WHAT lies in store for 2008? One thing’s for sure: if you aren’t already heartily sick of reading about climate change, prepare to reach for the vomit bag.
A glossy report from RSPB Cymru thudded on my desk this week. Called RSPB Cymru advocacy 2007-2008, it sets out the bird charity’s wishlist for the year ahead.
You can imagine what it wants: more biodiversity, more conservation, more land management and more climate change mitigation.
And, of course, more spending by Cardiff.
Perhaps the document’s most interesting aspect is its plea for a new “top-tier” agri-environment scheme for common land. It also calls for a new support mechanism for upland farmers to replace the old Tir Mynydd scheme when it finally goes.
All very laudable, but it occurs to me that conservation and environmental groups are going to find the going more difficult in the coming years.
Over the past decade or two organisations such as the RSPB have snapped up huge tracts of land for reserves in what some farmers have grudgingly referred to as the covert nationalisation of Britain’s landscape.
View over Maentwrog by Mike Alexander
In reality they’ve still go some way to match government but it is clear that conservationists have a growing power base in the countryside, if not in land ownership then in policy making.
This, in turn, has push a finger in the dyke of intensive agriculture. Everyone is now more habitat aware. Wildlife is gradually returning to areas where conservation is practised. And we all applaud that.
Could this process now go into reverse? It’s no longer the domain of woolly-minded farmers that climate change and growing global food demand is set to spark a fresh crisis in food production. The end of the era of cheap food was a recurring theme in late 2007.
Suddenly intensive agriculture is back on the agenda. Even GM food is back in vogue (at least with Britain’s former chief scientist Sir David King). In the coming rush for food production, we’ll need all the land we can get. Setting aside tracts of land for cuddly animals could seem rather retro.
I suspect the emerging debate over conservation vs food production will be one of farming major themes in the next few years.
Colette Burke wrote...
Yes conservation v food production may well become a key debate. But does it have to be either production or conservation which can only end up in an energy sapping fight between farmers and organisations like the RSPB?
Would it not be better for farming leaders to set an agenda which marries first class environmental management with exemplary production, and highlight the role of farmers as the front line in the fight against climate change?
Colette
Posted by: Colette Burke | January 3, 2008 3:57 PM