Lands At Stake

A conversation that stuck

An old conversation sticks in my mind. A decade or so later, through the synergy of passing time and the illumination provided by events, one plus one becomes three. On the opposite side of a snooker room table in a pub long demolished and replaced by rabbit hutch houses, a farmer chewed his cud during a break in a meeting of patriots. A dealer in straw and hay, he understood the value of hard work and money and talked nothing but common sense.

His attention turned to one of the day’s two big news stories – making it easy to recall the date. At New Year 2014, a rapid succession of prolonged Atlantic storms with persistent rainfall and gale-force winds, combined with high tides in the Bristol Channel, brought the worst flooding in living memory to the Somerset Levels.

For those unfamiliar with the territory, the Levels are a coastal plain and wetland in the West Country county of Somerset. Not entirely natural, the area was covered by sea thousands of years ago. Today, it is a landscape of rivers and wetlands that have been drained, irrigated, modified and managed over the centuries to support productive farming. My farmer friend insisted the bad weather and ensuing floods revealed not only the unpreparedness of the authorities but also a sinister strategy being played out against the farmer.

Stretching from the Mendip Hills to the Blackdowns, 160,000 acres of flat Somerset land rise to a maximum altitude of only 8 metres above sea level. Much of the area therefore lies below the spring high-water mark. The rivers in this region flow into the Bristol Channel as it narrows towards the Avon and the Severn. The tides and the Channel’s tidal surge influence the flow of the rivers in the other direction. The Axe, Sheppey, and Brue are to the north, while to the south are the Cary, Yeo, Tone and Parrett. Part of their courses are contained in artificial channels designed to drain farmland.

Nothing happened for so long

It was no secret at the time – not least revealed in a loud stage whisper by Prince Charles during a visit to the affected area – that the neglect of these waterways caused the flooding. A reduction in the dredging of the rivers led up to the 2014 floods. The channels had filled with sediment, reducing their capacity to carry water away.

On 26th January, Charles boarded a boat at Langport, from where he travelled to the marooned village of Muchelney which had been cut off since New Year’s Day. There, he spoke to flood victims who for the preceeding weeks had only been able to enter or leave their homes by boat. Back on solid ground, and taken to a village hall while sitting on a park bench strapped to a tractor-hauled trailer, the future king expressed his displeasure in a loud stage whisper remarking, “Nothing happened for so long.”

My pub farmer could explain the neglect of the Levels by linking it to other events elsewhere. He bemoaned the neglect of farming in general which he blamed on the EU and which, he was convinced, served a specific purpose. He saw the future of the countryside as no more than a day-trip destination for urbanites. The farming industry would wither. Left to return to nature, prime agricultural acreages would become a wasteland of thistles and ferns.

This was happening in conjunction with the other big news story of the day. Thousands of miles away, a political flood was engulfing a distant land. My farmer friend explained that the neglect of our countryside was due to a replacement EU land grab elsewhere.

Ukraine has long been considered one of the world’s most fertile and productive agricultural regions, earning it the title of the “breadbasket of Europe.” This nickname reflects the country’s vast and productive farmlands, capable of growing a wide variety of crops, including wheat, corn, barley, and sunflower seeds, as well as fruits, vegetables, and livestock.

Even the national flag references fertility, symbolising a blue sky above endless yellow fields.

The breadbasket

Ukraine’s rich black soil, known as chernozem, is among the most fertile in the world, offering ideal conditions for farming. The agricultural sector has been a key pillar of the economy throughout history, making a significant contribution to both domestic and global food supplies.

In pre-Soviet and Soviet times, Ukraine’s role as a breadbasket was essential to the broader Russian imperial and Soviet economies. It was often treated as a strategic asset, supplying food not only to the local population but also to the entire Russian Empire, Soviet Union and beyond. The collective policies of the Soviet era, much of the time under Stalin, disrupted the agricultural sector and led to the Holodomor, a devastating famine that claimed the lives of millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s.

Also in the 1930s, envious eyes turned eastward towards Ukraine. The German plan for Lebensraum or “living space” was a key component of Adolf Hitler’s ideology and foreign policy. It aimed at expanding Germany’s territory eastward to accommodate the needs of the German people. The idea was Germany needed more land to support its growing population and ensure its long-term survival as a powerful nation.

Hitler believed Eastern Europe, including the Ukraine, should be conquered and repopulated by Germans. In June 1941, Germany invaded the USSR, with Army Group South pushing into Ukraine. By the end of November, almost all of the then Soviet republic was under German control, as was southwestern Russia as far as Stalingrad – where the Wermachtt met its nemesis.

After World War II, Soviet collectivism dominated Ukraine’s agriculture, organised as large collective (kolkhoz) and state (sovkhoz) farms. The government prioritised grain production, particularly wheat, making Ukraine the USSR’s breadbasket. Forced collectivisation and centralised planning led to inefficiencies, although mechanisation and irrigation improved yields.

