By Paul Millard, CLA South West Communications Manager


The CLA has set out its vision for the future of farming - including a proposal for radical reforms to the system of farm support after the UK leaves the EU and the Common Agricultural Policy.

The driving principle behind this new vision is profitable farming and the need to confront some of the very real challenges the industry faces. Key amongst these will be to finding ways to direct large scale investment into farming infrastructure, skills and technologies to help shape UK agriculture going forward.

The CLA proposal is to redeploy public money in a way that rewards farmers for managing land for the benefit of the whole of society. Public goods for public money is not a new concept – but the CLA Land Management Contract offers a means to move away from the idea of entitlement and subsidy, to a more sustainable, transparent, and rewarding system based on contract and payment for services. 

At the heart of the proposal is a plan to end the much-criticised European Basic Payment Scheme which pays farmers and landowners based on the amount of land they farm. 

Instead, there would be a switch to a Land Management Contract that supports farmers who choose to manage land in a way that delivers public benefits - from improvements in soil quality to enhanced animal welfare and tree planting.

The Land Management Contract would be a legal agreement between the farmer and the government for provision of goods and services that the market doesn’t pay for but which provide valuable benefits to society. 

It will offer farmers a choice to deliver outcomes in return for public money with conditions that are more transparent, easier to administer and provide value for money for the taxpayer. 

But its not the whole story, this contract would form one part – albeit an important part - of an overarching ‘Food, Farming and Environmental Policy’ that would also see budget allocated to measures that will support an increase in farming productivity and rural economic prosperity. 

Neither is it the sort of change that could, or should, happen overnight. This is a vision for the end destination point - how we get there must be carefully planned in a phased transition that extends way beyond the current Ministerial commitments to maintain existing payments to the end of 2022.

Delivered alongside a new industrial strategy for the food and farming sector, this contract holds out a carrot to harness the opportunities of leaving the Common Agricultural Policy and unlock a new lease of life for farming, our rural economy and communities across the countryside and it offers the opportunity to end once and for all the divisive view that farmers are receiving subsidies for nothing.