I was interested to hear two quite different takes on the recent floods within a few minutes of each other last week. The first expressed frustration that the nearby river, which had burst its banks, was now never dredged by the Environment Agency. 'They never clean out the rivers so no wonder they flood. All the money goes to build flood defences in the towns instead.’

The second came in the form of a media article condemning ‘intensive agriculture‘ as a chief cause of flooding, with implications of greed and farmers’ disregard for their neighbours further down the river.

Both positions are commonly held in times of flooding, and both are understandable. However, both fail to see the whole picture.

Dredging rivers works well up to a point. It carries more water away more quickly, avoiding flooding where you have dredged. However, sooner or later you get to a place where there has been no dredging and the river is shallower. The water, delivered to this bottleneck more quickly by the deeper river, bursts over the banks in an even worse flood than the one you avoided upstream. This flooding can be disastrous for both agricultural and domestic property.

Blaming intensive agriculture for floods is unhelpful. Agriculture is a business driven largely by supply and demand, the same dynamic which can encourage the construction of properties in the flood plain in the first place. And right now food, however intensively produced, is in demand. The world’s population is booming and needs feeding. Water, unsurprisingly plays a significant part in this cycle, with irrigated land – mostly near rivers – being some of the most productive in the country. According to Savills recent research publication Aspects of Land, in England, just four per cent of crops, by area, are irrigated, yet they give 20 per cent of crop value.

However, most crops do not thrive in waterlogged soil and 30 years ago, the government invested large sums of money in supporting the drainage of farmland to improve its productivity. This has undoubtedly been a good thing for food production, albeit that those same drains now speed the passage of water towards the rivers.

Worth noting is that many farm businesses are now constructing winter-storage reservoirs, which fill up with water over the winter, collecting rain which could otherwise contribute to flood risk. In the summer this water is used for irrigation, boosting food production in a way which does not deplete river levels at their lowest. Such reservoirs are expensive, but surely an intelligent use of resources and arguably deserving of financial support by central government, particularly if they freed up more land for much-needed development downstream.

The reality is that we are living in an increasingly crowded country, with competition for resources such as water and space intensifying between land uses as a consequence. Already, serious questions are being asked about whether the water-supply network can support new development schemes in the South East. We need to be realistic as a nation. Demand for food, on the one hand, and for housing and infrastructure on the other, will both grow. Supply will follow demand. Rural and peri-urban land users are well placed to contribute positively to this cycle, be that by food production, flood storage, or providing land for appropriate development, and encouragement should be given to land users to do just that in the most intelligent way possible.

Further information

For more information and guidance, contact Savills farms and estates services team.