Tim Bonner: Will people be expelled from our rural Eden?

When Shakespeare wrote of "this sceptered isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, demi-paradise", Britain already had a population of 4 or 5 million people, the vast majority of whom were involved in one industry – farming. Our island had long ceased to be a natural wilderness and had been shaped for centuries, in fact for millennia, by the domesticated animals and crops that the population required for their survival. This other Eden is not God's creation, it is man's, and we continue to celebrate the glory of the British countryside to this day.

Yet, the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss have generated a reaction against the very concept of a cultural landscape, against the idea that the British countryside is as special as it is because it has been created and managed by generations of farmers. Granted, the intensification of some areas of agriculture, driven by the demands of the markets and some very questionable government intervention, has sullied some parts of this sceptered isle, but to conclude, as some have, that the solution to the world's problems is not to farm at all whilst living off factory produced sludge is the wrong one both for humans and nature.

The debate about the value of farm land is set to define how the countryside looks and whether farming communities survive over the coming years. The introduction of new incentives and income streams, especially the potential for carbon offsetting, means that competition for land will become more intense and farming may often not be the most profitable form of land use. Land use change is already a reality across large parts of highland Scotland and investors are purchasing land in England and Wales, often in upland areas, with a view to tree planting.

In Wales the debate has been taken a step further as the Welsh Government has intervened to outbid farming interests to purchase productive agricultural land for tree-planting. It plans to turn the 94 hectares in Carmarthenshire's Towy Valley into a 'Covid memorial woodland' which will contribute to meeting the targets it has set itself for woodland creation.

It is no wonder that there is concern in farming communities across Britain about the future of their way of life. Making a living from farming can be challenging enough, but competing with carbon investors, green lairds and even government intervention is another thing entirely.

It would have been a far more practical use of money, and a more relevant memorial to those who have died from Covid in Wales, if the Welsh government had invested in regenerating and enhancing the farming landscape of the Towy valley, rather than planting trees on it. The best answer to reducing carbon and increasing biodiversity is to incentivise the right farming practices and a harmony of farming and nature. That way lies our other Eden, and an Eden with people at its heart, not expelled from it.