As the global shockwaves of the Middle East conflict continue to amplify, urgent questions on food security are coming to the fore. From geopolitical instability to the increase in extreme weather events, it’s become increasingly clear that our approach to food security in the UK is not fit for purpose.

Here, the SFT’s Head of Policy, Megan Perry, and Senior Researcher, Robert Barbour, share their thoughts on the current situation and imagine what a future food system that’s more resilient to global shocks and price volatility might look like.

Fears about how the Iran war is impacting food production has now been widely raised by farmers and in the media. The main focus has been the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil and gas and about one third of global seaborne trade in fertilisers passes. Yet there is far more at play, and the lessons and solutions we should be drawing from this seem to be going unrecognised.

Disruption to the gas supply (a critical component of fertiliser manufacture) has further led to fertiliser plants shutting down in countries such as India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Around a quarter of the world’s rice exports come from India which will be impacted by a prolonged war. Brazil, which imports over 60% of its fertilisers, mostly via the Strait of Hormuz, is one of the world’s biggest exporters of agricultural commodities. Australia’s stock of fertiliser is expected to run out mid-April. US stocks of fertiliser are already 25% lower than usual. The Philippines has declared a national emergency.

It is not just the availability of food that is the issue, but people’s ability to buy it. With the disruption to fuel, many countries are experiencing a shut down in their industries, forcing people out of work. In the Philippines, the widespread Jeepney drivers are facing 50-60% pay cuts. In Gujarat, India, a shortage of gas has led the ceramics industry to close leaving the 400,000 employees without work. In Mumbai, a fifth of hotels and restaurants have been partially closed since the start of March.

This is all set within the backdrop of another major crisis. The United Nations warned last week that the earth’s climate is in a state of emergency and is “more out of balance than at any time in observed history”. Yet the environmental impact of the Iran war is catastrophic. It is draining the global carbon budget faster than 84 countries combined, with 5 million tonnes of GHG emissions released within the first 14 days alone.

Patrick Bigger, a research director at the Climate and Community Institute, was quoted in the Guardian, “Every missile strike is another down payment on a hotter, more unstable planet, and none of it makes anyone safer… Every refinery fire and tanker strike is a reminder that fossil‑fuelled geopolitics is incompatible with a liveable planet. This war shows, yet again, that the fastest way to supercharge the climate crisis is to let fossil fuel interests dictate foreign policy.”

There are also concerns the war will be leveraged to benefit big business or to remove environmental standards and regulation. An article from Greenpeace has said, “Expect the term ‘food security’ to be hollowed out and weaponised. Large-scale industrial players are already positioning themselves as the only thing standing between the public and empty shelves. In truth, it is this highly consolidated, chemical-dependent model of industrial farming that is making our global food system so fragile in the first place.”

How is the situation being addressed in the UK? The UK imports 60% of its fertiliser and close to 50% of its food, often from countries which in turn import significant amounts of fertiliser and rely on input-heavy production systems. The UK’s system is also heavily centralised and consolidated, nine big retailers account for more than 94% of all retail food.

The recently launched Land Use Framework gives an insight to the government’s thinking, namely we will need to produce more food from less land, with a drive to growth and efficiency in sectors such as poultry. George Monbiot does not mince his words on this approach, calling it “nothing short of moronic” given the poultry sector’s dependence on imported livestock feed.

The term ‘resilience’ is also being bandied around by the government and farming sector, but what does this mean? It does not appear to mean a big shift away from input-heavy approaches that dominate today, given the aforementioned focus on continuing to achieve current levels of production. Business as usual and tweaking rather than transforming appears to be the current thinking. But we need much more radical policies.

“The UK imports 60% of its fertiliser and close to 50% of its food, often from countries which in turn import significant amounts of fertiliser and rely on input-heavy production systems. The UK’s system is also heavily centralised and consolidated, 9 big retailers account for more than 94% of all retail food.”

As Professor Tim Benton says in this recent interview, it will likely take a crisis before change really happens. Yet we have the knowledge, resources and ability to transform our food system into one that is both resilient and does not degrade our environment.

If the government created support that took a whole farm approach, integrating nature and food production through agroecological farming methods, and promoted healthier diets aligned with what the UK can sustainably produce, we could move away from input-heavy agriculture, reducing our reliance on imports and increasing the resilience of domestic production to extreme weather. A decentralised supply chain is also critical for true resilience, embedding smaller-scale localised infrastructure across the country would be more flexible, able to pivot in a crisis and be less of a target from a security point of view. Empowering communities to produce food should also be taken seriously, supporting community growing, improving access to growing spaces and embedding practical food growing skills within the curriculum for young people. And we need to address our huge reliance on imported fruit and veg by creating market gardens and horticulture enterprises across the UK, accompanied by localised processing facilities.

