Hallelujah, I’ve always preached to my friends our countryside is like a desert to which they look at me bewildered. Thank god this is in the horizon, rewilding is the answer to so many issues, not least climate change.

A return to common sense,we need to buy more British food and go back to seasonal crops and grow food at home.I only have a small garden but I grow Lemons,Plums,Apples,rhubarb and Strawberries.

Here in the Philippines we planted 1 million new trees in a couple of days. If we can do it...you can do it!

We must have space for biodiversity in our agriculture systems.

This is fantastic. A green future full of rare butterflies, rich soils and healthy watercourses.

knepp has shown farming and massive ecological restoration are possible restore carbon save soils and we might just survive

It is wrong to say that in the EU farmers cannot be compensated for environmental care. In Germany such compensations are paid.So this could have done in UK being in EU also.

We should do what we can to support British farmer's and countryside management.

There is certainly an opportunity here to reform agricultural policy and particularly the subsidy system, and what subsidies are awarded for. The EU did introduce environmental measures such as set-aside (remember that?) and grants for creating hedgerows and wildlife corridors. This is not new. But the agricultural lobby is so powerful CAP reform proved difficult. This will be the case in post-Brexit Britain too where there are plenty of agri-Barons with a lot to lose and in general they vote Tory. Many farmers say they don't want to be countryside landscape custodians, they want to grow crops and rear animals for food. It's going to be interesting, but you are going to have to pay much more for your bread, beer and meat if we go back to more 'natural' production methods. Can't have it both ways. People say they are all for this sort of thing when asked but then they go and buy the battery chickens and eggs. Some have no choice because of poverty, others just aren't prepared to pay more.

So how on Earth did the European Commission prevent the Cumbrian farmer from planting trees? Completely bewildering the parallel.

Blames EU for failing British domestic policies.

Changing British farming is necessary but other things need to change alongside this project. Food production, food waste, education on eating less or no meat for sustainable foods and highlighting the health benefits for vegan or vegetarian diets. Growing crops to feed cattle etc is an inefficient use of land and resources. So let's reduce demand on animal products and feed ourselves with plants more.

The book by Isabella Tree "Rewilding" is a truly inspiring story

This sounds wonderful. Not only recovering biodiversity and quility of water, but giving and option to the farmers too.

Rewilding sounds great but don't understand why we need to leave the EU to do it? It's already been done succesfuly on a small scale within the EU (as the report showed) why can't we just scale it up.... what is the EU doing to stop that happenning?

Sounds suspiciously like the Common Agriculture Policy first introduced by the EU ...

They should be encouraging regenerative and biodynamic agriculture as well.

Tax the imports, simple. Importing food that we can produce is unsustainable.

Government should be paying farmers to care for new species like beavers, moose, bison and lynx etc

This is the very first time I hear of a genuine benefit to brexit. I never thought I would put these words in writing…

There is one crucial flaw in this video - blaming the current state-of-play on the EU, again. Take a look at Austria, for example. It is defined by a very small scale agriculture overall, compared to the UK, with a much larger number of sustainable, organically producing farms. The result, which the agricultural lobby in the UK as well as consumers weren't willing to support, are higher prices for dairy and meat. Seems there is a lot of room for national decisions after all, if a country actually want to take advantage of it. Hence, it hasn't been "blocked" by the EU but national consumer and producers decision. 🤷‍♀️

Simply not true regarding EU restrictions. The Dutch have some wonderful re-wilding projects. However re-wilding and adopting some old farming techniques will help with re-balancing things. Environmentally and ethically speaking.

Just a question, forgetting all about the EU, how will UK agriculture survive the import of US agriculture products that are produced on massive industrial farms by whatever means. Using growth hormones and relying heavily on preventive use of antibiotics for example. Also it is well known fact that hygiene standards are much lower in the US. All of the above reasons contributing to a huge cost advantage enabling the USA to undercut any UK farmer.

Who ever enables the rewilding I back them.

