood Mordor or Borchester; then there’s water quality, which is starting to be a serious problem on the Withywandle…
{Matt: Can you go a bit easy on the doom and gloom? We want to come out looking like the good guys...}
{Tim: Sorry, can I start again?} … We all think water quality is very important, and then there’s biodiversity. We are looking to increase the population of farmland birds, and with the river environment we’re trying to increase habitat for things like trout and eels and water voles along the Withywandle.
{Tim, aside; That any better?}
Interviewer: So those are the public goods. What about the public money? How much are you getting and when?
Tim: Well, so far we’ve been given half a million pounds. That’s basically the seedcorn, to write the business plan and the framework and all the legal stuff. But when we get going on the thirty year implementation phase we are going to need a whole lot more than that.
{Matt: I like that seedcorn bit, Tim. Makes you sound a bit less like a landowner and more like a farmer. All good PR!}
{Interviewer: I’ll cut that bit out, of course!}
Interviewer: We’ll come back to that later. Matt, let’s have a look at some of the things you have been doing on your farm….. We’ve just come down to the Withywandle. It’s a crisp morning and there’s a crust of ice across the river.
Sound of frosty sound effects
Interviewer: Matt, tell me what is that down there that looks like a kind of bridge. Three logs lying across the stream with some twigs and leaves piled up against them?
Matt: What we have here is a log debris dam. We’re trying to slow down the flow a bit to allow the debris to settle and slow the flow down a bit. I know it just looks like a few logs shoved across the river, but that is actually a Rural Payments Agency official Small Leaky Wood Dam RP 32. We had to get a flood risk activity environmental permit, flood defence consent, consent to fell those trees, and we had to have Natural England do a survey. Unfortunately they found a few bloody newts so we had to get a protected species mitigation licence from them. It all takes time and money. I almost ended up thinking it might have been better if Dad hadn’t dredged and cleared the bloody river in the first place.
Interviewer: That sounds like the sort of thing that beavers might do rather well with half the fuss. Have you thought about having beavers here?
{Matt: For God’s sake! Beavers? Are you out of your mind? You are going to have to cut that bit out too. Last thing we want is for a lot of beaver huggers coming out from the cities trying to see the beavers, walking all over the place as if they owned it. Public money is fair enough – we like that. But public access? Next thing it’ll be hunt sabs, raptor protection, footpath campaigners. What’s that Boris keeps on saying? ‘Après moi le deluge’ or something like that. So far we’ve managed to keep access to an absolute minimum, and that’s the way we like it. There are about 50 families owning these 60,000 acres, that’s only about a thousand acres per family, and that’s the way we like it. Got to keep the loonies off the grass – that’s what Dad used to say. You’ll have to cut that, of course. We like to say that this 60,000 acres is all our workplace – the staff’s workplace, anyway – and keep it strictly ‘look but don’t touch’! You wouldn’t like me wandering about in your bedroom, would you? Mind you, there is a plan to pay us for allowing public access. That’s a bit more like it. It all helps to pay the school fees!}
Matt: starting again: So we do get a bit of run-off of topsoil and fertilisers, so the idea is that this debris dam might let a bit of it settle.
Interviewer: What about the field itself? What are you doing to prevent the soil running off into the stream?
Matt: There’s this thing now called regenerative agriculture. All the go. All about cover crops and compost. {We are trying to rebrand what we have always done here, so I’d like you to take my next answer at face value and not ask difficult questions.}
Matt, starting again: So we’re trying to get 100% continuous cover. We’ve about 70% under arable crops and about 30% under cover crops that will be grazed off by sheep. That does a great job of letting the soil structure hold the soil back and stopping the nutrients being wasted.
Interviewer: So if these nutrients were to run off into the streams and the rivers that would cause eutrophication and pollute the rivers?
Matt: Well there is that. And with the high prices of fertilisers we’re a bit keener on keeping them on the farm than we were last year. You don’t mind them running off so much when they’re cheap!
{Interviewer, switching off the mike: That bit about the sheep didn’t sound that new. Wasn’t that what Turnip Townsend was doing back in the 18th century, growing turnips for winter fodder as part of the four-course rotation?
