Town & Country

Worth rewarding

THE NFU has released a new report on the ‘extensive role British farming plays in maintaining the nation’s iconic landscapes’ and has called on the Government to ensure the new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) is accessible to all farmers.

The NFU’s report comes almost one year after the publication of the Glover Report into the country’s national parks and AONBs, which found that they were being under-resourced and mismanaged. In response, the NFU’s Landscape and Access report reveals that there are some 140,000 miles of public rights of way in England and Wales, that farmers maintain more than 255,000 miles of hedgerow and that farmland is the destination of almost half of visits to the natural environment in England, totalling about 4.1 billion visits each year.

The NFU’s report makes five key policy points: ELMS must be open and accessible to all farmers, with fair reward for maintaining and improving landscape features and access; where landscape-scale impact is desirable, it must be