ABSTRACT

The previous chapter has sketched in some of the essential features of a Conservation Reserve as it might operate in the UK. A question not yet considered is how farmers will react to being offered payments to plant trees, establish grass or create new habitat on productive agricultural land. Under a voluntary programme, the willingness of farmers in the target areas to enrol land and abide by the conditions laid down is crucial to success. With the retirement and diversion of land now more firmly on the agenda than at any time since Mansholt, farmers are already being invited to consider ways of using and managing land which are as novel and revolutionary as any to emerge since 1945. The pressing need to bring about reductions in agricultural capacity and to put in motion longer-term structural changes in the industry means that farmers accustomed to intensification and specialisation are now being urged to extensify and diversify farm production in order to survive. To farmers who have responded to past policy signals in the required manner, this must appear a surprising and contentious reversal of public policy. Since farmer behaviour cannot, under these circumstances, be predicted from past experience, a large question mark hangs over who the first participants in a land diversion programme will be and how much land they will be willing to enrol.