Farmed countryside is people’s traditional
picture of rural England – a landscape of fields and farm
buildings dotted with villages, hamlets, woodlands and open space.
Over the next 20 years farming will remain the spine of much of the
countryside, but not farming as we have known it. There will be two
big stories: new economic opportunities for farming and the
diversification of land management.
Opportunities
New opportunities will be created by a growing
global market for food, changes in the market for agricultural
products (including perhaps non-food crops for energy and industry)
and new technologies. But farmers will need to adapt and not all
will be able to. Some will throw in the towel and the present
exodus from farming is likely to continue.
Farming will survive, but many farmers will go
under. CAP reform will expose farmers to international competition,
with those producing basic commodities the most vulnerable.
Supermarkets and food processors will exert even greater control
over producers, driving down prices. At the same time, they will
increasingly switch to lower cost suppliers in Eastern Europe. A
growing customised economy will increase demand for specialist and
regional foods. Environmental concerns will continue to impact
through both regulation and consumer behaviour. New technology will
create new markets, and by 2020 advances in biotechnology could be
sparking a new agricultural revolution.
How will farming respond to these changes?
-
Agriculture will increasingly become a ‘new economy’
industry –based on knowledge and networks. Even more than
today, it will rely on scientific research and technology
development to provide more economically and environmentally
sustainable production systems. Adequate funding of agricultural
research and extension will, therefore, be crucial, and there are
serious questions as to whether current and planned funding levels
are sufficient.
- Farmers
will be forced to become more consumer focused. Initially,
larger-scale farmers will push for ever increasing economies of
scale, but in the longer term, many will shift from volume to
quality, moving up- market and differentiating their products,
whether organic, high welfare, rare breed or local. They will find
it easier to widen margins in this way than to struggle continually
to cut costs.
As many are already doing, they will tap into
networks and rely on the sophisticated management of knowledge.
Successful smaller- scale farmers will add value or sell directly
to local and niche markets, and for many, farming will be just one
source of income.
A twin-track pattern of agriculture will,
therefore, emerge: on the one hand, highly capitalised, highly
mechanised, highly specialised, large- scale, often orientated to
world markets; on the other hand, smaller-scale, high value- added,
and focused on local and niche markets.
Diversification
Over the next 20 years land use will diversify.
Rural development will include farming, but will be extended to
encompass many other enterprises and goals, including tourism and
recreation, environmental protection and enhancement of
biodiversity, and the generation of green energy (eg. through
windpower and biofuels).
CAP reform will encourage this diversification,
with CAP funds becoming increasingly available for measures that
focus less on agriculture and more on developing the rural economy
as a whole and on promoting sustainability. CAP reform will
gradually replace farming for subsidy with farming for the market.
There may, however, be public resistance to environmental
subsidies, especially to preserve remote sites that no-one visits
or even can visit, while Treasury grants to match CAP funds may
decline. Further, EU enlargement, will make the UK increasingly
ineligible for financial support.
Food production will no longer dominate many
parts of rural England – and this will make the countryside
seem quite different in places. By 2020, the idea that the
countryside equals farming may be well and truly buried. A new look
countryside will emerge, encompassing different scales of
production and environmental management, with possibly some land
abandonment.
