https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/20/defra-officials-buried-analysis-dire-financial-prospects-hill-farmers-brexit-faming-payments-scheme

This is an issue that's been discussed with some heat, on GBF. One that's been in local news, for me here on Dartmoor. A dilemma that for instance Monbiot explored with great but divided sympathy in his book Feral. Seems to me insoluble without harm to someone.

But fact is, for instance Dartmoor, far from its National Park statutory mission "To conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the area" is in fact a monoculture ecological desert, like most of British uplands, due to centuries of ever-intensifying upland farming. Namely, far too many sheep, which eat every glimmer of 'natural' vegetation before it starts. A whole rich traditional way of life is built on this.

Defra's analysis merely exposed the obvious. Some experience shows that an alternative economy, with better incomes and employing more people, can be developed, which allows uplands to regenerate - but it won't be 'farming'.

Discuss.

Plenty of ideas out there about that - in a word (over-crudely), 'eco-tourism' which in various re-wilding schemes has brought better incomes and more jobs than the marginal farming it (largely) replaces. But strong traditional social systems scorn that kind of 'improvement' of their lot - feel a right to not be upended, any more than mining communities welcome new jobs in garden centres etc.

Sorry - was tongue-in-cheek, little joke, satirising pompous exam questions from the past. Other times I've similarly said 'what does the team think?' - another quote from the past.