ABSTRACT
The amount of land potentially available for a Conservation Reserve in the UK is, at least in principle, simply a question of demand and supply. Land will still be needed for food production and other uses such as forestry and urban growth. On the other hand, with continuing improvements in the productivity of agriculture, the nation’s farmers should be able to supply more food from a smaller area of land. It is safe to hypothesise that there will be a considerable surplus of land available for other uses, including a Conservation Reserve, by the end of the century. The aim of the land budget to be presented in this chapter is to show how large this ‘land surplus’ is likely to be. To be precise, it shows how much land could be spared from agriculture, while also meeting the claims of other land uses but without jeopardising the supply of home-produced foodstuffs needed to satisfy expected demand.
