Farmers warn rich landlords have said they will kick out tenants and turn their land into nature reserves and bogs to access millions in cash – as George Eustice defends rewilding scheme

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Are Boris' wife Carrie, father Stanley and his eco-chums the Goldsmith brothers pushing through their 'rewilding' pet project? 

Carrie Johnson and her husband's father Stanley Johnson, who says rewilding is 'halting man's manipulation of the landscape to allow animals and plants to return'

Environment minister Zac Goldsmith has repeatedly spoken out to insist the Government is 'committed' to rewilding, so much so they are described as being part of a 'cult'.

The Tory peer says farmers should be 'rewarded' for allowing their land to return to its natural state, letting native plants and animals come back.

Environment minister Zac Goldsmith and his landowner brother Ben Goldsmith

His public backing for the policy came at a time when police were investigating his younger brother Ben Goldsmith, a Department for Environment board member and also a friend of Carrie Johnson, over claims by neighbours that he released red deer and wild boar from his land in breach of rules.

Millionaire farmer Mr Goldsmith told the Mail that the issue was 'a bit of a Vicar of Dibley-style local ding-dong' and said he believed it was due to two neighbours who had 'philosophical' differences with him over his rewilding stance on his 300 acre farm in Somerset.

Lord Goldsmith said in a speech to Tory think-tank Bright Blue: 'I'm committed to ensuring that as we invest our Nature for Climate fund, we place a lot of importance on rewilding.'

He added that he wanted to see a 'much greater uptake of rewilding'.

Lord Goldsmith also hailed the end of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which will become the Environmental Land Management scheme (ELM). The Mail revealed that his brother had claimed EU CAP subsidies of £25,000 for his farm last year.

The payments were under the CAP scheme that ministers have vowed to reform post-Brexit.

Lord Goldsmith said: 'So if I want to go and plant ten hectares of land with trees I can be paid to do so and I can be paid reasonably well. If I want to leave that land to actually regenerate because that's the best solution for that piece of land, it won't be recognised and that's something that we need to address.

'So there is lots of work to be done... but I'm absolutely convinced that we need to get the incentives right to reward, and incentivise, much greater uptake of rewilding.'

Ben Goldsmith caused fury among farmers in 2020 by tweeting that 'overgrazing' by upland sheep farmers — rather than near-record rainfall — was responsible for the devastating floods suffered in South Wales 

Boris Johnson's father Stanley is also a fan of rewilding, calling it a way of 'halting man's manipulation of the landscape to allow animals and plants to return'.

In 2020 the Prime Minister Johnson gifted his father a group of beavers on his 80th birthday.

According to the Telegraph, the Prime Minister and his siblings clubbed together to get a licence to allow their father to have beavers in the river of his Exmoor estate.

The Prime Minister met with the UK's top rewilder, Derek Gow, to ensure the paperwork was arranged and the land suitably converted into a good beaver habitat.

Stanley Johnson was said to be 'delighted' at the gift.

Ben Goldsmith is an investor in Derek Gow's rewilding project.

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Boris Johnson's rewilding plans for Britain will lead to 'tragedy' for tenant farmers who face being kicked off their land by rich eco-zealot landowners who want to replace their crops and livestock with trees and bogs.

The National Farming Union also has growing concerns about Britain's food security, warning changing the use of agricultural land will damage the UK's self-sufficiency and lead to increased imports. 

Tenant farmers are the lifeblood of British farming - with a third of land used this way - and some families have farmed the same land for a century or more. 

NFU vice-president Tom Bradshaw said: 'We're hearing that some landlords are saying they don't need tenants and they are going to be putting the land into nature recovery. Where does that leave the tenants? If we lose tenants, it would be incredibly short-sighted.'

In England around a third of agricultural land is rented. The latest data from Defra based on a survey carried out in 2017 showed that in England there were 14,000 wholly tenanted farm holdings (making up 15 per cent of the country's total holdings), 36,000 mixed tenure (34 per cent) and 54,000 owner-occupied holdings. 

The Government's £2.4billion-per-year plan to replace the European Union's common agricultural policy - called the 'Sustainable Farming Incentive' - was launched by Environment Secretary George Eustice at the Oxford Farming Conference yesterday.

Landowners will be paid to plant trees and restore wetlands and peat bogs on 741,000 acres of land under the largest farming reforms in 50 years when Britain joined the EEC. 

But farmers say swapping fields of crops or cows for trees and bogs will make British food production a 'dirty word' and force smaller growers 'off the land' and out of business.

From 2023 the taxpayer will fund 15 large nature reserve projects of up to 12,000 acres across the UK plus thousands of other smaller projects. The 'landscape recovery' rewilding scheme will eventually cost £800million from 2028. 

