CPRE GLOUCESTERSHIRE BRANCH Policy Statement Farming and Land Management

Farmers and landowners are the owners and custodians of most of our countryside and of many of the buildings sited in the open countryside. Some of these buildings are of historic and architectural merit; the majority are larger more modern system built functional structures.

The characteristic of farming in Gloucestershire is that it is dominated by small farms and small fields. The pattern of field boundaries (whether dry stone walls, hedging, fencing or shelter tree belts) is an essential to the character of the landscape. Grazing livestock farming is on the decline yet a living grazed landscape is also characteristic for much of the landscape particularly the higher wolds.

Farming is under economic pressure due to competition from overseas and supermarket buying pressure. The logical response to these pressures is to go for the economies of scale of large fields and large farms to allow large economic machinery to operate and to raise the financing required for modern technology. This route to economic viability would be very damaging to the Gloucestershire countryside.

The communities which care most about their environment are living and working communities. It is essential that there is a dispersal of economic activity into rural areas to stop villages becoming mostly populated by retirees and commuters.

The conservation of the most rural parts of Gloucestershire depends on the related topics of ensuring farmers make a reasonable living within the existing landscape structure and ensuring our villages remain vital communities. Farming itself no longer provides the core of a community and vitality therefore depends upon generating other sources of economic activity.

There are a number of fundamental factors which CPRE Gloucestershire can not influence; the changes in the CAP, the level of Government subsidy, levelling the international playing field, the distribution of ERDP funds. We can however monitor the effects these changes have on the appearance of the countryside.

For us it does not matter who owns the farms or the extent that farms merge to form larger units. What matters is how the land is used and its distinctive elements conserved and that the detailed knowledge of the land, which small farmers have and contractors do not, is not lost.

For farmers to maintain the character of the countryside they need more than the grants and CAP funding available. We can not rely on a resurgence in prices and they therefore have to get more out of their assets and diversify income away from traditional agricultural income. The issue for CPRE is how can this be done without damaging the countryside.

Our policies should therefore be to:

• Support adding value through direct sales and local sales. We will support farm shops which have this objective. We will lobby local supermarkets to increase local purchasing. We will put effort into understanding local food supply chains.
• Support the protection from development of the best and most versatile agricultural land by reminding planning authorities of current policy guidance and by promoting the long term need to preserve this valuable and increasingly scarce natural (soil) resource. In a local context the availability of such high quality soils is essential to the production of many vegetable and fruit crops which can help to supply a genuine local food supply.
• Support pilot schemes to test renewable energy crops and encourage new developments to include linkages to such pilot schemes. Only by trying will we understand the impact alternatives crops have (visually and on traffic on country lanes). Pilots should be local, small, and include the necessary processing plant.
• Support the conversion of traditional farm buildings for alternative uses. Our preference will be for uses which deliver additional income to the farmer rather than short term gains from selling the assets.
• Support the conversion or replacement of more modern redundant farm buildings to employment or social use where they are not in prominent positions in the landscape, are easily accessible to larger centres of population and where we understand the full plan for maintaining existing farm activity. Such buildings/sites may well be suitable for renewable energy processing plant. We will oppose schemes where we feel “redundancy” is a first step towards releasing existing buildings for development to be replaced later by substitute larger agricultural buildings. In such cases we will lobby for the existing building simply to be replaced with fit for purpose agricultural buildings.
• Support the conversion of listed or fine traditional agricultural buildings for residential purposes where this is demonstrably the only way to achieve long term preservation. Otherwise we will continue a presumption against new housing in the open countryside including housing to support rural workers; this needs to be close to employment and facilities (e.g. schools and shops) and rarely will such proposals in the open countryside meet the needs of working families.
• Insist that all conversions must be to a design standard which ensures that the outward appearance maintains the essence of an agricultural building.
• Not be opposed in principle to new developments such as poly-tunnels or new farm buildings but view each case on its merits. In forming a view on the impact of proposed new developments and whether they are acceptable within the landscape, we will start from what is distinctive in the landscape using landscape character and whether the scale of development will have a material effect. Our first approach should be to seek to advise how such development might be acceptably located or scaled given the need for the site to be located on suitable soil.
• Seek to limit the local over-concentration of equestrian establishments where this would be contrary to the local landscape character, create pressure to construct new housing to accommodate owners/employees or put stress on the use of local roads.

The above imply active discussion with the farming community to find positive solutions which we can then support rather than an adversarial approach.

November 2006