Once a thriving UK industry, leather production in the UK had all but disappeared. So why are global luxury brands suddenly so interested in it again and what does it mean for fashion (and farmers)? Brodie Crouch investigates.

Not that long ago, leather was a fairly ubiquitous part of our lives and wardrobes, used for everything from sofas to shoes. The rise of cheaper synthetic materials and overseas textile manufacturing however, quietly changed that, wiping out demand and with it, the tannery businesses that converted raw hides into leather.

The result? Many hides in the UK are now either shredded, fed into biodigesters, or dumped in landfill. There’s a tragedy here in the waste itself, but also in the loss of jobs and a once vibrant British industry. There is also the sizeable knock-on impact on the UK’s local abattoir sector – a vital part of a secure UK food chain already in steep decline. Lose the abattoirs and you lose access to local meat, protected provenance and more local jobs – not to mention the impact on animal welfare when livestock are forced to travel miles to slaughter. Read more about the importance of why local abattoirs matter here.

Be all that as it may, industries and technologies change with the passage of time, and with it, the jobs we do and how we live – societies have never been static. We only need to look to AI to know that. Which brings us to the question of whether and why we should care about the decline of British leather at all? Is it an industry that has run its natural course and if so, why are luxury brands such as Mulberry suddenly fanning the flames of a revival? What would a revival even look like?

What we do know, is that British leather in 2026 still faces the same economic headwinds that first drove its decline. It also faces sustainability criticisms, not to mention its links to meat consumption. There are broader concerns too around leather in any context, with global supply chains linked to deforestation, poor animal welfare, toxic working conditions and climate impacts. A recent academic journal article published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering highlights that the global average emissions attributable to one kilogram of finished bovine leather product is more than twelve times higher than vegan alternatives.

But before you reach for that pair of pleather trainers, there is a more nuanced story to tell. What if we could create leather products in Britain made from hides that would otherwise go to landfill, with complete farm-to-product traceability, and where supplying farms maintained the highest standards of animal welfare? What if the cattle grazed species-rich pastures that supported biodiverse landscapes, and the resultant hides were tanned using traditional vegetable-based methods instead of conventional (damaging) chromium approaches? What if using those hides were to support a reduction in the climate impact of our food system, create jobs and support a devolved food and farming system that would underpin increased food resilience for all of us? Is it all an impossible dream?

“What if we could create leather products in Britain made from hides that would otherwise go to landfill, with complete farm-to-product traceability, and where supplying farms maintained the highest standards of animal welfare?”

Utilising a network of pasture-based cattle properties, a local abattoir, and a traditional tannery, British Pasture Leather (BPL) has demonstrated that this is in fact, already very much a reality. In a unique partnership with Mulberry, the leather is already being expertly crafted into high-end products in Mulberry’s Somerset factories.

BPL is not alone. Through their Service for Farms, any UK farm can have leather from their own hides, and Wiltshire farmer Andy Rumming is using leather from his beef cattle too, even offering on-farm workshops for people to make their own shoes.

The production systems from which these hides come are not new; rather they follow a style of cattle farming that has been practiced for generations in Britain: species-rich grasslands grazed by native breeds, interspersed with hay meadows, hedgerows and woodlands. The farms produce high-welfare, high-quality, grass-fed beef and premium value hides.

And the tanning process? Famously rich in toxic chemicals that pose a threat to people and planet, are heavy on the water usage and create plenty of difficult to deal with waste, the industrial leather process faces significant and justifiable criticisms that haven’t gone away.

In small UK tanneries such as Thomas Ware and Sons in Bristol (used by BPL) and Great Cotmarsh Farm in Wiltshire, however, things look rather different. Here hides are transformed by highly skilled craftspeople into premium leather using centuries-old methods. In stark comparison to the conventional chromium-based tanning approach that takes days or weeks, naturally occurring tannins from vegetable matter (like the bark stripped off branches) tan hides over a period of months. These traditional approaches also remove chromium from the equation, decoupling production from the problematic mining of raw chromium ores.

Separating supply chains – industrial from craft –and then communicating what that difference is and why it matters, is the next crucial step in this story if it is to be a successful one. Upon this narrative, rests the foundation for demand and justification for an inevitably higher price-tag.

Robust proof is equally crucial, and this is perhaps where the Global Farm Metric can really make a difference: a measurement framework that allows us to look more accurately at the environmental and social sustainability of different farming practices. In the context of a re-emergent leather industry, this would help brands to source traceable leather from farms demonstrating positive outcomes for biodiversity, animal welfare and climate. The proof not only justifies the price tag, but will only become more important as scrutiny over sustainable sourcing increases, both in fashion and beyond. It is only with such evidence that that this British leather will be able to show its true value, and convince the buying public that this is a product that they can both invest and trust in.

Find out more about British Pasture Leather here. And for more about local abattoirs and why we need to protect their future, click here.  

Solutions for Local Slaughter: Small Abattoirs in Local Meat Supply Chains – Groundswell 2026

The Sustainable Food Trust organised a session at Groundswell 2026 – ‘Solutions for Local Slaughter: Small Abattoirs in Local Meat Supply Chains’. Chaired by SFT Head of Policy and Campaigns, Megan Perry, the panel featured experts from across the sector:

• Eleanor O’Brien, Managing Director of National Craft Butchers
• Kevin Maher, Head of Operations, Food Standards Agency (FSA)
• Claire White, Senior Veterinary Advisor, NFU
• Phil Gordon-Jones, Manager, Fir Farm
• Tom Bowling, Owner, Edge and Sons Abattoir
• Andy Gray, small/mobile abattoir consultant

The well-attended session involved break out groups for in depth discussion and questions with the speakers. The following anonymised summary brings together the key questions and discussion points made during these breakouts.

Summary

Setting up an abattoir

• How hard is it to achieve? Key challenges include financial viability, staffing and managing by-products and wastewater (see below for more detail). The question of how to finance a new project must be looked at closely and with legal advice as there can be issues surrounding this. Drawing on the expertise of those in the industry, including trade associations, consultants and the FSA, is crucial. Establishing that there is a clear need for the abattoir is also a critical first step. Deciding on the size of the abattoir will depend on demand, species, number and availability of slaughtermen and their capability.
• Economic factors to consider: Speakers made clear that an abattoir must run efficiently and that comes at a cost – the farmers who will use the abattoir must be prepared to pay full market value for the service, otherwise the abattoir simply won’t be viable. Running an abattoir is different from a farm business with its own core product. You must be prepared to work extremely hard. There are busy periods (autumn through to December, for instance) and quiet periods, and you need to keep the business ticking over through both.