In some ways, this is a vision that mirrors the shift that is needed in our energy system – a wholesale transformation to alternative forms of production that will allow us to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, and in so doing improve our resilience to future shocks like the one being experienced today. Unlike the energy transformation, however, a similarly radical shift in the food system is not only failing to happen but is barely recognised as being necessary outside a fairly small circle.

“If the government created support that took a whole farm approach, integrating nature and food production through agroecological farming methods, and promoted healthier diets aligned with what the UK can sustainably produce, we could move away from input-heavy agriculture, reducing our reliance on imports and increasing the resilience of domestic production to extreme weather.”

Much of the media’s commentary on the Iran war has, quite rightly, noted the major impacts it will have on food prices and production, thanks primarily to the effects on nitrogen fertiliser supplies. There has, though, been vanishingly little reporting on how and why a major reduction in our reliance on energy-intensive agrochemical inputs, like nitrogen fertiliser, could tackle this issue moving forwards. Instead, prominent voices have effectively positioned fertiliser supplies, and the maintenance of current levels of food production, as proxies for food security. But this is a dangerous oversimplification, that ignores the various other equally important dimensions of food security and fails to acknowledge the enormous potential that exists to wean ourselves off agrochemicals, and in so doing generate a much deeper degree of resilience in our food system.

None of this will be easy to achieve, of course. But the threats our food system face are potentially catastrophic, and demand urgent and radical action. If we fail to do so, the consequences will be dire. If, however, we rise to meet the challenge – by implementing genuinely regenerative farming practices, adopting healthy diets and putting in place the various enabling policies and infrastructure needed to make this a reality – then we can create a better future for people and the planet alike.

 

To understand more about how these global dynamics are already playing out on the ground, and what they mean for countries directly impacted by the current conflict, read Zeead Yaghi’s analysis of Lebanon’s growing food crisis.

To hear more from Megan, listen to our most recent episode of the Sustainable Food Trust Podcast, where she joins Patrick and Stuart to talk about food security.

 

Featured image by Suphanat Khumsap (Getty Images).

SFT Content Editor, Alicia Miller, provides an overview on this year’s Oxford Real Farming Conference, including one of the SFT’s sessions, Grazing for Good, which took a closer look at the integral relationship between livestock and the biodiversity it supports.

Arriving into 2025 with the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC), it has been hard to ignore what this past year has delivered in terms of climate change – 24 hours of rain in Dubai, a terrifying hurricane season in the US, fatal flooding in Valencia, Spain, heatwaves here, there and everywhere across the globe, and as an intro to the new year, Los Angeles is burning like never before. Twenty-twenty four was the hottest year on record; what will 2025 be?

So, being at the ORFC felt almost blissful – a momentary haven to talk with like-minded people and think about the micro and the macro, how we move forward in a rapidly changing new world and, most pressing, what we can do to fix it, if fixing it is even possible at this point… But hope remains our friend and that’s good to keep in mind.

As always, there was much to explore at the Conference with an array of workshops and ‘deep dive’ sessions arguably dominating the more academic talks on topics like Trauma and the Land and The Interbeing of Agroecology– not to dismiss those deeper discussions which are important to have, but perhaps ‘practice’ is having a moment? What can we do on the ground, in the day-to-day, to make change happen? Are we in a place where action speaks louder than words? That’s definitely food for thought.

In a session on Improving Food Resilience, food policy veteran, Tim Lang, discussed the findings of his recent research for the UK Government, with the panel addressing the critical question: ‘Is the UK’s food system resilient?’ Unsurprisingly, the general consensus was a resounding ‘no.’ The panel explored what resilience truly means in the context of food systems – essentially, the ability to recover from shocks, whether acute (like pandemics) or chronic (such as prolonged political instability) – and how it can be strengthened. The ‘just-in-time’ logistics employed by supermarkets faced criticism, with broad agreement that transitioning to a more localised food system could be vital to ensuring access to healthy and sustainable food in an increasingly uncertain world. Sustain’s Sarah Williams shared insights from the Local Food Plan (which the SFT is involved in), while farmer and GP Tom Pearson emphasised the importance of more farmers engaging with their local communities. The panel agreed that the proof of concept exists, but robust policy frameworks and a stronger economic narrative are needed to turn theory into action.