Rewild !!!!! Brilliant

probably FAR far too late. The pennines, as with most of english land, is well on the ladder toward the Easter Island scenario. It is NOT pretty. So, TREES TREES TREES please, before too late.

UK's fishing industry is dead, meat industry to follow. There, I cleared up the title for ya

We need to be doing this in Canada too. (& most other countries.) We are urban but started planting trees on our properties 7 years ago. The birds, pollinators and even coyotes came back very quickly.

so say re milk farmer... farms can produce some milk, that is easilly collected and taken to a central facility to produce in milk products.. working on a smaller scale with diversification... consumers are looking for farm to plate ..

Channel 4 being positive about Brexit? What kind of alternative reality is this?

Love it! Bring it on!

Or as Prof. Patrick Minford has written - there is no place for industry or agriculture in the UK after Brexit. #ATAD #IndyRef2

Crop fields should have trees within them.

For arable farming, positive changes (except in pesticide/herbicide changes) to biodiversity are nearly impossible. Pastoral farming is completely different though. Regardless, it's an absolute minefield of a problem and obvious solutions seem abundant until you actually give them some thought. I wish farmers the very best and am more than happy to pay a bit extra for the bread, veg and meat.

That lovely stream for the Char would be badly effected if beaver got a chance.

June 2022 update. All of this just went out of the window as the UK government has put rewilding schemes on hold and announced a return to the policy of maximum food production regardless of environmental damage.

W Holistic Land Managment practices, like the Savory Institute concept, no doubt they could increase production, heal their land AND take in profits. V hopeful this works out and the US starts to adjust its subsidies too!

Where will our food coming from afterwards ?

I'm all for re-wilding, on our small farm we have planted over 1,000 trees and reinstated hedges that were pulled out in the 1070s/80s when the government actively paid you to do such things. The thing is though we have to get the balance right, as a country we are one of the most highly populated ones in the world and we need to produce food to sustain ourselves. If we reduce growing cereals and breeding animals to such an extent, then we will have to buy cheap imports from other countries that do not have the stiff regulations we do in this country which is why we have such excellent produce. I like to know where my food has come from. We need to connect woodland areas with hedgerows, this means animals can move about safely, we need to increase our woodlands too, make wetlands and ponds and areas round them, but we cannot turn the whole country into a nature reserve, as nice as that would be. We need to be able to support ourselves.

Mixed farming is traditional method of agriculture that has yielded output of quality food & animal products while preserving soil fertility. Grazing pasture - grass plants - is more efficient at converting CO2 to energy than trees & consume less water. Per hectare grass fields sink more carbon than trees. Grazing animals prune & fertilise grass plants & provide diversity of food & animal products: milk (butter & cheese), meat (rich source of protein, fat & iron), wool, leather & organic fertiliser for crop plants. Creating nature parks at the expense of good arable land is regressive policy. Balance between standard of living & preservation of environment produces better policy than radical environmental extremism. The notion that you can return arable land to a 'wild' state by reintroducing cleared species is specious: there is nothing 'wild' about human intervention in landscape to create new environments.

We can rewild all the factories once they all close down.

Why have they not done it before ? It’s amazing the spin that’s put on a non existent story. Honda Swindon closing its plant after July with the loss of 3,500 direct jobs and selling the factory. Brexit spin makes out that this is a victory with a £700 million investment in Swindon. People are so gullible !

Farming is out of date, they waste so much land. Intelligent farming systems is the future. You can grow more in multi tier warehouses than multiple fields.

The main problem is that 67 million humans live in that small island… not a lot of space for the wild…

Anyone know if this is getting done?

A lot of British farmland is marginal agriculture land. You don’t need to pay farmers anything. Economics will sort it out.

As people are generally cutting down on their meat and dairy consumption, I guess we could re-wild vast areas of the UK and produce all the meat and dairy we want - no need to rely on cheap, low welfare imports?

