TY - JOUR
AU - Ross,, Malcolm
AB - Abstract The UK Government’s ‘green Brexit’ includes fundamental reform of agriculture. We use resilience thinking to examine the complex relationship between farming policy and environmental sustainability. Farming is a social ecological system that will be disturbed by leaving the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. Reforms could reinforce persistence of the status quo or shape transformation to ‘better’ sustainability. We argue Brexit is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the hegemony of sustainable intensification to be challenged by enhanced agroecological farming practices. The interdependency of social and ecological factors is a critical threshold for transformative change, which we explore through three key sites of struggle: farmers’ cultural identity, connection to land, and security. We suggest transformative law and governance measures built upon Wild Law jurisprudence and resilience principles of diversity, scale, flexibility, relationality, education and participatory decision-making. We conclude that the Government’s approach falls short of the transformation needed for a resilient, sustainable farming system. 1. INTRODUCTION The UK Government claims it is pursuing a ‘green Brexit’ as it leaves the European Union, boldly asserting that reform of agriculture, forestry, land use and fishing will seize a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity and ‘hand over the planet to the next generation in a better condition than when we inherited it’.1 This article uses resilience thinking to question this claim in the specific context of agriculture and farming. Brexit undoubtedly administers a shock to a system driven for over 40 years by the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). However, we argue that the Government’s proposals in its Consultation Paper (CP)2 and Agriculture Bill (‘the Bill’),3 do not go far enough to secure the long-term sustainability of the complex social ecological system (SES) embodied in farming. The Government’s principal policy shift is that public money should only support public goods and that a new environmental land management system should reflect this.4 In our view, this predominantly financial prism is insufficient to enable farming to use Brexit to ‘bounce forward’ on a different, greener trajectory. More fundamental strategies are required to understand and work with the multidimensional and highly interconnected forces that characterise the farming SES. To that end, we harness two resources—resilience thinking and law—to forge a fresh interisciplinary and contextualised approach to support transformation of the English farming system5 post-Brexit by moving away from the current sustainable intensification paradigm to more agroecological values and processes. Accordingly, in this article, we first set out the gap between the Government’s priorities and an alternative approach to sustainable farming based on agroecological practices. In Section 3, we explain the relevance of resilience thinking to help better understand the interrelationships and processes of an SES such as farming and, thus, provide a benchmark against which to evaluate reform. Any SES faces critical resilience thresholds or tipping points, so Section 4 explores key sites of struggle for the future of farming—cultural identity, connection with land, and security. Failure to address these may not just be ecologically damaging but irreversible. Averting or confronting tipping points requires capacity building in systems. We therefore use Section 5 to suggest resilience-led governance measures to prepare, navigate and secure a transformation that enhances the role of sustainable agroecological practices. 2. CHALLENGING THE HEGEMONY OF SUSTAINABLE INTENSIFICATION Farming is understood to mean raising animals or growing crops for food, fibre or fuel and farmers are defined as anyone who uses land for these purposes as part of a commercial undertaking. Similarly, the farming system refers to the framework that governs these productive activities and does not cover related issues such as demand, distribution, public health, and waste. Whilst integrated farming and food policies are necessary for sustainability,6 the farming system as defined here is characterised by the direct and intertwined relationship between human and non-human nature. Farming policy must address the twin challenges of being more ecologically sustainable whilst ensuring food security. Hitherto, government policy has focused on sustainable intensification,7 which aims to increase productivity whilst simultaneously delivering enhanced environmental protection by using resources more efficiently.8 Admittedly, this could represent a strong sustainability agenda emphasising ecological priorities and practices.9 However, sustainable intensification may also invite short-term efficiency-led priorities that rely heavily on the promise of new technologies and, in so doing, maintain a ‘cheap food’ ideology and fail fully to integrate ecological, social, and ethical concerns.10 Certainly, evidence suggests that intensification has had ‘an overwhelmingly negative’ impact on soils, water and biodiversity and could do more to mitigate and adapt to climate change.11 As a recent international study concluded, ‘industrial agriculture does not and cannot reconcile the multiple concerns of sustainable food systems. Food and farming systems can be reformed, but only by moving away from an industrial orientation and organization.’12 Agroecology is an alternative paradigm to sustainable intensification with a pivotal contribution to make in addressing these tensions.13 It provides a holistic approach to food production, which integrates social, ecological, and economic considerations, differentiating it from other approaches to sustainable agriculture.14 Agroecological farming works with natural processes to promote sustainable food production appropriate to local contexts whilst maintaining genetic and cultural diversity.15 It highlights practices such as integrated arable and livestock husbandry, soil improvement through crop management and biological control of pests and disease rather than high artificial inputs and pesticide use.16 Evidence indicates many benefits including biodiversity, improved soil and water quality, pollinator health, climate change mitigation and adaptation,17 as well as more nutritious and better-targeted food production than intensive, conventional farming.18 However, an agroecological approach to farming is about more than minor adjustments and technical solutions. It is a long-term, dynamic transition that places human and non-human nature at the core of food production and prioritises the more economically or socially vulnerable to promote diversity and equity.19 As such, agroecology is a broader and more contested concept than ‘organic’ or ‘biodynamic’ farming. Depending on the context, those methods may reflect good agroecological practice but do not encompass the full range of objectives. In essence, agroecology demands policies that support farmers—particularly younger and smaller scale—to produce food in harmony with nature, drawing on traditional practices in combination with modern science, sharing experience and responsibilities with other farmers to create a cooperative, landscape-scale approach to food production.20 Seen against this background, the Government’s proposals may be unduly optimistic in claiming ‘a more rational, and sensitive agriculture policy which promotes environmental enhancement, supports profitable food production and contributes to a healthier society’.21 In the run-up to the CP, the DEFRA Secretary declared that ‘there is no inherent tension between productive farming and care for the natural world’.22 The CP follows the Government’s industrial strategy23 and 25-year Environment Plan (EP),24 which purportedly form complementary and mutually reinforcing approaches to the economy and environment. The crucial connection between economic growth and environmental sustainability is the use of natural capital valuation as a methodological and decision-making tool. Natural capital is understood to mean those elements of nature that either directly provide benefits or underpin human well-being.25 However, the obvious limitation is that this only measures what good the environment does for humans. Whilst the EP admits that not everything can be ‘robustly’ valued at present and that valuation is a tool rather than final arbiter of policy decisions, the natural capital approach could easily reinforce a highly efficiency-led construction of farming.26 Challenging the sustainable intensification paradigm may become even more difficult given that changes in domestic agriculture cannot be isolated from the wider context of international trade settlements post-Brexit. The CP advocates a more self-reliant and internationally competitive farming industry. Yet, as recent reports consistently indicate,27 future markets are uncertain and any bilateral trade deals agreed by the UK may radically impact upon competitiveness, lawful technologies and farming practices. The UK’s strategy for international trade after Brexit—whether a race to the ‘top’ based on niche markets and quality standards or ‘bottom’ driven by low consumer prices—will have huge consequences for farming and environmental policies. Any paradigm shift is, thus, clearly difficult and conditional on many eventualities. To understand the processes and stress points of transformation, we turn to resilience thinking as a way of better targeting reform interventions. 