When asked about whether the Government is complacent on food security - and more focussed on growing nature than produce - Mr Eustice said: 'I don't accept that at all', saying that every three years there is a legal requirement be a review of UK food security.

He said the one from last year found that the country was around 76% self-sufficient and produces more milk and lamb than we consume, and soft fruit and chicken is going in the same direction.

He said: 'We want to plant 10,000 trees every year and 300,000 hectares to be restored to their natural condition. That needs to be looked at in the context of the fact that we have over 9million hectares of agricultural land in England. It is a relatively small percentage - around two or three per cent - that might go to some land use change.

'If you look at where our food production comes from, there is not a direct correlation with land area. So 60% of agricultural output comes from just 30% of land. And in areas such as pigs and poultry, where he have seen a growth in self-sufficiency, they don't use very much land at all'.

'My argument has been all along that food production is essential, but the reward for that should come from the market. We are already seeing increases in farm gate prices - so there are positive signs that farmers are seeing the right kind of return for the food they produce'.

Asked by a farmer concerned about the rising cost of growing food, particularly, fuel, fertiliser and labour costs, Mr Eustice said farmers needed to enter 'tough' negotiations with supermarkets, although this might mean price rises.

Mr Eustice said that as the cost of wheat was just 10 per cent of the price of a loaf, he said: 'You can actually see a good increase in the price of wheat without really affecting the price of bread much at all.' Red meat was only 3 per cent of the average family's shopping basket, 'and that means that the overall impact on consumer prices and the average shopping baskets are actually quite low'.

Costs in Mr Eustice added: The truth is a bunch of daffodils in supermarkets has been £1 a bunch pretty much for as long as anyone can remember.

'And there is no reason why the price of daffodils should not actually rise to maybe £1.10.

'It should not be a psychological barrier.' He said: 'we will need to see retailers paying more to reflect the increased costs of producers and we do need producers to stand their ground and take quite a tough position with those retailers.'

Boris Johnson's pursuit of a 'green dream' for Britain - including eating less meat, banning petrol cars from 2030 and scrapping gas boilers - has been blamed by some farmers on the Prime Minister's family and friends.

The Prime Minister's father Stanley, wife Carrie Johnson and their environmentalist 'chums' Zac and Ben Goldsmith, who are advising the Government, are accused of being part of a 'cult of rewilding'. 

The announcement came days after Ed Sheeran announced his own plans to purchase farmland to plant 'as many trees as possible' to offset his considerable carbon footprint after years of worldwide tours and jet-setting. 

Jono Dixon, a farmer in East Yorkshire whose family have grown wheat on the land since 1857, said: 'I'm sick to death of all this tree planting rewilding mumbo-jumbo malarkey. Let us farm, let us produce but for goodness sake leave us alone to do what we do best'.

He told MailOnline: 'Planting trees on a mass scale on good productive farm land producing cereals, vegetables and other edible crops is quite simply ridiculous and in my view shouldn't happen. 

'As custodians of the countryside, we farmers know how to manage land, we monitor wildlife and we generally look after what's precious and that's our daily surroundings. We seem to be surrounded by a bunch of complete utter imbeciles who think they know everything but actually no nowt at all'.  

Mr Dixon said the people around Mr Johnson are 'dangerous', adding that Ed Sheeran and other millionaire non-farmers buying up land for conservation are getting into something they 'know nothing about'.  

Environment Secretary George Eustice (pictured) is in the firing line from farmers over the rewilding plans - but he insists it will not hurt food production

Farmers and landowners will be paid to protect nature by planting trees and restoring wetlands and peat under the largest farming reforms in 50 years (stock image)

There are concerns that the plans focus too much on freeing up land for rewilding instead of supporting British food production

Farmers are angry about the move towards rewilding, branding it 'mumbo jumbo c**p' 

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insists that projects will not go ahead if food production is risked and claims it will help cut greenhouse gases in the UK by the equivalent of taking between 12,000 to 25,000 petrol or diesel cars off the road. 

Chair of the NFU Cymru Milk Board, Abi Reader, said this week: 'At some point growing food alongside nature became a dirty word', adding sarcastically: 'It's ok because when we can't grow enough to eat here we can import food from other places round the world and reassure ourselves we have the upper hand on nature'. 

She believes that 'selling rewilding as the answer to all our problems' is wrong, because it takes farmers 'off the land' at a time when 'self sufficiency is falling' and rural communities are 'fragile'. 

Cash will be handed to farmers over a number of years, and they will have to prove they have been planting trees and plants, restoring rivers and dunes or reintroducing certain types of wildlife, including beavers, curlew birds, sand lizards and water voles.  