 

Finance and business structure

• What type of business structure works best? That depends on your business model. If you are focused on community benefit rather than profit, a CIC is probably the structure you’re thinking of — there’s a regulator you’d need to apply to. It works well for some businesses, including some farm-based ones. Equally, a limited company with shareholders can work. There’s also a co-operative/mutual ownership model. It really comes down to your objectives, and taking independent financial and business advice is recommended, because there isn’t one straightforward answer. The NFU is worth mentioning too — beyond membership, they provide services, and there are some small funds available to support early feasibility work, which can help you through the early stages if cash is tight. There are also finance specialists such as Tim Field at Oxbury Bank who can help advise. Strict rules also govern how businesses can solicit investment from the public.

 

Funding

• Are any grants available? While the Smaller Abattoir Fund has now ceased, this was extremely beneficial and de-risked investment significantly – Andy Gray and Fir Farm both made good use of it. The Abattoir Sector Group are pushing for more funding to be made available in the future. Other potential options include the Levelling Up Fund, Farming Equipment and Technology Fund and Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL), which some groups are currently exploring.

 

Recruitment and training

• What are the issues with skilled labour? Training a competent slaughterman takes a long time (months to become basically competent, a couple of years to be fully proficient), and the sector faces recruitment and retention challenges. Apprenticeship schemes are being developed with industry training bodies to help address this. They need a temporary Certificate of Competence and license to slaughter. The challenge is getting people through the door in the first place (i.e. attracting people into the industry), the second issue is retaining the people you have spent time and money training.

 

Official Veterinarians

• How does official veterinary (OV) provision work for a small abattoir? Every red meat abattoir must have an OV present at all times when slaughtering, to deliver Official Controls (an inspection carried out by the vet and meat hygiene inspector). It’s rarely done through the local vet, as they need to be officially designated by the FSA to carry out the role. Historically, some local providers charged relatively high rates for this work; over the years, contracting arrangements have been modernised and consolidated, and prices have generally come down. There’s no fixed rota as such, but contracts are structured to provide cover, essentially, around the clock, and there is provision for subcontracting — so if your usual provider can’t attend, someone else meeting the necessary qualifications can step in. Recognising the right level of experience for this kind of work in a rural area, where caseloads can be quite different to elsewhere, is part of the challenge.
• Is there a vet shortage? There is not currently a shortage in vets in the way that was experienced during Covid and post-Brexit.

 

Regulation

• Can you say more about charges for Official Controls? There was a recent court case that’s given the FSA an opportunity to look again at how regulation and cost recovery for Official Controls is delivered proportionately. The FSA say they take seriously the principle that official controls and what they charge for them, should be fair and reflect what’s actually needed. It is worth being clear about roles: the FSA is the enforcement authority — they don’t set the underlying legislation. If people want to see the regulatory burden itself reduced, that is a matter for Defra and Ministers rather than the FSA. The FSA are often asked to explain and justify their own efficiency to ministers, which they do regularly.
• What about the alignment with EU regulation and the ‘5% rule’? A key discussion point was the EU-derived “low-throughput abattoir” derogation, which allows abattoirs to operate with reduced regulatory requirements (e.g. not needing an official vet present at all times), provided the combined throughput of such abattoirs doesn’t exceed 5% of national throughput. The UK has not historically been able to take advantage of this flexibility, and the sector has been lobbying for the 5% rule to be implemented in the UK. It would make a real difference for small abattoirs’ ability to grow and would give smaller operations flexibility to kill a bit more some years and a bit less in others, without immediately triggering the higher regulatory tier. The EU itself has reportedly been looking at raising its own threshold towards 10%, partly because they want the small-abattoir sector to grow. As the sector has consolidated, the abattoirs that remain could in principle do more, but the regulatory burden constrains that. It also affects related services — for example, private-kill services for farmers tend to be the first thing an abattoir stops offering when under pressure, which particularly hurts smaller producers who rely on it.
• Is there any prospect of a specific small-scale, low-volume allowance to be processed without full regulation? There’s discussion of something along those lines — comparable to arrangements in some European countries — allowing a small, defined number of animals (for example, a modest number of sheep) to be processed locally under a lighter regime. It hasn’t been secured here yet, but it is part of the broader conversation. The rationale for the current system is that approved slaughterhouses guarantee proper checks — animal health and food safety — and there’s understandable caution about diluting that as more processing moves on-farm.
• What about the potential for remote inspection technology and AI in reducing the amount of official veterinary time required on-site? It’s an interesting area, and one that is being discussed. It is possible that if more abattoirs are built in remote areas, this will make camera-based inspection more appealing, so infrastructure and appetite may end up developing hand-in-hand. However it is, of course, important not to compromise on standards while developing these technologies.

 

Mobile Abattoirs

• How mobile are they? Mobile units are, in reality, only as mobile as their hubs or licensed sites enable them to be. Mobile units still need to be licensed in the same way as a static abattoir, and each site the unit goes to also needs to be separately licensed and have the correct facilities, which can make being truly mobile a challenge. However, the new Orkney Tiny Trailer Abattoir (TTA) will likely be more mobile than previous models as it is smaller and primarily for sheep only.
• More about the hub concept: Orkney will be using hubs – sites that are licensed and have the correct lairage that the mobile unit will dock into. This can be simplified so that existing infrastructure such as sheds, toilets and offices (needed for vets) can be used. Water collection can be done with an IBC. Scottish government (Food Standards Scotland) have tended to be more relaxed than England.
• How long does it take to build? The time taken to establish a mobile abattoir varies depending on several factors including location, design, availability of parts and engineers, funding and project management. Fir Farm’s Mobile Slaughter Unit took 18 months for the initial unit to be built.
• How much does it cost? The Orkney TTA cost £100k, Isles of Scilly will cost around £200k and the Fir Farm unit cost £240k – but more was spent on lairage, chiller, etc. More funding for infrastructure is needed. Running costs vary but Fir Farm costs around £1,500 per kill day.
• What happens to waste and by-products? This is context specific and varies a lot. For example, Fir Farm waste is currently going as category 1 at 50p per kilo. Andy Gray is developing a fertiliser business that can utilise waste. On the Scilly Isles new sewage treatment works are being built which will be helpful for managing waste water from the abattoir unit being constructed there. At Fir Farm, underground pits are used to store the hides, which go to a local tannery. Hides and skins are a major challenge, but there are people working to revive small-scale traceable tanning in the UK, such as British Pasture Leather, which may provide more opportunities in the future.
• Do you need a vet? Yes, all red meat abattoirs, including mobiles, require an Official Veterinarian to deliver Official Controls.
• Can you get a return on capital when being run at capacity? This is unlikely but depends on throughput and hanging capacity.
• What are the regulatory issues of a mobile unit? Mobile units are regulated in the same way as static abattoirs. There is a difference between a fully mobile abattoir (like the TTA) and a mobile slaughter unit (like Fir Farm) – you will also need to think about regulation around butchery services, lairage, etc. Planning permission for lairage and a cutting room on-farm can be easier to achieve first, rather than an abattoir.