Following in the vein of Tim Lang’s thinking was a lively panel organised by the Eating Better Alliance. Chaired brilliantly by the organisation’s Sarah Wakefield, the panellists tackled the complex issue of dietary shift and implications for farming – a topic often mired by polarisation, which Eating Better aims to overcome. Holly Purdy’s Exmoor farm exemplifies the concept of ‘better’ meat, with her pasture-fed beef and sheep, and ‘more plants,’ through the introduction of a market garden and silvopasture incorporating fruit trees. Jimmy Woodrow at Pasture for Life highlighted the need to better account for the ecological role of livestock in regenerative food systems, a contribution that isn’t always “captured in spreadsheets,” while Julia Kirby-Smith of Better Food Traders brought in the perspectives of consumers and retailers, emphasising the system’s reliance on cheap food. Could True Cost Accounting provide the solution to rebalancing the system and demonstrate the far-reaching benefits of ‘eating better’? The discussion around barriers ranged from the lack of local abattoirs to the role of the media, and, once again, the panel agreed that getting people – whether school children or MPs – onto farms will be essential to shifting mindsets and driving real long-term change.

Also very interesting and relevant, was a session on pesticide use and its future, organised around organic beef farmer Denise Walton and mixed arable farmer Patrick Barker and how they manage their land. It was an enlightening perspective, especially from Barker, who while working hard to conserve nature on his land (and doing it very well), still uses glyphosate widely. It’s a strange disconnect – for Barker, it’s a tool and he doesn’t worry about it overmuch. But for most, if not all, agroecological farmers at the ORFC, it’s anathema. You can’t do both and his admission is at best problematic.

The Sustainable Food Trust’s session on Grazing for Good? Livestock and Biodiversity in the UK, chaired by SFT CEO Patrick Holden, included the SFT’s Senior Researcher Robert Barbour and Farmer Teleri Fielden, along with Molly Biddell, Head of Natural Capital at the Knepp Estate and Jo Riggall at Plantlife. It was an engaging discussion on the integral relationship between livestock and the biodiversity it supports. Teleri Fielden made a strong case for the role that the mixed flock of cattle that she and her husband graze in Snowdonia National Park are essential in the wider preservation of the nature they support. Practices like rotational grazing and the inclusion of more diverse swards can help to mitigate the overuse of anti-parasitic medication which has significant impact on invertebrates. The reintegration of fertility building leys grazed by animals in crop rotations also offer significant benefits in reducing agri-chemical use. And there are many more sustainable practices that work to support nature and natural habitats in a variety of ways – it is possible to have a food system that works for “people, farm animals and the natural world”. Livestock, as Molly Biddell comments, is “totally critical for the health that their meat provides [and] critical for what they do for the landscape…” The session explored many of the themes that will be covered in the SFT’s next report, due out later this year.

Can we find the serenity to accept those things we cannot change, but at the same time, the courage to take action in the areas where we could make a difference?

Many of us, although certainly not all of us, have been upset by the news of the US election, and some by the recent UK Government budget.

Whatever our reaction, we clearly must accept what is, in connection with which, the serenity prayer comes to mind:

“O God, give me the grace to accept with serenity the things which cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

In an Eastern version of this teaching, Vipassana meditation, the word “equanimous” is used, meaning, as I understand it, remaining impartial and accepting in front of us what is.

Viewing this ‘acceptance of what cannot be changed’ through the lens of sustainable agriculture, how might we come to see the results of the American election and the UK budget in a more positive light?

In the US, it is surely welcome news that Joel Salatin, one of the leading examples of truly sustainable agriculture and whose farm I have visited, has accepted an invitation to join the Trump administration’s agricultural advisory group. Joel has pioneered mob grazing and although like me, it’s only recently that he has been measuring the soil carbon outcomes, it’s obvious when you visit the farm that these practices are sequestering carbon at quite a scale.

Then there is Robert Kennedy Junior, who before the election did a piece to camera in front of the Department of Agriculture, telling everyone what he would do if Trump got in, which is more or less an ideal manifesto for all the things we at the Sustainable Food Trust believe in. Apparently, since the election, his anti-vax position has precipitated the White House team to distance themselves slightly from him, so he may not be as much of an influence as he was hoping, but it’s another example of how, in this strange world in which we live, even disturbing events can have unexpected positive consequences.

Whatever the outcome of this US saga, there have also been interesting developments on the UK front. Last week, I had the good fortune to have three short conversations, with the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, the Environment Secretary Steve Reid, and Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, at events in London.

“…every human being – whether a small farmer, Prime Minister or President of the US – is a representation in microcosm, both of the systemic order but also the disorder which comprises our universe and which is reflected everywhere in all aspects of life, including, paradoxically enough, the disharmony of our daily lives.”

I suggested to the Chancellor that carbon sequestration in soils could become a cost-effective part of the Government’s climate change strategy, but only if they harness the potential of farmers to be carbon stewards, firstly through measurement and then through payments linked to ELMs.

