Presenting our Land Tenure modelling tools: Defra-run Land Tenure Forum
Land Tenure Forum
Our research team member, Christopher Lee, attended Defra’s Land Tenure Forum last month to outline the agricultural modelling tools being built under NZ+, explaining why land tenure was an essential component of efforts to assess the feasibility of net zero-focused land use change in UK.
The Land Tenure Forum was set-up in response to the Rock Review, to outline plans for land tenure mapping and modelling in England and Wales. The forum comprises leaders from the major land owning and managing and advisory organisations (Association of Chief Estate Surveyors and Property Managers, Agricultural Law Association, Central Association of Agricultural Valuers, Country Land and Business Association, National Farmers Union, National Federation of Young Farmers Clubs, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and Tenant Farmers Association).
The Forum expressed a lot of interest in the capability to map, and then model the barriers presented by land tenure arrangements; with universal agreement that existing datasets are poor, with very little information on where different types of land tenure are found, and almost no information on how it impacts the feasibility of achieving policy ambitions. There were some questions about the specifics of what could be mapped and quantified (e.g. grazing licenses, common land, tenancies, etc.), and how we would deal with incomplete database.