Government urged to behave as 1,700 English farms ‘disappear’ since 2010 | Politics | News | EUROtoday

Last week the Chancellor touted growing the countryside round our cities and cities as the important thing to unlocking financial progress. But at what value?

More than 1,700 farms, an space of land the scale of Leeds, have disappeared from the sting of English cities and cities since 2010. Many of them have been within the Green Belt, 14 areas of protected land, launched by the post-war Labour authorities, however undermined by this one.

These misplaced farms are now not placing meals on individuals’s plates, offering tranquil inexperienced areas for individuals to take pleasure in, or doing their bit to safeguard the pure world.

The farms that stay near cities and cities are food-producing powerhouses.

Although they symbolize simply over 10% of the UK’s farmland, they produce greater than double that proportion of our wheat, oats and barley, together with vital quantities of potatoes and milk.

They additionally operate as inexperienced buffers that assist native wildlife, scale back meals miles and contribute a powerful £3.3 billion to our financial system annually.

In her speech, the Chancellor confidently introduced that constructing on the inexperienced belt will repair the housing disaster. It received’t. It will solely result in extra car-dependent, identikit estates of unaffordable properties throughout our countryside, injury the UK farming sector, and undermine a key environmental safety that Labour itself invented.

In England alone, greater than 1.2 million properties may very well be constructed on shovel-ready brownfield websites. 1.4 million potential new properties have been granted planning permission however haven’t but been constructed.

The actuality is that enormous housebuilders  – not the planning system or environmentalists – are guilty for the painfully gradual supply of recent properties.

By intentionally proscribing provide, they maximise revenue for themselves. They have a job to play, however unchecked, it’s like placing the fox in command of the hen home.

Every farm misplaced from the perimeters of our cities and cities is an erosion of UK’s countryside and capability to feed itself.

Faced with local weather change and nature in freefall, we needs to be celebrating those that farm the land round our cities and cities, relatively than eyeing up their farmland for brand new properties that needs to be constructed on brownfield land.