The Virgin Lands Campaign and increased fertiliser use boosted output, but poor management and declining soil fertility led to stagnation by the 1970s. Despite being a major producer of wheat, maize and sugar beets, Ukrainian farmers faced low incentives, chronic shortages, and bureaucratic constraints, which limited agricultural productivity until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Post independence

After gaining independence in 1991, Ukraine continued to rely on agriculture but faced significant challenges in modernising its sector, including land privatisation, inefficiency, and political instability. As if it were a struggling business ripe for takeover, the EU offered the new country closer economic and political ties through a proposed EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.

This deal, seen as a step towards European Union integration, included a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area. However, mounting Russian pressure, including economic threats and energy leverage, led pro-Russian President Yanukovych to suspend the agreement’s signing in November 2013. With some Ukrainians drawn to the idea of EU integration, this decision sparked protests in Kiev.

The protests, centred on Kiev’s Maidan Square, were dubbed the ‘Euromaidan’ demonstrations. These protests turned violent in early 2014. In February of that year, European foreign ministers mediated a compromise involving a unity government and early elections. After the collapse of the power-sharing agreement on 22nd February 2014, President Yanukovych fled Ukraine with a new government installed by the Ukrainian parliament.

Eleven years later, and three years after the escalation of the war following the Russian attempt to encircle Kiev, the EU’s agricultural policy, if anything, has become more erratic and inefficient, with the future need for agricultural land elsewhere intensifying. Simultaneously, the population of the EU continues to grow, in large measure because of mass, uncontrolled immigration.

The EU’s vision for agriculture

The European Union’s vision for the future of Western European farming, shaped by the European Green Deal and the Common Agricultural Policy, claims to focus on sustainability, innovation, and resilience. The aim is to transform agriculture to meet environmental, economic, and social goals. The EU is obsessed with reducing carbon footprints, promoting biodiversity, and addressing climate change through more sustainable farming practices. This includes pressuring farmers to adopt organic farming, agroecological practices, and precision farming technologies optimising resource use and minimising environmental impact.

In addition, the EU claims to enhance the competitiveness and viability of European agriculture by supporting farmers in their transition to greener practices while ensuring fair income distribution. The future of Western European farming emphasises the digitalisation of agriculture, with new technologies such as artificial intelligence and data-driven farming methods expected to play a key role in increasing productivity and efficiency.

The EU’s vision prioritises food security, claiming to ensure agriculture can continue to meet the demands of a growing population while maintaining high food quality and safety standards. By integrating environmental sustainability with economic viability, the EU envisions a farming sector both competitive and adaptable to future challenges.

But is this possible, or is it a mass of contradictions driven by virtue signalling, greenwashing and opportunistic lobbying?

A Green deal?

As for the European Green Deal, this is a comprehensive policy aimed at making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. It has significant implications for farming. Under the initiative, the EU seeks to transform agriculture to make it more sustainable, environmentally friendly and resilient to climate change. One of the main goals is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with farming being a key sector due to its large carbon footprint. The Green Deal promotes practices such as organic farming, agroecology, and sustainable land management to reduce emissions, improve soil health, and preserve biodiversity.

It should be noted the obsession with reducing methane emissions from livestock farming relates to the 0.00017% of the atmosphere that consists of that gas. In the Netherlands, this madness extended to the Dutch government committing to halving the country’s livestock herd to reduce ‘agricultural pollution’.

The EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy, a key component of the Green Deal, encourages farmers to adopt what the EU claims are more sustainable production methods. It targets a reduction in pesticide and fertiliser use, promotes crop diversity, and fosters the growth of local, organic food systems. It also aims to increase the share of sustainable food products in the market, making them more accessible to consumers.

The Green Deal supports farmers in their transition through financial incentives and investments in innovation, such as digital technologies and precision farming. However, the changes come with challenges, including higher initial costs for farmers, which the EU tries to offset through subsidies and training programmes. Ultimately, the European Green Deal seeks to ensure farming is environmentally sustainable and economically viable.

The Dutch also proposed reducing the use of fertilisers to lower nitrogen pollution, despite an inevitable colapse in yields from unfertilised fields.

Elsewhere in the equation, Natura 2000 is the Union’s largest coordinated network of protected areas, encompassing both terrestrial and marine sites established to safeguard Europe’s most valuable and threatened species and habitats under the Birds and Habitats Directives. Article 6 of the directive now covers almost one-fifth of the EU’s land area and around 10% of its marine area — a total of 300,000 square miles of land and 139,000 square miles of sea.

Presently, the system is a dog’s dinner, with accession states forced to designate land to Natura in order to be allowed to join the EU. A so-called ‘protective regime’, we can expect further attempts by European lawmakers to impose additional restrictions. In combination with events in Ukraine, this suggests a failed long-term EU strategy destined to seriously reduce agricultural production in western, southern and near-eastern Europe, with no breadbasket under EU control further east.

You don’t have to be a wizened straw and hay dealer to predict a lose/lose outcomne for both the farmer and the consumer.
 

© Always Worth Saying 2025