Brexit’s Shades of Green—(Missing) the Opportunity to Transform Farming in England?

Abstract

Abstract The UK Government’s ‘green Brexit’ includes fundamental reform of agriculture. We use resilience thinking to examine the complex relationship between farming policy and environmental sustainability. Farming is a social ecological system that will be disturbed by leaving the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. Reforms could reinforce persistence of the status quo or shape transformation to ‘better’ sustainability. We argue Brexit is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the hegemony of sustainable intensification to be challenged by enhanced agroecological farming practices. The interdependency of social and ecological factors is a critical threshold for transformative change, which we explore through three key sites of struggle: farmers’ cultural identity, connection to land, and security. We suggest transformative law and governance measures built upon Wild Law jurisprudence and resilience principles of diversity, scale, flexibility, relationality, education and participatory decision-making. We conclude that the Government’s approach falls short of the transformation needed for a resilient, sustainable farming system.