Farmland Flooding

Blake Stephenson Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jerome Mayhew]

The hon. Lady is right in concept, in that where there is uninsured loss of productive farmland caused by flooding, the last Government was right to create the farming recovery fund to compensate, at least in part, for those losses. As for flooding by agreement, if I can describe it as that, that happens on the Somerset levels as part of the landscape recovery agreement there—it is called the Adapting the Levels project. That needs to come with sufficient funding under the environmental land management scheme, and I will address wider funding concerns later.

Farms can have a role in minimising flooding, and they can do that in-farm as well as further down the watercourse. But the Government must continue to work with the Conservatives and with the environmental land management scheme, which the previous Government set up, to recognise and support this.

We start at the top of the watercourse. Where available, there is upland peatland restoration. Peat bogs, when they are in good condition, are essentially like giant sponges, not just for water but for carbon storage. When they are in poor condition, the cycle goes into reverse, both for water and for carbon emission. Riparian buffers, which can be planted and maintained next to watercourses, slow the flow of water off the land and absorb a percentage of it.

More importantly and more interestingly—I was about to say for farmers like me, but I am not a farmer—for people involved in farming, there are the in-field developments, which are becoming increasingly mainstream and have developed from the regenerative agricultural movement. They are based around soil management. We always used to describe this as the heavy metal approach—that does not refer to our taste in music, but is instead about plough, drill and till, which has been the “traditional” method of agriculture since the second world war, where the inputs come out of a sack and horsepower is relied on to manipulate the soil.

The problem with that, apart from its very significant impact on biodiversity—that is a debate in its own right—is that this leads to collapsed soil structures and then we need to go into subsoiling. The more metal we use, the more heavy metal we need to use, and that destroys or very substantially limits the ability of the soil to absorb and then retain water. That has the short-term impact of increasing run-off, leading to flash flooding in a way that did not happen when I was a boy. It also has a knock-on impact in the summer. If there is a soil structure that is not capable of absorbing and retaining water in the winter, it becomes water-hungry in the spring and summer, and there is parching in a way that affects yield and costs money in irrigation to compensate for that.

There is a movement called the regenerative or min-till movement, where that approach has been challenged. By minimising the impact on soil—the disturbance of soil through metal—the soil structure can be increased, retained and developed. That creates spaces in the soil in which to absorb water, but it also has a secondary impact, which is the mycorrhizal interaction of live roots. That secures carbon and improves the sponginess of the soil.

All those things are great because as absorption is increased, the speed at which that water is emitted back into the watercourse is reduced. Allied to that is the use of cover crops during the winter. Having live roots in the water and a structure that prevents run-off and soil erosion in the winter is enormously important. There is also contour ploughing—that is, ploughing along the contour, not up and down it, as a matter of course. That is basic physics, but it helps to retain water on the land and slows its emission down into the watercourse. These are all things that the farm can do in-field to help its cause, and also to retain water for lower down the watercourse.

A second option, suitable for less valuable land that is not the best quality or the most fertile, is to accept seasonal water, along the lines followed by a traditional water meadow. Watercourses can be re-wiggled—I am not sure if that is a technical term—to slow down the flow of water in appropriate areas. By accepting floodwater, farmers are able to re-establish traditional meadows, but they need to be compensated because they are giving up productive land, albeit less productive land, to provide a social good. The whole concept of the environmental land management scheme was public money for public good.

[Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Farmers in the Flit valley in Mid Bedfordshire are concerned that repeated flooding and waterlogging has left large areas of farmland unfit for agricultural purposes. Our farmers are prepared to do the hard yards to put in place nature-based solutions, but does my hon. Friend agree that they need support and certainty from the Government to achieve that?

[Jerome Mayhew]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The basis behind my seeking this debate is to highlight the need for continued, not new, Government support. ELMs is a Brexit dividend. It would be a crying shame if the Government failed to build on the very good work of the last Government, as I will come to in a minute.

ELMs is the flagship scheme. The last Government honoured their commitment to provide £2.4 billion every year, from 2019 onwards, to support the transition from area-based payments to public money for public good. The sustainable farming incentive supports soil quality, water quality, hedgerows, tree planting and riparian buffers. There are also the countryside stewardship scheme, and the landscape recovery scheme which I have already mentioned. Other schemes include the England woodland creation offer and the nature for climate fund. All those schemes back up the transition to nature-based solutions, and allow farmers to recognise and mitigate for changes in rain distribution and intensity. They provide funding for the changes necessary for biodiversity and food production.