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The current direction of travel for UK agricultural policy after Brexit is that direct payments based on land area farmed should be replaced with payments to farmers for delivering public goods.
A public good is defined as something that when it is supplied to one individual is immediately available to others at no charge. So national security, street lighting, flood defences and official statistics are often quoted as examples. Added to that are the likes of air quality, water quality and biodiversity.
As a result, when Defra Secretary Michael Gove talks about public money for public goods, he means paying farmers for planting trees, creating wildlife habitats, etc. In other words, while some financial support might be there in the future, farmers will have to do a lot more to get it when compared with the area-based payments of today.
Therefore, it is understandable that farming and food industry leaders also want food production and food security considered as a public good. Doing so would support arguments for payments (in whatever form) to continue to be made to farmers and not linked to environmental enhancement.
But at present, most government advisers, academics and economists point out that food can be bought and sold, so it is not a public good.
They are also quite dismissive of the fact that the UK is only around 60% self-sufficient in food, arguing that it is much more important to ensure consumers have the money to buy food, and can access it by ensuring ports are open, transport infrastructure is in place, etc.
Perhaps the main argument the agri food industry can make is to highlight the danger that under current plans the UK could end up producing less food in the future.
With a rising population, it must then import more food, effectively outsourcing any environmental concerns. So we end up with a UK public good, but a global public bad.
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