There are concerns that the new policy will reward the richest landowners who can bring in millions in taxpayer-funded grants, while smaller tenant farmers face 'financial catastrophe' because of the 'joke environmental idea'. 

All the new schemes will be voluntary and it will be for farmers to decide what combination of actions is right for them.

But it appears that if they don't go along with it, they will miss out on cash. 

British beef farmer Joanne Pile predicted: 'We're walking head first in to a very dangerous future of food security for this country'. 

Under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, farmers were given taxpayers' money from Brussels broadly based on the amount of land they farmed. This meant that the more land they had, the more cash that came their way.

Until 2024, the Government will maintain the £2.4billion paid to the UK in EU agriculture subsidies, but will halve the £1.8billion handed out in direct payments to farmers. The £800million to £900million-a-year saved will go towards the new 'landscape recovery' scheme.   

The NFU also has concerns, with vice president Tom Bradshaw declaring: 'At a time when public support for British food and farming is at a high, our biggest concern is that these schemes result in reduced food production in the UK, leading to the need to import more food from countries with production standards that would be illegal for our farmers here.

'This simply off-shores our production and any environmental impacts that go with it and would be morally reprehensible.'    

Under the plans some 15 nature reserves will be created, which will aim to recover threatened native species such as the curlew, sand lizard and water vole, restoring rivers, lakes, ponds and streams.

Other threatened species expected to benefit from the plans include the Marsh fritillary butterfly, the shrill carder bee and wild asparagus. The plans will take effect this year, starting out with restoring 24,700 acres of habitat.

The Government claims it will help cut greenhouse gases in the UK by the equivalent of taking between 12,000 to 25,000 petrol or diesel cars off the road, a reduction of 25-50 kilotonnes of carbon. Despite the proposals' large scale, some 22.2million acres of farmland will remain, so officials do not expect food output will be affected. 

The common agricultural policy, which subsidised farmers according to how much land they owned, had been criticised for providing incentives to destroy habitats.

One scheme in the new plans, Local Nature Recovery, rewards farmers for 'making space for nature' in farms and countryside. This could include planting trees, restoring peat bogs and turning fields into wetland areas.

More radical changes will take place in a second scheme, Landscape Recovery. This will include establishing new nature reserves, restoring floodplains or creating forests and wetlands.

The two new schemes follow on from the previously announced Sustainable Farming Incentive, which provided support for practices such as reducing pesticide use, improving soil quality and rewarding farmers for preventing local river pollution.

The schemes aim to bring up to 60 per cent of England's agricultural soil under sustainable management by 2030. The reforms will be the biggest changes to farming and land management in 50 years with more than 3,000 farmers already testing the schemes. 

At the Oxford Farming Conference, Defra Secretary George Eustice said applications will shortly open for the first wave of Landscape Recovery projects.   

The scheme is part of the environmental land management payments programme to replace the EU Common Agricultural Policy payments which mostly focused on the amount of land farmed.

There will also be a 'local nature recovery' scheme paying farmers to take local action and work together to benefit the environment, through measures such as reducing run-off, curbing flood risk by restoring peat or wetland areas, and adding trees and hedges to fields.

It will be trialled in 2023 with a full rollout across the country from 2024. 

The landscape recovery scheme will pay for more radical, long-term, large-scale land use changes and habitat restoration, officials said. 

A sustainable farming incentive, which supports environmentally friendly farm practices such as looking after the soil by growing cover crops in the winter, has already been announced.

The three strands of the new scheme are expected to each receive roughly a third share of the £2.4 billion annual Government spending on farm and land management payments by 2028.

The Government said the schemes would help halt the decline in species, restore up to 300,000 hectares of habitat by 2042 and generate carbon savings of six million tonnes a year by the mid 2030s. 

Mr Eustice said: 'We want to see profitable farming businesses producing nutritious food, underpinning a growing rural economy, where nature is recovering and people have better access to it.

'Through our new schemes, we are going to work with farmers and land managers to halt the decline in species, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, increase woodland, improve water and air quality and create more space for nature.

'We are building these schemes together, and we are already working with over 3,000 farmers across the sector to test and trial our future approach.

'Farmers will be able to choose which scheme or combination of schemes works best for their business, and we will support them to do so.'

Speaking at the online Oxford Farming Conference, Mr Eustice said the 'local nature recovery' scheme would pay farmers to make space for nature, by planting trees, making ponds and creating wildflower meadows on unproductive parts of their land.

It is aimed to be a more ambitious replacement for the existing countryside stewardship scheme, which is also seeing a 30 per cent increase in the value of payments to encourage more take-up as a bridge to the new regime.

The landscape recovery element was 'about much more fundamental land use change', Mr Eustice said.

