England's first-ever Land Use Framework must prioritise nature-friendly farming

This week the government has unveiled its long-awaited Land Use Framework – a plan to set out how we use land in England that has been promised for several years.

The Soil Association has been calling for the framework to prioritise agroecological farming, like organic, and to scale up production of nature-friendly, British fruit and veg.

Soil Association Policy Director Brendan Costelloe said: “It is great news that we finally have a Land Use Framework. Our food system is dangerously vulnerable to shocks like war and climate change, and this is a step towards greater resilience.”

What is the Land Use Framework and why is it important?

The framework sets out how we use land to deliver multiple, stacked benefits like food production, nature recovery, and climate mitigation and adaptation.

There have been calls for a LUF for years and in January this year we finally had the chance to take part in a consultation, which showed some limitations behind the proposed framework, but also why it is so important to have one.

We only have a finite amount of land in England, and we need to ensure the right land is being used for the right objectives. Land has many competing demands – food production, housing development, clean energy and nature recovery. That makes this complex.

Done well, a Land Use Framework would give policymakers, local decision makers, farmers, landowners, private sector and developers (to name a few) certainty around spatial priorities. So, it's not just about delivering multiple benefits, but also making sure this happens in the right place.

Targeting the right activities on the right land is crucial for the delivery of other important policies like the forthcoming 25-year Farming Roadmap, the Environmental Improvement Plan, the Food Strategy and planning policy. All need to work together to deliver healthy and sustainable diets to support nature-friendly farming.

The framework aims to fix a number of problems. To stop the wrong farming happening in the wrong place, to safeguard soils and the best agricultural land, and to facilitate land use decision-making across government departments, helping to remove silos that can undermine .

The Soil Association welcomes the much-awaited framework and calls for it to prioritise nature-friendly farming

The Land Use Framework has set aside land for habitat restoration, which is essential to help nature recover, and it promotes a vision for and multifunctional land use where farmland can be used for food production, nature and climate.

For the land that will remain farmland, it’s vital the government recognises that food production does not have to stop to create space for nature. We can, and must, make sure the land that’s producing food is doing so in a nature-friendly way. We know multifunctional land management is possible, with 30% more biodiversity on organic farms.

The government also need to set a strategic direction for the kind of food we produce, so we can create more space for habitats and nature-friendly farming. This means less land growing food for industrial livestock and more fruit, veg, beans and pulses, which is a far more efficient and healthier way to feed humans.

Agroecological, mixed farming and horticultural land use, including organic, should receive highest priority. Less than two per cent of agricultural land is used for horticulture production and the UK is very food insecure. Scaling up these enterprises and spatially prioritising them in the right places will not only improve food system resilience, but also climate adaptation and resilience.

This means moving away from growing on lowland peat and catchments where nutrient pollution is turning rivers into dead zones. Instead, we should focus on boosting peri urban and urban horticulture with fruit and veg produced in and around towns and cities.

We also need to move away from growing crops that typically involve a lot of soil disturbance – namely maize – on steep slopes or flood-prone land. This leads to soil erosion, which again washes into our rivers along with any pollutants it might be carrying like artificial fertiliser.

These crops are also often used to produce biogas, which is not a good use of our land and a false green solution.

It is great news that the Land Use Framework set out an ambition to produce more of the food that we consume.

A Land Use Framework can only be successful alongside healthy and sustainable diets

A reduction in intensive livestock production is essential. We know these systems harm nature and climate, as well as having poor animal welfare standards.

The framework’s support for food security and national resilience, making a long-term commitment to maintaining food production in England is a step in the right direction.

Nature-friendly and organic farming already provide a roadmap for how to do this and reduce our dependence on vulnerable imports of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser as well as producing food for people not for commodity markets and biofuels.

But government needs to use its other forthcoming policies to spark a shift to healthier and more sustainable diets, with less and better meat, and much more fruit and vegetables.

We can do this by expanding production of beans and pulses as a sustainable alternative protein source. These crops also provide nitrogen and can help farmers to move away from increasingly expensive, fossil-fuel based nitrogen fertilisers.

By planting more fruit and nut trees, we can help nature, reduce emissions and grow healthy food. Trees also play an important role in protecting livestock and crops from heat, wind and flooding.  

This means we’ll produce more of what we consume, partly because more of our land will be efficiently growing the high value food that people recognise on their plates, rather than ingredients for processed and unhealthy food or animal feed, and farmers will see more of this value.

There is great opportunity for the sustainable expansion of horticulture, and agroecological and organic approaches can make a huge contribution there. We welcome the commitment to a horticulture growth strategy, but we are concerned about the plans for a poultry growth strategy.

Our polluted rivers show that industrial poultry production is already maxed out, as well as eating up a huge footprint of cereal production, so the land use framework should not be a green light for unsustainable growth plans in all sectors of farming.

What’s next for farmers

The government still needs to publish its other strategies to bring the Land Use Framework to life, but this week’s announcement serves as an indication of their vision.

The framework’s welcome focus on multifunctional land use means that nature-friendly farming is backed by government, which can see further through the upcoming reopening of the Sustainable Farming Incentive in June and September.

Farmers are facing numerous challenges, from extreme weather to unpredictable fuel and input costs due to the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine.

But they should feel confident about making plans to bring nature onto their farms more as the support from government only seems to be increasing, and this way of farming can also deliver resilience in the face of shocks to the system.