To: J.B.C. who wrote (110835 ) 6/12/2022 9:46:59 AM From: J.B.C. Read Replies (1) | Respond to BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN AGRICULTURE , UNITED KINGDOM London Times : “Ministers quietly abandon ‘green crap’ as focus shifts to food security.” The threat of starvation, like the prospect of hanging, concentrates the mind:Boris Johnson has scaled back plans to rewild the country as the government retreats from the green agenda to focus on the cost-of-living crisis. Ministers last year announced a post-Brexit scheme that would pay farmers up to £800 million a year — a third of the farming budget — to transform agricultural land into nature-rich forests, coastal wetlands, peatlands and wildflower meadows. But the fund, called the landscape recovery scheme, has been quietly slashed to just £50 million over three years, less than 1 per cent of the budget. The UK is hugely reliant on imports, producing roughly 64 per cent of our food, down from 78 per cent in the 1980s. The tensions echo the storm that embroiled David Cameron in 2013, when the then prime minister was alleged to have ordered his aides to abandon “green crap” despite publicly vowing to run the greenest government ever.