 

Casualty and emergency slaughter:

• What are the options for using meat from emergency or casualty slaughter? For casualty slaughter of fractious or dangerous animals — for example, difficult cattle or buffalo — there is a recognised route: the animal is shot in the field, then winched onto a trailer or into a box for transport to the abattoir within the required time window (two hours). Because the animal is shot and bled promptly, there is very little compromise to the carcase. Many slaughterhouses already have the facilities to receive casualty animals killed this way. It is important to note that this route is for acute injury or an accident — it can’t be used for a chronic condition such as long-standing arthritis; the animal must be genuinely unfit to travel due to an acute event.
• Is there any prospect of extending this to animals in the field with more general acute welfare needs? There is an ongoing conversation about broadening the ability to shoot animals in the field in a wider range of acute situations, since it is arguably a considerably better welfare outcome for the animal than transport followed by conventional slaughter — even accounting for how things look from the outside.

 

Poultry and game slaughter

• What are the regulations around on-farm poultry slaughter? Farmers can slaughter poultry on their own farm without a licence provided they stay within set thresholds (up to roughly 150,000 birds per year), and without needing veterinary supervision. Selling the meat, however, requires registration with the local authority, inspection of facilities, and evidence of appropriate training. Red meat does not currently benefit from an equivalent on-farm derogation. Game handling establishments operate under a different (somewhat more relaxed, but still regulated) set of rules to conventional abattoirs. Wild game such as shot squirrels or rabbits generally needs to go to an approved game-handling establishment rather than directly to a restaurant.
• How does the regulation work for game — for example, squirrels or rabbits shot on my own land? If you’re operating as an approved game-handling establishment, there are a fair number of derogations in place compared with standard abattoir rules — particularly around fur and feather game destined for local butchers. Local authorities generally have good, longstanding working relationships in this area, and the rules — while still rules — tend to be more relaxed, for example around inspection of shot game for signs of the shot itself.

 

North Cotswold Abattoir

• Will it serve only the local private kill market? No, North Cotswold Abattoir is aiming to do more than private kill. Their key challenge is ensuring market/slaughter prices work for farmers and supply chain.
• How are you setting up the structure for the Cotswold Abattoir? We have three directors and shareholders with equity shares.
• What financial advice can you give? There are two types of tax relief you can look into – 30% and 50%. It is illegal to solicit investment directly, so people looking to invest must come to them directly via the website. They’ve had 400 expressions of interest from a spectrum of people including local farmers and bigger investors.

 

For more information on setting up an abattoir, take a look at the ‘Playbook’ put together by Claire White which can be found on the Abattoir Sector Group’s website – ‘Small Abattoir Development Support’.

At a time when governments are once again backing productivity, technology and intensification, are we overlooking the fact that intensive farming systems may be becoming less resilient, not more? The SFT’s Senior Research Manager, Robert Barbour, considers the question in light of the UK’s increasing number of mega dairies.

What kind of food system are we building?

That question has been brought into sharp focus by two recent developments in the British dairy sector. First came an investigation by Andrew Wasley for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, revealing that the number of so-called ‘mega dairies’ – where hundreds or even thousands of cows are kept permanently indoors – has doubled over the past decade. Then came the news that the number of dairy farms in Great Britain has fallen below 7,000 for the first time, less than half the number operating in the early 2000s.

Taken together, these stories tell a familiar tale. Faced with years of low milk prices and rising input costs, many dairy farmers have been pushed into a corner: either leave the industry or invest heavily to increase production. The result has been fewer farms, larger herds and a growing reliance on intensive systems that depend on imported feed, synthetic fertilisers and high levels of production to remain viable.

For some, this is simply the inevitable modernisation of agriculture. For others, including Sustainable Food Trust CEO and dairy farmer Patrick Holden, it points to a deeper problem. As we argued in our Grazing Livestock report, the long-term future of livestock farming should not be judged solely by how much it produces, but by whether it works within the ecological limits of the land while supporting food security, farmer livelihoods, animal welfare and environmental health.

Until recently, the argument for more agroecological forms of livestock farming was often dismissed as unrealistic. The assumption was that lower-input systems could not deliver the volumes needed to feed the population. But as climate change intensifies and global supply chains become more fragile, that assumption deserves much closer scrutiny.

The blockade of the Straits of Hormuz – through which a third of the world’s nitrogen fertiliser is transported – and extreme weather events like the June heatwave in Europe, show why transitioning to low input, pasture-based systems is more critical to food security than ever before. In part, this is because such systems have a much lower reliance on fossil fuel-intensive imports of energy, feed and fertiliser: animals can ‘upcycle’ human inedible plants into nutrient-dense foods and soil quality can be improved without synthetic fertilisers, for example with the dung of grazing animals and nitrogen-fixing plants like clover. The recent news that the Straits has, to some extent, reopened, must not serve as cause for complacency in the drive to transition to more resilient farming practices. Ongoing geopolitical instability means it is unlikely to be the last such instance, with sobering warnings that Europe’s food system is likely entering an era of permanent stress.

Climate change and environmental degradation are, of course, a massive driver of this stress. A significant proportion of our agrifood imports come from countries that are highly vulnerable to climate change, with a Government security assessment, published earlier this year, concluding that the UK would probably be unable “to maintain food security if ecosystem collapse drives geopolitical competition for food”. But environmental and climate breakdown also pose major challenges for domestic production. In their most recent report, the Climate Change Committee predicted that, without adaptation, the amount of ‘high-quality farmland’ in England and Wales could shrink from 38% to 11% by 2050 under a 2°C warming scenario. Soil erosion is expected to increase by at least 15%, and arable crops will become increasingly threatened by drought, with the worst year in 20 causing 20% yield loss in wheat in the South East of England. Extreme weather is already negatively impacting yields, with England having experienced three of the worst five harvests on record over the past decade driving the five-year harvest average below the 20-year average – an unprecedented reversal.

In short, there are serious questions around whether we will be able to keep on producing food and feed in the same high input, high output manner as we do today. It feels even more difficult to argue that we will be able to use as much arable land to feed livestock – an inefficient use of a finite and increasingly pressurised resource, that will only get worse if livestock production continues to intensify.

Livestock production centred on grazing, on the other hand, could make a central contribution to a more efficient and resilient UK food system by converting grass and other inedible feeds into nutrient dense meat and milk. The total quantities produced would be lower than today; our Feeding Britain report, for instance, modelled a 20% reduction in dairy production alongside steep falls in pork and poultry, due, mainly, to the much lower quantities of arable crops available for feed.

