Does the British landscape need farming? What would happen if we all became vegans? Farming is synonymous with our landscape; a pastoral image that the British love and is certainly part of our heritage. With growing concerns of rural outmigration, farming has maintained, and stood at the heart of, rural communities. Farmers can play a vital role in conservation. Indeed, farming is often a brutal and isolating vocation and it is the connection farming families have with the land and the heritage that it embodies that keeps people there.
EU incentives, such as CAP, promote the idea that farming can preserve natural environments into the future. But current agricultural systems are coming under significant scrutiny. With a growing global population, climate change and socioeconomic inequalities, how are we going to sustainably produce food for the future? The Sustainable Development Goals have outlined our aims to end world hunger by 2030. So how are we to feed the world?
I first started thinking about this when I saw George Monbiot on Countryfile in 2016 blaming cows for low land flooding. He's outspoken and opinionated but it seems that a lot of his ideas stand - even if entitling blog posts "Rural Idiocy" doesn't exactly promote a constructive conversation starter. I've read many of his books, and his views are sometimes not favourable, but it seems, at least in light of recent reports, that more and more are echoing his rewilding ideas. His idea of reintroducing apex predators into the UK undeniably comes with a host of logistical nightmares. Nonetheless, across Europe several programmes now exist, and in the UK, Ennerdale began its transformation into a 'wilder valley' in 2003, with several projects following.
So maybe the latest report from the CCC calling for significant changes in UK agriculture and land-use in order to reduce GHG emissions should come as little surprise. It backs a wider body of research emerging, claiming that we must significantly alter our food systems at all levels to provide a sustainable way of feeding ourselves into the future. Several reports recognise the health of the environment at the forefront of being able to provide food into the future. It seems to make sense, food comes from the land, so the land, the environment, is a key player in us being able to sustain growing human populations. The concept echoes rhetoric drawn up in the Stockholm Planetary Boundaries Report.
It's a complex task that will involve changing farming systems, supply chains, consumer habits and, importantly, policy. There however seems to be a consensus on the science side. Lancet's EAT commission is calling for little to no consumption of red meat, along with the CCC calling for a 26-36% reduction in grasslands and rough grazing. The IPCC's 2019 report on Climate Change and Land sighted changes to agricultural systems, specifically land use, as a key part of tackling several issues in the report:
A 2018 Nature article, 'Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits' projected what it will take to stay within Steffen et al.'s planetary boundaries. Their models show that present and future environmental pressures are most significantly contributed to by the 'animal products' food group.
Figure 4 shows greatest reductions from food production need to be GHG emissions with changes in diet being the biggest area for possible change. Although GHG emissions and cropland use could be the greatest stressors, the Springmann et al. paper suggests that these are the areas we can reduce our effects into safe operating zones.
With all the focus on farming, what about industry and transport? Yes, they come in as the current highest contributors to GHG emissions... but the point is that our food system within itself can't continue to support itself as it is... or us for that matter. Change is clearly needed.
So, will our countryside be unrecognisable in 30 years? We are already seeing many cattle farms go under but having said that we are seeing an increase in the factory farm system. I suppose we have to decide what is the greater good. Farmers will need to play a key role in the future of our food systems, but alongside the wider community, they will have to evolve. Evolution in political and economic systems may prove most difficult. We've seen how much vested economic interest there is in agribusiness, so concerted effort for reform will prove essential.