In the name of net zero, the war on farmers will get much worse

Telegraph

27-02-2025

The threat to family farms from the removal of inheritance tax relief has been the most obvious blow, bringing farmers in their thousands on to the streets of Westminster to protest.
But the future of farming in this country faces a much bigger threat in the years ahead as the government pursues its net zero agenda.
Already frustrated by endless delays in the 'sustainability' payments they were told would compensate them for giving up productive crops, farmers could be forgiven this week for wondering if the government would like them to stop food production altogether.
If the recommendations from the Climate Change Committee are adopted, it's clear that thousands of farmers will either be forced off their land or told to retrain as forestry managers.
The Committee's Carbon Budget, measuring the UK's progress to net zero, says that British cattle and sheep farming must be reduced by 27 per cent in the next 15 years, and that consumers should adjust their diets accordingly, eating 25 per cent less meat and dairy products.
The Committee stops short of announcing food rationing, so it's not clear how these dietary changes will be imposed – veganism has proved to be a minority interest rather than a national enthusiasm.
Farmers, however, will have no choice but to comply. The British consumer can simply switch to eating more imported meat and dairy products, but the government can impose its carbon targets for agriculture by issuing livestock quotas.
Every item of livestock already has to be individually documented. Agriculture is one of the most heavily regulated sectors in the British economy.
The environmental burden on the sector is already disproportionate. The Climate Change Committee blames farming for contributing 12 per cent of the UK's carbon emissions. But as farmland accounts for 70 per cent of UK land area, acre-for-acre British farming is much more carbon-efficient than other land uses.
Yet the Committee's report frequently groups together emissions from meat, dairy and aviation, as if the sectors are equivalent. As Tom Dunn of the Tenant Farmers' Association says 'this is simply bonkers'.
Ministers have yet to comment on this week's announcements, but Labour's enthusiasm for net zero and lack of sympathy for the countryside suggest that their desire to reach climate change targets will outweigh any concern about the impact on agriculture.
Tenant farmers are already suffering from green zealotry as big landowners such as the National Trust remove fertile land from agricultural use and replace livestock and crops with millions of trees.
As housing estates, solar farms and pylons spread their tentacles across the countryside, forests of plastic-encased saplings are encroaching further on our pastoral landscape. The familiar patchwork of arable and grazing land is disappearing.
British farmers are paying the price for the metropolitan elite's obsession with environmentalism. Compounding the tragedy is the certain knowledge that as productive farming grinds to a halt in this country the increase in food imports means that associated carbon emissions will simply be shifted abroad.
Winning the race to net zero will be no consolation for a once-fertile country that can no longer feed its own people.