This means that transitioning to an agroecological farming system will go hand-in-hand with changes to our diets, but smaller amounts of high-quality meat and dairy would still represent a significant source of various key nutrients, and one that, crucially, would complement, rather than compete with, the food we get from croplands. This, in turn, could create more space for systems of crop production that may be lower yielding, but which, through greater diversity and better soil health, are more resilient to extreme weather. Research from Wageningen University, for instance, has shown that a global food system where livestock are fed entirely on human-inedible feeds would only require 75% of the arable land needed for a vegan diet, because of the additional supply of calories and nutrients made available through meat and dairy.

Add this to the major environmental issues associated with intensive livestock production, and we have a clear imperative for a shift to farming animals in a less resource-intensive way – and adapting our diets accordingly.  Doing so, will bolster food security and support us to be healthier, all while using millions of hectares of UK grassland otherwise largely unsuited for food production. Realising this vision isn’t easy. As tempting as it is to think that the recent surge in input costs might precipitate such a shift, this seems unlikely, so it cannot be left to the market alone – Government needs to up its game, in all sorts of ways. We also need to broaden our understanding of sustainability and efficiency, from a narrow focus on product-level footprints (which tend to favour intensive systems), to a more aggregated, system-wide measurement of impact – which is, of course, the scale which ultimately matters.

The rise of ‘Big Dairy’ in the UK is certainly an issue that needs focus right now – it is a situation that should make us question whether bigger and more intensive necessarily means better. Yet, ultimately, this is about much more than dairy farming. It is about deciding what kind of food system we want, and what we mean by efficiency, sustainability and food security. If we continue to judge success primarily by output, we risk accelerating the loss of farmers, wildlife and resilience at precisely the moment we need them most.

Read about our London Climate Week session on Big Dairy here.

This year, as recognised by the FAO, marks the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. Nowadays pastoralism is associated by many with idyllic ‘country life’. Here, Olivia Boothman uncovers its true meaning and origin, and what we could learn from pastoralist practices to transform our farming systems and to rebuild a sense of connection between people and the environment that supports us.

The BBC’s ‘Race Across the World’ recently featured an episode where the contestants traversed Kyrgyzstan as quickly as possible to make it to their next checkpoint. This contrasts with the intentional and considered journeys that are made across the plains and mountain ranges of Kyrgyzstan every year as pastoralists herd their animals to pastures new. What was portrayed well, however, were the idylls of rural life in this country, sustained by land-based activities. Two young men from Liverpool paid their dues for their overnight stay by helping with the walnut harvest, another team rode on horses to enjoy the vast scenery.

Pastoralism, etymologically, originates from the word pastor, meaning ‘shepherd’. But it has also come to be associated with idyllic ‘country life’. These days though, ‘country life’, in many people’s minds (at least here in the UK), is Hunter wellies, Land Rovers, black and white cows, endless horizons of knee-high golden crops and lambs frolicking in fields demarcated by barbed wire fencing – a far cry away from ‘true’ pastoralism.

Pastoralists are people whose livelihoods depend primarily on herding domesticated or semi-domesticated animals, which feed mainly on natural rangelands, often involving seasonal or regular movement between grazing areas, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations.

Since, it is no surprise that the FAO is urgently trying to protect them. This is absolutely essential, but more than this, should we be using this ‘International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists’ to think about what we can learn from pastoralism to inspire our own farming future?

Can the UK feed itself in the face of ecosystem collapse? Our Head of Policy & Campaigns, Megan Perry, takes a closer look at the UK Government’s recently published security report – following a Freedom of Information Request by the Green Alliance – highlighting how the government’s ‘just in time’ approach to food supply jeopardises the UK’s food security, and the transformation in food and farming production that is needed to address this.

A new report has given one of the starkest warnings yet for UK food security. If current rates of biodiversity loss continue, every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse. This will mean the UK cannot feed itself.

These warnings were so stark, in fact, the UK Government attempted to bury its own report. ‘Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security’ was written by the joint intelligence committee (which comprises the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and senior officials from the Cabinet Office, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Ministry of Defence, Home Office and HM Treasury) and was initially blocked by Downing Street. It only came out following a Freedom of Information Request by the Green Alliance.

Why was it blocked? According to The Times, Downing Street felt the report was too negative and would draw attention to the Government’s failure to act. The published document is reported to have been cut down, with some of the most alarming parts left out.

As the Government tries to keep us in the dark, it is even more important we sit up and take notice. The report warns that, “Without significant increases in UK food system and supply chain resilience, it is unlikely the UK would be able to maintain food security if ecosystem collapse drives geopolitical competition for food. The UK relies on imports for a proportion of both food and fertiliser and cannot currently produce enough food to feed its population based on current diets.”

Across the world, ecosystems are collapsing. According to the report, the rate of extinction is tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years. It suggests that a sixth mass extinction may be underway. There is a realistic possibility some critical ecosystems, such as coral reefs in Southeast Asia and boreal forests will start to collapse by 2030 or sooner, and rainforests and mangroves from 2050. This is a direct result of biodiversity loss from land use change, pollution, climate change and other drivers.

As the report clearly states, “nature is a foundation of national security”. Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse threaten the fundamental existence of human life – access to water, food, clean air and critical resources.

As these become scarce, the report warns there will be conflict within and between states along with mass migration and increased risk of pandemics. According to the report, a one percentage increase in food insecurity in a population compels 1.9 percent more people to migrate. Political instability and rising poverty will provide more opportunities for terrorism and organised crime. Global economic collapse will become more likely. As the report says, “Nature is a finite asset which underpins the global economy. It would take resources of 1.6 Earths to sustain the world’s current levels of consumption.”

The report is upfront about how this impacts UK food security. Biodiversity loss, alongside climate change, is one of the biggest threats to domestic food production – through depleted soils, the loss of pollinators, and drought and flood conditions.

It details how ecosystem collapse would place the UK’s agriculture system under great stress, leaving it struggling to pivot to the new approaches and technologies that would be required to maintain food supply. Impacts on major food producing regions around the world will have a direct impact on the UK which relies on global markets for food (40% is imported), animal feed (18% comes from South American soy) and fertiliser.

But food is not just affected by biodiversity loss, it is a direct contributor, with food production named as the most significant cause of terrestrial biodiversity loss.

A shift to sustainable farming systems has therefore never been more critical, playing a key role in reversing ecosystem collapse and mitigating food insecurity. Carrying on as we are and pursuing extractive agricultural practices is not an option. Yet the UK Government seems determined to ignore the immense and imminent risks.

“As the report clearly states, “nature is a foundation of national security”. Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse threaten the fundamental existence of human life – access to water, food, clean air and critical resources.”