3. RESILIENCE THINKING: PROCESSES OF TRANSFORMATION Resilience is a concept used across many disciplines, but still underplayed in legal analysis. Whilst there is no single resilience paradigm, there is emerging convergence around social ecological resilience as a primary lens.28 We treat farming as a SES and canvass a resilience framework that develops a better understanding of farming policies and their consequences against the overarching goal of sustainable agriculture. Resilience and sustainability are often connected, theoretically and politically, but we understand sustainability to refer to outcomes over long timescales, whereas resilience prioritises processes and preparedness.29 Thus, resilience thinking is about understanding how the layers and actors of a system interact and what capacities exist, or might be established, to deal with disturbances. The special value of resilience to farming is to provide a more realistic, appraisal of connections that drive the dynamics of a system characterised by uncertainty and never-ending change. As such, resilience thinking fits within a broader theoretical understanding of human and non-human life as a complex system marked by non-linearity and relationality. Complex systems are not reducible to the sum of their parts, such that an adjustment to one part of the system causes a predictable and proportionate outcome elsewhere. By a continuing process of interaction with—and feedback from—its constituent parts and surroundings, it is always actively ‘becoming’ rather than being ‘passively subject to the timeless laws of mechanical physics’.30 This means that interactions between variables are unpredictable with no expectation of a linear relationship between inputs and outputs.31 However, unlike chaos theory, complexity does not render a system ungovernable. But, in contemplating policy interventions in an SES, resilience requires acceptance that human and non-human nature are fundamentally interdependent,32 not two separate or merely balanced considerations. For some philosophers, solidarity with non-humans is central to ecological understanding.33 To discuss governance of non-human ecosystems without consideration of the relationship between those ecosystems and human activity ignores the reality of not just scientific but also emotional and spiritual connections to land. Encompassing enchantment, belonging and understanding, these connections both increase well-being and enhance the desire and capacity to care for that land.34 Accordingly, resilience takes the relational character of these dynamic interactions as vital to understanding the context-specific processes of systemic change.35 The connectivity between social and ecological becomes a focal point for understanding transformative processes. Constructions of resilience can be traced to whether a system can recover from a shock without changing its basic structure, function, and identity.36 However, resilience does not just capture the ability of a system to ‘bounce-back’ or persist in the same state. It also incorporates the capacity to self-organise and adapt whilst staying within critical boundaries and not unintentionally shifting into a qualitatively different state.37 But, for our purposes, the value of resilience is to focus on how a system can ‘bounce-forward’, in other words transform into a new (here, more sustainable) state.38 More specifically, transformability is the capacity to cross thresholds into a new development trajectory.39 Deliberate transformation treats a crisis—such as Brexit—as an opportunity to navigate paths to a new SES. For farming, this allows fundamental reappraisal of the priority attached to intensification or agroecological methods. But deliberate transformations can only emerge from the interactions of individuals, communities and societies and through their interplay with the biosphere within and across scales.40 Thresholds are key to the relationship between resilience and sustainability. At first sight, resilience is a neutral concept; even dysfunctional systems can be resilient by persisting over time and being hard to alter. Farming may be resilient if it persists through Brexit by becoming less environmentally friendly and losing smaller farms to larger ones. Where resilience thinking contributes to sustainability, however, is by recognising key system variables that would bring about irretrievable environmental or societal harm. Resilience is an ongoing process to support the conditions that will enable innovation and pathways to ‘good’ (ie sustainable) adaptations or transformations.41 The importance of social thresholds has hitherto been understated.42 Taking this further, we contend that more attention should be paid to critical variables that connect the social and ecological. For example, the cultural question of what farming means may reach a tipping point around the numbers of farmers who understand or care about their land and the impact of their actions on the environment or who have the inclination to reflect upon their practices. Matters such as identity and security—even motivation and anxiety—are potential threshold factors when considering systemic disturbance. Understanding thresholds needs a genuinely interdisciplinary evidence base to acknowledge social trends and cultural phenomena as much as soil conditions, climatic impact, or habitat degradation.43 Awareness of critical thresholds allows policymakers to build and manage a system’s transformative capacity. Resilience entails a range of principles, such as diversity, flexibility, and scale. For example, capacity is increased where functional diversity is present in the farming practices and systems used, farm size, landscape type, and crops sown.44 Genetic diversity in crops grown and knowledge of different approaches to planting for pests or tilling for soil conservation increase the range of innovative solutions to challenges such as climate change.45 Social diversity is more likely to enable change since taking account of different cultural values and knowledge facilitates more effective, context-specific, policy interventions than rationalist, abstract, top-down approaches.46 Similarly, resilience suggests power shared by a range of actors, organisations and networks rather than only vested in government.47 This is not just a matter of diversity for its own sake but an appreciation that local communities are more likely to understand the realities of systemic complexities and should accordingly be politically empowered.48 Moreover, without diverse people and interests, there will be little disturbance of existing hierarchies and established management approaches. The principle of flexibility requires policy, law, or regulation to assimilate the feedback generated through innovations, experiments and monitoring and to adjust in response. That flexibility accommodates temporal and spatial dimensions and operates at the most appropriate scale. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to ‘successful’ forward thinking is lack of knowledge about the behaviour of ecosystems, human social systems, and the relationship between them.49 Resilience requires a framework integrating learning into the process of managing the system, feeding results back for evidence-based decision-making.50 Incorporating the learning of actors on the ground who are learning-by-doing is particularly vital.51 This applies both to current innovation and experimentation as well as traditional, even highly localised, embodied approaches to management of an SES. There are no universal solutions, and context-specific, tried-and-tested, local adaptations may often be most effective.52 Managed experimentation where it is ‘safe to fail’ reduces the risk of environmentally or socially undesirable outcomes affecting the fundamental functioning of the rest of the system.53 Governance measures should recognise different phases of transformation, from preparation and navigation of change to building post-transformation resilience.54 4. SITES OF STRUGGLE: CULTURAL IDENTITY, CONNECTION AND SECURITY THRESHOLDS Farming may not follow more usual SES typologies that explore a particular ecosystem—a wetland or a forest, for instance—in light of the complex interactions between its ecological and social aspects. Farming is a more multidimensional system that weaves together concerns for a range of ecosystems with a wide array of human-related interests and structures that comprise the ‘social’. There are multiple ecosystems at issue relating to soil, water, flora and fauna, which impact across a variety of scales—farm level, landscape, regional, national and beyond. Similarly, viewed as one SES, farming comprises a multi-scale array of social systems from individual farms, through civil society organisations interested in food and fuel production, to institutions and policymakers responsible for the frameworks in which farming takes place. The social and the ecological are entwined through the ongoing need to ensure that the land can supply the food and fuel needed for a growing population. The development, even survival, of a system depends on how critical thresholds are understood and addressed. Hence we discuss cultural identity, connection to land and security as key sites of struggle shaping the future of the farming system. These are central for any capacity-building strategy to support a transformative policy shift that challenges the hegemony of sustainable intensification. Although these sites of struggle are discussed separately further, they are highly interconnected, so that interventions in one may significantly affect others. All three relate to the social-ecological interdependency pivotal to the farming system. Cultural identity and connection reflect different relationships. The former largely concerns peer group relations or externalities in terms of what a farmer ‘should’ be doing, whereas connection refers to farmers’ individual relationships with (and subsequent behaviour towards) their land. Security is a factor capable of trumping the commitment to ecological attitudes that identity and connection might otherwise encourage. Brexit is undoubtedly a major threat to farmers’ financial security.55 Yet, in a rare explicit reference to resilience, the Government’s CP declares that ‘[t]he best way of improving resilience … is to support increases in farm productivity’. This not only limits resilience to food security but in so doing potentially undermines the green credentials of reform by seemingly favouring productivist values. Brexit’s impact upon cultural identity and connection may be more indirect, but just as significant if its effect upon farming is most detrimental for those practices and farms that are more likely to adopt sustainable agroecological behaviours. 