When I was a teenager and old enough to operate a chainsaw, I would cut trees and brush along our fields to expand our arable land base. We lived on a small farm in Eganville at the time. I enjoyed bush work and I loved clearing land.
My father often talked about one of the reasons our family emigrated from Holland was that he wasn’t allowed to cut down some poplar trees on his farm and it bugged him that he could only paint his silo one colour — black. In Canada there were no such laws.
Over the past 48 years, as a full-time farmer, I cut down many trees of all sizes and brush to make big fields. I could never farm with tree-lined fences or brush between fields or even trees or brush along the roadway. They’re cut down and roots dug out with the backhoe.
When I’m in European countries and see how the governments won’t allow farmers to take out trees and brush to make bigger fields, I’m glad of the freedom we have here.
On Friday March 29, 2019, the United Kingdom (U.K) is due to leave the European Union (EU). There will be some huge changes for U.K. farmers. Recently a new Agriculture Bill was introduced in the U.K. Parliament. It will cover a broad range of agricultural issues. Environmentalists will like the Agriculture Bill’s Environmental Land Management System that will pay farmers and land managers for environmental benefits, or public goods, that they create or preserve on their land. Qualifying actions will include ones that tackle climate change or preserve scenic rural landscapes. Yes, scenic landscapes with trees and brush between fields of grazing cattle and sheep. Maybe more trees planted in fields as wind breakers. And probably taking some land out of agricultural production and planting it in wild flowers and have more meadows with flowers.
The new approach to preserving and recovering environmental condition in rural landscapes will replace the subsidy system that has been used for direct payments to UK farmers as part of the European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
Josh Kraemer, Communications Intern with the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario (CFFO) in a communique for the CFFO, says the new Agriculture Bill proposals are said to improve on the previous EU subsidy system, which provides direct payments based on the total amount of land that is being farmed. According to a press release from the UK government, the former system has been deemed an ineffective way to pay farmers because these direct payments favour the largest landowners and not necessarily those providing the greatest public benefits. CAP payments are skewed, resulting in the largest 10 percent of recipients receiving half of the payments while the smallest 20 percent receive only about two percent of the payments. The new policy, dubbed “the Green Brexit,” seeks to change that.
The Environmental Land Management System is intended to instead pay the most to farmers and land managers providing the greatest environmental benefits. Michael Gove, who is the UK’s Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said he believes that the bill “allows us to reward farmers who protect our environment, leaving the countryside in a cleaner, greener and healthier state for future generations.”
The new bill includes a seven-year transition period to allow farmers time to adjust to the removal of the direct payment approach that currently exists, though all will likely see a reduction in payments at first.
Kraemer says the value of this approach is that those people closest to the land in their home regions know the land and therefore probably know best how to make improvements. This is very likely to be the case compared to bureaucrats in either London or Brussels.
