It’s not the plough, but the how!

As news of weedkiller resistant plants hits the headlines, Patrick Holden reflects on discussions at the latest Oxford Real Farming Conference, highlighting why the plough may not be the worst option when it comes to nature-friendly cultivation.

Last week I attended the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC), one of two events hosted in that city at this time of year. ORFC was launched around 16 years ago as a spoiler to the more conventional Oxford Farming Conference (OFC).

Since the first gathering of around 100 people, the attendance has mushroomed, so much so that more than 2000 people attended this year’s event, nearly four times the number of attendees at the traditional conference down the road!

I was encouraged and inspired by one of the 150 sessions which took place in the Court Room of the Town Hall. This room has a rather dark atmosphere as you might imagine, reflecting sentences passed on hundreds, even thousands of criminals, but this session really countered that Court Room gloom!

The theme was how ploughing and cultivation can be good for soil health. Both of these practices have been somewhat demonised by the regenerative agriculture community, who assert that soil cultivation in general, and ploughing in particular, is bad for soil health and especially for soil carbon.

It was so refreshing to hear the experiences of two farmers, Richard Gantlett of Yatesbury House Farm, a 1500+ acre beef and arable holding in Wiltshire and Iain Tolhurst (a.k.a. Tolly), a small scale organic grower in the Thames Valley near Pangbourne, both of whom have experience over several decades which runs counter to this orthodoxy.

After 35 years of growing on a couple of fields by the Thames, Tolly reported that his earthworm counts, soil carbon and general soil health were excellent, despite regular ploughing and cultivation. The point he made, I think very compellingly, is that if your farming system is right in its key elements, sensitive and shallow ploughing plus appropriate cultivation will not fundamentally destroy soil health.

In parallel, Richard Gantlett, who is somewhat of a data geek (I mean that as a compliment!), has been assiduously gathering evidence on the carbon outcomes of his farming system for more than 20 years. Richard reports, stunningly, that he is sequestering 10 times more carbon than the farm is omitting, and this is despite the fact that he built his fertility with beef cattle. It has been estimated that were his mixed farming system to be taken to scale right across the arable east of the UK, the soil carbon sequestered could offset a very significant percentage of total UK greenhouse gas emissions.

“What we need is more public pressure for change! I wonder how many people have noticed but not quite realised what is going on, as they drive around England at this time of year – that quite a lot of the arable fields have a strange orange hue about them. They should know that this is the colour of dead plants or weeds after being sprayed with Roundup.”

Linked to this, another thought occurred to me which didn’t come up in the discussions – but I think it’s highly relevant and sometimes overlooked – is namely that the repeated use of Roundup on fields across the east of Britain, and many in the west as well, is having a devastating impact on in-field biodiversity.

I am old enough to remember when arable weeds were an integral part of crop production, not threatening the yields too much, but nevertheless providing nourishment for a vast range of species higher up the food chain. The use of pesticides in general, and herbicides in particular, have eliminated this biodiversity habitat, which collectively accounts for 90% of the total farmed area of the UK. That is why we have witnessed such a catastrophic decline in biodiversity during my farming lifetime. Somehow the nature conservation organisations have overlooked this, instead advocating the introduction of stewardship strips around the edges of otherwise intensively farmed land.

I’ve often wondered why this might be the case. I think it could be because they have no practical experience of agriculture. They doubted the potential for chemical-free agriculture to go to scale, having been told by authoritative lecturers at their universities while studying for environmental degrees that, while well-meaning people who farm organically should be affirmed, they would always be in a minority, since grown-up farmers needed to use chemicals to provide food security and feed the world.

Stewardship strips around the edge of otherwise factory-farmed fields which are devoid of weeds, insects and most other forms of life (other than the crop itself), will do no more than mitigate the damage caused by intensive arable farming. Yet this is the predominant strategy currently informing the Defra post-Brexit farm support schemes. I brought this issue up at one of the Defra consultation sessions at the conference, but I’m not sure whether it made any impact.

What we need is more public pressure for change! I wonder how many people have noticed but not quite realised what is going on, as they drive around England at this time of year – that quite a lot of the arable fields have a strange orange hue about them. They should know that this is the colour of dead plants or weeds after being sprayed with Roundup. It is these very weeds that provided the main food source for pollinators, butterflies, farmland birds and a vast range of other species which used to depend on these habitats to nourish themselves in winter.

I find it sinister and rather shocking that the chemical companies refer to pesticides as ‘plant protection products’. The equivalent impact in the pastures of the west of the UK is when you see a field that that suddenly goes yellow. That is also Roundup. A large number of farmers in the west of Britain now routinely use Roundup instead of ploughing to reseed because they had been told that ploughing is bad for soil carbon.

It’s also more cost-effective, so please don’t blame the farmers. It is up to us as citizens to protest about the way in which chemical agriculture has become the norm on more than 90% of the farmland of the UK.