Farmers should be rewarded for tree planting and improving soil quality, a climate change body has urged.
In its report ‘Land use: Reducing emissions and preparing for climate change’,the Committee on Climate Change saidtree planting must double by 2020 as part of major changes to land use in the UK.
The committee said land currently used for food production should be converted to woodland, to grow crops to produce energy and for new homes to house the UK’s growing population.
There is potential to convert up to 17 per cent of cropland and 30 per cent of grassland, the report’s authors calculated.
Another priority should be to protect and restore carbon-rich peatland, and to ensure that by 2025 all food waste is used to generate energy rather than being sent to landfill.
The CCC stressed that Brexit was an opportunity to incentivise landwoners and growers to tackle climate change and protect wildlife, rather than subsidising farmers based on land ownership.
“The incremental changes seen in the past to how we use land is not enough,” CCC chief executive Chris Stark toldThe Guardian. “There is a window now to have a more radical policy.”
He added that intensive farming and global warming were damaging soil and wildlife, but stressed:“We are not saying farmers need to go out of business; we are saying that we need a different approach which is equally [profitable] if government policy supports it.”
Joanna Lewis, director of policy for the Soil Association, welcomed the report, saying:“The Committee’s proposals are important and timely, and emphasise the urgent need for a radical transformation in the way that we produce and consume food in the UK.
“We welcome the call for farmers to be rewarded for actions such as tree planting, restoring peatlands and improving soil and water quality, and the potential that is highlighted for improving overall productivity while moving towards net-zero by integrating trees with food production via agroforestry.”
The organic certification charity raised concerns about the government’s Agriculture Bill, saying: “It should be of concern that there is currently no reference to a net zero emissions target for the agriculture sector and soil health is inexplicably missing from the list of public goods.”
The body also expressed concern that there is no target for carbon storage through increasing the soil’s organic matter.
“The piecemeal approach to public goods proposed in the Bill risks delivering inadequate and uneven climate outcomes, or worse, creating perverse and counter-productive outcomes across the UK,” the Soil Association said.
