ELC Full Response to Concerns - Ecological Land...

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10th October 2016

The Ecological Land Co-operative (ELC) is a Community Benefit Society and social enterprise established to address the lack of affordable farms for new entrants to farming. Our co-operative has purchased the field to the south of Copyhold Cottages with a view to creating three affordable smallholdings for new entrants to ecological mixed farming and horticulture.

We have been asked by John McCutchan of Bates Green Farm to provide a written response for the Arlington Scene magazine to concerns he has set out regarding our proposal. Below we’ve addressed Mr. McCutchan’s concerns along with others that we’re aware of. All of the concerns raised have been brought to the attention of our Board of Directors. It is important to us that our proposals are informed by local views, and we intend to host a second community meeting where we would like to present revised plans, updated to address these concerns. We want this development to be an asset to your community.

Please let us know if you feel your concern hasn’t been addressed and we will ensure that it is at the next available opportunity.

Breaches at our Existing Smallholdings

Mr. McCutchan has commented that of our three smallholders at Greenham Reach – our site in Devon - we’ve reported that two have been in found in breach of their farm business tenancy.

One of the reasons why we are now only developing our second site some 10 years after the concept for the ELC was first discussed is because we took time to examine and take advice on how to protect our smallholdings once they are created. We examined the tenancy agreements, governance and/or policies of county councils for their smallholdings and farms, community land trusts, the Land Settlement Association, and the Scottish Crofting Federation. Following this review we asked our solicitors to develop a strict farm business tenancy and we wrote a comprehensive Management Plan for our smallholdings.

The Management Plan requires us to report as a breach matters which other bodies, including county councils, would not consider as such. For example, at Greenham Reach one of the smallholders, James, could not work full-time in the first year because his partner was diagnosed with and then being treated for cancer in Norfolk.

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As James wasn’t working full-time we were obliged to report it as a breach. Together with James we developed an ‘action plan’ which included support from the ELC to get his farm business back on track after his partner’s treatment ended. James returned to work full-time on his holding, has established a salad bag business, has planted half of his planned orchard and has acquired a flock of Shetland sheep. He will shortly be introducing pigs.

We believe that this high level of monitoring of the smallholders and reporting is a strength. The fact that we are transparent and thorough means that our members, the council and other stakeholders can hold us to account and together we can insure that smallholdings never fall out of agricultural use. This is one of the reasons why we have received the support of numerous organisations and why our model has been used as a case study including by the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) and the Royal Town Planning Institute. Professor Kneafsey of Coventry University wrote just this month: “examples of such careful monitoring are rare and extremely valuable”.

Protecting Holdings for Agriculture

Mr. McCutchan has written “If the smallholders persevere over their 5-year trial period, then achieve planning permission for permanent dwellings, there is little that can be done if the new home owners decide at some time it is preferable to earn their living from working elsewhere... Enforcement action is a tedious and expensive course with the costs falling on the ratepayers.”

Just as with county farms, if at any point, either during the period of temporary planning consent, or later, with a permanent planning consent, a smallholder is found not be working full-time on their holding and running an agricultural business they will be evicted by us, the ELC. In the event that enforcement action is required, this would be at a cost to us, the ELC, and the tenant: the tenancy states that where the ELC need to evict a tenant then the tenant is only compensated to 75% of the re-sale value given in their tenancy agreement.

Tenants cannot receive a windfall from their properties: if a tenant wishes to sell their holding, their tenancy requires that it must be sold back to the ELC in the first instance and in all cases must be sold at the re-sale value provided in their tenancy agreement, linked to inflation and not the housing market. Tenants cannot sub-let.

The ELC is a member-led organisation whose members care passionately about agriculture. Our members would not allow us to fail on one of our core objectives and watch land go to ruin or be taken out of agriculture.

Visual Impact of Temporary Structures

The concern which we understand to be shared by a number of local residents is that of adverse visual impact. As Mr. McCutchan articulates “there are some aspects that concern me after reading the Monitoring Report … No real solution in dealing with

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the concerns of their Parish Council regarding the visual impact of the many caravans”.

At our existing site, Greenham Reach, we have a temporary planning permission of 5 years for three residential smallholdings. Planning policy states that farm businesses are to prove their viability and need to live on the land in this temporary period, before a permanent permission can be considered. Our permission is such that the smallholders could build a temporary dwelling but risk having to remove any dwelling that they build at the end of the temporary period. Two smallholders at Greenham are therefore making use of caravans for their accommodation in this period of temporary planning consent, whilst the third has a timber cabin. Two of the smallholders use an additional caravan each as an office and processing room, and all three use one caravan each to house a seasonal agricultural worker.

If permanent planning permission were granted at Greenham Reach, both the ELC and the local authority would require the permanent dwellings to be made of natural materials and be in keeping with the landscape character. And any other permanent structures need to first be approved by the local authority.

