There's a problem. The environment secretary is a climate denier. He said in an interview with the Telegraph that livestock has a role to play in tackling climate change.
There isn't any evidence to back up such claims. There was no case of a livestock operation sequestering more greenhouse gases than the animals produced. The carbon that would be captured if the land were returned to wild environments is called the carbon opportunity cost. The Climate Change Committee says that transitioning from grassland to forestland will increase the soil carbon stock by 25 tonnes of carbon perhectare.
The tobacco industry uses misleading climate claims. We are not safe when the UK environment secretary repeats propaganda.
Maybe we shouldn't be shocked. He is a Trustee of his family's farm. It's difficult to see where his interests end and the public interest begins. Eustice says he doesn't want to encourage us to eat less meat. He bragged about tearing down environmental protections in a letter to people living in farmhouses in the Tiverton and Honiton constituency.
Most of the ministers at the environment department own farmland or were brought up on farms owned by their families. The chair of the parliamentary committee is supposed to hold the departmentaccount. Farmers should be included in government. They should not be represented in Defra to the exclusion of other people.
There are 115,000 people who work on English farms. They make up 2% of the population and 1% of the rural population. 2.5% of the total population and 3% of the rural population are included if you include everyone who might be involved in farming. Almost all of the people in rural areas are not employed by the industry. Farming and the countryside are synonymous with the government's policies. If you aren't a farmer, your interests aren't taken seriously. You are a second class citizen.
The government's disastrous food strategy is explained by this agricultural hegemony. Farming has an extraordinary range of derogations from planning laws, often to the great detriment of local people, who can't do anything to prevent their views from being ruined and their air and rivers from being poisoned. The new food strategy proposes more exemptions from public scrutiny.
Instead of trying to reduce meat consumption, the strategy focuses on technofixes that try to reduce methane burped by cattle. The codewords for removing bureaucratic and making regulations more proportional are removed. The strategy was supposed to include all the effective environmental measures. The lead adviser, Henry Dimbleby, recommended postponing the decision to encourage the rewilding of the land, which is essential to reversing wildlife decline.
The failures reflect a reversal of Johnson's environmental commitments in response to the National Farmers' Union. The NFU is on the wrong side of many issues. It is your champion if you want to fight the rules that are supposed to protect the rivers. The NFU is here for you if you want to resist and undermine the ban on the most deadly biocides. You have a friend who will help you torpedo the rules. The environment department is located in 17 Smith Square, London SW1. You will hear the same story if you enter one of the doors.
The Environmental Land Management schemes are supposed to replace the disastrous European subsidy system. The Labour party has formed an alliance with the NFU, Steve Baker, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and other members of the hard right in opposing this genuine, unique, and unique, chance to leave the European Union. When a party doesn't pay enough attention to any issue, it gets swept along on the currents of power and becomes aligned with the most powerful and dangerous corporate lobby groups.
Farmers are needed. They need to be regulated in the same way as any other sector so that their interests can't affect the public interest. I am often accused of being anti-farmer. I would like to see the same standards applied to farming as to any other industry. I would like to see how public money is used and the impact it has on the land. If it weren't for subsidies, there wouldn't be a lot of livestock grazed in this country. Shouldn't we have a say in what happens to the land we paid for?
I would like to see clear lines drawn between private and public interests. The NFU's lobbying power needs to be reduced. I would like to see a government that represents all of the people who live in rural areas. Is it enough to ask?
George Monbiot is a writer.
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