Under the scheme, land managers can bid to receive funding for large-scale, long-term projects for establishing woodlands, restoring peatlands, wetlands and other habitats and creating new nature reserves.

In the first wave, up to 15 pilot projects, which could include rewilding schemes that help re-establish natural processes in the landscape, will focus on restoring England's rivers and streams and helping threatened native species recover.

Successful bids, which will cover landscapes of between 500 and 5,000 hectares (1,200 to 12,000 acres), will be chosen by a team of experts over the summer.

Mr Eustice said that the 'radical rewilding experiment' at the Knepp Estate in Sussex showed that 'sometimes if you let go of the reins and allow nature to re-establish itself, and have a nature-led recovery of habitats, you can see some quite significant changes in a relatively short time'.

He told delegates: 'These types of projects we envisage under landscape recovery won't be right for every farm business or every farm holder, and indeed they probably won't be right for most farm businesses. 

'It will enable us to support a choice that some landowners may want to take, but we won't be requiring anybody to enter these schemes.'

He told the conference: 'It's important that we recognise the truth around land use.

'If we're to deliver the targets we've set ourselves for woodland creation in England - around 10,000 hectares of trees per year - and deliver our objective of getting 300,000 hectares of land where habitat is restored, there is inevitably going to be some degree of land use change.'

But he said it would only be a small proportion of the 9.3 million hectares of farmland in England.

And seeking to answer concerns about a drop in food production, he said there was not a direct correlation between productivity and the amount of land farmed, and the Government would be keeping a close eye on food security.

Professor Alastair Driver, director of campaign group Rewilding Britain which works with landowners on rewilding projects, said the landscape recovery proposals were a significant step-change, but urged ministers to 'get the details right' by ensuring rewilding was at the heart of the initiative. 

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has unveiled the £2.4billion-per-year plan to replace the European Union's common agricultural policy. Pictured: A curlew, which is one of the animals that will hopefully be aided by the policy

One scheme in the new plans, Local Nature Recovery, rewards farmers for 'making space for nature' in farms and countryside. Pictured: A water vole

Some 15 nature reserves will be created, which will aim to recover threatened native species such as the curlew, sand lizard (pictured) and water vole, restoring rivers, lakes, ponds and streams

'Rewilding marginal and unproductive farmland, and upscaling nature-positive regenerative farming, is a major opportunity to tackle the nature and climate emergencies, while offering opportunities for farmers and rural communities, and ensuring no loss of productive land for growing food,' he said.

Tony Juniper, chairman of government advisers Natural England, said: 'More than two thirds of England is farmed and these reforms pave the way for those who manage the land to produce healthy food alongside other vital benefits, such as carbon storage, clean water, reduced flood risk, thriving wildlife and beautiful landscapes for everyone to enjoy.'

Dr Alexander Lees, senior lecturer in conservation biology at Manchester Metropolitan University, said: 'Escaping from the clutches of the common agricultural policy, which has driven biodiversity loss across Europe by incentivising habitat destruction, represents a major opportunity to improve the state of UK nature.' 

If the UK is serious in reversing declines in its diminishing species 'we need to be racing towards the 300,000 hectare [741,000-acre] target as fast as possible,' he added.

All the new schemes will be voluntary and it will be for farmers to decide what combination of actions is right for them.

UK gives Leo charity £28k to protect the dwarf buffalo

By Helena Horton for the Daily Mail 

Leonardo DiCaprio's green campaign group has been given £28,800 of taxpayers' cash to lobby for 'rewilding'.

The charity backed by the Oscar-winning actor, who is worth an estimated £200million, received the grant to protect a species of dwarf buffalo called the Tamaraw in the Philippines by conserving land from development, allowing it to remain wild.

The sum appeared in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' accounts as 'official development assistance'.

Leonardo DiCaprio's green campaign group has been given £28,800 of taxpayers' cash to lobby in order to protect a species of dwarf buffalo called the Tamaraw in the Philippines by conserving land from development

DiCaprio, 47, launched the conservation project Re:wild last year and has already attracted large donations. According to its website the actor 'has provided more than $100million (£75 million) in grants to a variety of programmes and projects', with Re:wild described as 'the latest undertaking linked to DiCaprio's environmental activism'.

The star's most recent film, Don't Look Up, sees a deadly comet heading towards Earth in what many have interpreted as a metaphor for climate change. He said of his role: 'I just felt like this was an incredible gift to be a part of a movie that encapsulated exactly what we're going through.'

The actor recently came under fire for jetting from New York to Miami and back in one day soon after speaking at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in November.

A Defra spokesman said the projects it supports 'focus on local action... to address unsustainable use, habitat degradation and loss, whilst delivering poverty reduction'.

DiCaprio, 47, launched the conservation project Re:wild last year and has already attracted large donations