A new report on land use is a jumble of issues with no clear priorities, says Tim Lang
Land use makes retailers' eyes glaze over. Not retail parks, of course, but don't confuse that with the sum of land policy.
The cover of the new Land Use report from the Chief Scientist's Foresight Programme cleverly gets to the heart of the matter. The UK is depicted as a jumble of words, each a symbol of competing issues: water, housing, prosperity, energy, flood, risk, history, wellbeing, recreation, transport, forestry, agriculture. It's this complexity that makes land use policy so 'hot'.
For me, the food issue got lost in the Foresight report. Retailing is often on prime agricultural land, where people could farm and must again in the future.
Everywhere on the globe, even here in rich Britain, we must retain and probably maximise food production capacities. The too few veg we grow now in Britain are grown on the flatlands, mostly in the east where water is short. To pick veg (and fruit) needs labour. Currently, that's mostly migrant and seasonal because existing local labour shuns such work. There's history in this resistance: little dignity, low wages, patronising farmers, poor conditions. And where today are migrant labourers supposed to sleep? Housing is pricey. The rural existence is mythic; the realities, as last week's Rural Advocate 2010 report showed, less so.
Secondly, the Foresight core team showed the limits of science. It can inform but not decide. How its inquiries are framed determines outcomes. Democracy and politicians can't hide behind science. Foresight reports always have sponsoring Ministers, but no Minister, let alone several, attended the launch. Tensions, I gather, weren't just in Whitehall but advisory teams, too.
Thirdly, what methods should society use to judge how land matters? Do local or national interests take precedence? Mainstream economists believe giving land monetary values lets markets decide. Sustainability advocates counter: what price a bird or ecosystems or clean air, let alone future flexibility of use? Mark Twain's quip "buy land, they're not making it any more" misses the point. Once land has been concreted, it's hard to return it to Grade 1 agricultural land.
Important though elections are, and with ours imminent, whoever wins will probably not want to face the enormity of tackling land use. But the issue won't go away.
Tim Lang is professor of food policy at City University.
Land use makes retailers' eyes glaze over. Not retail parks, of course, but don't confuse that with the sum of land policy.
The cover of the new Land Use report from the Chief Scientist's Foresight Programme cleverly gets to the heart of the matter. The UK is depicted as a jumble of words, each a symbol of competing issues: water, housing, prosperity, energy, flood, risk, history, wellbeing, recreation, transport, forestry, agriculture. It's this complexity that makes land use policy so 'hot'.
For me, the food issue got lost in the Foresight report. Retailing is often on prime agricultural land, where people could farm and must again in the future.
Everywhere on the globe, even here in rich Britain, we must retain and probably maximise food production capacities. The too few veg we grow now in Britain are grown on the flatlands, mostly in the east where water is short. To pick veg (and fruit) needs labour. Currently, that's mostly migrant and seasonal because existing local labour shuns such work. There's history in this resistance: little dignity, low wages, patronising farmers, poor conditions. And where today are migrant labourers supposed to sleep? Housing is pricey. The rural existence is mythic; the realities, as last week's Rural Advocate 2010 report showed, less so.
Secondly, the Foresight core team showed the limits of science. It can inform but not decide. How its inquiries are framed determines outcomes. Democracy and politicians can't hide behind science. Foresight reports always have sponsoring Ministers, but no Minister, let alone several, attended the launch. Tensions, I gather, weren't just in Whitehall but advisory teams, too.
Thirdly, what methods should society use to judge how land matters? Do local or national interests take precedence? Mainstream economists believe giving land monetary values lets markets decide. Sustainability advocates counter: what price a bird or ecosystems or clean air, let alone future flexibility of use? Mark Twain's quip "buy land, they're not making it any more" misses the point. Once land has been concreted, it's hard to return it to Grade 1 agricultural land.
Important though elections are, and with ours imminent, whoever wins will probably not want to face the enormity of tackling land use. But the issue won't go away.
Tim Lang is professor of food policy at City University.
No comments yet