I pointed out to her that this was already being explored in Northern Ireland, where the Department of Agriculture has made receipt of post-Brexit subsidies conditional on farmers agreeing to measure soil carbon outcomes. She told me she would talk to Daniel Zeichner the agriculture minister as to how this might be taken forward.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, 92% of Northern Ireland’s farmers have signed up for the scheme, as a result of which they are collecting soil samples on every field of those farms, thus building up an accurate database which they can easily use to introduce incentives for farming systems which best build or retain soil carbon stocks.

When I mentioned this conversation to Steve Reid and Ed Miliband, they responded very positively, which is exciting, because if through measurement it becomes possible to demonstrate that the post-Brexit support scheme is delivering climate benefits, then that opens the pathway to unlocking a new income stream for farmers from the Treasury! It is important that such a framework of measurement should not be confined only to soil and climate, but also include impacts on natural capital and social outcomes.

In support of this, the Sustainable Food Trust has been working for over eight years on developing the Global Farm Metric, comprising a harmonised framework for measuring these impacts, which we hope will eventually represent a common language for assessing the sustainability outcomes of farms throughout the world.

The encouraging news is that more and more individuals and organisations are realising that this would be positive, including our own Government.

So, although it is challenging to be confronted by a rapidly changing political landscape, both nationally and globally, especially when as individuals we can feel overwhelmed by the scale of the need for change, it does seem to me that there is cause for optimism!

After all, every human being – whether a small farmer, Prime Minister or President – is a representation in microcosm, both of the systemic order but also the disorder which comprises our universe and which is reflected everywhere in all aspects of life, including, paradoxically enough, the disharmony of our daily lives.

To conclude with the insights from the prayer: can we find the serenity to accept those things we cannot change, and at the same time, have the courage to take action in the areas where we could make a difference? This is surely a daily challenge for us all.

Keep an eye open for Patrick’s next updates following his visit to Baku, Azerbaijan, for COP29, where he will be advocating for a more sustainable food and farming system.

Current thinking around how we use land to tackle climate change represents a massive missed opportunity – the significant potential of sustainable food and farming in addressing climate change, restoring nature and improving public health.

Before the general election, I met Sir Keir Starmer a couple of times – not one-on-one meetings, just brief chats at receptions. After the second encounter, I sent him an email suggesting that if he became Prime Minister, he might consider calling a meeting between the treasury and the departments of health, education, climate and Defra, exploring ways in which an investment in truly sustainable agriculture might bring savings to those other government departments.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he didn’t reply. Of course, I wasn’t offended, after all he is a very busy man, and for most of his advisors, the proposition of investigating ways in which an investment in sustainable agriculture could create savings for other government departments was simply not on their radar screens.

However, not having been able to get through the front door, my back-up plan was to work on individual government departments, encouraging them to form strategic partnerships where agriculture could help solve a problem.

And, as if by magic, a perfect case study presented itself at New York Climate Week, where I met Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, at a dinner hosted by the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI). Serendipitously, after giving his speech to around 50 CEOs, he came and sat at my table!

We had previously met at COP28 in Dubai. I had the distinct impression that he didn’t have much interest in agriculture, and this was quite rapidly confirmed during his speech! After rightly highlighting the urgency of accelerating the energy and climate transitions, he went on to make two points, subsequently repeated in radio interviews. Firstly, he spoke about how the Government were committed to spending billions on carbon capture and storage and, secondly, about their plan to use one percent of UK agricultural land for solar panels.

“It is so sad to witness this massive, missed opportunity, which both Defra and climate ministers are failing to grasp. The advantages of investing in sustainable agriculture as part of a wider strategy for addressing climate change, nature restoration and improving public health seem glaringly obvious to me, but not to them!”

Neither of these policies make any sense to me. On carbon capture and storage, surely this is a classic example of blind faith in an unproven technology. I suspect it won’t work, but even if it does, the cost will be horrendous and, from my perspective at least, there is a far better way of achieving the same result, namely by drawing down the equivalent amount of CO2 from the atmosphere and putting it back in the soil. This not only addresses climate change, but it also helps enable the transition to climate and nature-friendly agriculture because unless we re-carbonise our soils, this shift will be impossible on many farms.

He then went on to assert that the consequences of taking one percent of farmland for solar panels would not be significant for food security.

By this time I was thinking ‘Okay, he definitely doesn’t get agriculture!’ It seemed unwise, however, at this early stage in the life of a new Government, to say as much to this highly intelligent man, so instead, I told him the story of Richard Gantlett’s 1500-acre farm in Wiltshire, where Richard estimates he is sequestering 10 times more carbon than it emits. Would he consider a visit, I asked? He neither accepted nor declined, but I suspect he had probably forgotten the conversation within a few minutes of leaving the room.