I have a good harvest of cobnuts as well as wild hazels this year in the north east of Scotland . We must grow food trees as well!

“I don’t know the statistics but - 70% of farmers” 😂😂😂😂

More Brexit stories please. I really miss them, they were so interesting.

Maybe Brexit could achieve something constructive. Still, I wonder how the Government is going to fund this?

Farms in New Zealand who have move to sustainable environmentally friendly 'farm to suit the land and climate' coupled with effective herd/s management have found that their financial returns are better that previous farming practices with larger herds/stock.

farmers can create collectives... so that they can have region wide access .. so they have more ability to diversify their farms

This is very weird because the CAP does reimburse you for environmental protection and most EU country has rewilded quite successfully.

Extraordinary lack of balance in this! Has Johnson nobbled C4?!

One thing i can guarentee is that the new system will be hopelessly inefficient requiring huge numbers of civil servants. The uk system for giving every cow a trackable passport requires 300 civil servants to operate. In Australia it takes 2. Currently in England 25% of the money set aside for English farmers by the eu is spent on administrative costs

Great project! Keep up the good work!

It's worth noting that Chalk Downland habitat harbours some of the greatest biodiversity found in the world, often described as European rainforest. Up to 40 species of plant in a single square metre, which cascade benefits to other fauna. The UK itself has around 50% of the worlds Chalk Grasslands. Since the continuous settlement of humans in the UK, the vast swathes of Chalk Grasslands present for most of this time, were created and maintained as a man-made, waste product of people farming the land extensively with sheep. Sheep were introduced to the UK by humans and their grazing behaviours, as an alpine grazing animal, created an artificial alpine environment for species rich Chalk Downland to occur

Always thought it strange no tree in this area no wonder it's so cold,plant some apple and olive trees,damson pear anything see what happens,dont say it too cold there I know there are vineyards up there doing very well

ahh stop the lights!! How is it that in Ireland, farmers have been doing this for years? It has nothing to do with EU policy but UK policy.

Well at least when the farms go under, they'll be plenty of land for the developers!

Good report but some quibbles. 4:48 Larch is not a native tree, so its regeneration is not rewilding. Tree planting is freqently branded as rewilding, as if trees are impotent. Tree planting often replaces higher biodiversity of less agriculturally improved pasture with ranks of the wrong trees & plastic tubes. Many of them are overstocked or die. Unimproved grasslands are often shaded by inappropriate planted trees (not native to zone) and trees are planted where natural regeneration is already taking place. Unimproved grassland biodiversity is usually maintained by the right level of grazing, often seasonal. Meanwhile globally people elect far right governments (USA, Brasil, Australia, UK, etc.) addicted to GDP, consumption, waste and/or deforestation.

Rewilding? But how will we produce enough food?

Why not sell low and higher quality food and let the consumer decide what to buy. As long as the products are labels so consumers know what they are buying.

Whilst I love our natural spaces, and want to support farmers, are we going to be able to feed our nation without farmland usage? We already import 40% of our food, if they want to really help the environment they would stop immigration and the mass scale house building. I have seen all the natural soaces around my small town be eaten up for housing development, we have far too many people living in this country.

Well done that farmer it makes sense for Ennerdale

Good initiative but I doubt it amounts to anything other than green lip service...

Does anyone know the name of the news presenter?

Why should the UK taxpayer pay farmers to do the right thing for the environment? They are already privileged enough by owning the land! The government should make policy/laws to encourage and ensure environmentally restorative practices; if farmers can't make it work for them (the farmers) financially then they need to sell up or cope with the same level of social support provided to the rest of the people who can't make a proper living. There shouldn't be extra funding available just because you happen to own land.

I was sent here from school. I guess we're learning about this now. Huh.

To say environmental damage to the countryside is the fault of the EU is a complete lie. Under the present system farmers get millions in environmental payments. The problem has been a light touch enforcement system in Britain.