To mitigate the visual impact at Greenham Reach caused by temporary structures, we have done the following: all of their domestic structures are restricted, by way of planning condition, to a designated area of the project site; and all smallholders have been required by way of their tenancy, to plant visual screens, either new hedge, willow screens and/or new wooded areas.

Clockwise: Greenham Reach. Wild Geese Acres’ caravan photographed in Year 1; Steepholding’s timber cabin photographed in Year 1 and Elder Farm’s dwelling caravan and ‘office’ caravan photographed in Year 2.

The Board must balance local concerns regarding the visual impact of temporary structures with the economic constraints of farming. As CPRE write in their recent

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report New Model Farming, without farm subsidies, roughly half of farming is uneconomic. The Board need to ensure that we don’t restrict smallholders use of their holding to such an extent that they would become unviable. However, we will keep this matter under review and will be discussing visual impact further at our next Board meeting. We welcome any suggestions as to how to further mitigate visual impact.

Since the meeting at the village hall we have agreed in discussions with our direct neighbours to increase the proposed screening (new tree planting) to extend to the full length of the northern boundary of the field, and proposed a second area of screening to the north of the proposed residential area.

Weald Clay

Mr. McCutchan and one other resident of the parish have raised concerns about the suitability of the local soil.

We never choose Grade 1 agricultural land: part of our mission is to improve marginal land. None-the-less, when we look at land for potential smallholdings we ask existing successful commercial vegetable growers to assess the site for its suitability, this includes its soil. For this purchase, we took advice from Metske Van der Laan of Pannel Organic, Ru Litherland from Organic Lea, and Adrian Halstead from Barcombe Nurseries, all experienced growers. They were of the opinion that while the soil needs work, particularly on fertility, it can be improved and is suitable for commercial smallholdings.

The labour use per hectare on our smallholdings is vastly different from arable cropping which is on average 20 hours per hectare per year: we would expect our smallholders to employ upward of 1,200 hours of labour per hectare per year. This amount of labour allows techniques such as no dig, mulching, raised beds, and mixed green manuring to be used, alongside an attention to detail which may not be feasible on a larger scale.

As at Greenham Reach, it’s not expected that all of the land will be horticulture: some land will be used for top fruit and some for animal grazing.

At Greenham Reach, four local residents’ objections included that the soil would not support the proposed businesses. Two councillors during discussions at the planning committee meeting said the soil was unsuitable. At the appeal inquiry the council’s expert witness wrote in evidence that the land was seasonally water-logged clay and that “the site would not seem to be particularly well chosen for the many of the intended uses”. Greenham Reach now supports three farm businesses, and soil tests show an increase in both soil organic matter and mineral levels over the period in which smallholders have been farming.

The photos below are from Greenham Reach before our smallholders moved on, and then just one and two years after farming the land.

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Photos above: the land at Greenham Reach before smallholding commenced, with areas of rush, waterlogging and compacted soil.

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Photos on previous page, clockwise from top left: James in front of his salad and vegetable beds, Year Two; Steepholding establishing their polytunnel, Year One; Steepholding working their vegetable beds, Year Two; and first year’s tomato crop.

Viability of Greenham Smallholdings

Mr. McCutchan is concerned that at Greenham Reach “only one tenant has produced accounts with no indication of profitability”.

Only two of the three tenants were due to submit their accounts to us as part of the Year Two annual audit; our smallholders are only required to produce annual accounts as part of their obligations under the Management Plan once they have been on their holding for a full financial year.

The second tenant, James, didn’t submit his accounts as they covered the period in which he was attending to his partner during her cancer treatment (discussed above).

We don’t understand Mr. McCutchan’s comment that the third plot, Steepholding, showed ‘no indication of profitability’. We work within our sector to understand the economics of smallholding and to pick up best practice from financially successful smallholders. For example, we form part of a horticultural costings working group convened by the Soil Association and we conducted a study of the economics of 8 sample smallholdings Small is Successful. Based on what we have learnt, we should not expect our smallholders to produce a profit from a bare field within a year. What is key is that the smallholding is following their business plan and that their business plan provides for them to be profitable and financially stable within a reasonable period and no longer than the period of the temporary planning consent. Steepholding’s business plan projected a small loss in Year 1, followed by an increasing profit in the subsequent years, stabilising at around £25,000 per annum in Year 7.

Water

Mr. McCutchan has raised a concern about our smallholders’ water supply and its cost to their farm business. He wrote: ‘water [at Greenham] appeared to be a problem, even though you sank a bore hole’. There were no water supply problems at Greenham Reach once the smallholders drilled a bore hole; shortages in supply occurred when the smallholders were only using the rainwater that they had harvested.