It is so sad to witness this massive missed opportunity, which both Defra and climate ministers are failing to grasp. The advantages of investing in sustainable agriculture as part of a wider strategy for addressing climate change, nature restoration and improving public health seem glaringly obvious to me, but not to them!

The Climate Change Committee don’t get it either, and this matters, because if you add up all the land that is proposed to be or already has been taken out of food production, including for woodland creation, re-forestation, re-wilding, crops for biofuels and now solar power, there simply may not be enough left to adopt a sustainable farming strategy, where food is produced in harmony with nature, as advocated in our ‘Feeding Britain From the Ground Up’ report.

Can anything be done to shift the mindset of a Government who, despite their good intentions, seem oblivious to perhaps the most important environmental issue of our time, namely the connection between intensive farming, which now occupies so much of the planet’s surface, and climate change, biodiversity destruction and growing public ill health.

To end on a note of optimism, with the tide of public opinion now turning, we may yet be able to persuade the Government to change tack on all of this. Let’s hope!

All eyes will be on the Labour conference this September for further announcements on food, farming and the environment. While food and farming are at the heart of UK society, they are not currently a priority mission for the Labour Government. Yet creating a sustainable future for our food system is essential to deliver the Government’s key missions of health, economic stability and green growth.

With the spectre of a potential cut in the agriculture budget in October, the Sustainable Food Trust is calling for the UK Government to rally behind the sustainable food sector and put in place the necessary budget and policies that will enable UK farmers to deliver healthy sustainable food. On Thursday 19 September, the SFT published a dossier of evidence that clearly makes the case to the Treasury and Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department of Health.

The SFT has highlighted eight key priorities for the agriculture budget and wider policy:

• Align the future agriculture budget with the scale of need and reflect its contribution across Labour’s missions
• Recognise the scale of transformation needed to deliver these outcomes and work with regenerative farmers to build the expertise and innovation to deliver productive farming systems
• The agriculture budget needs to reflect the realities of transformation (such as stranded assets and new investment) and to support vulnerable jobs and communities, e.g. in rural upland areas
• Ensure quality farmer support and advice is effectively funded to drive transformation
• Create policy that leverages private finance and food sector business strategy to accelerate transformation and multiply impact
• Underpin the transformation through an integrated approach to food and farming policy, reflecting its reach across Labour’s missions
• Ensure public money is well spent through the development of harmonised metrics and impact measurement across a range of social and environmental, as well as economic, impacts (for example the Global Farm Metric)
• Ensure children and young people have the opportunity to build their understanding of the value of nature-friendly food production in the UK through financial support for on-farm visits and other education opportunities.

Read the briefing here.

 

Featured image courtesy of Jason Taylor.

SFT CEO and organic farmer, Patrick Holden, outlines his key food and farming policy recommendations for Sir Keir Starmer and the new Labour Government, and the need for a ‘revolutionary vision’.

As a farmer in Wales and CEO of the Sustainable Food Trust, I have both a bird’s and worm’s eye view of food and farming, and from this uncommon vantage point it feels that they could be defining issues for Sir Keir Starmer and his Government.

Labour has a history of driving radical change in this area. At the end of the Second World War, Clement Attlee’s Government made food and health central pillars of his efforts to rebuild the nation and create a better future. With our current food and farming systems impacting ever more negatively on the health of people and planet, we need a similarly revolutionary vision now – and Keir Starmer’s personal leadership is critical to this.

I feel strongly that food and farming are central to achieving many of this Government’s most important goals, from the preventative health agenda to action on climate change, reviving our nature and rivers, the Green Growth agenda and national food security.

By shifting to regenerative farming systems that operate in harmony with nature, Britain could become a world leader, pioneering a new approach that combats climate change and protects nature, while delivering food security and helping to tackle poor health and poverty.

An investment in truly regenerative farming is undoubtedly an investment in the nation’s health. Today, the NHS is spending billions treating the symptoms of declining public health, including many previously uncommon diseases such as obesity, diabetes, food intolerances and cancer, all of which have been exacerbated by industrial farming methods and foods.

An investment in sustainable agriculture is also an investment in combatting climate change. By using regenerative practices to draw carbon down from the atmosphere and back into the soil, some estimates suggest we could sequester more than half of total annual greenhouse gas emissions globally.

But to transform our food and farming system and enable it to engender impactful change, we need a shared bold vision and an interconnected strategy that goes beyond any one ministry.

The Government should convene a ‘Food and Farming Council’, which would bring together the Chancellor, Secretaries of State and Ministers from various departments with a broad spectrum of stakeholders from the food system, including businesses, farmers and NGOs.

