Rise of the ‘megafarms’: how UK agriculture is being sold off and consolidated

If you were to visit the English countryside 15 years ago, you would have found nine times as many small farms as you do today – and twice as many different farms in general. For years, farmers across the UK have received subsidies on a per-hectare basis without any requirement to use that land to actually produce food as part of the European Common Agricultural Policy. This means that wealthy owners of large estates have been given large sums of taxpayer money simply for owning land, without necessarily farming it. It’s a system that has long been criticised – and rightly so. With Brexit looming, the UK government’s Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) has recently introduced an Agriculture Bill and draft policies. It proposes paying landowners for delivering environmental benefits such as improved air quality or habitats for wildlife, an approach that has been understandably praised by environmental groups.There has been a rapid increase in the number of these farms in recent years – for both animals and crops. Britain’s first intensive poultry farm was approved in 2003 – and there are now more than 1,400 permits for these operations, the largest of which can “process” more than a million chickens per week. Similarly, the number of high-intensity horticulture operations is increasing, with government grants supporting efforts to produce vegetables without soil.