OK, so at first glance the subject of set aside replacement and agri-environment schemes on UK farmland may sound about as interesting as watching crops grow, but not everyone thinks so.
The subject is one that has been exercising us a great deal here at the RSPB in recent months and it’s one that has caused a major stir in the farming press.
“The whole thing is another nonsense dreamed up by a cabal of UK farming’s implacable enemies!,” thundered a correspondent on the letters page of the Farmers Weekly magazine recently. And no doubt there are many more opinions out there which aren’t quite as measured and polite.
So what exactly are they so excited about?
Well it all started in 1988 when the chaps in Brussels decided to bring in the policy of set aside – paying farmers to leave parts of their land lie fallow. This was intended to deal with the costly food surpluses being produced by European farmers which were resulting in the much talked about grain and butter mountains, but it had a unexpected benefit for our wildlife. The land which was left unploughed became a haven for farmland bird species such as the yellowhammer, the skylark and the grey partridge.
Fast forward 19 years to 2007 and the food mountains had gone, farmers were no longer delivering surplus produce and the policy of set aside was kicked into the uncropped long grass.
But farmland birds are suffering badly and it’s become clear to the RSPB, the government and the farming industry that a replacement plan needs to be put in place.
The Government recently launched a group with representatives from all interested groups to tackle the thorny issue and proposed a plan to introduce a compulsory scheme which would see farmers putting in place environmental features on their own farms. The RSPB has come out in support of this plan.
However the National Farmers Union claims the threat of compulsory regulation is heavy handed, and has proposed an alternative voluntary plan which they say will achieve the same results.
Hence the angry-from-Tunbridge Wells letters to the farming press.
The Government is set to make its plans known in the next few weeks, but until then the debate is set to rage on over farmland fence posts up and down the land.