Following on from our recent video on subsidies - Why a cheeseburger can cost less than fruit - Surge project manager Tatiana von Rheinbaben delves deeper into UK farming subsidies pre- and post-Brexit.

Under the still existing, but soon to be replaced EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), British farmers had been subsidised via direct payments. However, this had barely been able to keep many UK farmers afloat. The UK Government has firmly promised that post-Brexit, the new UK Agriculture Bill will ensure that public money is used for public goods, such as higher animal welfare standards, better air and water quality, improved access to the countryside or measures to reduce flooding.

Quoting the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), this new Agriculture Bill will move closer to “a future where farmers are properly supported to farm more innovatively and protect the environment”. This might sound like an encouraging statement, but can we really trust these words and believe in a future that is more compassionate towards the animals, the farmers and the planet, given the agricultural track record up until now? 

Currently, British farmers receive £3.4 billion a year in subsidies under the EU Common Agricultural Policy. Controversially, the subsidies are based on how much land a farmer owns and not on how much they produce. To mention a few specific examples, British dairy farmers obtain over £56 million in EU direct payments which make up almost 40% of their annual profits. Lowland and upland livestock farmers receive about £38 million in subsidies which make up over 90% of their annual profits! 

A sheep farmer from North York Moors national park in northern England, who owns about 700 sheep over 1,250 acres, makes around £12,000 profit in a good year, and even this small income would be impossible without subsidies worth about £44,000 from the EU Common Agricultural Policy.

In comparison, farmers growing cereals obtain about £40 million in EU direct payments (equivalent to almost 80% of their annual profit) but half of the cereals, pulses and oil crops are used for animal feed meaning that about £20 million of the subsidies for cereals are still for the livestock and dairy industry. And for fruit farms, the basic payment scheme only makes up roughly 10% of their annual profit (2014-2015).

The forthcoming Environmental Land Management, which is replacing the Common Agricultural Policy and ending the Direct Payments, is meant to ensure that farmers are paid for delivering environmental services (tree planting, flood mitigation and habitat creation, restoration or management.) and improved animal well being. This is a very good opportunity for farmers to turn their enterprises profitable.

The current EU basic payment scheme will support British farmers until the end of 2020. In 2021 the subsidies will start decreasing, with the largest reductions starting for those who are paid the most. By 2028, the UK should have fully shifted over to its new Agriculture Bill. However, ⅓ of UK farmers are aged 65 and above and many of them might retire if the decreases in subsidies starting in 2021 impact the production rates of these farmers. 

According to Environment Secretary Theresa Villiers, the new bill will transform British farming and “enable a balance between food production and the environment to safeguard the countryside and farming communities.” Nevertheless, some people have warned that it fails to provide long-term funding or safeguards to truly ensure environmental standards have been taken into consideration. Farmers will have to carefully consider how to survive in a drastically changing landscape.

Moreover, paying farmers for environmental services like tree planting, flood mitigation and habitat creation is not tackling the actual causes of environmental degradation - these are only steps to mitigate some of the consequences. For instance, the UK is a great place for growing pulses but the Government is still too locked into the old ways of doing things, and is not incentivising farmers to shift to less harmful farming practices and plant-based food systems that cause much less pollution than animal agriculture.  Instead, the Government is simply trying to cover up an outdated farming system. 

The truth is that we cannot yet know for a fact, how much farming will change in the UK with the new Agriculture Bill. What we can say, however, is that the Government has the power to redirect those subsidies towards real public good, such as helping farmers diversify and shift away from animal agriculture to plant-based food systems and other activities. 

Ireland’s €3 million Protein Aid Scheme introduced in 2015 is a good example of how such a programme could work in the UK. In Ireland, with this scheme protein crops are eligible for €250-280 per hectare - support that, according to agricultural minister Simon Coveney, allows for a “more consistent supply of Irish grown protein”. In 2015, this scheme led to a 300% increase in the production of protein crops. Like in the UK, Ireland also has areas with heavy soil, which limit the cultivation of protein crops. Nonetheless, this protein scheme has worked in Ireland and so the signs point to it also being successful in the UK. In general, production of protein crops could capture carbon, bring back nitrogen into the soil and decrease soil erosion.

Helping farmers transition away from animal agriculture will undeniably benefit the animals, human health, and the environment.

Tatiana von Rheinbaben is a global citizen who finished her master's degree in environmental engineering and science at Stanford University in June 2018, after having studied molecular biology (B.S.) at the University of California, San Diego. After an internship at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany and an internship at The Not Company in Chile, Tatiana started working for Surge and for Refarm'd, a startup helping farmers transition from animal agriculture to plant-based milk production and stock-free farming.