Farmers have their say on UK Government Policy

As the Agriculture Bill works its passage through Parliament, we polled farmers to ask them what policies they think the UK Government should be adopting to create greatest opportunity for UK agriculture.

We presented farmers with a range of policy suggestions and they awarded them points on merit.

• Maintain Single Farm Payment
• Improve rural broadband connectivity
• Develop tenancy law to give the tenant more incentive for long term improvement to the land
• Negotiate great trade deals to open up new export opportunities
• Make payments to farmers for “public goods” (biodiversity, soil health, rainwater catchment)
• Accelerate research and development
• Grant funding to encourage farmers with good ideas to scale farm-level innovation

While the farmer respondents were able to allocate all their points to a single policy or distribute them among different policies, three clear types of farmer emerge.