Matt: All this is a bit of a steep learning curve for me but I’m finding out that getting the funding isn’t necessarily about making big changes, it can be more about rebranding what you do to come within the parameters , to come within the frameworks of the various schemes so you qualify for the funding… Anyway Turnip Townsend was a great man in his time. Ancestor of mine, I’m told.}
Interviewer: I’m now talking to Dave. Dave, whatever is that noise? {Aside- we’ll dub in the noise of the drone here..}
Dave: That’s a drone we’re using to map the flood plain.
Interviewer: Wow, that’s amazing. Tell me, what I can see, Dave!
Dave: Well, we’re looking at the floodplain of the Withywandle. You can see the way it is all divided into cultivated fields. The drone technology allows us to map where the fields will be flooded…
Interviewer: Don’t the farmers know that already?
Dave: You’d be surprised; some of them don’t get out to walk the farm much. But they do like a bit of technology. Anyway, we’re investigating some changes of land use, maybe fencing off the land that floods. Then we can maximise the arable practice right up to the fence and maybe move to a more grass-based system along the river. Then we’re looking at speeding up the river too to clean some of the silt out…’
Interviewer: I’m getting confused. Matt was trying to slow the flow; you want to speed it up. I was asking Matt about using beavers to make ponds, but he wasn’t keen at all. What do you think Dave, as an ecologist?
{Dave: ‘Well, if you’ll switch that thing off….thanks. If you want to know my personal opinion, having some beavers up the Withywandle would do more good in a few months than this farm cluster will do in ten years, but I can’t say that. Beaver dams would retain the runoff and the pollutants, which would break down in the beaver ponds. There’d be more fish, more invertebrates, and more birds. It’s been demonstrated on many sites in the UK, but this lot won’t hear of it. Leastways, not until they get paid for it. If there was a bit of the Environmental Land Management scheme that allowed you to be paid for having beavers, that might work, but then all the farmers who were not getting paid would start shooting any beavers that turned up until we paid them too. So please don’t keep that bit of the recording. These landowners hate the idea of beavers, and until they see money in it I wouldn’t rate the chances of any beavers that turn up here.}
Noise of scrunching gravel and boot scraping.
Interviewer: I’ve now arrived at Withywandle Manor to speak to Tristan, one of the founders of the cluster.
Tristan: Morning! Come into my study. Have a glass of whiskey? I’ve got some splendid Bun na h’Abhainn you might like…
Log fire and leather armchair sound effects
Interviewer: We’re settling down here in front of a log fire doing what log fires do best, to find out how Tristan sees the future of the cluster. Maybe you could tell us how you got involved?
Tristan: Well, I own all of the old Withywandle Manor Estate of course, and I was one of the founders of the Borchester Farmers’ Bank. We set that up a couple of years ago when we saw the way the land lay and the wind was blowing with the ending of the EU subsidies. It was good while it lasted, being paid just to own the land. Suited me fine, actually. It supported the big landowners like me particularly well of course. But with my background in finance I knew that the thing was to take advantage of change, get ahead of the game, and so we thought when the new ‘public money for public good’ environment developed we’d want to be positioned to take advantage of it. Have another dram and then come and have a look round and I’ll show you how we are thinking.
Sound effects of Landover Discovery, spaniels dribbling, mud squelching etc
Interviewer: So I’ve come down with Tristan into a little hollow in the field where there’s a spring surrounded by a few trees. The water coming out here will eventually join the River Withywandle before flowing into the River Am near Borchester. So you are one of the directors of this cluster, Tristan. Here we have a clear spring of fresh water, and you have been measuring biodiversity and soil carbon, and water quality, and counting farmland birds. How do you see the future?
Tristan: The thing is, having a few birds about was fine and dandy, especially pheasants and woodcock ‘cos you got a bit of sport. But now in this new environment you can monetize everything, things that had no real value before, unless you were one of those bloody twitchers. So if a property developer is messing up the newts then he can buy himself out of trouble by getting us to protect some biodiversity on the farm instead. It’s called Biodiversity Net Gain because everybody gains. The developer gains and so do I because I can get paid to say a bit of my land compensates for the land the developer has buggered up. That’s one thing.