This Council should then demonstrate the same level of leadership in transitioning towards sustainable agriculture, as witnessed in the energy sector. In the early 2000s, the German government ingeniously convinced major fossil-fuel energy companies to subsidise feed-in tariffs, thereby overcoming the initial cost barrier until economies of scale eventually made renewable energy more affordable than nuclear and fossil-fuel power. Our Government urgently needs a similar approach to jumpstart the transition in agriculture, and the solution is within reach.

The food companies, retailers and other businesses who have a vested interest in ‘testing the waters’ of a transition, have the combined resources to create new models and templates for sustainable food production, and together can help shift the balance of financial advantage from extractive to regenerative production.

There are already instances of this transition in action, visible right on my farm in West Wales. Castell Howell, one of the largest food wholesalers in Wales, has recently initiated a pilot project to introduce organic vegetables into schools. They are funding the production and distribution of these vegetables, in my case carrots, using profits from their conventional trade. They are investing in this initiative because they recognise the long-term financial benefits of being pioneers in this area.

Many other players in the corporate world can support the transition by working together in new alliances. For example, members of the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), which was launched by the then Prince of Wales in 2020 and includes banks, asset managers, insurance companies and water companies, are now partnering with food companies and retailers to co-finance new initiatives that reward farmers for delivering on climate, nature and health.

The Government must also play its part by removing barriers to change. Here are three actions that Government could take:

• Back a large-scale pilot of a new approach to finance regenerative agriculture: through the SMI, the Sustainable Food Trust is working with a group of CEOs from some of the UK’s most influential companies, including McDonald’s, McCain, Pepsi, Waitrose, Lloyds Banking Group and Lloyds of London to develop and run this pilot. The support of the Government and Defra could greatly boost the impact of this work.
• Link farm subsidies to measurement: the Environmental Land Management scheme has some positive attributes, but not enough money has been allocated to enable systemic change of the farming system. More money, combined with the use of common, holistic metrics, must underpin these schemes and determine what they can achieve. The Sustainable Food Trust has incubated the Global Farm Metric, a common framework co-created across the food and farming sector, which is now being deployed in trials across the world.
• Introduce a stronger regulatory framework: apply the polluter pays principle to those who buy inputs that contribute to climate change, pollute water and damage human health. This would create a level playing field for farmers who are doing the right thing.

If the Government acted on these fronts and enabled a shift from chemical to biologically based food production, they could rightly be seen as world leaders in this great food and farming transition.

 

This article was originally published by Goals House on LinkedIn.

SFT CEO, Patrick Holden, recently wrote to the Secretary of State for Defra, The Rt Hon Steve Reed, to express the critical need for finance to accelerate the regenerative farming transition and the use of common metrics to measure and report on progress towards meeting our climate, nature and social goals.

I am writing to congratulate you on your historic victory and the energy and optimism you have brought to the challenges we face as a country.  

I am both a farmer in Wales and the CEO of the Sustainable Food Trust, so have a bird’s and worm’s eye view of food and farming. From that perspective it feels to me that food and farming could be a potentially defining issue for this Labour Government and for you as Secretary of State. The last time this was the case was at the end of the Second World War, during the Attlee Government, when food security and health were centre stage and seen as central to our nation’s future. With your personal leadership, it could be again.

Food and farming go to the heart of your Government’s preventative health agenda, Green Growth agenda, action on climate change, nature and rivers and are core national security issues, as Ukraine has proved. I believe it is something the public are desperately looking for leadership on. Britain could be a world leader on regenerative food and farming, pioneering a new approach that combats climate change, protects nature, builds food security and fights ill health and poverty. But to achieve this, we need an interconnected strategy that goes beyond any one ministry, linked to a big and bold vision.

To drive this integrated approach forward, a first step could be convening a ‘Food and Farming Council’, to bring together the Chancellor, Secretaries of State and Ministers from across departments, alongside a diverse set of voices across the food system from business to farmers. This forum could then shape and drive the integrated approach we need.

Linked to this, I wanted to suggest two key practical actions to take progress forward:

1.  An at scale pilot of a new approach to financing regenerative agriculture developed and run with farmers, business and government. We are working through the Sustainable Markets Initiative, initiated by His Majesty the King, with a group of CEOs from some of the UK’s most influential companies, including McDonald’s, McCain, Pepsi, Waitrose, Lloyds Banking Group and Lloyds of London, to put this in place. It would be brilliant to bring Defra into this process to help design and implement a blended finance approach which complements the ELM scheme.  

