In this LinkedIn post from Sune Nightingale – he asks is there a potentially sinister land grab going on in the UK?

Sune Nightingale• Sustainability groups ~ Renewable heating ~ Local government

Farmers in the UK are moving from the basic payment scheme over to ELMS.

One pays to increase their yield per hectare. The other pays them to deliver ecological and social services.

ELMS payments are also lower than the previous payments.

A result of that is that cost of local food production will rise.

Because of the crazy existing situation where our own rules aren’t applied to imports, and because ‘controlling our borders’ turns out to be a series of free-trade agreements, what seems likely to happen is that we will increase imports of food grown to lower standards, which simultaneously exports the ecological problem, and betrays our own producers.

Anecdotally I’m hearing that morale among Devon’s farmers is at an all time low. The blame for this could easily be framed as lying at the feet of ‘greeny policies’, when in actual fact it lies at the feet of poor decision making.

It’s a double whammy that no one wants….sorry I mean that the majority of people do not want, because some people will want it….

It’s nice to see local bodies stepping in to try to help (as per the report I’ve linked to), yet aren’t they just attempting to patch up gaps left by a lack of joined up thinking in national policy that looks a lot like incompetence?

Add in the UK Landscape review which shows that the plan is not to increase funding for our nature-agencies (that have already had their budgets slashed by 50-60% since 2010), but instead to privitise the delivery of “Nature-services”

It makes me wonder if, instead of being incompetence, that it’s actually deliberate; a squeeze them till you can privitise them land-grab, then ‘squeeze for profit’ approach that’s rather familiar?

Assessing the impact of Agricultural
Transition in Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly, Devon, Dorset and Somerset