Making capital out of nature is the way ahead

While it is now some years since the term “biodiversity” and its importance was introduced to farmers, it looks likely that the latest addition to the industry’s lexicon will be the phrase “natural capital”.

Defined as the world’s stocks of natural assets – geology, soil, air, water and all living things – the term has been growing in prominence in discussions on post-brexit farm support and policy measures.

The phrase was widely used by UK Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Michael Gove, last week when he outlined his plans for future policy measures at the Oxford Farming Conference.

And the Scottish Government has also been keen to play a leading role on this front – with a commitment being made only a month ago when First Minister Nicola Sturgeon welcomed 700 delegates from 60 countries to Edinburgh as the country hosted the second World Forum on Natural Capital (WFNC).

The organisers of that event believe that humans derive a wide range of services – often called ecosystem services, which make human life possible – from a country’s natural capital.

It states that the most obvious ecosystem services include “the food we eat, the water we drink and the plant materials we use for Scottish farmers wanting to take their first steps in assessing some their natural capital, could, for a tenner, get to grips with the wide range of bird species on their land.

In the run-up to the Uk-wide Big Farmland Bird Count, the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) is holding a bird identification day at its demonstration farm at Auchnerran on 26 January. 0 Michael Gove spoke of ‘natural capital’ at Oxford fuel, building materials and medicines”.

However, there are also many less visible ecosystem services such as the climate regulation and natural flood defences provided by forests, the billions of tonnes of carbon stored by peatlands, and the pollination of crops by insects.

“Even less visible are cultural ecosystem services such as the inspiration we take from wildlife and the natural environment,” claims the WFNC.

And the notion will be central to a new a new national farming group launched last week, the The GWCT said that the bird count was an annual census undertaken by farmers and land managers willing to spend 30 minutes on one day between 9 and 18 February identifying and counting the birds on a chosen area of their farm.

Across the UK, 970 participants took part last year, spotting 112 species over 900,000 acres of farmland. Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN).

Its stated aim is to persuade both the UK and devolved governments to create a post-brexit framework which will help farmers restore British wildlife, reverse declines in soil quality and help manage the impacts of climate change – at the same time as growing affordable, healthy food.

“Thousands of British farmers already use nature friendly farming practices, but we believe that the scale of the decline in wildlife and soil quality and the challenges presented by climate change, means that this work needs to be scaled up rapidly with strong policy support,” said the organisation’s chairman, Cambridgeshire farmer, Martin Lines.

He said Brexit was an opportunity to ensure nature friendly farming became mainstream.