2. Impact measurement for environmental schemes such as ELMs: the SFT welcomes your continued commitment to schemes that support farmers to undertake environmental action. However, the major question underpinning these schemes, and public investment in them, is do they deliver? The SFT believes that common, holistic metrics are needed to underpin these schemes and determine what they can achieve. The SFT would welcome the opportunity to discuss with Defra and other relevant departments, the potential to develop a core framework and assessment that would enable the Government and farmers alike to measure and potentially value, environmental and social gains – and to identify major risks such as pollution. The SFT has incubated the Global Farm Metric, co-created across the food and farming sector. It is now being deployed through Defra trials, by major assessment organisations and adapted to be trialled across the world through the international collaboration with Regen 10. If Government were to mandate the use of this common framework as part of ELMs, it would help unlock a more joined up approach to finance and transparency.  

The SFT would welcome the opportunity to discuss these ideas further with you. We are ready to enable ambitious change to accelerate the shift to regenerative food and farming.

 

Featured image shows Ben Thomas on Treveddoe Farm, Cornwall. Photographer: Christian Kay (Transfixus Creative).

SFT CEO, Patrick Holden, considers the farmer protests taking place across the UK and parts of Europe, and discusses what he believes to be the necessary steps to rectify the situation, including the redirection of farming subsidies.

How can we best understand and relate to the farmer protests which are going on all over Europe, including down the road from our farm in West Wales? The regional TV news on Monday 20^th February ran a big piece featuring Mark Drakeford, the Welsh First Minister, Lesley Griffiths, Minister for Rural Affairs and others, covering the protests and the Government’s defence of the new Sustainable Farming Scheme, with both the Welsh farmers’ unions, NFU Cymru and the Farmers Union of Wales, out on their tractors blocking the A48, putting out slogans like “enough is enough”, and reminding anyone who will listen that subsidies have bought us cheap food and that farmers deserve to keep on receiving them.

Equivalent demonstrations have been taking place in the Czech Republic, with tractors invading Prague and farmers staking out the ministry of agriculture building; in France, where farmers tried to block Rungis, the largest food market in the country; in Germany, where the farmers are up in arms about the proposed cut in red diesel subsidies; in Holland, where the Dutch Government introduced payments to farmers to get out of dairy farming –  which caused such a reaction that the farmers formed a political party and toppled the Government!

Of course, the situation in the EU is marginally different from the UK, mainly because they have the Common Agricultural Policy with the proposed green reforms, whereas we have post-Brexit subsidy packages which are moving in an environmental direction.

However, in essence, the issues are similar because the background to this is common. The farming community have been receiving what amounts to social security payments in the form of an annual subsidy cheque, to which few conditions have been attached as to the kind of farming system that is preferred, leaving individual farmers to adopt what they perceive to be the best practice to stay in business.

However, this is now changing, as a result of the growing realisation that 50 years of intensive farming has had a devastating impact on climate change, nature and society, including damage to public health. Accordingly, new policies are being designed which restrict future subsidies only to farming systems which deliver so-called ‘public goods’.

As I’ve listened to all these news bulletins, I’ve tried to put myself in the place of the farmers who are protesting and I actually do feel a certain degree of empathy with them. After all, they have simply been following the money! This is because the subsidies have been unconditional and the market has been brutal; they have used, as the NFU likes to say, ‘all the tools in the toolbox’, i.e., nitrogen fertiliser and pesticides, to continuously increase their food production in order to stay in business. But unfortunately, this has been at the expense of our natural capital, climate and food quality. So, you can hardly blame them – after all, they were playing by the rules.

But now, the position that these farmers find themselves in, is that they have become commodity slaves, encouraged by the supermarkets and food companies to produce the cheapest possible milk, beef, grain and vegetables. The retailers and food companies don’t even refer to buying crops anymore. They call themselves “offtakers”, which rather summarises their parasitic attitude toward the farmers.

Driven by supermarket price wars, retailers have been relentlessly pushing down the price that they offer to the farmers that supply them, who, when faced with this price pressure, have perceived the only option left to them is further intensification and enlargement of their farming operations and, in the case of livestock, animal numbers. Worse still, many of them have invested large amounts of money in huge buildings to house factory farmed animals, and they are financially exposed with no alternative deployment for the infrastructure they have borrowed on.

I bumped into a neighbour the other day, who has a small family farm with maybe a couple of hundred acres; they used to be a dairy farm, but gave up due to the aforementioned price pressures, and switched to beef cattle and sheep. This is typical of quite a large number of farmers around here. They didn’t join the rat race and further intensify, instead they quietly accepted their fate, perhaps downsizing a little and supplementing their income with a day job. He asked me, “What is your take on the protests?” Before I could answer, he immediately chipped in, “The big boys have spoiled it for everyone else.”

