Who Owns Britain by Kevin Cahill has just been published in paperback. Thank goodness there are people like Cahill who are able to sift fact from fiction and blow away the myths surrounding land ownership and occupation in the UK. People still say to me that the UK is an overcrowded island, but here some facts from Cahill's book:

• England and Wales total about 37.1m acres

• about 53m people inhabit those 37.1m acres, giving each of us a notional 0.7 of an acre to ourselves

• all except around 400,000 of us live on just 2.2m acres - about 6% of the total land area

• in that urban plot we live at a high density, at about 44 of us per acre

But what of the other 34.9m acres? That divides as follows:

• about 27m acres are agricultural and are owned by just 134,000 families

• at about four persons per family that works out at one person for each 50 acres

• the remaining acreage - about 7.9m - is mountain, bog, waste, and large variants in government statistics

Doesn't this make you wonder about the motives of those FoE and CPRE robots who want it to remain this way! What a great analysis of the situation they have - can't be vested interest in the former (who knows what's in the mind of FoE?) but it must be in the latter.

This land ownership thing seems to dog me more and more. A friend Paul has a collection of the videos documenting Sepp Holzers hillside farm in Austria. His recent addition is the one on terraces and raised beds, probably the least awesome of the three, but a further explanation of the principles that Holzer has used to turn an unpromising environment into something productive and beautiful. Paul is inspired and suggests that Sepp's methods should be taught to farmers and in schools. He says:

'If you were to discuss these methods with farmers and hypothecate how Permaculture principles could be used in their region, farmers would probably say that the principles were sound but it would never work. The series of videos produced by Crystal Lake prove that it actually works and that using Permaculture today will eradicate soil erosion and build soil fertility, protect farm incomes, give the farmer a number of sources of income, stop monoculture and it's damage to the environment, produce local income, cut back on transportation, eradicate the use of pesticides and fertiliser, reintegrate farmers into the local community, stop the reliance on subsidy etc.'

He goes on to say:

'What is missing is the will of Government, red tape and most of all education. Sepp has had to battle with red tape in Austria (mentioned in the new video) but he usually gets his way with determination and a little guile! Wouldn't it be nice to have a chance to prove these principles and practices will work in this area?'

I felt Paul needed a reply, if only because we need to discuss as champions of Permaculture what will work and what has less chance of succeeding.

Anybody currently farming will be hugely reticent about drastically changing their practices if they are reliant on the farm for their income. Yes, I know some farm incomes are already poor and the only way would be up, but there are still production subsidies that keep many of these farms going. Income from production subsidy is the driving force for land use and management and thus of probably 80% and more of our farmland (which in terms of all UK land means greater than 60%). It causes distortions - even now, a number of dairy farmers that went organic are finding that the lack of demand for their milk is forcing them to leave organic as soon as their subsidy tie-in period has finished (so much for their supposed idealism, as promoted by the ayatollahs of the organic movement). Thus it is a vicious circle - farmers come to expect subsidy rather than to seek to make their farming financially self-reliant. (The subsidy regime will change with the proposal to decouple subsidy from production, but the same farms will still get the same money and potentially for doing nothing. Where there is no subsidy - i.e. horticultural production - land of proven production capability changes hands for £20,000 per acre rather than the £2-3000 per acre of other land - which tells you something about its potential income.)

Government is a blunt tool when it comes to effecting change in agriculture. Firstly, they have to contend with a Common Agricultural Policy that makes it difficult for each country to have a distinct national farming policy. Recently, modulation of CAP gave countries some freedom to devise original subsidy streams (i.e. England Rural Development Program) and the Strategy for Sustainable Food and Farming tinkers with that by introducing the new entry level stewardship schemes. But there are chasmic faults in this:

• the UK is apparently leaps ahead in using this modulation and the recent Midterm Review of CAP will have the affect of slowing us down to the pace of other countries in using it as a tool for change

•  it is still a financial incentive tool i.e. a subsidy

•  stewardship is about silly notions of wildlife conservation tacked around farming RATHER THAN looking to introduce novel methods of farming

On the latter point, Government does sponsor research initiatives that investigate a more integrated approach to varied production and land use and which seeks to scientifically replace artificial processes with natural ones (i.e. in terms of pest control). But again, there is little leverage available with farmers to adopt the results of these research projects unless there is the carrot of some subsidy or that there are new and guaranteed markets available (farmers planting biomass for energy production got their fingers "burned" when the contract to take their short-rotation coppiced willow output fell through).

