Future land use must not be viewed through a single lens, says NSA

9th February 2022

With debates raging over future land use strategies the National Sheep Association (NSA) is warning policymakers how categorising land into areas for food production, nature, timber production, or carbon storage ignores the multi-functional nature of much of our farmed environment, in particular grassland.
 
NSA is concerned the UK’s extensive and diverse grasslands are at risk from major land-use change policies, with grasslands still being evaluated on food production capability alone.
 
NSA Chief Executive Phil Stocker comments: “I still hear regular comments that our poorer quality land isn’t very productive and that it should be focussed on tree planting, nature recovery or carbon storage but much of this has an important role in sheep farming. Despite everyone starting to talk about multi-functionality, this view ignores the fact the UK’s major areas of grassland do not just produce high-quality food but deliver an attractive countryside, habitat for nature, and stable form of carbon storage. We are rushing towards some significant land-use change and risk ignoring the value of what we already have.”
 
The recent launch in England of the third pillar of the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) - the Landscape Recovery scheme, offers opportunities, on a larger scale, to explore ways to improve biodiversity, enhance nature protection, and improve water quality. But NSA highlights the portion of farmed land and farming activities involved with this will be minimal. Some estimate as low as 3% of land in the scheme will be actively farmed. With a proposed one third of the ELM budget apportioned for this, it means a large slice of the budget is likely to go to a small number of large-scale landowners/managers with tenant farmers and farming edged out.
 
Mr Stocker concludes: “There is always more farmers can do for the environment with the right incentives and reward, but we should recognise how much of our wildlife and ecology, and our rural communities too, come from a farming and livestock grazing foundation. I would still argue, the fact food production isn’t recognised as a public good is resulting in many thinking it’ isn’t of any good to the public. We have to think along more multi-functional lines and need assessment tools to enable holistic sustainability to be measured and communicated. We also need more standardised metrics and approaches - without this we will continue to see land management decisions made on incomplete considerations”.