In those few short words, he got pretty close to the truth! Of course, the big dairy, chicken and even beef producers who have invested heavily in new equipment and buildings are dismayed at the prospect of no longer receiving the area-based Single Farm Payment, particularly as their margins are relatively tight at the moment.

However, as the Wales First Minister said, why should Government give public money to farming practices which cause damage to climate, nature and people? The answer is they shouldn’t, of course, but since these protesting farmers are vociferous and have a big influence on the National Farmers Union and the Farmers Union of Wales, the voices cannot be ignored.

Has the Welsh Government got everything right with their outline proposals for the Sustainable Farming Scheme? Not completely, although if you read through the framework, they’ve not made a bad go of it and it still has the status of a consultation. The main policy feature that the intensive farmers highlight, when asked what they are really upset about, is the requirement that 10% woodland and 10% natural habitat is allotted on farm, which they see as a demand to take 20% of their land out of production.

It’s hard to object to this, but interestingly on our own farm we do have a problem with this approach. It goes back to the ‘land sparing’ versus ‘land sharing’ argument. If you are already farming in harmony with nature, it does grate a little to be asked to take even more land out of production. There’s probably a way of reconciling it, which is, of course, what we will try to suggest to the policy team at Welsh Government. Why not allow overgrown hedges to be treated as woodland and reward farmers handsomely for planting more trees, leaving the choice with the individual producer? I feel reasonably optimistic that we can persuade the policymakers to soften that requirement, something that they are definitely open to.

Interestingly, the new Welsh scheme looks quite positive for organic farmers, which is encouraging. Regardless of whether you are intending to farm organically, the idea of supporting a farming system designed around the principles of sustainability and not just the bits and pieces – the kind of pick and mix menu which most of the schemes now constitute – I think is the best way forward.

So, who is ultimately to blame for the farmer protests and the resulting political mess that we find ourselves in? Arguably, it is us, the consuming public. After all, most of us have become accustomed to buying cheap food, deceived into thinking this is okay by a pricing system which is fundamentally dishonest, because it doesn’t reflect the damage done by intensive farming.

The farmers are not wrong actually, when they say it is the subsidies that enable us all to have cheap food. But the problem is the subsidies have been misdirected, encouraging farmers to intensify and industrialise, instead of farming in harmony with nature. Although we might not have been aware of this, we have been complicit in precipitating the European farming crisis, due to the relentless race to the bottom when it comes to food pricing.

Of course, this is not the end of the story. Over the last couple of days, politicians have been debating the future of agricultural support at the annual conference of the National Farmers Union, and although the press has been covering the story, it is not yet clear whether we can redesign subsidies to enable a just transition, not just for the people who eat food, but also for the farmers themselves, many of whom are really struggling to stay in business at the moment.

The issue is of enormous importance, because if the subsidies can be correctly redirected, farmers could move from being part of the problem to becoming part of the solution, rebuilding the lost soil carbon, reinstating in-field biodiversity and improving the social and cultural impacts of food systems throughout the world. To achieve this, will require the introduction of new forms of agricultural support, not just from governments, but from businesses, banks, investors, insurance companies, utility companies, and of course, food companies, all of whom need to collaborate on redesigning the financial framework on which farmers operate.

We also need to resolve the current stand-off between farmers and government policymakers. It is deeply concerning that farmers have become angry and the debates polarised. A representative of the Nature Friendly Farming Network said on Farming Today that people like him were being intimidated by the demonstrations, frightened to speak out in defence of at least part of the Welsh Government policy proposals package. I, for one, would certainly be very happy to go and meet representatives of the NFU to make the case for reconciliation and constructive debate.

I sent an email to NFU Cymru this morning, suggesting that the Welsh Government’s own commissioned analysis of the impact of the introduction of the new policy package (suggesting major net job losses) was probably wrong. I would go so far to say that if truly sustainable farming practices replaced the current extractive model, agricultural employment would almost certainly increase, especially if there were also incentives introduced for re-localising Welsh food systems. On our own farm, the processing of our milk into cheese has resulted in the creation of five additional full-time equivalent posts.

This is because the old model of extractive industrial farming with centralised processing and distribution, necessitates shedding labour at great social and environmental cost, whereas the new model should be a net job creator!

Patrick also spoke about these issues on Radio Wales this morning. You can listen to Patrick’s interview here, from 13:40.

 

Featured image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Attending this year’s Oxford Real Farming Conference earlier this month, SFT Content Editor, Alicia Miller, shares more on the sessions that took place, in her round-up article on this year’s event.

After the excess of Christmas and New Year, the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) is always a good place to come back down to earth, contemplate the coming year and think deeply about what it might hold. With COP28 taking a big step forward in recognising food and farming as a critical part of the issues we face as a planet, it left much food for thought to pick over at the ORFC.