No government has ever stayed in power once it has shown a disregard for the (vested) interests of land owners and thus you can rule out coercion by government.

It would be nice to think that someone like Sepp Holzer owned a farm somewhere up the Calder Valley and that over the last 30 years, they had transformed the hillside into a productive (and beautiful) landscape that would act as example and encouragement to others nearby. If farmers can see it - they usually will believe it! One thing is for sure though, that farmer could not have been poor to start out with as experimentation is financially risky - and it would be interesting to know a bit more about the economics of Holzer's situation as I don't see evidence of more than a self-reliant income rather than an income that could fund acquisition and development (did he inherit the farm, where does the capital come from to develop his superior accommodation? etc.). It is a sad fact that if I were to nominate two farmers that I have met that have shown the most courage in innovation, then both of them were hugely financially secure anyway, in the knowledge of inheritable wealth and assets to come.

To counter this, there are of course the new breed of marginal land dwellers, mostly in breach of planning laws and often without two pennies to rub together other than their Social Security payments (another form of subsidy?). None of these (with maybe the exception of Ben Law) are ever likely to be taken seriously by the mainstream, which will disregard them as subsistence dwellers (as was the judgement on Permaculture by John Gummer as a Government minister).

The bottom line is the immobility of farm land to change ownership or user. Innovation often needs the injection of people with new ideas and enthusiasm but without the baggage of years of inherited conformity (last big number change in farmland ownership was in the 1930's when farming was in recession, but in terms of major land tract ownership, nothing much has changed for over 150 years - and see 'Who Owns Britain' by Kevin Cahill). Continuity or permanence is a good principle in Permaculture, but that makes the assumption that generations in the past got it right and are handing down the right information. It certainly isn't true here.

One false hope would be that with so many farmers nearing retiring age (average 58) and with their children reluctant to continue, then many farms will start to crop up on the market. Sorry guys, you will never be able to afford them as more farms nowadays are bought by non-farmers seeking a rural home ("you mean that land comes with this house?") and rural planning laws just lock down the provision of new homes in the countryside (i.e. low impact developments with associated land) that would bring pressure to force prices down.

I don't want to sound too pessimistic, but it is all about the usual problems of land and money. Big landowners in the quasi-public sector - such as the National Trust - have shown some evidence that a conscious decision can be made to influence farming for the best (or at least what they think is best). I believe that you will also see more and more of the other national quasi-public organisations (only quasi-public as they are still able to resist democracy) acquire more land and do the same, but it will be slanted towards what is the agenda of the organisation i.e. the RSPB will have skylark and lapwing friendly farms irrespective of whether that is actually an advance in sustainable agriculture. An option I suppose would be the setting up of a land trust with a specific aim to take on a farm for the sole purpose of Permaculture development. However, I can't see the public's money pouring in to that - its hard enough getting public money into the national association. Thus I guess the land trust could instead be a deal between a number of like-minded people who are able to contribute capital - do these things ever hold together?

I once fostered the idea of taking on a council-owned farm and developing it as a living and working example of the approach that Permaculture would take to modern farming. There were minor irritations like the tenancy agreement of council farms forbade tree planting and a business plan would have to have been produced to show that the rent would be paid from day one as councils are required to obtain a return on their lettings. Thus the 10-year Permaculture development plan to sustainable production wasn't a runner! Moreover, council farms rarely came up for new tenancy and it was difficult in those days to find out anything about the farms or even which farms the council owned (not so nowadays when asset management is far more under pressure). I suppose it is still possible that a local authority itself could take the lead on this, applying their goodwill (and thus some "public subsidy") but it would have to make up its own rules and convince its in-house lawyers that it can be done - but why would a local authority want to do this?

I guess on the latter, that we face maybe 30 years of hard slog making sure that all urban dwellers are trained in Permacultutre Design (i.e. equip them with the ability to have an informed opinion about agriculture) and that we evolve our local democracy to the point where we have local plebiscites. That way we could VOTE to have agriculture on Permacultural lines and that we could devote our local tax to achieve it! So we start by a Design course in Sowerby (where Paul works) and we go on from there!

Mark Fisher, 28 August 2003

www.self-willed-land.org.uk  mark.fisher@self-willed-land.org.uk