The gateway to growth
Land management has never been more exciting, as Rupert Bates discovers
FORGET the commercial and development departments of property consultancies; if you want surveying glamour and business excitement these days, you want to be on team rural.
Growing up on a dairy farm in the Cotswolds, Jon Dearsley, head of natural capital at Savills, remembers an old trailer with the latest price per litre of milk painted and repainted on the side and the number invariably heading south: “My father said: ‘Why on earth do you want to study agricultural business management at university?’” Well agricultural business management is big business – to gaze a while upon the fields of barley, hoping to walk in fields of gold, paraphrasing Sting – more rock idol than rural agent.
The environment has been around for a while but the topic is now so high up agendas, be it in Westminster or at the family dinner table, that the opportunities, with the caveat of political vagaries, are significant. “It’s about farmers and land managers looking to weave that environmental thread into the financial, food, sporting and social value networks of the land – and getting the balance right,” says Dearsley.
Despite trying to distinguish between policy carrots and sticks, rural businesses for the moment still have a choice in terms of what they do with their land. “It is about being clever with land use and realising you can deliver multiple benefits with new tools and techniques,” he explains.
It is the chance to stack a range of nature-based solutions in one landscape, such as woodland creation, food production, renewable energy generation, biodiversity provision, nutrient reduction, flood management and public access.
The last government committed to a Land Use Framework that did not materialise, and food security is a key concern in the stampede to deliver nature-based solutions. How on earth you value nature in the first place is a moot point but biodiversity net gain, carbon markets and nutrient credits are the new trading floors.
Labour is all over housing, vowing to bulldoze through an archaic, adversarial planning system. However, with talk of compulsory purchase powers and capping profit on the sale of land – both green and grey belt – in the Government’s fanciful bid to meet its housing targets, more layers of uncertainty and legal delays will be added, not to mention the viability of new developments.
Equally, Labour should be supporting landowners offering a mixed portfolio of housing, energy infrastructure and environmental improvement. Dearsley sees land as a facilitator, earning a slice of the valuechain pie, even if Labour now has its beady eye on removing the cream on top: “Engaging with higher-value options such as development, energy, social and tourism means a diverse income stream and more business resilience.”
We are back to choice. If you want to be a dairy farmer, be a dairy farmer, and if you want to deliver natural capital, sell biodiversity or create leisure facilities, you can. Sporting is a vital ingredient in the environmental improvement mix too, says Dearsley. “Land management has never been more exciting. It feels like the gateway to the green infrastructure and growth that the economy is looking for.”
For the Savills man it is all a far cry from working on Cotswolds farms in his youth, not to mention spending his gap year grading trout. There are now bigger fish to fry.