England's Farming Gets Its Biggest Makeover Since WWII

For the first time in nearly 80 years, English farming has a long-term plan that actually listens to the people working the land.

The Labor government just rolled out Farming Roadmap 2050: Growing England’s Future, a 25-year blueprint that’s being heralded as“the most significant moment for English agriculture since the Second World War.”And for once, the politicians didn’t dream this up in a Westminster conference room. Instead, they built it on the back of a review conducted by Baroness Minette Batters, a working farmer, former president of the National Farmers’Union of England and Wales from 2018 to 2024, and current House of Lords member who knows the sector inside and out.

Here’s where it gets interesting: the roadmap redefines what counts as agriculture altogether. It’s not just about what grows in the field anymore—it’s about everything that comes directly from that production. English dairy, brewing powered by English hops, beer crafted from English grain—it all counts now. That shift alone tells you something fundamental has changed in how the government values farming. Under the old math, agriculture represented just 0.6% of the national economy. Under this new, more honest accounting? It’s 6.1%. That’s a tenfold jump, putting one in every ten workers into the agriculture or agri-food sector, making it one of the country’s largest employers.

Environmental Minister Emma Reynolds put it plainly:“Of course farming doesn’t stop at the farm gate. We should look at agri-food in the whole. And the agri-food sector is massive. It’s got the economic value that’s equivalent to the automotive sector or the construction sector.”Translation: we’ve been massively underestimating farming’s worth for years.

The roadmap adopted 53 of the 57 recommendations from Baroness Batters’review, none of which came from politicians. That’s practical stuff: easier farm reservoir construction, better access to finance, solutions for seasonal worker shortages. The government’s also doubling its investment in agricultural innovation—soil health monitoring, climate resilience, robotics—and committing to cut trade friction with the EU. There’s even a $39 million fund for small producer expansions and an extension of the seasonal harvest worker visa program through 2030.

What makes this work is the partnership approach. Reynolds herself has spent the past months“rebuilding our relationship with farmers brick by brick,”and that groundwork shows. For the first time in decades, English farming has visibility and a coherent strategy that stretches beyond the next budget cycle. That matters, because it gives farmers room to invest in their futures with some actual confidence.