It is notable that the UK has so far failed to change its approach to supply chain resilience and security, unlike countries such as Sweden, Finland, Norway and Germany who are building up their food stocks and reserves. The UK, meanwhile, continues to rely on a ‘just in time’ approach to food supply, requiring consistent and rapid delivery to keep shelves stocked. Any disruption to this supply chain could have an enormous impact on the availability of food in the UK.

Global threats are looming, and while the UK now reports separately on food security, it lacks any coherent action plan and fails to integrate food with wider security strategy. The UK Risk Register – which flags up the main threats to the UK and covers everything from terrorism to disease outbreak – fails to make food and water a clearly defined risk in its own right. The UK National Security Strategy published last year gave a passing mention of food four times and without any detail about how the UK plans to address threats to food supply. The 2022 Government Resilience Framework said nothing at all about food.

What can be done?

Protecting and restoring ecosystems is clearly a priority. But our current trajectory does not look good, and plans need to be put in place now to deal with the potential impacts.

We agree with many of the report’s conclusions, including that self-sufficiency requires a wholesale change in consumer diets and improvements in efficiency, waste reduction and resilience across the food system, including agricultural production, food processing, distribution and consumption. These echo the conclusions of the Sustainable Food Trust’s Feeding Britain report which showed the UK can transition to fully regenerative farming practices and maintain or improve current levels of self-sufficiency, but that dietary change would be needed.

We welcome the mention of regenerative agriculture as a solution and feel there is a wider point to be made – climate change and geopolitical shocks change the equation around agroecological vs ‘conventional’ food systems and their (perceived) practicality. Arguments that agroecology is unfeasible due to its lower yields and a requirement for very difficult dietary change, are somewhat overshadowed by the reality that a food system with heavy use of imports, fossil fuels and agrichemical inputs could become unviable in the face of ecosystem collapse and geopolitical turmoil. Not to mention that these intensive input-heavy systems are the biggest contributors to ecosystem collapse. There is no choice but to seriously consider agroecology as the main alternative.

We therefore caution against placing too much emphasis on new technology to provide the answers (plant-breeding, AI, lab grown protein and insect protein are all mentioned). That’s not to say that technology has no role to play – far from it. But systemic change, from farm to fork, is what is ultimately required.

Any shortages in food will inevitably impact hardest on those who are already facing food poverty. The report says substantial price increases for consumers would be required for self-sufficiency. Yet prices now do not reflect the real cost of production, with the most damaging foods often being the ‘cheapest’ yet costing far more in environmental damage and impacts on our health. A transformation of our food system is needed to right these skewed economics and government intervention must be a core part of that.

The report also says the UK does not have enough land to feed its population and rear livestock. We agree that a complete shift is needed away from grain-fed livestock, particularly intensively produced poultry and pork. But integrating pasture-fed livestock, such as cattle and sheep, into regenerative systems is critical to rebuild soil fertility and move away from our reliance on fossil fuel- and energy-intensive fertilisers and pesticides.

Grazing livestock produce nutrient-dense foods that complement, rather than compete with, the crops produced from our finite and increasingly degraded arable area. In fact, in a regeneratively farmed UK, predominantly grass-fed animals could supply a significant proportion of the nation’s nutrient requirements – including around 34% of recommended protein intake, 37% of fat intake and 98% of vitamin B12 intake.

“We caution against placing too much emphasis on new technology to provide the answers (plant-breeding, AI, lab grown protein and insect protein are all mentioned). That’s not to say that technology has no role to play – far from it. But systemic change, from farm to fork, is what is ultimately required.”

Livestock also provide a level of resilience to environmental shocks that crops do not – they can be moved and, in worst cases slaughtered, should resources such as water become scarce or fields flooded.

So, a major transformation in livestock production is needed, as is the case for crop production. And this will require many people to eat less meat and dairy, overall. It’s critical, though, that this transformation doesn’t overlook the massively positive role that livestock can play in fostering a more resilient, environmentally and socially sustainable food system.

The report says countries best placed to adapt are those that invest in ecosystem protection and restoration, and resilient and efficient food systems. Yet support for sustainable food production has been inadequate and shambolic, with record closures of farming businesses. The UK also appears to have given up on the 30×30 target (30% of our land and sea protected for biodiversity by 2030) and is on track to miss targets established in the 2021 Environment Act for protecting and restoring wildlife.

While we must pressure Government to act with urgency, communities can also take things into their own hands. Tim Lang’s excellent report on civil food resilience highlights the different ways people can build resilience themselves, whether by growing food in allotments, gardens and community farms, forming co-operatives, building community food stocks, or by sharing skills.

Ultimately a major mindset shift is needed to address the root causes of ecosystem destruction and to embrace an integrated approach to food production and nature restoration. There is no time to lose.

 

Featured image courtesy of Christian Kay.

With Christmas approaching – a time for stories and renewed hope – Robert Barbour, Senior Research Manager at the Sustainable Food Trust, reflects on the six months since the launch of Grazing Livestock: It’s not the cow but the how. He examines why we urgently need the ability to imagine a different future for food and farming, and how a research-backed vision for such a future has drawn both praise and pushback.

Earlier this year, the SFT published a report looking at the debate surrounding grazing livestock. It was a labour of love (amongst other emotions) started by our late colleague and friend Richard Young, that set out to make the case that cattle and sheep actually have a hugely positive role to play in a future UK food system – one where farming practices and diets are based on the land’s ecological carrying capacity.

Since its publication, we’ve had some really engaging conversations on the issues the report covered. But with lengthening nights and the dismal advent of Christmas hyper-consumption having soured my mood this week, I’ve decided to instead tap into my inner Scrooge and reflect on some of the criticisms the report has received.

The critiques: Tough questions to consider

Most of these have posed some interesting challenges. Wouldn’t, for instance, a future that involves smaller amounts of sustainably produced meat and dairy send food prices soaring? By talking about the positives that grazing systems can deliver, or by arguing that ruminant methane is a nuanced topic, aren’t we just pushing ‘Big Livestock’ talking points? And even if our arguments do have some validity, they only apply to a fraction of the animals reared today, and therefore surely only serve to justify continued, unsustainable patterns of meat consumption?

These are important questions, which I don’t have the space to do justice to here. One key point to make, though, is that these critiques are not universally applicable in every context. Yes, arguments for nuance around methane, for instance, are abused by parts of the livestock sector – but this doesn’t mean they constitute industry denial in every instance. And yes, the pasture-based, low input ruminant systems the report argues for only supply a small percentage of the meat and dairy we consume today – but that doesn’t mean that this need always be the case.

Is it all just “romantic cottagecore”?

