Why Agroecology is the Future of Farming
Farming has a pretty murky rep when it comes to climate change, and consumers want more traceability than ever when it comes to food. So we spoke to several young farmers about how they’re driving sustainable change — and how you can support them.
The organic food market rose by 12.5% during the first lockdown: its highest growth level in 15 years. Concerns about food supply chains arose once again as the UK leaves the EU. With empty supermarket shelves becoming a familiar sight, there seemed to have never been a better time for consumers to support local farmers and growers.
But farming, especially cattle-based, has a pretty murky reputation for climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. A 2019 YouGov study found that 35% of those who wanted to give up eating meat claimed it was because they were concerned about the environmental impacts of agriculture and the food production system. There is also the issue of the finite amount of resources that farming ultimately depends on: soil.
Although the agricultural sector is estimated to be responsible for just 10% of UK greenhouse gas emissions, placing it behind transport (27%), energy supply (21%) and residential (15%), this climate myth has stuck.
Whilst the discussion about tackling climate change and promoting sustainability within food systems, a new holistic approach to farming that works with nature could be part of the solution: Agroecology. According to The Soil Association, agroecology promotes farming practices that mitigate climate change, work with wildlife and suit the local area. This means that every farm will use different approaches to suit their soil conditions and type of farm best.
We spoke to several South West farmers to find out what they’re doing to make their family farms more sustainable.
“I see the process of agroecology and sustainable farming as a lifetime’s work, something you’re constantly working with, learning about, moving on with,” says Tom Bowles, from Hartley Farm, who is the fifth generation of his family to work on the farm.
“So in the last two or three years, we started to drive it and try to operate as sustainably as possible. Historically, our farm was a commercial arable [crop-growing], and pig farm and our fields were heavily tilled. Dad always told me about how hard it was to grow crops on our farm because of our soil type and how hard he had to work the land to do it, how much you had to put into it, such as organic synthetics. So our decision to move to entirely pasture-based and then switch our production method to grass-fed beef just started to make sense because going back through the generations, it has always been a grazing farm.”
Madeleine Pow, L.S Pow & Sons
It’s also a focus for Madeleine Pow, who will be the fourth generation at her family farm LS Pow & Sons: “That’s my aim as a farmer, to make it as sustainable and regenerative as possible, so long as I can still make it profitable — certainly break even. Working with the land and doing something good.
“We don’t own the land. Sure, our name is on the lease, but it’s not ours, we have to leave it in a better condition than we found it. We’re all working together to feed the world, and we can’t do that if we don’t have good sustainable resources, we can’t just take all of the nutrients out of the land and leave it like that. We’ve got to look after the land and be able to hand it onto the next generation without just handing them a pile of rubbish.”
For others, just being ‘sustainable’ is not enough. “I’m trying to integrate everything [at the farm] because it’s fine doing one thing, but if you just do one, it doesn’t integrate anything,” says Josh Gay of Newton Farm.
“That’s the problem with changing to specialist farms rather than being mixed farms, like how they integrated livestock historically. It’s why our soils in England haven’t failed because we’ve integrated. Sustainable is pointless if your soil’s no good because it’s just sustaining bad life, whereas regenerative farming rebuilds the soil. That’s the difference between sustainable and regenerative: there’s no point in sustaining bad farming practices.”
Josh Gay, Newton Farm
Having a larger amount of land to manage with extremely varying soil types also makes the process much more complicated: “With all of the regenerative stuff, I’m still right at the start, so I’ve been proud to switch to it. I’ve switched to direct drilling here — all the neighbours think it can’t be done, but I’m going to stick with it because I say it can be done and it will be done.” Seeing the damaging effects of soil erosion motivated Josh, the fourth generation at his family farm, to learn about regenerative farming as “the soil is my biggest asset, without that I can’t grow anything”.
With growing global awareness of climate change’s devastating effects, switching to regenerative farming practices can only be a good thing. But why has it taken so long to make the change?
As his colleagues, Tom thinks that agricultural education could be the answer. “For my dad and his generation, agricultural education was very much about the time, production and the cost of everything. How much do you get out of an acre, how much do you get out of an animal? And that was essentially what they were born into, whereas the next generation has been slightly more environmentally aware. I know that a lot of agricultural colleges now have got a focus on agroecology and regenerative agriculture, so it’s definitely part of the process now.”
During Madeleine’s agricultural degree, she visited other farms and looked at case studies of those who adopted regenerative agriculture. She said it was incredibly helpful as it “proved that you can do it successfully and you can make money from it”.
Farming regeneratively while keeping it commercially viable is a clear tension, as there are so many factors to consider while shifting farming practices. Josh explains: “I pushed our livestock feed manufacturer to make soy-free food for us. Soya isn’t farmed in a sustainable way. It can be, but they’re clearing Amazon rainforests to grow it purely for profit because they know that they can fatten pigs and cows quicker on it. But why should I care about my bottom line more than I care about the damage that it’s doing to the river systems and the environment in other countries? Why should I export our environmental problems onto another country just for profit?”
Tom Bowles, Hartley Farm
Luckily, all agree that consumers have more buying power than they think. Tom says, “The last year has really helped highlight the point about how fragile our food supply could be. So the shorter the supply chain, surely the better. They’re not being picked up on a lorry and shipped halfway up the country, going to a sorting house and shipped back down here into a supermarket. It’s literally the shortest supply chain.
“Also, as a generation, we’ve become too lazy in the fact that everything is available and it’s too cheap as well. How you can buy three chickens for ten pounds is insane. The amount of effort and time that gets put into producing these crops and these animals. Over the last twenty or thirty years, we’ve worked out how cheaply we can produce food but in a very unsustainable way.”
Some farms have diversified, so they sell their own produce directly to consumers, such as in farm shops, and kitchens and cafes. But what about those who sell to supermarkets, at the mercy of their price wars? Madeleine explains: “For now, it’s much more viable for us to sell through a supermarket, so I think it’s tricky to say how people can support British farming without shooting myself in the foot. I 100% think people should buy local, but if they can’t buy local, then the supermarkets do really good ranges of British food. So I think that’s the next best step for people.”
This idea also takes into account another thing learnt over the past year: the UK’s food poverty rate is one of the highest in Europe, meaning that many consumers benefit from competitive supermarket prices.
Madeleine continues: “In terms of just buying British, British farms are held to such high standards of animal welfare and environmental standards that just backing any British farmer will make a difference and will kind of enable us to keep doing what we’re doing.”
And what about their aims for the future?
“I’d like to raise more awareness with people, especially with other farmers,” says Josh. “I’m also doing it to show that it can be done.”
Does he think that some farmers just aren’t interested in regenerative practices?
“It took a long time to get farmers to adopt the use of nitrogen fertiliser, maybe twenty years, and it will take just as long to get them to stop using it. Subsidies are a step in the right direction when they’re used for the right things and we do use them, but they could do with their scope widening. Also with regenerative farming, it should be more profitable in the long run. There might be a few hard years at the start but you should end up with a lower cost system and a higher profitability, and a system which is better for everything.”
Madeleine agrees: “I think it’s important that people know that we do really care. We do really care about our animals, and we really care about our land. That’s what I’d like people to know.”
Written by Sophie Ellis
Sophie is a twenty-something cafe assistant near Bristol and Bath. You can usually find her trying to perfect her latte art and book shopping, but ideally, she's by the beach.
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