ABSTRACT
An attempt was made at the start of this book to define the wider possibilities open to policy-makers as they set about reforming policies that affect the use and management of rural land. Many years of land-saving technological progress in farming, coupled with a long-term stagnation in the demand for food and fibres, means that certain degrees of freedom are now available. These should permit a more spacious and imaginative use of rural land than ever before. The ‘large project’ is to redistribute the fruits of past technological change by redeploying the excess land, labour and capital that is presently fixed in a farming use to benefit all users of the countryside. This will involve some combination of an extensification of production and the diversion of land out of agriculture altogether. The question was asked: if the need is to reduce agricultural over-production, then can this be achieved in ways which keep conservation to the fore? It would be ironical indeed if environmental concerns were to be just as effectively pushed to the margin by contraction as they were by expansion. In the past such a direct and simple question was rarely posed. Policy-makers, preoccupied with the need to reduce over-capacity to solve pressing budgetary problems, have only recently begun to think more clearly about longer-term agricultural restructuring. Now that they have, the way is open to move some way towards ensuring that agricultural surpluses are translated into environmental opportunities. But the approach is more oblique than the ‘large project’ defined above might suggest.
