According to the Guardian, the government plans to reduce the cash allocated to nature-friendly farming in England by £100 million to help close a £22 billion deficit in the Treasury.
Farmers and environmental organizations in England have dubbed this a “huge error,” claiming it compromises the government’s legally mandated goals to enhance the environment.
According to RSPB analysis, this loss would result in at least 239,000 fewer hectares of nature-friendly agriculture, and this number might rise if farmers are discouraged from applying due to the smaller budget.
According to civil service insiders who spoke to the Guardian, ministers were blaming the cut on an underspend of £100 million annually from the £2.4 billion budget. They said that because the Conservative administration had not used the entire amount, it was not viable to defend the Treasury’s decision to preserve the funding at that level.
To help close the funding gap in the country’s budget that Reeves claims the Tories left, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has ordered departments, including the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), to find more than £1 billion in savings. Other departments have been ordered to find hundreds of millions of pounds.
In response to reports of the underspend, the environment secretary, Steve Reed, assured farmers earlier this year that Labour would “cut through the Tory bureaucracy that has blocked farmers from receiving funding for work that included protecting nature and wildlife habitats on their land.” He assured the Conservatives of breaking their pledge to the farmers.
Farmers were no longer eligible for the common agricultural policy subsidies program, which compensated land managers based on the amount of agricultural land they farmed when the UK left the EU. The devolved countries have instead established their own farming payment scheme. This is the environment land management scheme (Elms) in England, which pays farmers to encourage the natural world by planting wildflowers on field borders for birds and bees or allowing hedges to grow wilder.
According to a research published last month, the English system is helping to enhance the numbers of butterflies, birds, and bats among other creatures; in some regions, the number of birds had increased by 25%.
Nature groups warned that in order to meet the targets set out to stop the decline of species by 2030, financial assistance for sustainable agriculture needed to be increased, not decreased.
“Whilst we recognise the financial challenges government faces, investment in nature-friendly farming is critical, not just to meet our legally binding nature and climate targets, but also in order to underpin our national food security and the health of the economy,” stated Alice Groom, head of sustainable land use policy at the RSPB.
Furthermore, she stated that a failure to invest in the environment and climate is anticipated the economy by 12% – an impact worse than Covid and the financial meltdown. Even a £100 million reduction in funding would mean 239,000 hectares of fewer nature-friendly farms.
As per the most recent independent analysis, to secure the future of our disappearing farmland birds and animals, clean rivers, and prosperous farming and rural companies, the agriculture budget in England must be raised from £2.4 billion to £3.1 billion annually.
Vicki Hird, the Wildlife Trusts’ strategy lead on agriculture stated, “Cutting the Elms budget would be a very big mistake.” In order to protect soils from erosion, guarantee pollinators have a future, and assist farmers in adjusting to periods of high rainfall and drought, funding for nature’s recovery is vital to ensuring a profitable and resilient future.
She went on to say that any action to cut financing for environmental restoration will increase the likelihood that agricultural companies will be negatively impacted by climate change and will ultimately result in higher long-term costs. According to the National Farmers’ Union, a budget cut would jeopardize food security and severely erode farmer confidence, which was already at an all-time low.