Thread by @herdyshepherd1

What an absolute shambles this government’s farming and food police are

The current system starts being wound down next year and they are nowhere near having a well thought through system to replace it... ft.com/content/81009a…

You might think this has nothing to do with you, but actually whoever you are this affects you

We all need a farming and food policy that provides the right food, and the right kind of land management and environmental outcomes...

Most sensible people can see that a future policy can be better than that of the past

But the thinking from government on this is so bad and so flawed it looks like being a disaster...

On the one hand they want to encourage a growth of productivity so our farmers are as productive as those of North America

And on the other they want the wildlife, soil health, flood prevention, and other ‘public benefits’ we all need...

Without realising that ill thought through copying of American ag since WW2 is actually what did away with so much nature on our farmland...

And putting out farmings in to a worse financial situation then their competitors will make it all worse...

In an ideal world no one would be needing ‘subsidies’ but the awkward truth is that most agriculture in N America and Europe is heavily subsidised and loss making without that...

Because commodity food production in largely unsustainable specialised and mono cultural systems reliant on fossil fuels and antibiotics and pesticides has driven down prices so that farming rarely pays...

One of the most worrying things in this is that the little control exercised about the environment in the UK is bought through the existing system and it’s basic rules - but much of our land may quickly fall out of this system if it isn’t worth it for farmers...

So we will have a race to the bottom that will exacerbate long term trends

With small areas of land doing great things for nature, and everyone else trying to produce to compete with Iowa... which will be the worst disaster for rural areas imaginable

Food policies typo

I love and breathe nature friendly farming... but the inability to think about sound food production as a public good that needs support in a broken global system is dreadful

And I think many environmentalists have been suckered by the talk fo ‘public’ goods...

The net effect on the UK landscape is the most important think - the net amount of nature

And food security and food trust are vital

The thinking about this in silos is disastrous

We need food and environmental thinking to work together - at the policy and field level

There is a lot in ‘rewilding’ that I have learnt from - lots we need to understand, and try and make happen

But it also a council of despair letting politicians think that everything is Ok if only we have a few token wild places - it isn’t, we need more nature on farmland

It is not a coincidence that lots of right wing neo-Con money is behind rewilding

Large tracts of land belonging to the and their mates where they are lots of wildlife and feel virtuous - whilst they make a fortune in a free for all everywhere else