4.1 Cultural Identity A critical question linking social and ecological aspects of farming is how farmers identify themselves and their function(s) and how they respond personally and collectively to change. Put simply, what farmers believe in, worry about or feel secure in doing will affect how they farm. Often grouped under the umbrella terms of ‘social capital’ and ‘social memory’;56 cultural factors include feelings of agency, trust, the extent and nature of social networks, alongside common rules, norms and values found amongst actors or communities as well as the store of knowledge and practice held by those actors.57 If transformation is to be supported, then ways of reframing the cultural identity of farmers and farming must be found. This means addressing the conceptualisation of the ‘good farmer’, an idea so widespread that it is helpful to invoke research and experiments from other agricultural regimes when considering the English system. Hitherto, the prevalent standard of the ‘good farmer’ connotes a food producer rather than someone primarily concerned about the ecological capacities of the land farmed. This extends to regulatory assumptions about the farmer as a competitive business manager who employs conventional methods.58 Although by no means universal,59 such a shared cultural identity is hard to disturb and, as a result, the self-identity of many conventional farmers has been a barrier to their willingness to adopt environmentally friendly practices.60 Thus, farming land ‘tidily’ by neat ploughing and hedge cutting is perceived as more valuable than other practices, such as no-till agriculture, which reduce soil-erosion but do not conform to the behaviour of a ‘good farmer’ because the result looks extremely untidy. Decisions to do something ‘different’ may well impact adversely personally and in relation to professional standing.61 In addition, farming remains male-dominated, where barriers to women can affect the conduct of farming, such as choices of technologies, decision-making arrangements, diversification strategies and even the physical design and operation of farms.62 The ‘good farmer’ standard—as a source of values and legitimacy for farming practices—is, thus, a site of struggle63 for any process transforming the goals, priorities and practices of farming. Put another way, there are at least three farmer roles potentially in tension: as producer, owner, and citizen,64 with the latter also understood as steward or guardian. But those roles are not fixed, the reality of identity consisting in ‘doing’.65 In resilience terms, a key question is whether those roles can be ‘managed’ alongside sustainable intensification66 or whether a radical transformation is required for the purposes of ‘better’ sustainability that cannot just be a matter of balancing roles within multifunctionality. The processes and agents for reimagining the ‘good farmer’ are many layered and complex. Research from Sweden67 suggests factors are institutional (CAP’s greening provisions and organic standard setting), market (growing demand for organic produce) and ethical (public concern over animal welfare and environmental protection). A study in England concluded that farmers’ willingness to engage in environmental activities was affected at different levels ranging from individual beliefs and values to community and societal norms.68 Belgian social psychology research also suggests that farmers’ moral norms and self-identity shape the extent of their motivations to take care of biodiversity.69 In sum, the remoulding of what it takes to be a good farmer is the product of an ongoing iteration with social and cultural contexts.70 Moreover, it is this internalised reconceptualisation of the ‘good farmer’ over time that is the critical element in bringing about changes in behaviour on a sustainable footing, rather than the more limited effects of external drivers such as financial support and incentives.71 Thus, for resilience purposes, the process of transforming the self-identity of farmers may unlock and navigate a more sustainable, scale-led approach to agricultural practices. In particular, measures to remodel the notion of the ‘good farmer’—if conducted along resilient lines of co-production of knowledge and understanding—can be a bridge between the small scale of the field/farm to the larger scale of landscape.72 As noted in a Welsh farming cooperative study, habitat work may be undertaken jointly, which would not have been embarked upon as individuals.73 Agreement about types of action (tree planting, destocking, etc) can be made collectively, with individual farms still deciding about particular levels or intensity of action suitable for their undertaking. Shifting the focus to landscape level could prove a more appropriate basis of future funding schemes.74 Institutional factors that contribute to the persistence of the good farmer identity also need addressing. As discussed further in Section 4.3, agricultural tenancy law and policies governing access to land for new entrants may also hinder sustainable transitions. The CP’s shift to ‘public money for public goods’ is not of itself enough to secure a transformation in identity. Rather, the key point is for farmers to become legitimised in prioritising practices that are ecologically appropriate for their land. Put another way, resilience capacity demands that the Government’s preference for sustainable intensification is thrown open to contestation with the possibility of alternative, peer-supported, local solutions. 4.2 Connection to Land The people-place connection commands particular attention because it is associated with an ethic of care, which correlates positively with a willingness to act as a steward of land, with responsibility both to that land and wider society.75 Furthermore, at a deeper and more personal level, individuals need motivation, knowledge and skills to change their behaviour and act in more environmentally friendly ways. Having a sense of interdependence and emotional attachment to land contained in the notion of connection with nature strongly provides that motivation.76 For Herman, this is best captured through the concept of ‘enchantment’, which expresses an individual’s personal and embodied relationship with a place arising through interaction and intimacy with the land of the kind experienced by many farmers.77 More broadly, literature across various disciplines suggests that connection with non-human nature is primarily acquired through experiences in nature, particularly when younger.78 This fundamental connection through feeling underlines further the lack of separation between social and ecological. A key resilience threshold is, thus, likely to be encountered as mental disconnection between humans and the biosphere continues.79 Despite its ‘health and harmony’ tag, the production-oriented CP is conspicuously free of references to this connection. Indeed, ‘engagement with the natural environment’ is linked only to conservation of natural beauty and to exercise or recreational activities for the general public.80 Reinforced by its dependency on natural capital valuation, the CP shows a worrying lack of concern for connection to land among farmers. In this sense, the land itself can be seen as an actor in the understanding and management of land use and farm practices. As Graham has argued, the ‘de-physicalisation’ of land holds significant risks for how property law is conceptualised and regulated.81 Whilst lack of connection does not automatically entail a lack of care, the relational approach advocated in resilience thinking invites a closer and more localised understanding of conditions and solutions to problems. Soil degradation provides a specific illustration of the impact connection (or lack of it) can make on farming decisions and resilience. Modern agricultural practices are widely seen as largely responsible for the loss of this natural capital,82 with the annual cost of soil degradation in England and Wales put at £1.2bn.83 The predictions are dire—according to the independent UK Committee on Climate Change ‘[s]ome of the most productive agricultural land in England is at risk of becoming unprofitable within a generation due to soil erosion and the loss of organic carbon’.84 In resilience terms, therefore, the scientific evidence appears to be screaming the dangers of approaching critical thresholds. However, consensus about the threat has not yet been matched in terms of response. A study based on farming in the South Downs National Park concluded that behaviours regarding soil erosion can be divided into passive and active.85 On one hand, farmers motivated more by questions of financial security would only act in relation to their soil where there was a risk of losing financial incentives. On the other, if environmental values were at the forefront of the farmers’ motivations, there was greater likelihood of more active, pre-emptive changes in practices. However, in that study, only a minority of farmers were driven by conservation values. These findings suggest that policy interventions to secure durable transformations cannot be based on financial incentives alone. Voluntary activity seems hugely important to the development of improved soil management and other sustainable farming practices.86 Understanding land and being connected to it are part of the navigation of changing patterns of relations that is central to capacity-building.87 However, the CP, whilst citing soil health first on its list of ‘public goods’, has already been criticised for its lack of detail about implementing strategy. In contrast, the Sustainable Soils Alliance has called for an immediate integrated eight-point soil action plan underpinned by statute.88 The kind of caring, knowledgeable relationship with land characterised by the idea of affective connection or enchantment has a significant temporal dimension; farmers need time to develop the connection, which can motivate and enable them to engage in effective behaviours for sustainability. Not only do dominant property norms fail to reflect the significance of such a relationship,89 but certain specific property rules may well work against transformation of farming. We discuss appropriate responses in Section 5. 