
How we ended up paying farmers to flood our homes
It has the force of a parable. Along the road from High Ham to Burrowbridge, which skirts Lake Paterson (formerly known as the Somerset Levels), you can see field after field of harvested maize. In some places the crop lines run straight down the hill and into the water. When it rains, the water and soil flash off into the lake. Seldom are cause and effect so visible. That's what I saw on Tuesday. On Friday, I travelled to the source of the Thames. Within 300 metres of the stone that marked it were ploughed fields, overhanging the catchment, left bare through the winter and compacted by heavy machinery. Muddy water sluiced down the roads. A few score miles downstream it will reappear in people's living rooms. You can see the same thing happening across the Thames watershed: 184 miles of idiocy, perfectly calibrated to cause disaster. Two realities, perennially denied or ignored by members of this government, now seep under their doors. In September the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, assured us that climate change "is something we can adapt to over time and we are very good as a race at adapting". If two months of severe weather almost sends the country into meltdown, who knows what four degrees of global warming will do? The second issue, once it trickles into national consciousness, is just as politically potent: the government's bonfire of regulations. Almost as soon as it took office, this government appointed a task force to investigate farming rules. Its chairman was the former director general of the National Farmers' Union. Who could have guessed that he would recommend "an entirely new approach to and culture of regulation … Government must trust industry"? The task force's demands, embraced by Paterson, now look as stupid as Gordon Brown's speech to an audience of bankers in 2004: "In budget after budget I want us to do even more to encourage the risk takers." Six weeks before the floods arrived, a scientific journal called Soil Use and Management published a paper warning that disaster was brewing. Surface water run-off in south-west England, where the Somerset Levels are situated, was reaching a critical point. Thanks to a wholesale change in the way the land is cultivated, at 38% of the sites the researchers investigated, the water – instead of percolating into the ground – is now pouring off the fields. Farmers have been ploughing land that was previously untilled and switching from spring to winter sowing, leaving the soil bare during the rainy season. Worst of all is the shift towards growing maize, whose cultivated area in this country has risen from 1,400 hectares to 160,000 since 1970. In three quarters of the maize fields in the south-west, the soil structure has broken down to the extent that they now contribute to flooding. In many of these fields, soil, fertilisers and pesticides are sloshing away with the water. And nothing of substance, the paper warned, is being done to stop it. Dated: December 2013. Maize is being grown in Britain not to feed people, but to feed livestock and, increasingly, the biofuel business. This false solution to climate change will make the impacts of climate change much worse, by reducing the land's capacity to hold water. The previous government also saw it coming. In 2005 it published a devastating catalogue of the impacts of these changes in land use. As well as the loss of fertility from the land and the poisoning of watercourses, it warned, "increased run-off and sediment deposition can also increase flood hazard in rivers". Maize, it warned, is a particular problem because the soil stays bare before and after the crop is harvested, without the stubble or weeds required to bind it. "Wherever possible," it urged, "avoid growing forage maize on high and very high erosion risk areas." The Labour government turned this advice into conditions attached to farm subsidies. Ground cover crops should be sown under the maize and the land should be ploughed, then resown with winter cover plants within 10 days of harvesting, to prevent water from sheeting off. So why isn't this happening in Somerset? Because the current government dropped the conditions. Sorry, not just dropped them. It issued – wait for it – a specific exemption for maize cultivation from all soil conservation measures. It's hard to get your head round this. The crop which causes most floods and does most damage to soils is the only one which is completely unregulated. When soil enters a river we call it silt. A few hundred metres from where the soil is running down the hills, a banner over the River Parrett shouts: "Stop the flooding, dredge the rivers." Angry locals assail ministers and officials with this demand. While in almost all circumstances, dredging causes more problems than it solves, and though, as even Owen Paterson admits, "increased dredging of rivers on the Somerset Levels would not have prevented the recent widespread flooding", there's an argument here for a small amount of dredging at strategic points. But to do it while the soil is washing off the fields is like trying to empty the bath while the taps are running. So why did government policy change? I've tried asking the environment department: they're as much use as a paper sandbag. But I've found a clue. The farm regulation task force demanded a specific change: all soil protection rules attached to farm subsidies should become voluntary. They should be downgraded from a legal condition to an "advisory feature". Even if farmers do nothing to protect their soil, they should still be eligible for public money. You might have entertained the naive belief that in handing out billions to wealthy landowners we would get something in return. Something other than endless whining from the National Farmers' Union. But so successfully has policy been captured in this country that Defra – which used to stand for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – now means Doing Everything Farmers' Representatives Ask. We pay £3.6bn a year for the privilege of having our wildlife exterminated, our hills grazed bare, our rivers polluted and our sitting rooms flooded. Yes, it's a parable all right, a parable of human folly, of the kind that used to end with 300 cubits of gopher wood and a journey to the mountains of Ararat. Antediluvian? You bet it is.