If we’re going to emerge from our current siloes, we need to be much more open-minded and imaginative when it comes to the arguments presented by different sides in this debate, and in our ability to imagine food systems that are very different to today’s. And this leads on to the main criticism I’ve come across of our position, which is that the less intensive, generally lower yielding approach to livestock and food production that the SFT supports is disconnected from reality – “romantic cottagecore” as George Monbiot dismissively put it.

It’s true that the vision we set out will be challenging to realise. A wholesale transition to agroecological farming practices, where livestock production is centred on pasture-based systems of mainly cattle and sheep, is not going to happen overnight. Achieving this whilst also aligning our diets to what we can sustainably produce, and in so doing reducing the amount of meat and dairy most of us consume, will be even trickier.

Taking a more strategic view

I completely disagree, however, that campaigning for a move towards this vision is naïve or detached from reality. For a start, making the case for a more agroecological future isn’t just about fostering better lives for the people, livestock and wildlife that live in our farmed landscapes (though these things are clearly worth fighting for in and of themselves). There are big strategic reasons for supporting this transition, too. Take the reintegration of grazed temporary grass and clover ‘leys’ into arable rotations. We know that this can bring all sorts of environmental benefits. But what’s probably less often considered is how valuable a role this transition could play in improving the long-term viability of arable production, by making it more resilient to climate-related shocks, and much less reliant on the energy- and fossil fuel-intensive inputs we are going to have to wean ourselves off moving forwards, whether we like it or not.

This strategic value also applies to the nutritional contribution of grazing animals. Contrary to what is often argued, this could be really significant, not just because of the quantity of key nutrients that could be produced, but also, crucially, because this would be a supply of nutrients from a feed source – forage – that humans can’t consume. And this means we’re talking here about animals which complement, rather than compete with, the crops produced from our finite and degraded arable area, unlike animals reared in heavily grain-fed, industrial systems. Again, this is a service that is only likely to become more valuable as climate change and its associated shocks increase the probability of major disruptions to domestic crop production and global agrifood trade.

Some would say that that’s all well and good, but that it doesn’t change the fact that realising this approach to livestock production and the smaller amounts of high-quality meat and dairy it would necessitate is wishful thinking. They have a point – getting people to change their diets requires overcoming all sorts of deeply embedded institutional and cultural barriers. But this is the case with any sufficiently transformative vision of a sustainable future food system! Take a future where all animal-sourced foods are replaced with analogues created through precision fermentation or other cultured techniques. It’s sometimes argued that this represents a much more plausible route to getting people to change their diets because, in effect, they’d still be eating the same foods – it’s just that they’d come from a vat rather than an animal. But is that really the case? As far as I can see, this represents a dietary shift every bit as radical and difficult to sell as the sort we support – in fact, arguably more so.

What about ‘sustainable intensification’?

The immense difficulty of the diet challenge is partly why others argue that making industrial livestock systems ever more ‘efficient’, to sate the planet’s growing demand for meat as ‘sustainably’ as possible, is the only plausible solution here. But even if we set aside the massive environmental and ethical challenges this poses, this vision also comes with big question marks over its future viability. Climate change and its associated geopolitical shocks are already having major impacts on the food system, and as these worsen, the input- and import-heavy intensive cropping systems which industrial livestock production relies on are only going to become more vulnerable – perhaps even untenable. We also know that we need to get fossil fuels out of the food system fast, and this will have massive implications for the production, and potentially availability, of the synthetic fertilisers and pesticides that form the lifeblood of industrial agriculture. It’s safe to say that the potential ramifications of this have not yet been widely enough grasped.

A realistic agroecological future – and what’s needed to get there

In short, I don’t think an agroecological future, where grazing animals play a central role, is any more implausible than the other more commonly supported visions of a sustainable food system. Neither is it a ‘fairytale’ – grazing animals can help improve the resilience of a UK food system that faces all sorts of major threats to its food security, in various ways.

There is a hugely positive story to tell here, in some ways more positive, I’d argue, than the livestock-free narrative, certainly when it comes to speaking to the farming community. And that matters, given we very obviously need farmers to be a key part of any transition. I think a lot of people and organisations realise this – it’s hugely encouraging, for instance, to see an increasing number of conservation groups showcasing pasture-based and organic livestock farms as examples of what sustainable meat and dairy production looks like in practice. All too often, though, there still seems to be a disconnect between the positioning of pasture-based livestock systems – and indeed, agroecological farming practices more generally – as case studies of sustainability on the one hand; but then, on the other, the promotion of policies or recommendations that actively work against the adoption of these systems at scale. The EAT-Lancet commission’s latest report is a recent example of this. It contains a lot of really good stuff, including positive words around the need for a shift towards agroecology. Frustratingly, though, some of its agricultural modelling assumptions (e.g. increased yields in regions where these are already high) and dietary recommendations (e.g. greater levels of chicken in the diet than red meat) are just not consistent with what a shift towards agroecology would look like in reality.

This criticism is perhaps a bit nit-picky, especially when most livestock production – irrespective of species – still has so many problems. The point, however, is that if we do want to support agroecology at scale, as many organisations say they do, then there needs to be much more clarity and joined-up thinking across all food system actors than is the case today, including of course, around the need to support a transition to low input, pasture-based grazing systems.

How do we do this? There are obviously lots of things to say here, but I’ll finish by focussing on the critical importance of measurement. Sustainability is still so often understood largely, or even solely, through the narrow lens of carbon and land use intensity metrics, that don’t just overlook a wide range of key public goods but also provide a very incomplete picture of actual climate and land use impact. Unless we develop and adopt more holistic measures of sustainability, we will find it impossible to create a food system that truly delivers for people, the planet and the landscapes that we rely upon.

You can learn more about the role of livestock in a sustainable food system by downloading our Grazing Livestock report.

With water an ongoing issue in California’s San Joaquin Valley, ranchers have stepped in to rethink how to restore the land, in valuable and creative ways. At the centre of this are cattle who play a key role in reviving native and non-native grasses, along with innovative farmers exploring diverse opportunities – from firebreaks to solar farm management.

The San Joaquin Valley stretches some 400 kilometres from California’s capital Sacramento to Bakersfield in the south. With its mild climate and fertile soils, the Valley is one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions; some 250 crops can be grown here, from lettuce to carrots, garlic, onions, melons and peppers and, most important of all, almonds. However, nothing grows without irrigation – the climate is semi-arid. California’s highly complex water system consists of hundreds of dams and reservoirs to catch rainwater and snow melt: a network of canals that measures roughly 6,500 kilometres distributes water to farms and cities like Los Angeles and San Diego.

In the past decades, California has seen long periods of drought. Farmers who could afford it paid for additional wells, some as deep as 400 meters. Thousands of these wells reach into the aquifer like straws, sucking it dry very quickly. Over-pumping has led to subsidence, causing roads to buckle and buildings to crack. To preserve what’s left of the groundwater, California has passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). From 2040, well owners can only pump as much water from the ground as can be recharged during the rainy winter months.