4.3 Security Security—or, more pertinently, insecurity—takes myriad forms, including financial, physical, and mental vulnerabilities that affect a farmer’s perceptions, decision-making and conduct. Disturbances to security will have both systemic and individual effects, with extreme impacts manifested in bankruptcies, exits from the industry, or even suicide. Indeed, farming persistently ranks as one of the highest suicide risk occupations, at least for men.90 The joined-up thinking required for resilience understands social aspects of farming—such as identity and connection—to be just as integral to personal security as financial concerns. All the more so since Government surveys indicate that farmers are not only motivated by profit maximisation.91 Financially, English farming presents a mixed picture, with 16% of farms making losses in 2014–2017.92 Incomes vary across sectors, with poultry farms the most profitable in this period and grazing livestock and mixed farms the least.93 Financial security is a driver for diversification, with almost two-thirds of farms in 2016–2017 using farm resources to deliver non-agricultural activities that yielded profits across all groups of farms.94 In the worst-case scenario, threats to livelihoods rupture the critical connection between social and ecological altogether, rendering security a key site of struggle. Yet, if an environmentally aware farmer exits the industry, it does not automatically follow that the land becomes a housing development or a desert ravaged by over-intense farming methods. Resilience must, thus, accommodate a range of variables around financial shocks—such as the effect on land prices and availability, the opportunities for new, possibly more innovative or entrepreneurial, entrants to farming or the reorientation of existing farming practices and technologies. As resilience does not preordain outcomes, possibilities such as abandonment of land and rewilding could prove ecologically positive responses to replace previous farming activity in some areas. Brexit will almost certainly have significant financial consequences whatever the eventual nature of the UK’s trade relationship with the EU and the rest of the world. With around 60% of farm incomes currently coming from basic EU payments,95 exit from the CAP leaves a financial gap. Recent reports that have modelled post-Brexit outcomes point to different impacts across sectors. For example, cereals and upland beef and sheep producers account for a large share of producers and land use.96 According to the Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board, it is these producers who, on average, will be most severely affected by drops in farm business income.97 Indeed, on the ‘Fortress UK’ or ‘no-deal’ scenario (ie based on WTO rules affecting market access and support), those sectors would see their average farm become loss-making.98 Different factors, such as increased labour costs from the loss of migrant labour, are potentially critical for other sectors such as horticulture.99 From a resilience perspective, large-scale financial harm puts the critical social-ecological relationship at considerable risk. Agricultural regulatory regimes generally fall into one of four categories:100 sectoral protection (eg Norway, Switzerland), decoupled subsidies (eg the CAP), insurance (eg USA and Canada) or market-oriented (eg New Zealand and Australia) schemes. The greater the dissonance between agricultural objectives and sustainability goals, the more likely the disturbance to the very structure of the farming SES. Recent analysis for Chatham House, for example, advocates a post-Brexit market model for the UK whilst acknowledging the significant impact upon farm businesses.101 On this view, the benefits of ‘lower prices for consumers, ensured food security through diversified trade, and a rise in the sector’s productivity…potentially outweigh those of preserving any particular form of farming system’.102 This market approach also claims that the costs of such restructuring can be exaggerated and that farmers exiting the industry will be deployed elsewhere in the economy.103 But, we would argue, in what sense does that—even if true—assist the sustainability of the farming SES? Put another way, a policy shift to prioritising the market fails to recognise the tipping points that we have been discussing as pivotal to the system. Even with the transitional period set out in the Bill,104 wider Brexit negotiations might radically rewrite market conditions and exacerbate factors affecting the structure of a farming SES vulnerable to global pricing and fluctuations in supply.105 Structural diversity of farms, farmers, and practices promotes the capacity of the farming SES to respond appropriately to changing environmental, economic and social pressures. Ensuring diversity in the species of crops or animals husbanded, as well as methods of growing provides greater flexibility to achieve sustainable food production and adapt to challenges such as climate change.106 Diversity of farm size and type is similarly valuable. In contrast to larger ones, smaller farms may be less likely to produce high volumes of food efficiently. They may also struggle more to make use of economies of scale and to maintain financial security with reduced options for diversification and fewer resources to invest in new technologies. However, these farms are more likely to employ agroecological practices with lower chemical inputs or heavy machinery use, which directly benefit ecosystems.107 Smaller farms may also provide better opportunities for connection and ‘enchantment’ of the farmer with the land which, in turn, incentivises its future care.108 They are also likely to employ more people and produce and sell more local varieties of food109 and to employ more women, who are under-represented in farming.110 Yet small farms are in decline in England, with one recent report suggesting that few if any farms under 20 hectares could be left within a generation, and most of those up to 50 hectares also gone in two generations.111 This loss of farm diversity has hitherto been met by ‘deafening silence’ among institutions and policymakers.112 Worryingly, the CP fails to acknowledge the contribution of small farms to a ‘green’ policy. Rather, their discussion is diffused across rural communities, landscape heritage and problems of digital connectivity. In our view, this is another opportunity missed, as allowing small farms to flourish must be part of any transformative path for farming. The CP similarly fails to address another key issue of security: tenure and access to land. This is currently a major challenge for farming in England where land prices are very high.113 Leasing land could provide a way in for new entrants and others who are unable to purchase land, but tenancies too are hard to find, often with high rents and very short terms.114 Unfortunately, successive government policies have exacerbated problems in several ways. For example, security of tenure for tenants of farmland was substantially reduced by the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995 from potentially three generations (under the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986) to four and a half years on average.115 Likewise, cuts in local council funding have contributed to large scale reduction in the availability of council-owned farms as land is sold to fund shortfalls for essential services.116 At the same time, farmers are retiring later and holding onto land that in previous generations would have become available much sooner.117 Having farming land available that is not prohibitively costly or short-term is a key requirement of transition to an agroecological SES because it enables a diverse range of entrants and enables long-term sustainable thinking. Lack of available land at affordable prices has adverse implications for the diversity of the farming population and existing imbalances in age, gender and ethnicity and cultural perspectives and values. As difficulty in accessing land disproportionately impacts younger farmers seeking entry to the industry, it also risks severely damaging the farmer-land relationship because age appears a relevant feature in developing emotional connection with non-human nature. Loss of security of tenure impacts security more generally and creates greater pressure to build a profitable enterprise quickly—especially where there is significant debt—regardless of longer term ecological considerations.118 At a more individual level, security is a key issue for farmers’ ability to pursue innovative farming practices or business diversifications that enhance the social-ecological relationship. Where farmers are uncertain about markets and income streams, they are less likely to entertain further uncertainty by taking risks for long-term environmental benefits, especially where these risks could further threaten the present viability of the farm by reducing yields or undermining relationships with distributors, family or neighbours because they are not seen as compatible with ‘good farming’. Similarly, diversification strategies that may make the farm more financially secure in the long run but require investment in the short term may be impacted by feelings of insecurity. Even experiments at a minor level—with new leys, breeds, or rotations, for instance—are less likely when a farmer is worried about the future of the farm, never mind bigger innovations in ecologically sensitive practices. However, insecurity may also prevent farmers adopting innovations, which might arguably be more likely to undermine the social-ecological connection; large-scale mechanisation, for instance. Nevertheless, it is also entirely possible for insecurity to stimulate innovative activity, as some farmers feel driven to try new things in response to uncertainty in traditional income streams. Thus, for resilience, it is important not to leap into interventions that address uncertainty too quickly without full consideration and iteration of issues and consequences. On this basis, the Bill’s transition phase is welcome as a space in which resilience-inspired creativity can operate. 5. BUILDING CAPACITY FOR TRANSFORMATION: LAW AND GOVERNANCE Two major propositions have emerged so far. First, the shock of Brexit is likely to impact significantly upon the farming system by disturbing social-ecological relations across the threshold sites of struggle. Secondly, ‘greening’ proposals will probably fall short of a transformation without more resilience-focused policy interventions. To that extent, Brexit presents an opportunity—we would say last chance—to reverse the drift towards sustainable intensification as the main driver of policy. However, the CP is vague and limited by its emphasis upon natural capital valuation and increased productivity. We therefore turn to how interventions may be framed and targeted for farming transformations that work towards ‘better’ sustainability outcomes. Put in specifically resilience terms, our concern is to build capacity within the farming system not only to avoid agricultural policy being ramped up to destructive over-intensification but also to ‘bounce forward’ to an agroecologically focused array of policies, processes and practices. From this transformative perspective, we take law as an archetypal institution for managing human interaction with ecosystems. It has a pivotal yet double-edged role, capable of either maintaining the status quo or driving and supporting change. Law’s capacity to provide a crucial feedback loop between social and ecological elements of farming gives it heightened significance for shaping or managing the critical relationships around sites of struggle at a time when the outcomes of Brexit negotiations will use law to lock in particular policy paths and consequently prevent or deter others. Law’s centrality is underlined by studies of social resilience,119 which show that self-help or voluntary actions on the part of key actors (farmers in our context) are insufficient, making additional interventions necessary. Connections within and between eco- and social systems inspire the legal measures and governance recommendations below. In keeping with our resilience focus, we do not tie proposals to specific sites of struggle as this would be an unrealistic, rigid and inappropriately linear approach. Resilience invites a reconsideration of how complex systems work in fact and provides an incentive for using that evidence in creative thinking about flexible governance processes.120 At the outset we identify the need to recalibrate some fundamentals of legal thinking. We then focus on three strategic levers for preparing and navigating transformation: the use of public money, innovation measures and reform of legal relationships that determine land use. As any transformation still needs consolidation and long-term development, our final element provides monitoring and enforcement through embedded learning and participation in decision-making by key actors. Our recommendations for a farming law and governance framework are guided by four general considerations. First, we draw upon principles of resilience from Section 3. Secondly, in translating those principles into effective interventions, we utilise a palette of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ measures ranging from property law reform and financial support to learning and participation in decision-making and monitoring. Thirdly, we refer to lessons to be learned from the CAP. Fourthly, we address structural and individual issues by combining measures about both farming and farmers. 