Then there’s talk of getting paid to let the great unwashed walk on our land. That might be a nice little earner so long as we can keep them under control. We’re thinking we might have footpaths that run between high fences so they can’t roll about in the grass and have picnics or anything like that.
And then there’s all the other ‘public goods’. So we’re gathering data. We’ve been doing eDNA testing of the water, whatever that is, and documenting the water quality and habitat variability so that we can quantify everything we want to put a price on. We are starting to realise that it was a mistake not to value nature, because in this new agrofiscal environment everything that has a value will have a price. The higher the price, the more we’ll get paid.
Interviewer: So if the changes you make in this catchment have a measurable impact on water quality, on soil carbon, on biodiversity, who do you think is going to pay for that, and how much?
Tristan: Well of course we’ve had half a mill from the government already, but everything is market driven now so most of the rest will have to come from the private sector, I think. The cost of flooding to developers and householders and insurance companies is huge. It’s getting to the point I may have to stop being a Lloyds name, we’re having so many claims now. Councils are spending a fortune on flood prevention schemes. And down here along the Withywandle the main railway from Borchester to Mordor got flooded for the first time last year. I don’t see why we should reduce the flooding if they won’t pay us for that. Then there’s the water quality. That’s really crucial. If we manage to produce really clean water, the water authority is going to have to pay for that, and in the current climate clean water is getting hard to find. We farmers aren’t a charity; if you want your land – err, well, our land actually - and your water and your nature protected you’re going to have to pay for it. After all, in the end it’s our property, isn’t it? It belongs to us, we bought it –well, inherited it, actually, but same difference. So if we clean the water, ensure it doesn’t have too many of our farm chemicals in it, we’re going to be doing everyone a great service, aren’t we? But not for nothing!
Interviewer: So the cluster has got half a million of public money – how much private money do you think you can attract?
Tristan: I think we could extract hundreds of millions over the course of the next thirty years into this project. Thing is, these are things we are not as a society used to paying for, and we need to get used to paying for them in the future otherwise we are going to have a full societal and ecological collapse. And the people we are going to have to pay are farmers and landowners. It’s a market driven world. I don’t see why we should look after the countryside unless we get paid for it, do you?
Interviewer: I’ve noticed a bit of friendly competition between you all. Is that actually part of the motivation?
Tristan: That is definitely a massive driver. Farming has been getting very boring, to be honest. We only grow a few crops round here, maybe wheat and then oilseed and then you might have to have a crop of beans before you go back to wheat again, and all you have to do is pay for all the fertiliser and pay for all the spraying, and the contractor does most of mine. Basically, if you can’t harvest it with the combine harvester, we don’t want to know. We’ve kept it pretty simple. So outside the hunting and shooting season there isn’t much to do. The price of fertilisers and sprays is going up all the time, and it’s all been a bit depressing really. But now we’ve got Tim boasting he’s got the best farmland birds and treating it all like a massive competition. And Matt has been a bit peeved because his phosphate runoff is too high, but now – he doesn’t know it yet – he’s got the best soil carbon score in the catchment. He’s going to be well chuffed when I tell him. So yes we’re all competing with each other, there’s a huge amount of that. Capture the most carbon, hold the most water, have the most birds and I think we’ll all be happy. It’s a bit like being back at school, playing rugger together.
Interviewer: That was fascinating, Tristan. Thank you so much. We’ll be back tomorrow with another programme about how to maximise your income from carbon offsetting and other so-called green initiatives. We’ll be talking to Toby Challenor of the estate agents Grubb and Poker who are the leading experts on how to channel the maximum income into your farming enterprise from tree-planting schemes and carbon offsetting and biodiversity net gain without actually radically changing what you do from day to day. What’s not to like about that? See you then!
Farming up the Withywandle
Health warning…not to be read on an empty stomach! So that was proper paramedic-black humour Richard.
I love your tongue in cheek writing style Richard. It's a great way to make your point.