The RSPB warns that wildlife such as skylarks and stone-curlews could be under threat due to large areas of set-aside farmland going under the plough this winter.
Last year the RSPB predicted that high prices for wheat, caused in part by the worrying government incentives to grow biofuels, would prove impossible for farmers to ignore, but the sheer scale of the habitat loss shown in Defra?s announcement today comes as a unwelcome shock.