5.1 Unlocking Legal Thinking: Wild Law Approaches One of the biggest obstacles to law delivering step change is that any deliberate transformation must overcome the resilience features and processes of the existing system and legal framework. In particular, anthropocentric values underpinning the prevalent view of sustainable intensification are an ongoing barrier to a holistic, integrated, realistic understanding of farming as an SES in which the centre of gravity is shifted to agroecological practices and cultures. As noted earlier, resilience targets the interdependency of human and non-human nature and the connectivity of ecological and social thresholds. However, the current dominant value framework for law privileges the social at the expense of the ecological, presenting the non-human natural world as something separate from ‘us’ and to be exploited for our use.121 This creates a tendency to make decisions on land use which fail to recognise adequately the needs and interests of non-human nature, as well as less easily quantifiable human benefits. Whilst controls over land use in the community interest have limited owners’ rights in some contexts, the residual dominance of private property in much agricultural land use regulation only reinforces the notion that there is no general obligation of stewardship of agricultural land for the public (environmental) good.122 More recent conceptual approaches to environmental protection, such as ecosystem services or natural capital valuation, preserve anthropocentric values.123 To conceptualise ecosystems in terms of their benefits to mankind or how they can be monetarised might admittedly import a greater awareness of public goods considerations into policy-making. However, this is merely as part of a calculus and still misses the fundamental nature of the interdependency of earth and humans by only considering ‘those elements of the natural environment which provide valuable goods and services to people’.124 A resilience thinking approach that properly understands the complexities of social-ecological relations demands bigger adjustments to political and regulatory mindsets. Wild Law opens this pathway, demanding the creation of a legal framework that works primarily to support the functioning of vital ecosystems.125 It emphasises the interconnectedness of human and non-human nature, the importance of ecological and social processes in ensuring sustainability and the value of participatory decision-making.126 Like agroecology, from a Wild Law perspective, sustainable land use is dependent upon the integration of culture and nature. In prioritising ecosystem, health and human–nature relationships, a Wild legal and policy approach is also less inclined to rely on technological or market solutions where these are not likely to best maintain that health and those connections.127 Prioritising intensification through advanced technologies may have significant advantages but is unlikely to accommodate the full ecological, intrinsic, or spiritual value of land. Precision delivery of herbicide by machine, for instance, may reduce pollution and local water company costs but do little to safeguard a well-loved landscape. Similarly, intensive crop production on one area may not be adequately offset by taking another out of production or purchasing an ‘off-set’ nearby. Human and non-human life alike may have interactions with the land, which are not adequately captured in monetary terms or compensable by offering an alternative, even if the overall ‘biodiversity value’ is equivalent.128 Instead of being considered primarily as a commodity, the broader value of land—and the ecosystems it supports—is central to the aims and obligations of Wild Law, policy and practice.129 Failure to recognise properly the interrelationships between human and land risks damaging key ecological and social features needed to support sustainable farming, such as habitats, soils and watercourses, as well as human care and appreciation of non-human nature. A Wild Law of property presents landownership as comprising significant responsibilities as well as rights.130 Like other more community-oriented concepts of property,131 freedom to use the land is perceived as inherently limited by ecological considerations. As such, for a Wild Law of property, there is a higher baseline at which payment for farming sustainably needs to be paid than under traditional approaches.132 Likewise, by recognising and seeking to represent diverse values in decision-making, Wild Law captures the complexity of systemic relations and need for involvement of diverse actors represented by principles of resilience. Creating a post-Brexit framework for agricultural land use provides an opportunity for embedding Wild Law principles into law and policy to support transformation of the farming SES. However, giving effect to both Wild Law values and resilience principles presents challenges. Rule of law values such as certainty and liability for harm can stand in contrast to flexible responses needed for adaptive governance.133 Sometimes, law’s focus on pre-decisional—front-end—procedures such as environmental impact assessments places too much emphasis on predictability and reliability, with limited opportunity for responding flexibly to feedback.134 Yet law can provide useful stability and guidance combined with capacity for adaptation by emphasising guiding principle over rigidly defined outcomes and processes.135 We maximise ‘soft’ law mechanisms in the form of guidance and best practice or laws, which are framed broadly and include significant discretion for enforcing authorities. Balancing flexibility with certainty and accountability will still be an ongoing challenge.136 5.2 Public Financial Support: Reorienting Farming Values Politically, post-Brexit agriculture cannot escape the question of whether public financial support is justifiable. Predictably, this is a central focus of the CP’s new ‘land management system’. Currently, the CAP framework provides financial support comprising direct payments to farmers via a basic payment scheme (BPS) and payment for rural development through agri-environment schemes (AES).137 Farmers entitled to support under the BPS must comply with certain land management requirements, including abiding by all relevant laws and meeting basic standards of, for example, soil conditions and crop rotations. Additional ‘greening’ obligations were introduced in 2013 requiring maintenance of permanent grassland, crop diversification and creation of ‘ecological focus areas’ on arable land.138 Farmers may also apply to join an AES—currently, Countryside Stewardship—where additional payments are available for farming with enhanced environmental, climate and recreational benefits.139 Although successive reforms have undeniably moved away from an exclusively productivist paradigm,140 the shortcomings and unintended consequences of CAP strategies have been apparent for some time. For example, allocations based on land area mean that bigger farms get more support; to the point where 25% of farms capture nearly three-quarters of public subsidy.141 Moreover, payments are made whether prices are low or high so that any risk protection element to direct subsidies seems misplaced.142 The financial system envisaged in the Bill is based on the mantra of ‘public support for public goods’ instead of income support. Certainly, paying farmers to ‘produce’ biodiversity, capture and store carbon and promote recreational access and education recognises value provided for the wider community at personal cost. Such a shift of emphasis from support to ‘payment’ is critical to the recalibration of the social-ecological relationship. Paying farmers to produce environmental and recreational outputs may engender cultural change more effectively than previous policies and directly incentivising more sustainable practices or outcomes. The ‘good farmer’ is still able to make a living by being a good producer—a key identity factor—but is now producing environmental goods alongside food. In other words, using financial tools to alter the critical social-ecological nexus mitigates the kind of security threat that may otherwise hinder transformation whilst also lending political and cultural legitimacy to a longer term redefinition of the purpose of farming. From both a resilience and agroecological perspective, diversity and flexibility are key features of any payment scheme so that—depending on context—farmers on highly productive land can continue to concentrate on food production, whilst other equally ‘good’ farmers deliver a higher proportion of environmental goods. This does not mean that ‘good’ land should always be productive and ‘poor’ land the subject for environmental action—on the contrary, resilient transformation requires any such bifurcation or stigmatisation to be avoided in favour of a contextualised systemic approach. The boundaries of ‘public goods’ were left open by the CP, and Section 1 of the Bill provides the Secretary of State with significant discretion to determine the priorities for financial assistance. So, for example, financial support