The Government should be congratulated on making an urgently needed move to protect the environment on farmland. 

This was the verdict of CPRE [1] today (Friday) to the decision by Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for the Environment, to take forward the key recommendation [2] by Sir Don Curry’s expert group [3] for a replacement for the set aside scheme [4]. This will require farmers to put a percentage of their land into primarily environmental management.

‘This decision is good news for our wildlife, our rivers and streams and our landscapes. But we need to make sure enough land is dedicated to this task. We suggest this should be a minimum of 5% of cropped land which is not covered by any other green farming rules’ said Ian Woodhurst, CPRE’s senior farming campaigner.

CPRE is concerned that the proposed abolition of the set aside scheme by the European Union [5] as part of its Heath Check of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) could have lead to damaging effects on the countryside, undoing years of good management through set-aside.
 
CPRE has lobbied hard for a new measure to provide important wildlife habitat, protect water bodies from pollution and add to the diversity of the farmed landscape, but which is also easy for farmers to implement.

‘It would have been a pity if all the public money spent over the years on ensuring that farm land provided much needed environmental benefits had been wasted. We urge Natural England and the Rural Payments Agency to press ahead with developing a measure that is practicable for farmers and which will mean the reformed CAP delivers more for the environment.’ Ian Woodhurst continued.

‘We hope that in the meantime farmers will continue to show that they can both produce food and manage our countryside by putting a small area of their land aside, as they were doing only a year or so ago.’ Ian Woodhurst concluded.

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NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. CPRE, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, is a charity which promotes the beauty, tranquillity and diversity of rural England. We advocate positive solutions for the long-term future of the countryside. Founded in 1926, we have 60,000 supporters and a branch in every county. President: Bill Bryson. Patron: Her Majesty The Queen.

2. Sir Don Curry’s group has recommended the Government develops a new replacement measure for the set aside scheme as soon as is practicably possible. Under the proposal farmers would identify small areas of land for environmental management to replace land previously managed in this way but which has now been put back into production. This would form part of the environmental requirements that farmers need to meet in order to receive the Single Farm payment from the CAP.

3. The High Level Group on Set-Aside was established by the Secretary of State for the Environment in October 2007 to assess what the effect of the decision by the European Union to set a 0% rate of set-aside for 2008 was having on the environment. The 0% set aside rate was introduced in response to the rise in cereal prices as a consequence of lower world production, increased demand for food, feed and fuel purposes and low global stocks.

4. Set aside was introduced in 1988 to prevent over production of food by taking agricultural land out of production. Set aside land could then be managed to produce environmental benefits. For example, by providing areas of feeding habitat for wildlife and by preventing water courses becoming contaminated by agricultural sprays. Areas of set aside also added to the diversity of the landscape by creating patches of non-cultivated land. In recent years around 500,000 hectares of land has been left fallow or put into set outside making it England’s third largest land use. While agreeing that set aside should be phased out, now the CAP no longer requires farmers to produce particular crops to receive farming payments, CPRE believes that alternative measures need to be introduced to prevent the loss of the environmental benefits accrued while set aside existed.

5. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Health Check, currently being undertaken by the European Commission is examining whether the reforms of the CAP introduced in 2003 are working effectively and is also proposing some further changes. One of these is to completely abolish the set aside scheme.