Tenth of Farmland to be Axed for Net Zero
More than 10% of farmland in England is set to be diverted towards helping to achieve Net Zero and protecting wildlife by 2050, the Environment Secretary will reveal today. The Telegraph has the story.
Swathes of the countryside are on course to be switched to solar farms, tree planting and improving habitats for birds, insects and fish.
The move is part of a consultation being launched by Steve Reed, the Environment Secretary, on how the competing priorities of food production, Net Zero and nature should be reconciled in England.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates that 9% of farmland would need to be removed from food production by 2050 to meet green targets, the Telegraph understands. A further 5% is expected to be mostly taken out of production owing to a decreased level of food output, and another 4% will share space with trees.
Mr Reed will insist that his framework will not impose changes on landowners, but the figures are likely to reignite Labour’s row with farmers who expressed concerns that the strategy could lead to the Government telling them what they can grow and where.
The Government will say that the land use framework consultation, which was first promised under the Conservatives, will protect the most productive agricultural land.
In a speech at the Royal Geographic Society in Kensington, Mr Reed will say: “Using the most sophisticated land use data ever published, we will transform how we use our land to deliver on our Plan for Change. That means enabling the protection of prime agricultural land, restoring our natural world and driving economic growth.”
The Government has ambitious targets to increase woodland in England by 20%, or about 265,000 hectares, by 2050, accounting for a third of the change in farm use. It has also set a target to build 1.5 million new homes, install hundreds of square miles of solar panels and onshore wind turbines, and protect 30% of the land for nature.
The UK is committed to reaching Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, meaning as much carbon is removed from the atmosphere as is produced. Tree planting targets are expected to be a major contributor to this, as is the restoration of peatland.
Some 70% of England is farmland, and a 9% reduction would bring this down by 760,000 hectares.
Farming groups have warned of growing threats to food security, expressing concern over the implications in the Government’s analysis. “Whenever the state gets involved, its tendency is to only become ever more prescriptive,” said Victoria Vyvyan, the President of the Country Land and Business Association.
“Government must build safeguards into the policy to prevent mission creep, or else it is entirely possible that, in years to come, the man from the ministry will be telling farmers what they are and aren’t allowed to grow, plant and rear on their land.”
Worth reading in full.
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It didnt quite work out for the Soviets when they dictated what the farmers should grow.
If it hadn’t been for the dangerous Arctic convoys then the Soviets would have starved during the war.
Very true, and incredibly brave seamen they were. The Russians have long honoured those brave men. We should remember also that it was Russian blood spilt that won the war against Hitler.
If you have ever been near one of these solar farms, there are never grazing animals, the wildlife that was once in those fields are gone, and the things are a great bloody eyesore, then comes the fact that when they are finished with they cannot be recycled instead they are buried to poison the ground such that crops and animals are poisoned.
Idiotic thinking by PPE wonks who have never worked the land, lived amongst the land but inflict their experimentation on us , the wildlife and the landscape. They the Millibands of this world are the people destroying the planet and wildlife under the disguise of saving it, they are killing it and us,
97% of meadowlands have been lost since ’45. The remaining along with necessary farmland will be nuked by the solar farms, which leech poisons into the ground, and like you said, destroy flora and fauna. The ‘bee disaster’ is due to a lack of wild meadows and pollination sites. We need farms and meadows, not bird choppers and solar farms. How is destroying our ecology saving Gaia?
The panels are an insult to nature, which converts the sun’s energy to beauty and food
Food and power to be rationed. All seems to be going to plan.
The next step is to ration people.
Hence the need for less food.
The government being made up of pre-GCSE school aged Marxists, they should know that when Stalin tried to run farming there were millions of deaths. It should be noted that the farm land being taken for solar is the best arable land of all.
This is for the good reason that both cereals and solar farms need sunlight whereas grass and sheep can tolerate hills and dull skies and rain.
Of course they don’t know that, because they don’t want to know, and don’t care.
What a convoluted statement.
(A hectare is 100 m x 100 m or 0.1 km x 0.1 km or 0.01 km^2)
From the article a 9% reduction in farmland is 760,000 ha.
English farmland is 760,000 / 9% = 8,444,444 ha,
8,444,444 ha is 70% of England.
Therefore England is 8,444,444 / 70% = 12,063,492 ha or 120,635 km^2.
But Wikipedia says England is 132,932 km^2 (about 10% more) – where’s the other 12,297 km^2?
Re-writing the sentence for clarity we might get:
It is towns and cities, particularly London! But never mind, to house another 10 million immigrants we need another City the size of London. The best place for such a disaster area is the centre of France, they have land to spare.
How are they going to acquire this tenth of all farmland – seize it, compulsory purchase, or make farmers an offer they can’t refuse?
With our money…
Regular payments into an account may be an offer they can’t refuse.
They have been paying farmers to stop farming their land for a while now, probably under the Sustainable Development Goals farce.
Farmers are forced off the land by tax bills.
They will probably rent it at a ridiculous price, as electricity bills can easily afford it, can’t they? All this land need to be as close as possible to the South Coast and flattish, because there is more sun down there! This will cut our wheat production in half and for what gain? Extreme energy prices! Someone somewhere is just plain ignorant or stupid or it is deliberate to ruin Britain, and particularly England.
Simple … IHT for farmers.