might be a lever for encouraging polycultures, mixed (livestock-arable) farming and use of less-commercially popular varieties to promote food security, increase biodiversity and buffer periods of uncertainty. Diversity in food production may also enable consumer demand to be met with reduced transportation costs and helping farmers to achieve a steadier income by spreading the risk over different markets. A policy question is whether farmers should be given incentives to diversify food production, for example, into fruit and vegetables where the UK has high reliance on imports.143 Payments should only be available if necessary for the growth of fruit and vegetable production and that such growth is valuable for the sustainability of the farming SES, whether in terms of long term security of food supply or significant ecosystems. Food may be a private good but food security, like functioning ecosystems (soil and water) and attractive landscapes, is arguably a public good on which public money could be spent if the market will not supply it.144 However, any new payment package can only facilitate the process of transforming the farming SES if it is built, applied and monitored with close regard for the dynamics that affect critical thresholds. A financial framework of itself is no guarantee of effective outcomes, as CAP experience has shown. ‘Greening’ payments have not significantly enhanced environmental performance, with a change in farming practices in around only 5% of EU farmland.145 These ‘greening’ elements of the BPS payment may have been well-intended, yet little evidence was produced in support of the ecological need for such a component, which either replicated what farmers were already doing or required them to do something inconvenient for little value.146 To foster the transformation towards agroecology, any new scheme must do more to incentivise a diverse system with low chemical inputs than under the CAP.147 Accordingly, whilst financial incentives may mitigate security risks, the creation, focus, and application of such payments also need to take place in accordance with resilience principles of ‘bottom-up’ governance and participation. Shifting the paradigm values of farming in an agroecological direction cannot be done without building systemic capacity around the ‘identity’ and ‘connection’ sites of struggle. In the past, farmers have reported interactions with government agencies in which their real-world knowledge and insights are not reflected in regulatory obligations. Instead of being able to contribute land management solutions using embodied knowledge of their farms, farmers have been perceived as ‘technicians’ whose role is to carry out the instructions of the ‘expert’ conservationist.148 The resulting feelings of lack of ‘ownership’ have been identified as a significant reason for limited uptake of agri-environment schemes.149 However, recent studies suggest that, given opportunities to have their views properly integrated into policy development, farmers feel greater ownership of the resulting policy and a stronger willingness to commit.150 Any new scheme must be developed from sound evidence with appropriate empirical and experiential input from farmers so that ‘public’ obligations are meaningful and schemes attract take-up. Similarly, a post-Brexit scheme must be more flexible and responsive to feedback than the rigidities of the CAP.151 Farming for resilience, thus, reflects wider calls for collaborative governance approaches that incorporate effective listening to a range of voices and willingness to adapt policies on the basis of those inputs.152 Recent steps—the EP and the 2018 consultation exercise itself—suggest some commitment to ensuring farmers can participate in development of policy and regulatory obligations. But resilience requires ongoing participation, beyond policy formulation to post-enactment review. Where relationships between farmers and advisors or regulators are well-developed, they provide knowledgeable assistance to the farmer on conservation and a conduit back to policymakers of the impacts of policy on the ground.153 Visits may also provide a feeling of connection to a wider network. Whilst contact time may be financially costly, the value in terms of learning by both parties, changing cultural expectations and emotional security appears high. The pledge to ongoing support for advice services154 will be an effective mechanism if properly funded. Reference in the CP to trialling new approaches with farmers and land managers is positive,155 but it is unclear how much commitment exists to ongoing feedback or how to achieve it. The success of financial reform also depends on appropriate and effective levels of funding. Payment cannot simply become ‘income support’ by the back door; it must be calibrated to properly value the public goods being produced and recognise the costs being borne by producers. From a Wild Law perspective, this should take into account the inherent responsibilities contained in landownership and increasingly recognised as such.156 On this basis, payment for some existing BPS obligations, such as maintaining basic soil health,157 could be deemed unnecessary.158 However, future land management obligations must strike a fair balance between the burden imposed on individuals and the corresponding public benefit.159 Ultimately, for agriculture to be transformed, payments must enable a high proportion of those who wish to engage in environmentally beneficial farming to do so profitably. Moreover, not just those who possess the largest farms. Any evidence-led, flexible approach needs to accommodate the particular contributions of specific types of farm and their challenges. This highlights the reasons to continue to support small and vulnerable farms that perform the important resilience roles identified in Section 3. Some basic support may be needed simply to enable these farms to survive, enhanced by public goods payments for the more environmentally friendly practices they undertake. The CP recognises the potential need to provide tailored support to certain sectors, notably sheep farmers.160 The transitional terms envisaged by the Bill161 face the twin challenges of not losing the existing diversity of farms and farmers and being slow enough to promote sustainable transformations. 5.3 Facilitating Learning and Innovation Building transformative capacity requires support for learning, experimentation and innovation by farmers.162 Whilst acknowledging that technology cannot be a panacea for wider systemic change, law and policy can support technological advances that have sustainability benefits.163 The EP places significant emphasis on the role of new technologies in sustainable food production,164 and the CP refers to farming as a ‘capital intensive industry’ with technology integral to farming profitability.165 Developments such as precision farming using robotics, artificial intelligence, and genetic modification are likely to be highly valuable in reducing environmental impacts of farming and enhancing efficiency. However, resilience concerns arise if new technologies are developed and marketed too quickly. Without real, long-term testing taking place, new technology can generate fresh, unintended, negative ecological or social consequences that take the system further from the objective of ecological sustainability. In this respect, reform should encourage a wide array of small-scale innovations and experimental case studies at levels where the approach trialled is safe to fail, both in terms of the ecosystems that might be affected and the farm, farmer and community. Innovation for transformation can also be supported by incentivising the development of agroecological techniques.166 This, crucially, need not be confined to new technologies but could encompass developments in traditional practices and knowledge such as crop rotation, integrated pest management and hedge-laying. Although labour-intensive, these are high-value for transformation as they foster diversity and flexibility within the system as well as promoting connection with land. Supporting farmers to work at a smaller scale, in closer proximity with the soil and species on their farm, encourages enhanced connection and relationship with the land, of the kind more likely to empower and incentivise long-term ecological care of that land.167 Innovation and development in traditional farming practice is also perhaps more likely to occur at the farm level or involve research activity with farmers than new technologies and so foster the local, bottom-up adaptations that are appropriate for agroecology and advocated by resilience thinking.168 The EP and CP recognise the importance of some of these more traditional practices.169 But support for research and innovation appears focused almost entirely on new methods170 and the idea of farming ‘excellence’ linked firmly to the adoption of new technologies.171 Incentives for learning and innovation may be financial and personal satisfaction and cultural capital. The proposal for capital grants for sustainable practices in addition to the new payment scheme for environmental land management is helpful.172 Again, lessons can be learned from the CAP regime, which was not designed to incorporate the learning of farmers or to promote innovation; even its agri-environment schemes proved complex and overly prescriptive.173 A scheme that allocates payment by results has the potential to foster experimentation and further empower farmers by enabling them to choose outcomes they value and are appropriate for their farm and landscape. This requires a wide range of options174 challenging enough to require sensitive but innovative land management, not just permit ‘business as usual’. There are additional concerns that many desired outcomes are difficult to define and monitor,175 but in a good example of resilience-thinking, Natural England is conducting small trials of the payment by results approach using indicator species that do not require specialist skills to identify.176 The potential of this approach is recognised in the CP, following results from another pilot by Natural England.177 However, care must be taken to ensure that emphasis on outcomes does not stifle legitimate attempts to solve problems creatively. Opportunities for learning are accordingly essential. Soft law in the form of written guidance is valuable here.178 This gives practical advice on compliance with obligations, explains the ecological and agricultural value of many practices and provides suggestions for more ecologically sustainable techniques beyond those required by law.179 As an efficient way of fostering awareness of more