IN-DEPTH: Why an Investors’ Push to Rewild Farmland Could Be Putting Food Production at Risk

Two lambs and a sheep on a farm in the Yorkshire Dales national park dated March 3, 2021. Danny Lawson/PA Wire

With environmentalism increasingly driving the agricultural land market in the UK,  some farmers fear that a push that takes away land from production could cause major food security issues.

Rewilding is experiencing a rise in attention from affluent investors who are eager to showcase their ecological commitments.

However, some say that the government-backed strategy risks jeopardising England and Wales’ food production capabilities.

The Epoch Times talked to experts who said that conservation and climate change are increasingly driving the agricultural land market in the UK.

The UK government is pushing for land to be rewilded as part of efforts to protect native plant and animal species and cut the country’s carbon footprint.

Ministers in 2022 unveiled plans to restore 300,000 hectares of wildlife habitat in England by 2042, which it claimed would have “carbon savings” of between 25 to 50 kilotonnes per year, roughly equivalent to taking between 12,000–25,000 cars off the road.

According to government numbers, agricultural area (UAA) is 8.9 million hectares in 2022, accounting for 69 percent of the total area of England.

The government is also committed to a 30x30 global land (and sea) conservation target, a UN framework initiative for governments to designate 30 percent of their land as protected areas.

According to a 2022 report by the House of Lords’ Environment and Climate Change Committee, this will “require the designation of significantly more land for the purpose of nature conservation on land that currently has different or complementary purposes.”

It added that at “present it is not clear which sites are intended to count towards 30 by 30, or how the government plans to achieve the target.”

Defra (The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) plans to publish a map of what will count towards 30 by 30 before the end of the year.

‘More Pressure’

Full-time fourth-generation farmer Ioan Humphreys, who has a farm in Wales with 32,000 free-range hens, and 500 acres told The Epoch Times that he believed that rewilding could create more pressure on the lands.

“We will have to import more food with less land, it’ll create more pressure on the lands, I don’t like the idea of it,” he said adding that his farm has been with the family since 1903.

“I am trying to do the best I can do to make the land as predictive as possible in a sustainable way, with as little fertilizer as possible, reusing manure to fertilise the land,” he said.

“Farming and the environment need to work together,” he said.

He added that when some land is left for rewilding, “it looks horrendous, invasive species kill the indigenous and it’s the same with plants.”

“The way I farm is that I keep everything as natural as possible, with flowers and meadows, we can farm that way, but we need to work together instead of arguing,” he added.

Farm traffic crosses Bigsweir Bridge, over the River Wye, dividing England (on the right) from Wales (on the left) near the town of Llandogo in south Wales on Oct. 17, 2020. Geoff Caddick/AFP via Getty Images

According to the Tenant Famers Association (TFA), some landowners are attempting to regain possession of land rented to tenant farmers, to enrol it for use in rewilding schemes.

Some farmers have even accused landowners of reenacting the Highland Clearances, the forced eviction of inhabitants of the Highlands and western islands of Scotland, beginning in the mid-to-late 18th century.

Approximately a third of farmed land in England is tenanted, meaning they farm land that is rented from another. The TFA’s concern was that landlords are saying they don’t need tenants and they are going to be putting the land into nature recovery.

A TFA spokeswoman pointed to The Epoch Times to its 2022 report, commissioned by the then Defra Secretary of State Private, which said that markets “for environmental outcomes will be part of the future farm revenue and cashflow” and that “income from these markets may compete with agricultural rent in the future.”

“If the value of natural capital outcomes increases, and tenants are not able to take part in the market, landowners may choose to stop renting their land for agriculture and instead cash in on natural capital,” the report said.

Deforested coniferous woodland is seen adjacent to the Neuadd Reservoir in the Brecon Beacons National Park in Brecon, Wales, on Feb. 6, 2010. Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Buyers Motivated by A Green Agenda

In a report in 2021, Knight Frank, the UK’s leading independent real estate agency, found that business people, industrialists and even A-list actors are increasingly motivated by the desire to buy land to rewild.

The UK left the EU in 2020, EU subsidies, where farmers received payments based on how much land they farm, ended. Since 2023, part of the UK’s new model, they have received increased payments for “protecting and enhancing nature.”

