Back to the Future: Farming Systems in Transition

Abstract

National policy levers play a central role in shaping agricultural systems. In his timely book Land Renewed: reworking the Countryside Peter Hetherington (2021) challenges British policy makers to form a far more coherent approach for land use supporting the transition towards improved national food security, seen through a lens of climate change and biodiversity loss. In the UK there are currently three separate government departments responsible for land, the environment, farming and climate change complicating policy alignment. He points out that without subsidies, in the form of area payments, over 60% of all British farms would be running at a loss. The challenge is to improve domestic crop production which currently provides just 60% of the nation's food (Lang, 2020) and hence make the food system more resilient to shocks in international food supply chains while addressing the climate emergency. Hetherington documents a number of cases where farmers, collaborating in organisations such as the Nature Friendly Farming Network, are successfully encouraging a resurgence of bird-life through reduced tillage, renewing and planting hedgerows and using lower doses of fertilisers, including on larger holdings with over 500 ha. This is perhaps the other side of the coin of the bleak future for biodiversity associated with major broad-acre crops outlined by Dewar (2021) in these pages. However, Hetherington (2021) points out that just under half of England's farms produce 2% of total agricultural output, while 8% of them account for over half of it. This implies room for landscape scale nature-friendly farming and even re-wilding, particularly in the uplands, with the caveat that local communities play a central role in plans and implementation. With heightened public interest in the climate emergency and biodiversity loss there is increasing desire for food which is local and particularly in food traceability. This is leading to increasingly sophisticated methods to track and publish farming and animal welfare standards with supermarket chains requiring producers to adhere to these (e.g., Waitrose and Partners, 2022 one of many examples). Underpinning such standards, methods of carbon accounting which may be applied to soil, whole farms or individual enterprises within the farm have been a focus of research for some time (e.g. Goglio et. al. 2015; Abram, 2020). At the most basic level regular soil organic matter tests and a soil management plan will allow British farmers signed up to the entry level of the recently announced Sustainable Farming Incentive (DEFRA, 2022) to be "paid with public funds for providing public goods". To receive payment, they will also be required to ensure 70% of the farm has a green cover through the winter from December to February and add organic matter, which can be via a green cover crop, on one third of the land each year. Currently there is no requirement to demonstrate that soil organic matter is increasing over time – this is assumed. As time goes on however it is possible to envisage more nuanced payments for increasing stored soil carbon, and even a "market" developing as is the case with woodland creation (Forestry Commission, 2022) as producers become the "carbon farmers" of tomorrow as suggested by Korres & Dayan (2020). External inputs including crop protection products will all be included in farm or enterprise carbon budgets. Policy levers are also a focus to regulate the quantity of agrochemicals used for crop protection. The European Union's "Farm to Fork" and Biodiversity strategies, aim reduce by 50% the use and potential risk of chemical pesticides by 2030 and reduce by 50% the use of the more hazardous pesticides also by 2030, although a recent assessment indicates slow and uneven progress towards targets and adoption of IPM measures (European Commission, 2020). Individual countries also take unilateral measures as seen with restrictions on use and in some cases phasing out of the use of glyphosate e.g. by 2024 in Germany (Sustainable Pulse, 2022). Glyphosate is a widely used tool for the destruction of green cover crops (e.g. Fogliato, 2020) so alternative approaches will be needed where these are used at scale as part of interventions to build soil health and store carbon.