agroecological practices, guidance could be enhanced with more experimental approaches. However, as discussed earlier, this must be in addition to support from advisors who understand agroecology and with whom the farmer can create a dynamic relationship enabling both farmer and regulator to adapt and improve management obligations. The proposed support for peer-to-peer learning is particularly welcome because structures for collaborative learning amongst farmers can build capacity for transformation by enabling the horizontal spread of agroecological approaches.180 Agricultural education is vital, with provision for both new entrants and established farmers a key part of orienting future farmers’ cultural expectations and capacities for environmental management. The CP further highlights the importance of post-16 educational pathways into farming,181 including one linking agriculture and environment. This is a step in the right direction, but it could suggest an ongoing separation rather than complete integration of environmental considerations within farming. Ensuring that agroecological approaches are fully integrated into agriculture teaching—and wider schooling—is vital to achieving a more sustainable farming future.182 As emphasised throughout, a resilience approach must understand the interconnections of factors in the farming SES. Innovation is a pivotal issue that sits at the heart of the social-ecological dynamic and cuts across all the sites of struggle affecting the future direction of change. Small farms, again, are a crucible in which innovations may be nurtured and trialled but are also at perhaps greatest risk of financial insecurity because of the high labour costs involved.183 5.4 Reforming Legal Relationships Concerning Land Use A notable gap in both the EP and CP is consideration of regulatory issues around availability of land for farming. Market forces are unpredictable, although withdrawal of Direct Payments may reduce the value of land to buy or rent and so make access for new entrants slightly easier.184 A more direct intervention could encourage remaining local authority landholding to be used more effectively.185 Presently, local authorities have no legal obligations to prioritise selling or renting their rural holdings to farmers practising more agroecological methods or to hold smaller plots of land to enable new entrants to experiment and gain experience.186 Such reform might facilitate a new wave of farmers keen to engage in more sustainable practices. It may also be possible to make further use of planning policy and planning ‘advice’ currently used by some local authorities to promote sustainable urban growing.187 Planning authorities could be required to give significant weight to the incorporation of space for agroecological growing as part of a development, perhaps in combination with additional support to the burgeoning Community Land Trust movement.188 The CP makes brief reference to working with councils to ensure the existence of community farms but lacks detail.189 Better support for transformation to sustainability across all the sites of struggle could come from changes in the law relating to agricultural tenancies. Currently, some language and content of the law contributes to the persistence of the good farmer identity in the productivist mould. The obligation of ‘good husbandry’,190 for instance, discourages extensified land practices by the tenant, which might result in lower yields for ecological gain.191 In resilience terms, this reduces the flexibility for tenants to engage in diverse practices and ecologically beneficial experimentation because of impact on the security of their holding. The significance of this obligation has been reduced by successive legislation,192 but many leases still incorporate the ‘good husbandry’ requirement, given the need for some frame of reference by which to judge tenant behaviour and the lack of an alternative, updated, version of good husbandry in law.193 Moreover, as discussed earlier, the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995 also reduced the security of tenure enjoyed by tenant farmers. This has implications across systemic thresholds. Short leases provide reduced opportunity and incentive to develop a relational connection with the land.194 Shorter time scales may also discourage farmers from trying agroecological practices that might lower yields—especially where those practices are experimental—and from joining agri-environment schemes.195 In other words, the legal framework promotes the persistence of productivist culture and an insecurity, which may inhibit transformative activity. The CP sought views regarding the impact of agricultural tenancies on new entrants but with little emphasis on law reform.196 Security for existing farmers must be balanced with ensuring that landowners are willing to offer land for rent so that sufficient land is available for new entrants. Limited reform could be explored to better reflect the multifunctional farming role and whether minimum terms could be introduced, which recognise both the need for land availability and for security and connection with that land, such as the 10-year term advocated by the Tenant Farmers Association.197 We would also advocate the development of a more ecologically sustainable successor to the ‘good husbandry’ obligation, drawing on Wild Law to reflect an expectation of tenants’ responsibilities to farm in an ecologically sustainable manner. 5.5 Monitoring and Enforcement The farming SES is always incomplete and changing, and so far we have explored factors important in preparing and navigating transformative shifts. However, resilience is an ongoing learning process, without which any transformation may unravel or be unpicked. Monitoring the functioning of the system and the success or otherwise of obligations undertaken by farmers in exchange for public money is key, together with feedback on non-financial strategies. Yet approaches to monitoring and enforcement of obligations have been persistently problematic. In particular, there has been a failure to require information about not only significant ecological thresholds, such as the state of soil health,198 but also social thresholds, such as loss of small farms, farmers feeling compulsion to sell and so on. The EP’s proposal to implement a useable soil monitoring mechanism is positive.199 However, a monitoring programme equivalent to Natural England’s Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment, which assessed socio-economic and socio-ecological connection trends, could provide valuable feedback.200 Monitoring is also vital in ensuring that farmers are complying with their general legal obligations besides meeting their targets under any payment scheme. To best promote transformative capacity, mechanisms for monitoring and enforcement would involve and empower farmer networks, encourage experimental approaches and enable feedback.201 However, there has been a tendency for monitoring and enforcement arrangements to be seen by farmers as inflexible and disempowering and penalties as disproportionate.202 On this basis, the current review of farm inspection regulations is welcome.203 We recommend a greater role for peer monitoring and enforcement of compliance with conditions attached to payments. Natural England and the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) would still conduct oversight and enforcement, especially as this may become more challenging with the potential loss of the BPS to ensure cross compliance with environmental obligations.204 Nevertheless, regional panels of farmers could provide a degree of advice, oversight and possess limited powers of enforcement. The CP advocates greater industry self-regulation.205 Such an approach may address issues of ownership and empowerment and provide more flexibility in deciding whether breaches have occurred, but determining panel membership would need care. Farmers cannot be expected to have knowledge of all aspects of countryside management included within new payment schemes, with land management to protect archaeology or rare flora requiring specialist experience, for example. If local or regional panels are used to allocate payments under a new system, these must comprise a diverse range of stakeholders and expertise if schemes are to be administered fairly and effectively. Instances of serious or repeated breach would remain cases for the more extensive powers of the RPA. We see the crucial hub for peer monitoring and enforcement as the farmer ‘cluster’, formed of groups of farmers and other land managers in a region for purposes of learning and support. Instigated by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust,206 their development has been facilitated by support and funding from Natural England and have been used to test experimental strategies for conservation at landscape scale.207 Opportunities to embed knowledge, extend awareness of others’ activities and identify new possibilities for innovation can be achieved by involving farmers more centrally in the administration of new or replacement agri-environment schemes.208 Using clusters (and other organisations, for example, National Park Authorities) as governance mechanisms through which bidding for schemes and primary enforcement takes place encourages the cooperation between groups of farmers and other land managers, building transformative capacity.209 Working together can overcome the inflexibility of agri-environmental schemes that would only be available to individuals and allow audit by the group as a whole to maintain a sense of autonomy and control.210 Cooperation can also provide more effective and creative responses to environmental concerns at the landscape scale. Bringing farmers together is likely to encourage a more integrated approach to effective management of soil, water and habitat in an area and help to ensure farming stays within key ecological thresholds. But clusters also have the capacity to strengthen the social-ecological connection across the sites of struggle, particularly by providing a forum for challenging cultural identities and improving feelings of security. If farmers can recognise the value of environmental schemes themselves and—crucially—feel that these are farming activities respected by their peers, then this would be beneficial in dealing with the social pressures that might otherwise deter ecological activity or empathy,211 as has been seen in the context of farms located near nature reserves where farmers have ‘not wanted to let the side down’.212 However, whilst the EP and CP recognise a potential role for collaboration amongst farmers and land managers, they do not give clusters sufficient weight or commit to providing incentives for their development. 