Clean, green New Zealand is a lie - and a warning for our post-Brexit countryside | Patrick Barkham

Michael Gove plans to cut farmers' subsidies while enhancing the environment post-Brexit. New Zealand's cattle-wrecked land shows the folly of his thinkingThere can't be a more successful tourism marketing campaign than "100% Pure New Zealand". And New Zealand is seen as a world leader in another respect: how its farmers sell their food globally without government subsidies. But the tension between these two successes has been exposed by Sir Tim Smit, the co-founder of the Eden Project in Cornwall.Smit has sparked a minor international incident by declaring that New Zealand is "so pure the people of Christchurch won't even swim in the river Avon. Most of the lakes are full of algae. It is like a beautiful person with cancer." He was speaking to British landowners pondering the New Zealand model for post-Brexit agriculture. British farmers currently receive ?3bn in subsidies each year; environment secretary Michael Gove must design a much smaller subsidy system - or scrap it altogether. Continue reading...