Individually, they will remove various barriers that in the past have constrained the choices available to tenant farmers. Collectively, they will create a new and better balance between the rights of tenant and landlord, and one that better fits the circumstances of the future. It fails to allow tenants to diversify into other economic activities as they would wish. It also fails to take account of the increasing public interest in protecting and enhancing the environment, and in particular in environmentally friendly farming activity. New arrangements are needed that are both flexible for the future and fair to all concerned.
Diversification is therefore technically a breach of tenancy.
In practice there is usually tacit acceptance that a degree of flexibility is acceptable, but many tenants feel that the statutory bar is a constraint. The recommended solution was to introduce a statutory provision into new leases to permit diversification, with appeal arrangements for resolving disputed cases and compensation arrangements to deal with the effects of the diversification which outlast the duration of the tenancy. A new provision should be introduced into leases to permit diversification. The provision should be in general enabling terms, with no attempt made to set out in statute a schedule of eligible diversification activities. There is near unanimity that the creation of such a schedule would be very difficult, and in any case inflexible for the future.