6. CONCLUSIONS We have invoked resilience thinking as the key to maximising sustainability in the post-Brexit landscape of English agriculture. In particular, we have emphasised the importance of using resilience principles of scale, diversity, flexibility, and inclusive governance in building capacity in relation to critical thresholds of the farming SES embracing identity, connection and security. We have stressed the interdependence of social and ecological factors and given particular weight to the need to adopt strategies to combat degradation of cognitive human capital. Alongside the importance of evidence to inform policy, we also point out the value of the experiential connection of individual farmers to their land in establishing resilience. Legitimising and unlocking that resource by polycentric mechanisms can play a huge part in identifying, foreseeing and responding to disturbances, whether cultural, economic, technical or ecological. Empowerment of farmers is accordingly fundamental to the resilience of farming. At the same time, resilience must acknowledge and accommodate scales—so that the landscape level of understanding and action is crucial for better appreciation of ecological effects and effective planning. A running theme has been to critique sustainable intensification and call for greatly enhanced roles for traditional farming techniques, small farm units and the preservation of human commitment, connection and land-related knowledge. There are signs that shifts in attitude and behaviour are occurring—witness the number of ‘green’ farming organisations, online groups and emerging fora in which experiences and sustainable innovations are shared and developed. However, there is a problem—which we address by firm recommendations—in the extent to which resilience is conceptualised in policy and anchored in action. It is a particular disappointment that the CP only expresses resilience in terms of productivity and new technologies. We also fear that the emphasis upon natural capital valuation misses, or at least understates, the significance of connection in human–nature relations. Transformation by its very nature is radical, albeit capable of being staged, progressive and flexible. It is also likely to be contested. Our message is that there are huge risks in the post-Brexit policy landscape—especially if agriculture is sacrificed for other goals in leaving the EU. Political compromises may lock in the ‘wrong’ solutions at an early stage and could do long-lasting damage both ecologically and socially to the farming industry and communities. Hence, our call to facilitate and build options at individual farm and landscape levels, which maintain diversity, flexibility and an embedded commitment to sustainability. Resilience-framed strategies and appropriate legal changes are essential if a sustainable ‘green Brexit’ is to be more than aspiration or rhetoric. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors would like to thank Emily Lydgate, Donald McGillivray and the anonymous reviewers. The usual disclaimer applies. Footnotes 1 Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), A Green Future: Our 25 Year Plan to Improve the Environment (January 2018) 9. 2 DEFRA, Health and Harmony: The Future for Food, Farming and the Environment in a Green Brexit (Green Paper, Cm 9577, February 2018). 3 Agriculture Bill, published 12 September 2018 <https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2017-2019/0266/18266.pdf> accessed 15 November 2018. Publication came too late for detailed analysis here. However, the Bill substantively adopts the approach of the CP. 4 DEFRA (n 2) Executive Summary [14–17]. 5 The devolved arrangements for agriculture in the UK are set out in the Agriculture Bill Explanatory Notes, Annex A <https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2017-2019/0266/en/18266en.pdf> accessed 15 November 2018. 6 IPES-Food, From Uniformity to Diversity: A Paradigm Shift from Industrial Agriculture to Diversified Agroecological Systems (International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems 2016) <www.ipes-food.org> accessed 8 June 2018; Tim Lang and others, A Food Brexit: Time to Get Real (City University, University of Sussex, Cardiff University 2017). 7 For example, Funding the Sustainable Intensification Research Platform <www.siplatform.org.uk> accessed 8 June 2018. 8 ibid. 9 Nic Lampkin and others, The Role of Agroecology in Sustainable Intensification Report for the Land Use Policy Group (Organic Research Centre, Elm Farm and Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust 2015) ix. 10 For example, The Royal Society, Reaping the Benefits: Science and the Sustainable Intensification of Global Agriculture (2009) 17, describing the use of high-productivity livestock breeds as a cornerstone of sustainable agriculture without considering potential welfare issues illustrated in, for example, Farm Animal Welfare Committee, Opinion on the Welfare Implications of Breeding and Breeding Technologies in Commercial Livestock Agriculture (2012). 11 Daniel Hayhow and others, State of Nature 2016 (The State of Nature Partnership 2016) 12. 12 IPES-Food (n 6) 13 Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Report of the Regional Symposium on Agroecology for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems for Europe and Central Asia (2017) 38. 14 FAO, Catalysing Dialogue and Cooperation to Scale up Agroecology: Outcomes of the FAO Regional Seminars on Agroecology. Summary (2018) 3. 15 Miguel Altieri, ‘Linking Ecologists and Traditional Farmers in the Search for Sustainable Agriculture’ (2004) 2 Front Ecol Environ 35. 16 Fabio Caporali, ‘History and Development of Agroecology and Theory of Agroecosystems’ in Massimo Monteduro and others (eds), Law and Agroecology: A Transdisciplinary Dialogue (Springer 2015) 15. 17 FAO (n 14) 8–10. 18 ibid. 19 ibid 4. 20 Ibid, Ch 1, 3. 21 DEFRA (n 2) Foreword. 22 Michael Gove, ‘Farming for the Next Generation’ <www.gov.uk/government/speeches/farming-for-the-next-generation> accessed 4 June 2018. 23 Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Industrial Strategy: Building a Britain Fit for the Future (White Paper, Cm 9528, 2018). 24 DEFRA (n 1). 25 Natural Capital Committee, The State of Natural Capital – Towards a Framework for Measurement and Valuation (2013) 11; <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/natural-capital-committees-first-state-of-natural-capital-report> accessed 20 November 2018. 26 DEFRA (n 1). 27 Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), Brexit Scenarios: An Impact Assessment (2017); Resolution Foundation, Changing Lanes – The Impact of Different Post-Brexit Trading Policies on the Cost of Living (Resolution Foundation 2017). 28 Julie Davidson and others, ‘Interrogating Resilience Toward a Typology to Improve its Operationalization’ (2016) 21 Ecol Soc 27 (identifying four other typologies of engineering, community, disaster and urban resilience). 29 Dayton Marchese and others, ‘Resilience and Sustainability: Similarities and Differences in Environmental Management Applications’ (2018) 613 Sci Total Environ 1275. 30 David Chandler, Resilience – the Governance of Complexity (Routledge 2014) 23. 31 ibid 22. 32 Carl Folke and others, ‘Resilience Thinking: Integrating Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability’ (2010) 15 Ecol Soc 20. 33 Timothy Morton, Being Ecological (Pelican 2018). 34 Agatha Herman, ‘Enchanting Resilience: Relations of Care and People- Place Connections in Agriculture’ (2015) 42 J Rural Stud 102; Helena Howe, ‘Making Wild Law Work – the Role of ‘Connection with Nature’ and Education in Developing an Ecocentric Property Law’ (2017) 29 JEL 19. 35 Ika Darnhofer and others, ‘The Resilience of Family Farms: Towards a Relational Approach’ (2016) 44 J Rural Stud 111. 36 Crawford Holling, ‘Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems’ (1973) 4 Ann Rev Ecol Systemat 1; Brian Walker and David Salt, Resilience Thinking Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World (Island Press 2006). 37 Elena Bennett and others, ‘Toward a More Resilient Agriculture’ (2014) 5 Solutions J 65. 38 Ika Darnhofer, ‘Resilience and Why it Matters for Farm Management’ (2014) 41 Eur Rev Agri Econ 461, 466; Folke and others (n 32). 39 Folke and others (n 32). 40 Carl Folke, ‘Resilience’ (republished) (2016) 21 Ecol Soc 44. 41 Folke and others (n 32). 42 Davidson and others (n 28); Herman (n 34); Katrina Sinclair and others, ‘Can Resilience Thinking Provide Useful Insights for those Examining Efforts to Transform Contemporary Agriculture?’ (2014) 31 Agric Hum Values 371. 43 Herman (n 34); Darnhofer and others (n 35). 44 Bennett and others (n 37). 45 Altieri (n 15). 46 Chandler (n 30) 39–52. 47 Tracy-Lynn Humby, ‘Law and Resilience: Mapping the Literature’ (2014) 4 Seattle J EnvL 85, 97. 48 Chandler (n 30) 41. 49 Holling (n 36). 50 Folke and others (n 32); Ahjond Garmestani and Craig Allen (eds) Social-Ecological Resilience and the Law (Columbia UP 2014). 51 Humby (n 47) 96; 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Peter Burdon, Earth Jurisprudence, Private Property and the Environment (Routledge 2015). 90 Office for National Statistics, Suicide by Occupation, England: 2011 to 2015, 2017 <https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/suicidebyoccupation/england2011to2015#suicide-by-occupation-among-males> accessed 8 June 2018. 91 DEFRA, The Future Farming and Environment Evidence Compendium (February 2018). 92 ibid, 6. 93 ibid. 94 ibid. 95 ibid, 8 96 AHDB (n 27) 27. 97 ibid. 98 ibid. 99 ibid. 100 Ian Mitchell, The Implications of Brexit for UK, EU and Global Agricultural Reform in the Next Decade (The Royal Institute of International Affairs 2017). 101 ibid. 102 ibid, 16. 103 ibid. 104 Agriculture Bill (n 3) s 5 provides for 7 years in England starting in 2021, extendable by regulations. 105 House of Lords EU Energy and Environment Sub-committee, Oral Evidence 7 February 2017. 106 Altieri (n 15). 107 Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), Food and Farming Foresight Paper 2, Uncertain Harvest (2017); 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Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Brexit’s Shades of Green—(Missing) the Opportunity to Transform Farming in England?
JF - Journal of Environmental Law
DO - 10.1093/jel/eqy025
DA - 2019-11-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/brexit-s-shades-of-green-missing-the-opportunity-to-transform-farming-Jwy6B0HMbc
SP - 413
VL - 31
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -