With our departure from Europe, funding via the EU’s Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) has ceased. The government has a transitional arrangement in place, but this is being reviewed. One of the major benefits of Brexit is a move away from the CAP, which is awful. Too much of its funding goes to a small minority of large landowners to overproduce products, which are often dumped by wholesale markets onto developing countries, making it impossible for their own producers to compete. I would have preferred that we stayed in Europe and helped overturn it, but here we are.
It is uncertain what will replace the CAP for Derbyshire farmers, but they will need assistance at council level to help ensure fair access. As a Green, it should be no surprise that I will try to get subsidies directed to environmentally beneficial activities, and to smaller landowners, and tenants, that play a role in our communities.
An agricultural transition is needed to protect and regenerate nature. The Greens would work with farmers to assist transition to more sustainable, diverse and environmentally friendly forms of land use, with reduced focus on intensive farming. There are a range of ways of doing this, from traditional and ‘organic’ to more technological methods.
Green Party national policy is that assistance through grants and other means would be given to farmers to encourage a new approach to farming, and we support proposals for an Environmental Land Management scheme, which calls for public funding for public goods. This would include funding for activities such as the promotion of tree-planting, rewilding, enhancement of biodiversity and a diversity of crops and business models. If policies such as this are adopted by central government, we believe that they should be administered at council level rather than by centralised bodies.