Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
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Posted on September 17, 2013 | 5 Comments
I recently discovered that the government’s Department for Communities and Local Government has, in its wisdom, published a consultation document entitled Greater Flexibilities For Change Of Use.
Contained therein is the suggestion that farmers with redundant agricultural buildings could convert these to residential dwellings under permitted development rights without the need to get planning permission. My first thought was that sustainable small-scale agriculture is a labour intensive enterprise that really needs people in numbers living on the farm, but currently this is pretty much ruled out by planning policy, so how good it could be to create multiple farm residences along these lines.
But then the incomparable Simon Fairlie gently pointed out to me the rather obvious fact that if this policy were to be implemented the price of agricultural land and buildings would rocket far beyond the means of anyone who was proposing actually to make their living from farming. Which rather confirmed my second thought, that this is basically a developer’s or landowner’s charter that will further suck the life out of the country’s agricultural infrastructure.
Current planning policy states that “Local planning authorities should avoid new isolated homes in the countryside unless there are special circumstances such as [1] the essential need for a rural worker to live permanently at or near their place of work in the countryside….[2] where the development would re-use redundant or disused buildings and lead to an enhancement to the immediate setting”.
Having just fought a protracted battle for the right to build an ‘isolated new home’ under the first rubric, it does seem to me a bit odd that the government is now proposing virtually open season on isolated old homes under the second. I can see the logic of making best use of existing buildings, but it may be worth enquiring more deeply into the state of modern farming and finding out why such buildings are redundant. Farming changes for sure, but it may be that in the future we need more farmers, and therefore more places for them to live in the countryside. If planning policy readily removes farm buildings from farm use for general residential purposes, then that job will become harder. Perhaps it’s noteworthy in that respect that virtually the only people who formally objected to my recent application for a new agricultural dwelling were those living in former farm buildings nearby that used to serve my site and the surrounding fields, precious few of whom are themselves involved in farming.
Doubtless there are many different views about what an ‘enhancement to the immediate setting’ of farmland would be. I’d submit that actually trying to farm it sustainably is an honourable one, and selling it off for non-agricultural residence is not so honourable. There’s a veritable knot of problems around land prices, food prices, energy prices and planning policy that requires careful untying if we’re to ‘enhance the immediate setting’ of farmland by actually trying to farm it sustainably. But, to press the metaphor, it seems to me that the knot will be tied ever tighter if this proposal is implemented. The consultation ends on 15 October – so farmworkers of the world unite, we have nothing to lose, except maybe our future houses.
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It strikes me that the central point that makes thinking about these matters so difficult is the impossibility of knowing the future.
The present situation is at least visible, if not clear. Perhaps I could risk simplification by describing it as: conventional economics sees farm buildings/homes as most valuable when occupied by commuters and others who want to live an urban lifestlye with a rural backdrop; this puts them out of the economic reach of people who want to live a genuinely rural lifestyle, ie till the land; a tiny minority of people (us) think this is a bad thing.
Our view is one largely based on a view of the future, one in which we think it likely that much more labour will be needed on the land. We think such a future would be a good thing as it would be a move towards a more sustainable agriculture – something which is dear to our hearts. In the present, the number of people who, like the intrepid Spudman, want to live in the country and till the soil is tiny. The question is perhaps more one of human rights than of demographics if one only looks at the present.
As for the future, it seems to me that a situation in which a large number of people were needed on the land would be a low-fossil-fuel situation and in that case the urban lifestlye/rural backdrop option would fade away in the face of high fuel prices. By ‘high’ I mean what would today be called astronomical.
But who am I predict the future? There’s one thing that all predicitons of the future have in common: they all turn out to be wrong.
Thanks for another thoughtful post, Patrick. I agree that a genuine rural or ‘alternative farming’ lifestyle is motivated by perceptions of future circumstances, which can make it an odd thing to try to practise in the here and now. Funnily enough, I’ve written a comment along those lines for my next post. I’d be inclined to add three further points to yours:
(1) Though I agree that only a tiny minority actively want to live in the country and till the soil, I think the number who would like to do so but recognise its impracticality for them in modern life is much larger (judging by the vast numbers of people wishing to volunteer with us, for example). No doubt there’s an element of the ‘grass is greener’ and misplaced romanticism in some of this, but also I think a genuine alienation from and/or critique of the contemporary urbanised economy. Perhaps this explains the appeal of permaculture in providing an outlet for people living in constrained urban circumstances to feel that they can take charge of their self-provisioning at least to some degree.
(2) Though I agree that the kind of stuff I do makes most sense in the context of an energy-constrained future and isn’t likely to become mainstream unless & until that future arrives, I’d argue there’s also a contemporary human rights issue inasmuch as the apparently endless contemporary availability of cheap food in the UK and other wealthy countries is built to a considerable extent on the deprivation of others both here and more particularly elsewhere. So one reason to pursue small-scale locally-oriented farming and the food sovereignty agenda is contemporary human rights.
(3) In relation to the specifics of the government consultation, although it does make sense to try to reuse redundant rural buildings it seems strange to me to place such impediments in the way of new ‘isolated’ dwellings, while giving free rein to old ones – surely any rationale for preventing isolated development should be the same in each case. And given the huge financial payoffs potentially available to landowners in converting functional farm buildings to dwellings, the policy will doubtless incentivise landowners to find all sorts of reasons why their farm buildings are quite suddenly ‘redundant’!
Halfway through the second sentence of your post the real reason for this change of rules is clear. There is no ambiguity in this and it is very painfully predictable. The country – and I grew up in Berkshire and I saw this happening with my own eyes by the way – is a luxury commodity for the rich. The market wants it and is prepared to pay for it. Pigsties, sheds, any old building will deliberately be left to rot (even if it could be used or repaired) and then developed. Why would you house workers onsite when you can minibus in eastern Europeans from dormitories in the nearest town and when a tumble down bit of stone wall can be converted to half a million?
When I was growing up our community was a picture of one nation toryism, the middle and upper classes at one end and the working class at the other, but sharing the same shops, pubs and school (not always with the school but mainly). Now my dad tells me the council estate has been knocked down and the rubble (and people) removed. The land has only nominally been returned to agricultural land because it still lies fallow. They are so rich and powerful they removed an entire class from a community and they are not even doing anything sensible with the land, they have just improved the view!
Oh yeah, and they built a new “estate” with “affordable housing”. The cheapest was £450,000.
Perceptive as ever Tom, and all too true I fear. The struggle is around the conjoined issues of economic justice in land access and ecological wisdom in farming, but it’s hard to see it succeeding without major ecological shocks. Of course the answer certainly isn’t a return to one nation toryism, though your description (very familar from my own home counties’ upbringing) does underline how far ‘conservative’ neoliberalism has drifted even from that minimally inclusive vision. Still, to try to seek some positives from a bleak situation, I wonder if the government’s newfound enthusiasm to house people in the countryside (of which I suppose my recent successful planning appeal may have been a beneficiary) could still be used to some advantage by people minded to create proper local farming infrastructures if they can find smart ways of developing cooperative financial instruments?