The most solid statement of English farming policy for years has come in a moment of political flux. Everyone seeking to influence Burnham’s team is translating their priorities into Andy-speak. In his kick-off speech last week, the PM-in-waiting set out his formula: Manchesterism, ‘good growth in every postcode’, achieved through devolution turbo-charged.  

This puts the Farming Roadmap in a tricky spot. Like much of the policy squeezed out before the change of hands, it’s hard to predict its shelf-life. Food and farming got a namecheck in Burnham’s address, as one of the ‘critical sectors’ that needed safeguarding. And the Roadmap’s central argument – that the state has got strategic ambitions, but the adoption of low-input, nature-friendly farming will increasingly rely on private finance ­– chimes with the public-private partnerships that defined his Manchester mayoralty. But it’s unclear how any of this fits with Burnham’s big play, of handing power and resources to Britain’s communities.  

Farming policy in England, perhaps since the County War Agricultural Committees, has followed the opposite impulse. Defra and its agencies call the shots from Westminster. Farmers await their cheques, once for subsidy and now for nature services, from the RPA. If farmers have a voice, it's through their national lobbies. That’s the level of collaboration that the newly convened Farming and Food Partnership Board represents.  

Other policy areas look a better match. For food, there are levers that local and regional government can already pull: procurement, planning, limits on advertising on transport and council land, investing in infrastructure. After the publication in March of the English Land Use Framework, the challenge of making it real will be done on the ground – by farmers, landowners, planners and councillors. The fact that it’s a framework, not a plan, reflects a growing belief that it’s neither productive nor palatable to dictate from on high how a field will be used for decades to come.  

Could devolving more farming powers work? Agriculture is varied and complicated – even for those brought up in it. We might question whether local officials have the time and experience to make decisions about such a specialised industry. We might wonder too whether the sheer national importance of farmland, covering just under 70% of the UK land area, makes it risky to divvy up responsibility. The same goes for the country’s food security, which draws on international markets and relies on billion-pound corporate players. For the latter, devolution might be a chance to divide and conquer. Of course, farming policy is already devolved across the four nations, though the divergence of post-Brexit approaches might sound another note of caution.  

But those worries can be allayed. National governments can still set the direction and lay out shared principles, for where it’s important to be joined-up. But community leaders, operating at a sensible scale, are primed to make considered decisions about the places they live and invest for the long term. That’s where the magic happens. 

Many places have started. The Farming Roadmap mentioned the uplands review led by Hilary Cottam. After fieldwork in Cumbria and Devon, the review recommended a more rooted, place-specific approach to decision-making and distributing funds. A pilot is now in the works. Local authorities such as Lincolnshire, Northumberland, and York and North Yorkshire have brought farmers to the heart of policy-making, feeding into big issues like profitability, soil, water and the changing climate. With more than 200 members, the North East Cotswolds Farmer Cluster is working out ways of producing food while providing environmental stewardship across 60,000 hectares and several catchments. Such tangible, empowering initiatives share something of the co-operative spirit, that other gift of Manchester to the world. Britain's food and farming co-ops, from giants like Arla and Openfield on down, are also about people and small businesses working together and making decisions at the scale that works for them.  

The more you think through it, the more this approach makes sense. Though they'd rarely use such language, most farmers see their land as a place. Every one of Britain's 209,000 farms is unique, a singular conjunction of geology, geography, history, culture and personal ties. Many farms have a 'Big Field' or a 'Long Park' – but none of those fields look the same. Most have once employed a Gerald – as my Dad is fond of saying – but no two versions of Diddly’s dry stone waller are truly alike.  

There’s a business angle too. Even the most bloody-minded operator admits to caring for the land they hope to pass on. Since the millennium, diversification’s importance to the bottom line has made bringing more people on to the land central to a prudent business plan. Encouraging more life on a farm – through restoring habitats as part of paid-for schemes or embracing regen to step off the commodity treadmill – is becoming good, modern agriculture. Couldn’t this be the goal of policy: to make farms – and their landscapes and regions – the best places they can be? 

It could start right away. Draw on the values and ambitions in England’s Roadmap. Fund a few more pilots. Resource the farming areas that already have regional governments. Allow pioneering landscape recovery projects to expand their remit and see how far their impact could reach.  

There’s much be to gained by just trying. The evidence is growing that revitalised local food economies, with farms feeding nearby people as well as national markets, can rebalance our top-heavy food chain. As well as achieving that ‘good growth’ everywhere, it’s also what the public want.  

This also matters for resilience. On the Big Top stage at Groundswell, climate minister Katie White proposed that devolution, extended to farming and food, could help Britain cope with the shocks of extreme weather and global conflict. Her presence, the first visit to the festival by a non-Defra minister, sent a message that parts of government, beyond Whitehall’s usual corners, see farming’s future in serious terms. And they are keen to see what people are doing already and build on it.  

Which leads us on to trust. Looking at farming through a national lens has only bred scepticism. That goes back to the days of the CAP and the likes of a three-crop rule passed down from Brussels. Policy made closer to the villages, valleys and hillsides where farming happens would start on a surer footing. Step by step, it would repair the strained relations between farms, industry and government. That’s a relationship on which the wellbeing of the whole country depends.  

Manchesterism and farming might seem an odd pair. But treating farms like places – and providing countryside communities with what they need to determine their future – might be the most natural thing of all.