In harmony with nature
For farming to be part of the solution to the climate crisis, some profound changes are required, says Patrick Holden, with the appropriate support to make this transition to a sustainable model possible
HAVING recently spent time at the climate change conference COP26 in Glasgow, it was shocking that farming and food were ‘missing in action’ from the main agenda. What an oversight. It’s clear that our farming systems have been part of the problem but they could become a big part of the solution. Agriculture is more or less the only sector that has the potential to draw down CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it in the soil.
The failure to include farming is a missed opportunity for the government. Instead of agreeing to trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, both likely to hurt the interests of UK farmers, we could have launched a new international framework for all future trading of food and agricultural products, with tariff-free trade restricted to food produced in a climate- and naturefriendly way; and tariffs applied to products produced to a lower standard. This would have been a transformative announcement, a real legacy for COP26.
In order for farmers to play their new role as stewards of nature, carbon and public health, we need some profound changes to farming practice. Simply put, we need a return to mixed farming. Instead of fertilising our crops with synthetic nitrogen, the price of which has tripled recently due to the natural gas crisis, fertility would be built through crop rotations with a regenerative phase, normally of grass and clover, followed by several years of crops for human consumption.
I suspect there isn’t a producer in the country who would not want to be part of this collective solution, were it to be a financially viable option. But undergoing this form of transition puts financial strain on farmers. As an example, a 1,000-acre all-arable farm in the eastern counties could become a more diverse enterprise through reintroducing livestock (probably dairy, beef or sheep) to utilise the grass from a fertility-building phase of the crop rotations. This would clearly cost money to implement. If farmers aren’t paid to work in a sustainable way, they won’t be able to make the transition required.
Farmers are understandably worried about the implications of this switch, particularly at a time when consumers are choosing more plant-based diets, erroneously believing that livestock, and particularly ruminants, are part of the problem when, in fact, correctly managed they can be part of the solution. There are also practical challenges associated with a switch to regenerative farming. On many farms in the eastern counties, all the infrastructure used to support livestock has disappeared. To replace it will require investment.
Now we come to the difficult bit: an economy and policy that enables this transition. DEFRA seems to be sitting on the fence with regards to ELMS (the range of schemes through which the government pays farmers for environmental outcomes). Perhaps this is understandable since the department is getting conflicting signals from the Climate Change Committee, who seem to think that sustainable intensification – an oxymoron, in my opinion – is the right way forward: this means more intensive production on the best land and leaving more space for rewilding, biofuels and afforestation on remaining acres.
For me, it is clear that this is the wrong approach. Not that I am against rewilding in moderation, but the key challenge is to feed people using farming systems that work in harmony with nature, thus preserving the biodiversity that we have lost during my farming lifetime.
To meet this challenge, we could introduce the ‘polluter pays’ principle: if we redirect the lion’s share of the post-brexit subsidies towards supporting mixed farming systems, it could be decisive in shifting the balance of advantage towards sustainable agriculture. Add to that the power of the investment community and, critically, the consuming public, who represent the other two cornerstones of agriculture’s future, and this transformed business environment could come into place quickly.
However, public education will also be necessary to build widespread support for sustainable mixed farming. Consumers already have, or are thinking of switching to a plant-based diet, because they believe that doing so is a climate solution. They rightly abhor industrial livestock production and its many evils, but there’s a misunderstanding about the critically important role that grass-fed ruminant animals can play in the transition to sustainable farming practices.
The public has long been told that the methane these animals emit is a major contributor to climate change, which is partly true, but what they haven’t been told is the carbon sequestration and methane offsetting potential of the soil under pastureland, particularly when managed using holistic grazing systems. Further to this, Professor Myles Allan and his colleagues at the University of Oxford have shown that the formula used for calculating the impact of methane on climate change has been overstated by as much as 3:1.
By engendering public support, farming can become part of the solution, and we must begin the conversation now. We haven’t got long if we want to play the central role that is necessary to keep our planet liveable for future generations. Patrick Holden is founding director of the Sustainable Food Trust, working internationally to accelerate the transition towards more sustainable food systems.
Public education will be necessary to build support for sustainable mixed farming