More than two-thirds of England is farmland. Since leaving the European Union and its Common Agricultural Policy in 2020, England has slashed traditional farm subsidies and redirected money to environmental activities. The thinking was outlined in 2018 by Michael Gove, a Conservative minister, who argued that per-hectare subsidies did not work: they pushed up land values and impeded innovation. The state should instead pay farmers for providing public goods, especially environmental ones.
Subsidies have been cut relentlessly since 2021 and will disappear entirely in 2027. Farmers can pick from a new menu of environmental actions with distinct payment rates. The grant for leaving crop stubble over the winter, which enables skylarks and yellowhammers to build nests, is £58 per hectare. The grant for sowing wild flowers is £739 per hectare. The average farm generated income of £71,000 in the 2024-25 fiscal year, about the same in real terms as when Mr Gove made his speech. What farmers have lost in subsidies they have gained in environmental payments and income from non-agricultural activities. Almost three-quarters of farms have diversified into things like solar power and renting cottages to tourists.
Between 2021 and 2025 the amount of arable land that is fallow or used for something other than growing crops more than doubled, from 231,000 hectares to 545,000 (a tenth of the total). The number of breeding beef cattle in England is falling, as is the number of sheep. Trees were planted on more land in 2025 than at any time for 20 years. Only 1,200 of England's roughly 100,000 farmers took government grants to quit, and some of them were probably going anyway. Farmers have not only learned to apply for environmental grants; they are also making better use of their land and buildings, renting fields to solar-power producers and cottages to holidaymakers. The ruling Labour Party has capped the amount of environmental payments per farm—a move that makes no ecological sense, since a flower is no less attractive to a bee if it grows on a big estate.
One-third of English farmland is cultivated by tenant farmers, who hold leases that can be as short as one year—a poor fit for environmental schemes that generally pay for three-year interventions.
Scotland and Wales have been reluctant to abandon the old per-hectare subsidies. Since the Brexit vote in 2016, the price of ordinary arable land in England has increased by just 12%; in Scotland it is up by 46% and in Wales by 33%, reflecting slower subsidy reform. Good farmers in England should find it easier to expand as a result, or to acquire land for the first time.
Britain produced some 13bn litres of milk in the year to March 2026. A cow today produces twice as much milk as one from the 1970s, thanks to robotic milkers, advanced breeding, wearable tech and AI. That puts Britain among the countries, like the Netherlands and New Zealand, with small herds and high output. Since 2019 the number of British dairy farmers has fallen by 20% to about 7,000. Britain lacks the spare capacity to convert excess milk into butter or cheese, and has too few facilities for turning raw milk into powder. In 2025 Britain exported a record £2.2bn of dairy products, mostly to Europe, 17% more than the year before. Brexit trade barriers make it costlier and slower to ship extra milk.
I've found my niche. If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was this little hole in the bottom ...