In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:
> Why should we even try to convince big landowners? All that is needed is to take away their subsidies and make them pay the same business and inheritance tax as everyone else.
I think your vision of who owns the land and what money they receive in subsidies is pretty far from the truth. It also varies massively depending on what the land is and where it is.
A small farm 25-50hectare or less, probably barely breaks even with subsidies and even with a the farmer doing 60-70hr weeks, they need a second income, from one person either working elsewhere, or add ons like cottage rental etc.. just to provide a modest living.
Bigger farms 50 up to a few hundred hectares, they can make a living depending on their sector, but only for 1 or 2 people, if they are niche enough to have some economy of scale. etc.. but even then the subsidies almost certainly represent less than 10% of their income.
Your super estate in the uplands or highlands, that is managed for shooting, typically makes a loss of a few hundred thousand pound every year. There is no money in them, they don't gain enough income from the land to clear the staff costs and building maintenance etc.. they are rich boys toys. They won't have much land that is farmed, what there is will almost certainly leased out, so the subsidies go to the farmer running the lease, not your rich toff, which bring us back to either example of 1 or 2 of the farmer struggling by.
Your Linc/Norfolk food producing farm, loads of subsidies, every inch of land is worked, with many of the biggest get a several hundreds of thousands a year in subsidies. But compared to the volume of food they produce and their turnover it's still small. Why do they need the subsidies? because the supermarkets hammer them on price. If you pay more for your food, they'll happily live without the subsidies and their lives would be much easier for it.
As someone who owns a modest amount of land and comes under the same CAP rules I would love to not to have to do any work filling in forms, I gain very little from it and the hourly rate for sitting online or hand writing forms would be appalling. I have roughly 100hectares, 20 of which are fields or grazed forest. Half is SSSI status (or equiv), I have massive environmental obligations, such as hand scything 2 hectares every year and removing this hay by hand etc.. many ancient stone boundaries/piles to maintain and in total I get around £1500 a year from the state for my conservation efforts over 100hectares (250ish acres). If you knew the price of any farm or forest machinery, you'd know 1.5k is pretty meaningless. Perhaps if farmers got more, they might do more for the environment.
> The very last thing we should be doing is handing landowners another way of keeping vast swathes of land in their families for generations while living off the income. If their business model doesn't work without subsidies and tax breaks and they need to sell off their estates that's just capitalism at work.
What do suggest the farmer does when he dies? Give it away?
If re-wilding is the key, then the land has to stay in families hands for generations as the pay back time is several generations in the first place. They don't get tax breaks and the business model doesn't currently work, that's why only the ultra rich can afford to run a Scottish estate for a modest loss, using their wealth earned elsewhere. Who would buy their estates if they sold them off?