Yesterday, we heard from Scottish farmer Michael Clarke and his triple bottom line of financial, environmental and social elements to his farming business. Today, we head south to hear from Henry Edmunds, who farms in Wiltshire.
(All views shared in this series are those of the individual farmer and have not been edited by the RSPB).
"Once again we have an opportunity to influence the future support mechanism for British Agriculture. One could well ask why support should be forthcoming in the first place? Farming the land is an activity that has been undertaken here since Neolithic times, safeguarding a growing human population from starvation. Today, with the wealth of food available on global markets, the UK could survive on imports alone. This would, however, result in the loss of a rural population skilled in the many facets of livestock, cereal and vegetable production. It would also render the country vulnerable to shortages caused by global climatic variations, population growth and escalating costs. In a free market situation UK agriculture is unable to compete. Other countries enjoy huge advantages in soil fertility and lower production costs, with a more stable climate. A degree of support for British agriculture enables supply stability.
Since the war there have been many developments in the farming industry; most notably of fertilisers and agrichemicals. This has enabled the traditional rotational system, where grass and livestock were a feature on every farm, to be largely abandoned. This application of “technology” as it is termed, has precipitated the current crisis in the rural environment. Chemicals kill birds, insects and mammals. Seed dressings have poisoned house sparrows, bumblebees are killed by insecticides applied to control pests in oilseed rape; voles and shrews are eradicated by slug pellets. Where chemicals are not directly poisonous, they can affect wildlife in several ways; by accumulating in body tissues, to who knows what result, and by removing cereal weeds so effectively, that no seed is left for wintering birds, which will then starve.
Image: rspb-images.com
The application of these chemicals also has long-term implications for the environment. Water is being contaminated by nitrogenous fertilisers and herbicides and the supply companies are escalating expenditure to remove them.
When a farmer applies nitrogen prills to his fields half is lost. 25% seeps directly through to ground water and a further 25% is lost to the atmosphere. This is such a serious pollutant that worldwide 8,000 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent is added to the atmosphere every year.
By definition then, high-tech agriculture is a major contributor to environmental damage and global warming. Furthermore, it causes soil degradation and with it the loss of micro-organisms and organic matter. Thus we all pay a heavy unseen price for our food. But this can be changed. We need to acknowledge the environmental damage caused by these unsustainable practices and return to a more traditional system.
This is precisely where a new agricultural support mechanism needs to be directed. The solution lies in the utilisation of leguminous plants. The most commonly grown species were red clover, white clover, lucerne and sainfoin. These can be mixed with grasses to produce abundant forage crops without the need for artificial fertiliser. Legumes produce adequate natural nitrogen to force its companion grasses to the limits of their potential. Animals are needed to utilise these crops, to produce lamb, beef or milk. Such crops are retained in the same field for several years building organic matter, fertility, reducing arable weeds and nitrate leaching. After four years the field can be ploughed and returned to a few years of wheat or other arable crops without the need for herbicides or fertilisers, certainly in the first and second years.
Today, many arable farms are being challenged by aggressive invasive weeds, e.g. black grass, which have become resistant to every chemical currently available. This will be an escalating problem involving other weed species in the future. The only viable solution is to incorporate and exploit leguminous leys within the rotation.
Techno agriculture is described as efficient, but only because its burden of pollution is passed on without charge to the general environment and us. Furthermore, it has enormously reduced numbers of farm workers by employing ever-bigger machinery on ever expanding fields, achieved by hedge grubbing. Numbers of farmers also drop year by year as we see more consolidation within the industry, all made possible by the “advances” of industrial agriculture.
Clearly, any support mechanism should be directed away from furthering this destructive process. Measures to reduce chemical dependence, advance employment, protect and build soil fertility and plant hedges are critical. The soil can be a natural carbon bank; carbon sequestration from the atmosphere is vital for all our futures and encouraging a rotational system incorporating leguminous-grass leys could be a huge leap forward in achieving the targets we have to meet to prevent the planet overheating.
We will be importing more food in the future, an inevitable consequence of Brexit and the need to trade on a worldwide basis. This will give us an opportunity to mend the land and at the same time retain the skills we require in agriculture in the event of catastrophic failure of the global harvest.
So we can start to see a way to restore a countryside that has been steadily impoverished over the last fifty years. Plant new hedges, which will drive track ways of life through the barren wastes of this chemically orchestrated monoculture. These will enclose the now smaller fields, more adaptable for stock keeping enterprises. Plant leguminous leys, “bee loud and beautiful”. Employ more farm workers for more diversified farm businesses. Achieve a vast reduction in agro-chemical pollution both in water and the atmosphere, with soils now retaining and accumulating natural fertility. Above all, a countryside brimming over with wildlife and birds – a sky full of birds and bird song, the hedges a nursery of nests and fledglings; this can be ours.
Don’t subsidise farmers, reward them for services given, a cleaner atmosphere, pure water, sustainable soils and above all the song of larks, of corn buntings, of turtle doves and this can be a gift above everything for those who will follow us."