Facing Up To The Future

With all the focus on transport and energy, we don’t often consider the environmental cost of fruit, veg and meat, especially that which is produced relatively locally to where we live. But a new initiative by the Soil Association aims to address the environmental impact of feeding us.

Like many people, I wasn’t brought up to consider where my food came from, or how it was produced. Being raised on the edge of rural Lincolnshire, the site of vast fields of yellow rape seed flowers in the spring, and towering golden wheat in the late summer, gave one a sense of how wonderful and beautiful nature is. Though one would see the occasional tractor or combine harvester, it never occurred to me that this was anything other than perfect, idyllic countryside - a tonic and testament against the industrialised and polluting factories that lined the Humber estuary, marking the northern boundary of this otherwise agricultural county. Some four decades on, though it would be harsh not to still recognise the stunning beauty of those same fields, it is perhaps a beauty that runs only skin deep. Where is the bio-diversity in mile after mile of undisturbed mono cropping? How is soil quality maintained? How does one harvest, process, and distribute crops grown on this scale? What impact is this seemingly natural landscape really having on environment?

I have to say, I’d never really considered this until I saw a documentary a few years ago now, called A Farm for the Future (originally broadcast on the BBC but it can be watched again here: Google Video). The film was made by Rebecca Hosking who, after a decade of being a wildlife film maker, returned to her father’s Devon farm to make one last documentary about the need to reassess how we produce food in the face of Peak Oil and how she might run the farm in the future. One of the images that stuck in my mind was a comparison between two pieces of film shot 30 years apart (a similar span to that of my memories and the present). As Rebecca notes in her narration, “The flocks of gulls and crows squabbling behind the plough for worms and beetles is just a childhood memory for me. Today, the birds don’t follow the plough because the soil is dead and there is nothing for them to eat.” What is true in Devon is also true in Lincolnshire, there is next to no wildlife in the fields because what appears natural isn’t. Intensive farming to meet demand of a growing population with consumerist-tendencies for cheap food, wheat-based products and meat is having a detrimental impact on the soil and the wider environment. At least 96% of all food grown in Britain relies on farming methods that use synthetic fertilizer, without which the soil lacks enough nutrients for anything to grow in it, and without ploughing the soil is not aerated. As Rebecca goes on to suggest, “The only way modern agriculture can get away with killing the life in the soil is through the use of fossil fuel - by turning it into chemical fertilizer containing nitrates, phosphates and potash.”

The Soil Association’s Low Carbon Farming Project aims to tackle the problems with modern farming head on, looking at soil management, reduction (and eventual eradication) of artificial fertilisers, livestock diet, nutrient management, and energy efficiency. This will largely be done by encouraging a move to organic farming. There are those, however, who would argue that even this isn’t enough and that we need to consider whether localised food production based on permaculture principles should be seriously considered not just by fringe groups but by government itself. Of course, it’s a moot point whether permaculture could feed a population the size of the UK, but as Patrick Whitfield has argued, ‘a better question would be, “Can present methods go on feeding Britain?” In the long term, it is certain that present methods can’t because they are so entirely dependent on fossil-fuel energy. So we haven’t got any choice other than to find something different.’

What is certainly true is that this mustn’t be an exercise in simply pointing fingers at farmers. We all have a stake in the future of farming and food production, and we share responsibility for how that future looks. I for one have come to realise that ignorance about how the food I consume is produced is akin to me taking no interest in how my daughter is educated. To quote the Soil Association once more, ‘The Government’s Climate Change act has committed the UK to an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with a 34% cut by 2030. To come anywhere near meeting these targets we must make fundamental changes to the way we farm, process, distribute, prepare and eat our food over the next 20 years. If we are serious about tackling climate change all of us; Government, industry and the public alike; need to get serious about supporting organic and sustainable agriculture. Business as usual is no longer an option.’

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