UK Agrarian Reform

It is worrying times. There is a real instability around our food systems in the UK. This issue is twofold. One, people cannot afford to eat; and two the UK simply doesn’t produce enough of its own food. So I have an idea. An idea that really should have been put in place decades ago. An idea that will not be popular with many and I am sure that there will be sneering comparisons to Chairman Mao’s land reform. But that would be silly. The UK land mass is far smaller than that of China and so agrarian reform would be far easier to manage. We also have the benefit of hindsight here.

So my idea goes something like this -

Government to nationalise the agricultural system to address issues of food security and sovereignty. This would involve the sequestration of privately owned agricultural land with an emphasis on those areas over a certain size (say 100 hectares?). The land would then be distributed in two ways.

1. In plots of between 10 and 100 hectares with the intention of returning to a mixed farming system. The limit to the size of any one crop is to create a system that avoids monocultures. These plots could be run and operated by either government employed farmers or else farmers who already own and manage up to 100 hectares.

2. Plots of between 0.5 -10 hectares to be available for small scale worker co-ops to grow food on and to live on. These would be ‘stewarded’ by the co-ops with no rental charges. ‘Ownership’ is retained by local government, much like an allotment. Tenancies could be long term.

All agricultural land would be required to meet strict agroecological standards, e.g. a certain percentage of biodiversity, a certain percentage of edible crops, no glysophate, principles permaculture principles etc.

Land preparation:

Most of the soil has been ravaged by the use of herbicides such as Glysophate and so a plant like cannabis (hemp) could be an important crop for phytoremediation. This could also coincide with an investment in the logistics required for transforming cannabis into various products i.e. hempcrete, medicine, seed oil, textiles and even an alternative graphene for the use in supercapacitors.

All this would have to go hand in hand with educational tools teaching people about food production and consumption. Food growing would be on every school syllabus. Essential; like maths.

This kind of radical reform would also contribute to slowing down the climate crisis in two fundamental ways. 1. Through the growth of biodiversity reducing dairy monocultures and 2. By growing our own food we will reduce food miles.

Of course there are many finer details that would have to be ironed out, the figures are arbitrary but you get the picture…