This page looks at an opinion essay, first written in the early 2000s, that the archived site republished in 2011. The author, Ralph Crathorne, headed the land research group at Strutt and Parker, a property consultancy. The figures and views are his, as they stood at the time, and have not been updated or verified here.
The thesis
Crathorne argued that landscape management has always been the product of national farming policy combined with market economics. Rather than blaming farmers, he pointed to policy decisions that shaped how land was used in the past.
Lessons from history
- During the Second World War, pasture was ploughed up for crops to feed the nation.
- Later, farmers received generous grants to remove hedgerows and drain wetlands.
- In the Yorkshire Dales, the remains of dry-stone walls climb the valley sides like watermarks. The higher the wall, the more prosperous farming was at the time; in hard times the high pastures were abandoned.
The situation he described
He said farming income was collapsing, with the average UK farmer expected to earn about a third of the minimum wage in 2001. That, he wrote, meant a new period of land abandonment was starting. He mentioned that the foot and mouth outbreak had left many pastures empty and that neglected land would turn to scrub, bracken and ragwort.
Environmental consequences
Abandonment threatens the variety of plants and animals. He cited English Nature’s view that grazing was needed to retain certain species, including butterflies that depend on rough grassland.
His proposal
The author suggested that the Countryside Stewardship Scheme could help if its payment rates were reformed. In his view, farmers joined it only where it paid well or where they were personally committed, because flat-rate payments often did not cover their losses and rates were reset every few years. He suggested that more generous payments might be funded in part from welfare entitlements that struggling farmers did not claim, and that entry rules should be relaxed.
Reading it today
The scheme names and payment rules have since changed, so the essay is best read as a snapshot of a particular moment. For a short digest of the same piece alongside other news, see the news archive.