The Conservative candidate for the North East mayoral election has said he intends to “fight” against plans to re-wild swathes of land currently used for farming.

Under the 2021 Environment Act, the Government set a number of targets for improving Britain’s depleted natural environment, including increasing tree cover and improving water quality. The Government has set a target to re-wild about 300,000 hectares of farmland within the next two decades.

However, the plans have been questioned by farmers, with the NFU calling targets “irrational” and “unachievable” in 2023. At a mayoral hustings event hosted by Friends of the Earth in Alnwick last week, four of the prospective mayors faced questions on rewilding.

There was some support for the policy. Independent candidate Jamie Driscoll said: “If you look at the state our natural landscapes, it’s not massively natural. Forests are mainly monoculture and there is very little biodiversity.

“We want more food production in the UK so we want rewilding in areas where we’re never going to grow much food. In those areas, rewilding is absolutely the answer.”

Labour’s Kim McGuinness broadly agreed, saying she supported rewilding “in the right places”. Similarly, Liberal Democrat candidate Aidan King said rewilding was “about getting the right things in the right places”.

However, Conservative candidate Guy Renner Thompson had a different view. He feared the impact rewilding would have on tenant farmers and their communities.

Cllr Renner Thompson, who comes from a farming family, said: “I’m not in favour of rewilding. That said, if it is something a landowner wants to pursue that is up to them.

“The people that lose out are the tenant farming sector, not the large landowners. I know families who have lost thousands of acres of their farms to rewilding projects.

“If we remove farms from the communities, you lose the communities. They are what keeps the pubs, garages and schools going. We need to fight against rewilding because we will lose our communities.”

The Tenant Farmers Association warned that some landowners are attempting to regain possession of land rented to tenant farmers to use it for rewilding schemes.

Around one third of farmland in the UK is rented, although in Northumberland 80,000 acres of the Duke of Northumberland’s agricultural land is under the custodianship of more than 100 tenant farmers. Many have lived and farmed the same holdings for generations.

The impact of rewilding schemes on tenant farmers was in the spotlight at a recent meeting of the National Sheep Association (NSA) Northern Region and the Farming Network.

Farmers said they were being squeezed out of short term lets and Farm Business Tenancies (FBT) as landowners take back land, in most cases to get involved in large scale tree planting, rewilding and other environmental projects.

In some cases, others at the meeting claimed that this trend appears to be linked to tax benefits of being active in farming and land management. 

NSA chief executive Phil Stocker, who was in attendance at the meeting, said: “NSA is hearing of an alarming number of cases involving the loss of significant areas of land on five year FBTs, leaving farmers with unviable holdings either owned or on a full agricultural tenancy. It is clear this is a common problem in parts of the north of England, where a high percentage of farm land is tenanted and owned by large private estates, corporate organisations such as water companies, and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).” 

The practice of estates reclaiming land on short term lets is often driven by landowners and agents seeking to reduce tax liability, and increase income through government and private schemes including carbon offsetting, biodiversity net gain, and tree planting. But significant changes are also being driven by Natural England related to stocking reductions and Countryside and Higher Level Stewardship renewals.

Mr Stocker said: “In some areas we are seeing a breakdown in traditional sheep farming and grazing practices, with holdings becoming unviable, and tenants often not having the opportunity to benefit from the schemes that land is being entered into. This is not new, it’s a trend that has been going on for some time, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest it is increasing rapidly at a time when food production has been recognised as fragile.”

Farmers currently affected by this issue, whether in the north of England or further afield, are encouraged to contact NSA to provide a more accurate view of what is happening. Email enquiries@nationalsheep.org.uk or call 01684 892661.