Council farmland sell-offs

Wed Apr 5 15:19:39 BST 2006

Holding out
http://society.guardian.co.uk/localgovt/story/0,,1704490,00.html

Councils are selling off their farmland, but essential community links are 
being lost in the process, along with the chance to make farming 
financially viable. Simon Fairlie reports on the campaign to save smallholdings

Wednesday February 8, 2006 The Guardian

The last shop in the Somerset village of Chiselborough closed in the early 
1990s. Last, that is, until Richard and Sarah Jones opened up a farm shop 
at Balham Hill Farm, just outside the village boundary, selling 
home-produced meat, eggs, milk and vegetables, and produce from other local 
farms. The shop has helped to lift the spirit of a village where, six years 
ago, it looked as though even the pub might have to shut.

So it came as a shock to villagers, just before Christmas, to learn that 
the farm and shop are threatened with closure. Balham Hill is an 80-acre 
"county smallholding", owned by Somerset county council, which is in the 
course of selling off the majority of its farm estate.

Five farms have already been sold, netting the council £3.6m, and Balham 
Hill, unless it is given a reprieve, is scheduled for auction shortly. Like 
the others, it is to be broken up and offered in small lots, which command 
a much higher price as pony paddocks, while the buildings can be sold for 
redevelopment. The rationale for breaking up the farm was provided by the 
Liberal Democrat leader of the county council, Cathy Bakewell, who 
announced to Chiselborough villagers, at a local meeting about the sale, 
that "farming is dead".

There are places where it is safe to claim that farming is dead, but a 
parish council meeting in a rural village is not one of them. There was 
uproar and Somerset council had to embark on a major damage limitation 
exercise. A statement was issued denying she ever said such a thing.

"The farm in question certainly is not dead," says Jim Macartney, chair of 
the parish council. "It is well maintained by a family who have developed 
the business and run a farm shop that is a valuable resource for the 
village and a wider community. And farming is not dead, it is in recession. 
Now is exactly the time when we should be maintaining these farms, not 
selling them off."

Small parcels

The County Farms estates were created in the lean agricultural years of the 
early 20th century and between the two world wars, to prevent a decline in 
agricultural employment and meet what a contemporary called the insatiable 
demand for land in small parcels - conditions not dissimilar to those that 
exist today.

Small parcels of land, then as now, were disproportionately expensive, and 
county councils were given the power to buy up farmland and subdivide it to 
provide part-time smallholdings or a "first rung on the ladder" to farm 
ownership. It was the nearest the English government came to a land reform 
programme.

Over the years, thousands of competent but impecunious farm workers were 
given the opportunity to set themselves up as independent farmers, and 
while some failed, many more succeeded in realising their dreams.

By the early 1990s, the county smallholdings estate in England was about 
350,000 acres. But in its 1995 rural white paper, the Conservative 
government advised county councils to sell them off. At the time, Elliot 
Morley, now minister for the environment, asked in parliament: "In what way 
does it help the rural economy to give encouragement to county councils to 
sell smallholdings?". The Conservative spokesman, Tim Boswell, dodged the 
question by responding: "I am surprised the honourable gentleman wishes to 
take away the autonomy of county councils."

In 2003, the farming minister, Lord (Larry) Whitty, sent out a letter to 
county councils advising against further sale of the estate, but otherwise 
the Labour government has followed Boswell's advice. County councils can do 
what they want.

So, for example, Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire have sold off all their 
estate; North Yorkshire has sold half its estate and plans to sell the 
rest; Buckinghamshire has sold off a third and plans to sell the same 
again; Shropshire has sold 80%, but has recently decided to keep the rump. 
Cambridgeshire is keeping much of its huge estate but, after selling a 
holding to Persimmon Homes for £5m, employed Savills estate agents to lobby 
for other parts of its farm estate to be allocated for housing in 
development plans.

Since the 1990s, about 30% of the nation's county farms have been sold off. 
But other counties, such as Cornwall, Hertfordshire and Gloucestershire, 
are maintaining their estates and are proud of the fact. They continue to 
provide a wide range of opportunities, from 200-acre dairy farms to 15-acre 
smallholdings producing vegetables or pork, and one-acre plots for retired 
farmers.

Hertfordshire has produced a report on its farms estate, entitled A Century 
of Achievement, which provides a history of the estate, and announces a 
50-year masterplan for its future management. "The keen demand for 
tenancies," it states, citing a farm up for rent that attracted 80 
inquiries and 17 applicants, "can be seen as a litmus test for people's 
continued enthusiasm for small-scale farming. . . The tenancy of a county 
council farm is now virtually the only opportunity for anyone with limited 
means to become a self-employed farmer". Hertfordshire's 10,000-acre estate 
makes a profit for the county council of around £300,000 per year.

Strengthening links

Other counties are strengthening links between their farms and local 
communities, including schools. Gloucestershire, which boasts six farm 
shops and a cheesemaker, offers a rent rebate to farmers who pursue 
collaborative food or diversification enterprises.

This is the sort of approach Macartney would like to see in Somerset. He 
points out that the local authorities' websites are overflowing with 
support for local foods. "If the council supports this concept, why doesn't 
it hold Balham Hill Farm up as a model, rather than breaking it up," he 
says. According to Somerset's farm estate manager, Graham Parsons, county 
farms need to be sold because of the "dire and worrying viability issue ... 
Farming at the bottom end of the size scale, as is the case with County 
Farm tenants, is extremely financially challenging. Few of our tenants are 
earning a viable livelihood from their farming operations."

This may be true of some farmers selling produce to middlemen and retailers 
who cream off most of the value. But on a farm catering to the local 
economy - like Balham Hill - produce that is sold through the shop or other 
forms of direct marketing is profitable, while any surplus that has to be 
sold into the supermarket economy brings in slender returns. The trick is 
to maintain a continual and varied supply of goods for a local clientele 
throughout the year, and this does not necessarily require large areas of land.

The Trading Post, a successful farm shop four miles from Chiselborough at 
the village of Lopen, is based around an intensively managed market garden 
of just five acres. In Dorset, Fivepenny Farm sells vegetables, herbs, meat 
and eggs to local shops and at a stall at Bridport market. "Eighty acres 
not viable? You've got to be kidding!" was the reaction of Fivepenny's 
Jyoti Fernandes to the news that Balham Hill Farm was under threat. "We 
have been going three years, and our 42 acres already provide a living for 
two families and a surplus to invest in infrastructure."

For Richard and Sarah Jones, however, Balham Hill has been a rung on the 
ladder to bigger things. They have recently secured the tenancy of a 
450-acre farm belonging to the Prince of Wales's Duchy of Cornwall, where 
they plan to produce organic beef, lamb, chicken and pork for a larger farm 
shop to be sited on a main road leading to the Tamar Bridge. With a teenage 
son at agricultural college, this is not a family that feels they are 
working in a dying industry.

When the Joneses leave in March, the council will have to decide whether to 
sell off Balham Hill. Support is rallying for re-letting the farm and 
saving the shop. The National Farmers' Union has written to Bakewell urging 
its retention and stating: "It is difficult to see why another young farmer 
could not emulate Mr Jones and continue to farm the holding profitably."

There are hopes that the Conservative minority on the council - the party 
that originally proposed the national selloff - will oppose the sale. 
Farming is still alive and kicking in the village of Chiselborough. It 
remains to be seen whether the county council will persist in its policy of 
declaring it dead.

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