In order to use the bore hole responsibly, Greenham Reach residents only use the bore hole when rainwater supply isn’t sufficient. This has meant that their average daily consumption of bore hole water for all purposes is at 1.04m3, less than the average daily consumption of domestic water.

It is proposed that the smallholdings at Arlington would have both rainwater, as at Greenham Reach, as well as mains water. If residents at Greenham Reach had purchased the amount of water extracted from their bore hole at South Water rates

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of £1.25 per cubic metre and a £33.89 standing charge, their annual bill per household would be £193. Annual rainfall is c. 25% lower at Arlington compared with Greenham Reach: even if twice as much fresh water was needed (i.e. 2m3 per day), this would still be an affordable £338 per year in water per holding.

We plan for smallholders to use compost toilets and a soakaway for grey-water and as such there are no plans to purchase waste water treatment from Southern Water. We would apply for a surface water drainage rebate.

Footpath

Mr McCutchan is concerned that the footpath will cause difficulties for the public and for the smallholder. We would never allow our smallholders to block a public footpath. We cannot see how the footpath will be a problem for the smallholder, as it will be well away from the dwelling area, and it crosses just one part of an 8.75 acre plot.

Barn and Access

The set-up costs of the shared timber barn and the road access are met by the ELC, not the smallholders and incorporated into the sales price of the holdings. So far we’ve not incurred any maintenance costs associated with the access and track at Greenham Reach which crossed a water-logged field in an area with higher rainfall than the Weald.

Reflecting on the need for more agricultural storage space at Greenham Reach, the proposed barn at Arlington is 50% bigger than the barn at Greenham Reach. This additional cost was accounted for when we developed our most recent business plan.

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Photo: the barn at Greenham Reach directly after completion

Viability of Smallholding

Two local residents have raised concerns about the viability of smallholding. One has asked whether smallholders will be making loan repayments and taking drawings from the figures for profit that we quoted. She also asked how the smallholders would pay for the building of a dwelling, should they establish a profitable business and then obtain permanent planning permission.

We’ve interviewed dozens of smallholders about their finances, 8 of which we profiled in our publication Small is Successful. Once an established business, each smallholding either met all, or the majority of their household’s costs from the livelihood that they generate from their holding.

When we short-list our smallholding applicants we ensure that:

• They have a well-planned and well-researched business plan including a sufficient budget for seasonal labour and a known market for their produce.

• Their anticipated profits cover their household’s living costs, provide for the future financial needs of the business and cover any loan repayments.

• They have a projected cash-flow with no short-falls.

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• They have sufficient savings to cover their start-up period and to cover the cost of a permanent dwelling. We expect their permanent dwelling to be self-built and therefore provided at low cost.

One of the examples of an existing smallholding that we provided at the meeting was that of Vallis Veg: Vallis Veg organic vegetable box business cultivates its vegetables on 2 acres. In 2015/2016 the business had an income of £41,066 of which £34,301 was vegetable sales. The business incurred £22,414 of expenditure, leaving a net profit of £18,652. The owner, Chris Smaje, is happy to be contacted directly for his accounts.

We've found ecological smallholders are viable on small acreages because:

• They grow high value crops and / or sell direct to customers, quite often adding value and thereby allowing for a higher price to be achieved.

• They have lower farm business costs, particularly on machinery and fuel due to the small-scale / labour intensive nature of their farming.

Our smallholders have an additional advantage in that:

• Their household costs are lower than the national average: the cost of housing is low as the smallholding comes with a permission for a temporary dwelling; and we supply the site with a renewable electricity and rainwater water supply which is free at the point of use (aside from maintenance costs).

• We provide smallholders with business mentors and volunteer labour (from our members and supporters).

• We help to secure grants. At Greenham this is now in excess of £35,000 for farm business developments.

Generator

Finally, we were asked about generator noise. Our site at Greenham Reach has a generator which it uses from once a week in the autumn to four times a week in winter to ensure that the batteries used to store solar electricity stay fully charged on cloudy and short days. They have been no noise complaints at Greenham Reach.

We anticipate a similar level of generator use at this site, should the project proceed.

New farmers and growers face significant difficulties in finding affordable and available land to set up their own enterprises. Huge

increases in land values over the past decade have pushed land ownership out of reach of many future farmers. Between 1992 and 2006,

sales price indices rose by 100% in the UK and they have continued to rise. This high price makes farmland inaccessible for many new entrants

and is one of the reasons why the average age of a farmer is 58 and increasing.

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By providing an alternative land ownership model for small farms with accommodation and infrastructure, we at the Ecological Land Co-

operative are able to create opportunities for new and young farmers that are otherwise not available.

We very much hope you will help us make these opportunities possible.

[email protected]

01273 911 494

www.ecologicalland.coop

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