A Land Use Framework was one of the recommendations in the National Food Strategy, led by Henry Dimbleby, in 2022 and was originally promised to be published by the previous government in 2023.
Agriculture occupies more than 70% of UK land area and farmers play a pivotal role in maintaining and enhancing our dynamic landscapes for future generations.
The NFU is conscious that there are huge demands being made on land including the needs of agricultural production (food and non-food), for leisure and recreation, requirements for biodiversity net gain, protected landscapes, and the need for economic and residential development alongside national strategic infrastructure.
This is on top of the inevitable pressure on land to deliver climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Given the finite land area of the UK, and the importance of UK food security in volatile times, we believe that it is important that our countryside remains a multifunctional and dynamic space.
We need a better, more joined up approach to our land use to deliver what we all want from our land.
NFU asks
The government has a key role to play in developing a better, more joined up approach to our land use but also allowing farmers to assess their potential to deliver public goods alongside the production of food, energy and fibre, with the right tools and advice.
- The NFU believes that we need a multifunctional land use strategy that manages the risk of significant competition between land use categories.
- A land use framework or strategy, and any policy and legislation arising from it, should also be based on robust scientific evidence, making full use of expertise in both research and commercial sectors. It should not involve long-term or irreversible change to the productive capacity of farmland.
- Any framework strategy must be flexible to enable farmers to make informed business decisions on potential of their land to deliver public goods alongside the production of food, fibre and energy. As such, the NFU prefers a bottom-up approach such as ‘land capability mapping tools’ over a top-down rigid approach to land use planning.
- The legislative and planning policy landscape needs to facilitate agricultural modernisation and productivity growth, balancing the demands with the delivery of public goods for biodiversity, amenity, culture and landscape.
We need a plan for a resilient, sustainable and productive agricultural sector that makes the best use of our most productive agricultural land and delivers what is good for consumers, good for the environment and good for British agriculture.
The NFU will be responding to the consultation in full, when published.