So where will all the foresters come from to manage these new woodlands? Where is the policy to control grey squirrels and deer who destroy trees? Unmanaged woodlands are a disaster for wildlife but then an ignorant townie like Reed would not know that.
Well, if you wondered why they were discriminating against farmers and forcing them into selling their land, you now have the answer – land for panels and tax income for the government. A win win situation.
Plus cheap land for their oligarch friends.
Rather than sacrifice productive farm land let’s consider using national parks and golf courses first.
Or would that upset too many of the Great and Good? I think we know the answer.
Some ordinary retired people use Golf Courses. How about we leave both alone and let farmers farm so they can feed the nation.
Or consider putting panels on commercial premises etc if they must… not that 10x more panels will give you anything more than an unmanageable excess in summer, during the day, and bugger all x10 in the winter, when you need it most
Evil Net Zero Destroying Farmland
Now you understand why Rachel from accounts has introduced the Farm Tax
And it can’t be about that insignificant inheritance tax when you consider they send a similar amount to foreign farmers.
In Scotland alone more than 1 million trees were cut down for wind turbines last year, making 17 million over 24 years (https://www.wind-watch.org/). Three million trees have been cut down in Wales for onshore wind projects (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-66442822).
I could not find data for England but the number will also be in the millions.
And now somebody has decided we should plant trees.
Considering the UK government is so hot on paying reparations for slavery, one questions why they are not so interested in the use of African child labour in digging up all the rare earth minerals required for their renewable energy projects.
If it is night, a solar panel produces no energy; even during a standard UK day its energy production will not be high. If the wind is not blowing or blowing too strongly a wind turbine produces no energy (they are switched off in strong winds). But their manufacturing cost, both in terms of energy requirements and finance, is enormous.
Essentially, they are useless instruments destroying landscapes, the environment and wildlife.
They have no justification whatsoever, since parallel reliable energy production will always be required.
FYI, Environment Kommissar Reed, you can’t eat “nature”, “habitat”, “green targets” or “net zero.”
The Kommissars Must Fall.
I’m confused. I thought they were trying to reduce the population through longer NHS waiting times, difficulties accessing GP appointments, and the vaccines, which would explain why we need less food production. So why are they still allowing illegal migrants to flood into the country with all their food requirements? Is it just to speed up the starvation process?
My hunch is to dissolve any sense of community, therefore easier to control. Explains the assault on masculinity, the very people who would defend their homeland.
Surely you aren’t saying 2TK *hasn’t* ‘smashed’ the gangs yet?! 🙂
If we were 100% self-sufficient in food this utter stupidity might be, almost pardonable but we are not as we produce only about 54% of what we eat. It is, even with the current imbeciles in charge, inconceivable that they do not know this so where is the replacement food to come from? And increasingly it won’t be imports as populations rise (?) and Nut Zero kicks in; boats and planes?
Furthermore, and to state the obvious we will not be able to afford more unreliables and we will still be hoping to import probably a third of our fuel requirements such as oil, gas, LNG and electricity.
Just another strand in the destruction of Great Britain.
Words fail.
The benefit of this may depend on the type of land to be used, and how it’s all managed. If it’s permanent grass land, it could be used to graze a (presumably smaller) flock of sheep to manage the grass, e.g. – rather like how some vineyards do the same. Sheep are a alternative cash supply then, alongside the main crop (grapes for wine production for vineyards, such as Poulton https://www.poultonhillestate.co.uk/ ). However, it doesn’t look wise to switch from arable products to solar PV panels on the ground.
Planting more trees can be useful to help manage rainfall in some areas, and has been for quite a while. E.g. in the late 1990s, Purton Woods were planted https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visiting-woods/woods/purton/ It helps to reduce the risk of overloading the river Thames a little bit, as it is almost at the top end of it.
As CGW has already pointed out we are removing trees at a rate of one million per year and most trees require 25 years to reach maturity.
The land under and around solar panels is useless for producing anything and certainly no use for sheep.
There is no productive value in land once it has been taken over by the planet destroying eco nutters.
https://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/how-solar-panel-diversification-is-working-for-a-sheep-enterprise
Councils are masters at removing huge mature trees in the dead of night, before people know what is going on. And as you say, the mass of a large tree is a carbon sink, not that there is anything wrong with carbon of course.
Because central planning has always worked SO well.
They think we’re idiots.
And if the govt doesn’t fall as a result of this, then we are.
They are utterly mad.
Here is the question to ask about this though ———–WHY? —-Why is a government doing this? Is it to save the planet as we are often told? Well no because the UK is a tiny part of the planet and stuff like this will make no difference at all to the climate or the planet. Is it to create jobs? Well no because the purpose of energy production is to produce ENERGY, not jobs. Is it for “Energy Security”? Well no because using more wind and sun and less coal and gas gives less security, and we are at risk of blackouts because of the unreliability of the part time energy. ——So WHY? —-Because our Politicians are taking instructions from the Central Banks, the UN and WEF who say our lifestyles are “unsustainable” and because they are set to make billions out of this 120 trillion decarbonising SCAM
I wonder when they will fund a large factory to make solar panels? Oh no, you can’t do that, they need fossil fuels and produce harmful byproducts! Typical Labour doublethink! Imports are the future, except that the pound will sink really fast once the balance of payments goes even more negative than it is already!
So importing food on diesel powered ships, grown using unregulated chemicals, is ok.
Another Labour contradiction between solar panels and rewinding, although both will harm UK farming