	[NickSimo]
	I grew up in a 60's farming village, fields flooded every year, bad floods too. But fields act as sponges and any excess water was held until it SLOWLY drained away. Since then a constant programme of drainage to save crops has increased both the quantity of water being drained from fields and the speed and force at which it hits the becks, streams, watercourses and eventually rivers.
From a farming background I'm pro-farming but come on - to say farmers have no connection to flooding is like saying kids have no connection to ice cream.
Rocket scientists don't have to be involved here !!

	[elisasa]
	Human adaptability!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tell that to ther first dynasty of Egypt (the ones with the pyramids), who died from hunger due to a 30-year drought, the Minoans (volcanic eruption and tsunami), Babylonians (drought), Mayans (drought), Moches (South America - drought), Marajoaras (drought),Cambodians of Angkor Wat (drought), Roman Empire (volcanic explosion leading to drought and pestilence). Tell to the former inhabitants of the savanah now known as Saharan Desert (farming).Predatory salmon and cod fishing in the beginning of the early 20th century (so much the most of the catch did rot) led to such severe decrease that salmon is mostly farmed now (not the best solution but the only available). There is always overconfidence in human abilities (by now humans would be in Mars, we would be jetting over our cities, there would be no hunger,etc).

		[suzi]
		Patronising and cynical comment by the Government. I daresay we can 'adapt' to a certain extent but there are limits.

	[RobinWhitlock]
	Okay George, sorry but I've checked with the REA on this and according to them, and the governments RTFO Statistics Year 5 Report 6 data tables (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/biofuel-statistics-year-5-2012-to-2013-report-6) maize being grown in the UK ISN'T being used for biofuels. Am I missing something here or are you completely wrong on this? If it turns out that UK-grown maize is being used for biofuel, I would like to know where it is grown and how much. As far as I can see from the sources I've mentioned, the problem is down to livestock only, unless that is we import maize for biofuel from some other country, in which case there may be a flood issue associated with biofuel maize in that country rather than in the UK.

	[cymraeg147]
	This Tory/Lib Dem government has caused more tragedies for ordinary people in the UK in such a short space of time than any other n living memory. Even Thatcher took her time destroying the UK. With this government we are bombarded with the consequences of one bad decision after another from cuts to public spending to ripping up the regulation rule book. They are driven by political ideology rather than common sense and the needs of the people. There is a parallel between the coalition and Stalin, both blindly followed a political ideology regardless of the impact on people and the environment.

	[usuk4u2]
	George- maize is not evil. Farmers are not inheritly evil. Your simplistic view of nature and our effects on it are just plane wrong. On a technical level researcvh (i know you don't believe in research or facts) shows that contrary to common views - planting rows of crops down a hill will reduce soil erosion. It speeds water flow versus planting across the slope. The climate is changing due to human effects. These floods can't be blamed on that or maize farming or GM crops (I know you would be saying that if GM crops were grown in the UK - you must be so frustrated). RoundUp Gm corn would preserve soil through the use of no-till or conservation tillage but due to people like you that is not an option and also due to poeple like you we now have lots of poisonous organic sewage running off the land. I assume the bees can swim.

	[Anteaus]
	Half-doing any job may leave you with a worse situation than if you left it alone. Dredging the upstream half of a river, and not the rest, is a case in point. That is never an excuse for abandoning a job that is your responsibility, and which should have been done properly, though.

	[MacRandall]
	Look to the fey urbanite in matters of farming and land use, I always say. Farmers. Meh. Who needs 'em?!

	[niceguybut]
	Another contributory problem is field run-off discharging straight on to public highways and overwhelming the highway drainage, which in weather like we've been seeing recently is already struggling to cope. Such drainage doesn't take into account any run-off not within the highway as land drainage should be dealt with by the landowner, something which seems to be happening less often than it should. My regular commute to work on a major regional trunk road has been disrupted by drivers having to slow down to drive through large areas of standing and flowing water, of which a large proportion has escaped onto the road from neighbouring fields - one can see it pouring out of the verge, creating brown streams and huge puddles in the road. This suspended material then starts clogging up manholes, pipes and gullies, exacerbating the problem.

	[Brian Cartwright]
	Another good reason to protect soil: healthy soil is rich in carbon drawn from the atmosphere and stored in humus, the spongy soil structure that protects against drought as well as flood. Side benefit: it lowers CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