Knight Frank said that by giving way to an environmental support model, it predicted “that buyers motivated by a green agenda will become an ever larger part of the market.”

Claire Whitfield, Rural Consultancy partner at Knight Frank, told The Epoch Times by email that “there is certainly evidence that environmental purchasers are actively buying land to be planted with trees for carbon sequestration.”

Such schemes encourage new tree-planting projects to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Carbon offset schemes allow individuals and businesses to invest in and balance out their own carbon footprints.

For example, the Welsh Government says the sale of carbon units to companies like British Airways is a valid source of income for land owners and managers.

“Whilst purchasers for pure environmental investment have been small in number historically, the evolution of the natural capital market along with the increasing knowledge around ecosystems services has seen this sector increase in prevalence,” said Claire Whitfield.

She added that the “challenge to date is the overuse and inappropriate branding of re-wilding.”

“The greatest opportunity regarding carbon sequestration is the potential in soil carbon and the management of grassland to improve sequestration. Leaving it ungrazed restricts the sequestration opportunities whereas management with livestock dramatically improves the sequestration potential,” she said.

“Increasingly investors are looking for more than just carbon and the opportunities with risk management associated with water, biodiversity net gain, ecosystem maintenance enhancement, and nature recovery are all now playing a part in the ambitions of businesses looking to invest in land; well beyond simply shutting the gate to re-wild,” she added

Will Matthews, head of farms and estates at Knight Frank, told The Epoch Times that “although supply is up on the year, the volume of land for sale is still at historically low levels while demand remains very firm.”

He said that much of the interest is coming from environmentally focused buyers, including natural capital investors and funds.

“However, despite much attention from the media, they are far from dominating the market and, more often than not, are being outbid by more ‘traditional’ tax-driven, farmer or amenity buyers.”

“Environmentally minded potential buyers also remain in the market, although many are yet to actually purchase,” he added.

Pigs are judged at the Dorset County Show, Dorchester, England, on Sept. 4, 2022. Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

Competition for land

The National Farmers’ Union has expressed that changing the use of agricultural land could damage the UK’s self-sufficiency and lead to increase imports of food.

NFU Deputy President Tom Bradshaw told The Epoch Times by email that, “With competition for land use ever increasing, it is vital the English countryside remains a multifunctional, dynamic space.”

Mr. Bradshaw said that this “means enabling farmers and growers to continue providing climate-friendly food while also caring for the environment, producing renewable energy and contributing to the UK’s net zero ambitions–delivering multiple benefits at the same time from the land they work.”

“With the right policies in place and with greater access to data on land capability, such as more detailed agricultural land classification, farmers and growers can make more informed business decisions and further maximise land use efficiency.

“Land use must always be considered alongside food and energy security, which is why we have asked the government to commit to at least retaining current levels of self-sufficiency while achieving the UK’s environmental and climate goals,” he added.

Pressures

On rewilding, Dr. Prysor Williams, senior lecturer in environmental management at the University of Bangor in North Wales told The Epoch Times in 2017  that “most of the land has been managed for centuries.”

“It’s hard to know what a natural state would be for many places—you'd have to go back to the last ice age,” he said.

Reflecting on his comments from six years ago, Dr. Williams told The Epoch Times that he would say the “same thing today.”

Empty tomato shelves at a Waitrose store, Maidenhead, Berkshire pictured on Feb. 25, 2023. PA Images/Peter Clifton

Dr. Williams listed the pressures that British farming has had to face over the past three years: such as enhanced bureaucracy from Brexit, high energy bills and costs, food shortages, the impact from COVID-19, Ukraine conflicts, global tensions, weather events as well as farmers being costed out because of low prices set by supermarkets.

“There is no doubt government policy, has been moving away from production, encouraging farmers to focus on producing food alongside delivering public goods like environmental benefits,” he said.

“Go back to the 70s, 80s and early 90s, it was production, production, production in those days, and those days are in the past,” he said. “Farmers grew food in the UK and that was it, that was the policy,” he said.

But he added that in “our lifetime” there’s never been a period where there’s so much tension and pulling and pushing farmers in different directions.

He said that despite having farmers having to juggle multiple things now, policy “should not lose sight of the fact” that UK farmers do need to produce food because relying on exports “is an extremely dangerous game.”