CPRE - Living Landscapes

Originally published by CPRE and NFU.

Our beautiful and diverse countryside matters to us all. It lifts our spirits and boosts our economy. But how much time does it take to maintain and manage it, who does this work and how much does it cost?

Farming produces not only our food and other products but also produces beautiful and varied countryside. In a crowded, highly industrialised nation, this green legacy is arguably our greatest and most precious asset. Millions of visitors from home and overseas enjoy our countryside, and make a huge economic contribution in doing so.

Today, farmers facing the increasing pressures of the market can find that the management of our traditional landscape features places an additional burden on their time and resources. The previous demands of agricultural policy to grow as much as possible at whatever environmental cost is being replaced by a demand from the market to grow as much as possible for the least economic cost. But intensive production, for whatever reason, will have much the same consequences for our landscapes. Land which is too uneconomic to farm will soon lose its distinctive character through neglect.

Agri-environment schemes, which pay farmers to conserve landscape features and wildlife, will help farmers manage our distinctive landscape features. The recently introduced Environmental Stewardship Scheme, which eventually aims to cover most of England, is a good example. But these schemes need to receive enough funding to ensure all of the countryside can benefit from the detailed management needed to keep our landscapes distinctive. We cannot, as some may suggest, rely on the environmental requirements of the new farm payments system to deliver the intricate management for those features that makes one area of England different from another.

Without agri-environment schemes, most farmers continue to look after landscape features, even if they no longer retain their original agricultural purpose, because it accords with their values, not just as the producers of our food, but as stewards of the landscape. Many see it as part of their way of life.

Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and the National Farmers' Union (NFU) have made a first estimate of the scale of the landscape management work carried out by farmers outside agri-environment schemes. We also considered what might happen to this work if farm finances were put under further pressure.

We did this through a two-part study. The first part was based on a questionnaire sent to a representative sample of more than 2,000 farmers, examining what landscape management they were carrying out. The second part involved in-depth interviews of 27 farmers who had completed our survey - to validate its findings and find out how their landscape management work would be affected if farm support was further reduced.

Our study estimates that the landscape management and maintenance work on the average English farm, not supported by agri-environment funding, amounts to £2,410 per year. This is based on what it could cost to hire contractors to carry out the work that farmers undertake. The contractor rates used were those obtained from our study, since some - but far from all - of the landscape maintenance work is already being carried out by contractors.

We estimate that the total cost to farmers of landscape management outside agri-environment schemes across England is £412 million per year. This is likely to be a conservative estimate.

Looking towards the changes needed to support farming in the years ahead, we believe it is important to consider what might happen if funding for agri-environment payments were to be reduced. And what would might happen if the new Single Farm Payment scheme, available to all farmers, were to be significantly reduced or removed.

Our study indicates that landscape maintenance would decline drastically in both cases. Farmers would lack the time, money and manpower to do the work themselves or to hire contractors. Some land might be abandoned, become overgrown and lose its distinctive character. And some or all of the remainder could be exploited ever more intensively for maximum output at minimum cost.or stop being farmed and become developed instead.

We believe that if England's beautiful, familiar, diverse and distinctive countryside is to survive, farm incomes must be maintained - or landscape management work funded in a way that reflects its true cost and value to society.

John Ellerington is a tenant farmer in Yorkshire. His 800-hectare farm is mainly arable, but his flock of sheep has grown to around 300 in recent years.

A keen wildlife photographer, he has carried out far more stewardship on his land than he ever received grant assistance for. 'I believe all farmers should put a little more back into their farms than they take out,' he says. 'It's a good motto. By doing that I have seen a rise in bird numbers and the return of some species once thought lost to the area.

'I've often increased the size of the six-metre boundary strip at the edge of my fields to attract birds. Lapwing numbers have grown, along with good numbers of curlew, oyster catchers and skylarks.

'This year I've had a go at hedge-laying. It's hard work, but I'm pleased with the outcome. I've planted more than a mile of new hedge over the years, introducing between two and three thousands new plants.'

CPRE and the NFU believe the Government should give serious thought to how, in the future, the management of our farmed landscapes will be funded during the forthcoming debate about further reform of the EU's Common Agriculture Policy. We need to examine how we can ensure that our agri-environment schemes are adequately resourced to maintain and enhance the wealth of detail which enriches our 'ordinary countryside'. We need to ensure a much wider audience has a better understanding of the role of farmers in managing our treasured landscape features.

It's not only beautiful, traditional countryside that is at stake: secure food supplies, income from tourism, improved public health and wellbeing and thriving rural communities all benefit from our beautiful farmed countryside wherever it may be.

CPRE is grateful to the John Ellerman Foundation for the grant that enabled the research for this report to be undertaken.

To download the full report, or order a hard copy, visit the CPRE web site at www.cpre.org.uk