The importance of farming to our environment

FOOD is something we talk about a lot – and it’s a good conversation to have. What we eat doesn’t just affect our health but also has an impact on our environment, depending on how and where it is produced.

If we have a look at how food is grown and reared here in Wales, we have a great story to tell and there is a need to understand the difference between rhetoric spread by those opposed to eating meat and livestock farming, and the facts about the reliance of species and landscapes on farming systems and the positive benefits of maintaining our food security.

In fact, there are plenty of scientific examples which highlight the importance of farming to our environment, and when Stockholm University looked at 276 studies of the impacts of farmland abandonment they found that most areas did not see an increase in biodiversity because traditional farming has created habitats for species that struggle or disappear when human intervention ceases.

Similarly, an analysis by the charity Plantlife has shown that more than half of all wild plants need regular management or disturbance to thrive, and that 39.6% of plant species will decline within a decade if the land on which they grow is simply abandoned.

Meanwhile, the impacts of actually increasing livestock numbers often goes against the perceived wisdom – for example, a long-term grazing experiment on the Glen Finglas estate in the Scottish Highlands found that increased grazing by sheep and the introduction of cattle had a greater positive impact on species diversity compared with the removal of sheep.

Recent studies have also highlighted that any decline in UK livestock production would result in UK consumers’ demands for red meat being met by additional imports. If that were to happen it would undermine the UK’S efforts to reduce greenhouse gases globally because of the ways in which food is produced elsewhere.

It is quite obvious then that a policy that switches the supply of lamb and beef from a domestic source to less sustainable systems overseas in order to meet UK carbon emissions targets would simply mean off-shoring emissions and therefore disregarding our global social responsibility.

And let’s not forget that even if we could somehow all stop eating altogether, about 90% of our greenhouse gas emissions would still be produced.

So if we want to be healthy and save the environment, we must look at sustainable food production systems and food that doesn’t clock up too many food miles or is produced to animal health and welfare standards which fall well below those required of Welsh farmers.

So as the propaganda, noise and rhetoric around livestock farming grows, it’s important to take a step back, consider the real evidence in a global context, and bear in mind that Welsh farming is one of the world’s most sustainable ways of producing food.