About time

I would give granta for replanting native trees

Rewilding has been criticized by animal rights scholars, such as Dale Jamieson, who argues that "most cases of rewilding or reintroducing are likely to involve conflicts between the satisfaction of human preferences and the welfare of nonhuman animals." Erica von Essen and Michael Allen, using Donaldson and Kymlicka’s "political animal categories" framework, assert that wildness standards imposed on animals are arbitrary and "inconsistent with the premise of animal sovereignty". To resolve this, they contend that rewilding needs to shift towards full alignment with mainstream conservation and welcome full sovereignty, or instead take full responsibility for the care of animals who have been reintroduced. Ole Martin Moen argues that rewilding projects should be brought to an end because they unnecessarily increase wild animal suffering and are expensive, and the funds could be better spent elsewhere.

so cheap imports are to be restricted to get the prices up to a level the british farmers can compete at. but who is going to pay those higher prices? having a herd of galloway bovines run semi free and making money is not hard, the premium beef will fetch great prices with the lucky few, but feeding the country in that way will prove a lot more difficult.....

Lol they years ahead in EU, so not understand what Brexit got to do with this, unless the farmers will have nothing to do?

Paying farmers to be less productive? That wasn't rhetorical

Ummm. The cap was started by uk.

All the way from Western Canada it's hard to see what's going on over there, plus too busy to watch this vid just yet. So i just wanna say I pray your farming shake up is in the direction of Regenerative Agriculture, cuz that regenerates soil looong eroded from tilling & monoculture. Plus it works with forest. Rather than mowing them down it would selection log, not highgrading but taking out smaller trees so letting light thru, in places dappled. This would take food towards nutrient density, which is good preventative medicine for humans & wildlife.

an exit from the EU director by the name of von Westenholz - really??? von Bismarck going to be PM anytime soon?

The opportunity to enlarge the syphon from the taxpayer to wealthy landowners is not to be missed while simultaneously increasing the profitability of the larger corporations and enabling smaller 'less efficient' operations to be swallowed up.

Come to think of it Johnson did not attend the C4 debate on the environment and I hear that he is threatening to close C4 down.

Sorry but this rewildering guy is talking nonsens

Damn. First good story on actual policy resulting from Brexit.

New Zealand farmers stopped having Government subsidies and financial incentives and they survived. How about we do the same.

its not about how many sheep, its about how long you keep them grazing on the land!

EU never stop them from doing what they want, it is just the minister that did not negotiate and also abandon the farmers, also farmers that are too much greedy. Once the trade deal with US is signed they will all get bankrupted.

Wasn’t easier push the EU Commission to change the laws instead?

I think they spoil these farmers.

READ THIS! the solution is to nationalise all farm land and properties within national parks like Exmore, Yorkshire dales etc. to give animals there own separate territories so humans and wild animals don't have to have overlapping territories. this will stop farms illegally and legally shooting wild predators and large herbivores like wolves, bears, lynx, bison and elk etc.

Blame EU for the farming unsustainable policies is absolutely crazy. Who's to pay for all those programs? What nonsense. You are trying to calm farmers on the hard times ahead.

Rewilding needs to be prioritised in the overdeveloped south and midlands rather than the Lakes or the Pennines. Does anyone really want to see the great open moorlands vanish?

It’s all about the money.

so it's Blut und Boden Brexit now?

We need a way to subsidise farmers so they can compete against Australia, USA, South America, without "breaking the rules" if we pay them to help the environment it could be a win win?

there is nobody better than farmer to do this

So yet more fiddling around the margins and handing money to landowners rather than taking the serious action needed? This is why we need a Green New Deal. Preswrving and rebuilding the natural environment should go hand in hand with creating hundreds of thousands of good jobs. But why do that when we can throw farmers a bone and ask them to be a little nicer to the environment, pretty please?

Don't northern Europe plant about 20 million trees a year?

Sounds like a non-admission that marginal farming isn't viable.

Kudos to the UK for showing the way to the EU!