The consequences for agriculture in the Valley are stark: at least 20% of agricultural land will have to be fallowed for lack of water, and some estimates are even higher. But according to a recent study by the University of California Merced, the frequency of dust storms has already increased. Leaving ground bare on up to 900,000 acres, would be catastrophic.

Cows to the rescue

Before European settlers arrived in the 19th century, the San Joaquin Valley used to be a sea of grass, grazed not by bison, but Pronghorns and Tule elks. The native grasses were well adapted, and in winter, cold season grasses flourished, while in summer, heat tolerant warm season varieties dominated, and some grasses even tolerated highly saline soils on the west side of the valley. Could these grasses be reintroduced and could ranching make a comeback?

Diane Bohna is a fifth-generation rancher. In 2021, she rented 7,600 acres of land from UC Merced; the land was over grazed, showing more bare patches than remnants of grass. Bohna was an early adopter of Allan Savory’s principles of holistic management, and now, just three years later, 320 cow-calf pairs and a few bulls munch their way through a sea of knee-high grasses. “In the first year, we were lucky and got a wet winter,” says Bohna. There was still a seedbank of native grasses in the soil, and having the cattle graze them right – ‘bunched’ as a tight group and for a short period of time – helped re-establish those grasses. The animals will stay over winter, and during the summer months Bohna and her crew drive them to high altitude pastures in the Sierras on horseback, like the cowboys of old.

The SFT’s Senior Research Officer, Imogen Crossland, highlights the case study farmers featured in our Abattoir Users Survey 2025 report, which provide tangible examples of how abattoirs support diversification, profitability and resilience for farm businesses.

Concerns are growing around the provenance, ethics and sustainability of meat. For those who choose to eat it, knowing how and where the animals have been reared is increasingly important, especially as the environmental, animal welfare and human health consequences of industrial livestock production continue to be made clear. But the opportunity to choose traceable, locally sourced meat is under threat. Across the country, small abattoirs are closing at an alarming rate, with serious knock-on effects for farmers, local retailers and the communities they serve.

Earlier this year the Sustainable Food Trust, alongside the Soil Association and Rare Breeds Survival Trust, surveyed 850 livestock farmers across the UK, many of them operating agroecological systems with native breeds, to understand the importance of small, local abattoirs for their businesses. We asked what the impact might be of further abattoir closures, rising slaughter costs and the loss of key services often provided by smaller abattoirs, such as provision for particular breeds and species, or ‘private kill’, where the meat is returned to the producer to be sold directly to customers.

While the results revealed the importance of local abattoirs for livestock farms of all shapes and sizes, the dependency was greater for some than others, especially among those supplying local markets. If their abattoir were to close, 43% of farmers said they would no longer be able to sell their meat locally, while 29% would consider shutting their meat business altogether. Sadly, the impact of abattoir closures is already being felt, with a third of respondents having seen their local abattoir close in the last five years.

More than half of farmers (58%) believed their business would no longer be profitable without the ability to sell direct or locally. For many, this is because selling through short supply chains, including farm shops, farmers markets and meat boxes, combined with adding value to their meat and other by-products, are integral to their business viability.

The case studies featured in our survey report provide tangible examples of how abattoirs support diversification, profitability and resilience for farm businesses.

Farm retail: Essington Farm Shop, Wolverhampton

Essington Farm Shop has been retailing quality home-grown produce since 1892. Its award-winning butchery and deli are central to the business, accounting for more than half of its annual turnover.

The farm shop has seen steady growth, with butchery sales rising by 10% year-on-year.

Much of this success is attributed to growing customer concern about how meat is produced, especially around health, environmental impact and animal welfare. Demand for traditional counter service by a butcher has also increased, driven both by renewed interest in home cooking and the limited choice of pre-packed meat products in supermarkets.

Access to their local abattoir is fundamental to the continuing success of Essington Farm’s retail operations. Pigs and cattle reared on the farm, alongside livestock from neighbouring farms, are slaughtered there before the carcases are returned to the butchery for processing. If the abattoir were to close, the impact would be severe, risking the loss of around £2.25 million worth of sales and over 20 redundancies. Essington Farm would effectively lose its ability to meet the strong demand for high-welfare, local meat among the community.

In Cyprus, the Kot-Kot project shows how animals, food waste and farming can be reconnected to restore soils and reduce reliance on chemicals. But as writer and researcher David McKenzie explores, the challenges it faces highlight a broader dilemma: will food systems reward regenerative, mixed models like this – or continue to favour industrial approaches that externalise their costs?

There is no single solution to building sustainable food futures. Nor is there a silver bullet for establishing resilient food systems that can best respond to the unpredictable impacts and challenges of climate change. It will take a concerted effort, with myriad approaches and solutions working together.

Still, some solutions have more of a ‘feel-good’ factor than others. And this might be one of them.

An olive grove in Cyprus has been taking an innovative (yet incredibly simple) approach to enhancing the organic matter of their soil, while also helping combat the island’s serious food waste problem and providing a means of reducing chemical fertiliser and pesticide use. It’s doing this by taking retired hens from the egg industry and having them roam free on the grove, fed by unwanted food-waste collected from local schools, restaurants, hotels and businesses.

The project, called Kot-Kot, has been running since early 2024 at Akaki Grove, 30 kilometers west of the capital Nicosia. It was instigated by farmer Elena Christoforos, who inherited the semi-abandoned olive grove from her grandfather, and Nicolas Netien, an environmental engineer and soil biologist who Christoforos brought on board in 2021 to help revive the olive and citrus trees.

“My focus is always on growing soil,” says Netien, who has been designing agro-ecological systems in line with a permaculture framework for 20 years. “I grow soil and let the trees grow themselves.”

Within that framework, Netien looks for any and every technique to increase organic matter in the soil, he says, focusing on maintaining a healthy microbiome for the trees’ root systems. In line with this, a diverse ground cover of plants was first established at Akaki Grove to enrich and protect the soil. But Netien wanted to “speed up” these natural processes and carbon cycles by having animals grazing the ground cover.

Christoforos agreed, but as a vegan, she has a zero-kill policy at the grove, instead favouring the maintenance of balanced, diverse ecosystems in which pests kill each other. She insisted that they could only do it if the animals were not to be killed or used for egg, meat or milk production.

That’s where the “happy hens” come in. Animals are expensive to keep and to feed, and if they weren’t going to have them for meat, egg or dairy production then it made sense, as Netien puts it, to find animals that nobody wants. Chickens, in particular, are “great workers” for the olive trees, since they not only clear the ground cover and unwanted weeds, reverting nutrients back into the soil via their fertile droppings but also provide excellent pest control by pecking at the larvae of insects like the infamous olive fly, traditional adversary of Mediterranean olive growers.

