Thread by @herdyshepherd1

Why yesterday’s trade deal matters...

A THREAD

The British landscape has massive and highly place specific problems

Specifically a collapse in farmland biodiversity

Post BREXIT we have to choose whether want to ask British farmers to compete with the rest of the world on equal terms or not

Competing on equal terms under free trade means we have to either copy their scale and methods or be uncompetitive

But we got in to our current mess copying their methods since WW2

But we took the edge of that by being in the EU and regulating and constraining our agriculture from the worst welfare and ecological excesses (sometimes we did that badly)

We were told that BREXIT could be ‘green’ with a better social contract between the British public and farmers

And it sounded promising TBF

Our farmers could be asked to do exceptional things and be protected and rewarded for doing so

I for one, was up for that (and so we’re many other farmers) - I think we can be highly productive and massively repair nature in the British landscape

I tweet about little else and wrote a bestselling book about it - English Pastoral

Yesterday we burned that chance

And asked British farmers to compete with Australian farmers on equal terms of free trade

But why is that wrong and negative?

Because they are held to completely different welfare and environmental standards

And have a whole post colonial landscape to scale up on

The problem is not that they are terrible farmers or have a terrible product

Some of them are exceptional farmers (I have learnt from many of them) - just in an entirely different ecological and economic context

The problem is the British landscape doesn’t scale up or intensify to do that competition without grave damage to its remaining biodiversity

At our best we have a landscape of small fields with hedges etc...

Yesterday British farmers realised that for all the talk they are now being asked to do more (not less) of the things that got us in to our current mess

Get big
Get efficient
Or get out

Yes - there is, theoretically some system that might reward farmers for producing public goods - nature

Alongside their farming

But it is nowhere to be seen, highly bureaucratic and...

Based on a misunderstanding that we can be as efficient as North America on our productive land and have enough nature

We can’t - see RSPB State of Nature reports

Farming intensification makes fields/landscapes barren of the nature we need - that thrives in our old landscapes

Yesterday was highly symbolic and very real

The principle of doing something better on our islands and rewarding and protecting it died

Farmers will draw a simple conclusion - intensify or die

And this is a disaster for the British landscape

A total unmitigated disaster that will unfold over the years and a bit of free washing round the edges won’t result in net gain - it will result in net loss

And yes some British farmers/products/systems will be globally competitive and some will want free trade to export

But this kind of specialisation at landscape scale is what Fs nature

We actually need patchwork mixed farming landscapes that replicate our native ecosystems

Frankly if I am depressed

Sorry for the length of this thread

Sorry for typos

In a rush with kids and work

Worst of all yesterday we killed farmer good will and support for higher welfare and ecological standards and regulation

On what basis can we argue for that here and then import cheaper to undercut from elsewhere

That’s just a scam and displacement of effects

I can’t win that argument with my neighbours now

They’ve will say ‘get lost, we are competing with lower standards... get real’