The UK government’s post-Brexit approach to farming is, as Judith Evans points out (“The end of the family farm?” House & Home, FT Weekend, October 16), attempting to encourage a more environmentally sustainable path while forcing farms to compete with the high productivity, low-cost methods of the US and Australia.
What she fails to mention is arguably the most important question: how can farming address the catastrophic loss of species that has resulted from the move to larger scale, monoculture farming over the past two generations?
James Rebanks, the Cumbrian farmer and author, advocates combining the rewilding movement with a return to the sustainable, small scale farming of his grandfather’s era that used practices that encouraged, rather than destroyed, wildlife that had no economic connection with the farm. This is not the nostalgia that many claim. It is the only way for the UK to address both the crisis in farming and the shameful fact that the UK is one of the most species-sterile nations on the planet.
The big question is how can it pay. The government must direct its subsidies to food and goods from small-scale, mixed family farms so that they can compete with the high production, monoculture farms that mean we pay very little for our food but which are disastrous for the natural environment.
There is no shortage of young people wanting to farm but they, like all of us, have to make difficult economic decisions.
Cathra Kelliher
Owner, Borve Lodge Estate
Isle of Harris, Western Isles, UK
Letter: UK farmers must address catastrophic loss of species
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