And so, with the help of free-range egg farmer and olive grower Nicholas Schizas, Kot-Kot managed to adopt a few hundred two-year-old hens coming out of the egg industry, who have finished their productive laying years and otherwise would’ve been slaughtered (yet still with plenty of ‘retirement’ years ahead, having a life expectancy of eight years or more).

From there, the next issue was sourcing food for the hens. Again, without any income that would usually come from egg or meat production, this needed to be cheap (if not free).

Coincidentally, however, Cyprus has a terrible food waste problem.

Cyprus generates by far the most food waste per capita of any country in Europe at around 300 kg per year, more than double the EU average of 132 kg/inhabitant. To make matters worse, the island nation’s waste management system has been mired in scandal and mismanagement for years, leading to hefty fines from the EU for continuously failing to meet waste management targets and failing to establish adequate facilities for processing mixed municipal waste (including organic waste), despite heavy EU funding specifically for such projects since at least 2015.

The UK’s rivers and wetlands are under pressure from pollution, droughts and floods, with livestock farming both part of the problem and the solution. In this article, Robert Barbour, Senior Research Manager at the SFT, explores how agroecological livestock systems could help restore water quality and build resilience to climate extremes.

For all that the UK is famed for its reliably damp climate and lush green landscapes, the reality is that it faces a major water problem. This year, an exceptionally dry spring and summer is likely to result in the fifth worst harvest since 1984. Yet it was only last autumn that the south of the country witnessed record-breaking heavy rain that led to the third worst harvest on record. It’s been a bewildering, historic year of weather, but these are far from isolated aberrations. The climate crisis has already increased the likelihood of extreme weather events, and as the planet warms, these are only going to become more frequent and intense, both in the UK and globally.

At the same time, many of our rivers, lakes and wetlands are in a desperate state, choked by sewage and agricultural pollution. While some chemical indicators of water quality have, in fairness, improved over recent years, by most measures our freshwater environment continues to deteriorate – a damning indictment of decades of political and market failure.

These are serious issues, that pose some major challenges for the future of livestock farming in the UK. Intensive production systems, with their often-heavy use of fertiliser and high concentrations of animals – and therefore slurry – are a leading source of nitrogen and phosphate pollution in many catchments, the Wye and Lough Neagh being perhaps the two most infamous examples. Livestock farming is also hugely vulnerable to changes in climate, and the greater extremes in precipitation we are already seeing, pose a real threat to the way in which many farms operate. This is something the sector hasn’t fully come to terms with yet, but if the predictions are right, a much more unstable climate is a reality every farm is going to have to face up to.

How we confront these challenges is, like all things livestock, a contentious issue. Some would argue that livestock have no role to play at all in a food system that works for water. But while every farm and catchment is different, and no one solution will work everywhere, livestock can play a hugely positive role in restoring our aquatic environments and increasing our resilience to extreme wet and dry weather, by helping enable a nationwide transition towards a food system based on agroecological principles.

Realising this will require a shift from the largely production-focused systems which remain commonplace today, to a more multifunctional approach, where animals are rotationally grazed on diverse pastures for most or all of the year, with minimal use of synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or arable feed inputs. Such a transition would help alleviate the massive pollution problems associated with intensive livestock systems touched on above. It could also deliver more direct benefits for freshwater biodiversity, by supporting the sorts of low-intensity grazing practices which benefit a number of wetland plant species. Grazing livestock can even help reduce water pollution from conventional all-arable systems, through the re-integration of fertility-building grass and legume ‘leys’, grazed by livestock, into crop rotations. By naturally fixing nitrogen, increasing soil carbon levels and disrupting pest, weed and disease cycles, leys minimise the need for fossil fuel-intensive synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, both of which are major water pollutants in the east of the country.

These more nature-friendly, agroecological approaches to livestock production could also improve the resilience of our farming systems to drought and heavy rain, in various ways. Shifting from all-arable to ley-arable systems could, for example, help increase the genetic, landscape and enterprise diversity of farms, so spreading weather-related risks. Agroforestry expansion, meanwhile, would provide more shade and shelter for crops and livestock. But perhaps the biggest climate adaptation benefit of an agroecological approach to food production is that it tends to increase a farm’s soil water holding capacity, thanks, in particular, to the higher levels of soil organic matter generally found in biologically based systems.

This is something which grasslands are key to delivering. Stable organic matter can absorb several times its own weight in water, just one of the reasons why increasing soil organic matter levels is a crucial objective. Grassland soils contain much higher levels of organic matter than arable soils, and this means they soak up water much more effectively than arable land, reducing the speed of runoff and the risk of rivers bursting their banks. This is particularly true with semi-natural and extensively managed grasslands, which are far more effective at reducing the risk of flash flooding than those which are too heavily grazed. Culm grasslands in North Devon, for example, hold more than four times as much water as intensive grassland, and have much slower rates of water runoff, even when the soil is already waterlogged. But there is also considerable scope to improve water holding capacity of improved grasslands too, by encouraging more species-diverse, deep-rooting swards. The integration of trees into grassland can also dramatically improve water infiltration rates in pastures, significantly slowing the flow of water and helping reduce peak river flows during heavy rain, as the Pontbren Project in Wales has shown.

Grasslands can play an even more direct role in flood prevention, in the form of floodplain meadows. Clifton Ings and Rawcliffe Meadows, for example, are a crucial part of York’s flood defences, with their combined water-storage capacity of approximately 2.3 million cubic metres helping reduce the level of floods by up to 15 cm. The capacity of grasslands to store huge quantities of water can bring major benefits during periods of drought, too – including, again, in arable rotations that incorporate temporary leys.

Realising this sort of approach to livestock production at a national scale will obviously be difficult to achieve, requiring major changes in farming practice, and a shift to diets more closely aligned to what the land can sustainably support.

There are reasons for hope, though. The sorry state of our freshwater environment is now a headline issue that has energised a large swathe of society, and this has helped force government into action. There have, for instance, been some promising announcements around policy and regulation, two intensive poultry units have recently had their planning permission removed, and the massive problem of nitrogen pollution is now finally beginning to receive the attention it deserves, in no small part thanks to the work of the Sustainable Nitrogen Alliance (of which the SFT is a member) and others. However, this is only a start, and governments – and indeed every actor in the food system – need to go much further in helping farmers produce food in a way that delivers plentiful clean water.

You can read more about grazing livestock and their role in a sustainable food system in our report, Grazing Livestock: It’s not the cow but the how.

Featured image taken at Treehill Farm by Cath Shellswell.