Greater than 1,700 farms on the outskirts of English cities and cities have disappeared since 2010, in accordance with a groundbreaking report printed by CPRE, the countryside charity.
The report reveals that productive agricultural land surrounding city areas – land that would feed native communities and supply environmental advantages – is quickly being misplaced from farming.
The loss equates to 56,000 hectares of farmland, an space related in dimension to town of Leeds, and represents a crucial loss for each meals safety and environmental sustainability.
Whereas the areas studied within the report signify simply 11.3% of UK agricultural land, they produce an outsize proportion of meals together with wheat (20.6%), oats (20.6%), barley (20%), potatoes (14.3%) and milk (13.3%).
These farms not solely present meals safety but in addition function important inexperienced buffers that help native ecosystems, scale back meals miles, and contribute £3.3 billion yearly to the UK economic system.
This disaster comes amid additional uncertainty for the agricultural sector, following Defra’s latest announcement that the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) scheme could be paused. This key post-Brexit cost programme was designed to reward farmers for environmental stewardship. It was halted abruptly final month, leaving many farmers with out essential monetary help.
CPRE’s new report follows its earlier analysis that confirmed how 14,000 hectares of England’s best farmland have been misplaced to improvement since 2010, 60% of what stays is at excessive threat of flooding, and local weather knowledge from the Forties remains to be getting used to categorise the standard of UK agricultural land.
Graeme Willis, agricultural lead at CPRE, mentioned:
“Farms round our cities and cities produce important portions of meals however are disappearing at an alarming charge. Each hectare of farmland misplaced is greater than only a statistical decline, it’s an erosion of our countryside and our elementary nationwide resilience.
“Farmers are being requested to provide sustainable meals, shield biodiversity, enhance soil well being and fight local weather change – all whereas going through unprecedented financial challenges and pressures from improvement. With out correct help methods in place, we threat shedding not simply farms near cities and cities however doing critical injury to the UK agricultural sector total.
“The federal government ought to urgently be a part of up its insurance policies on land use, meals safety and agricultural help in a approach that recognises the important function of the countryside round our cities and cities. This implies strengthening planning protections for agricultural land and offering the required help to farmers to each put meals on individuals’s plates and higher handle the setting for future generations.”