Farming’s Future

A back-to-normal Oxford Farming Conference provided farming pointers aplenty. Charles Abel reports

THE 77th Oxford Farming Conference packed a punch as it tackled the thorny issue of how farming can take a fairer share of the value it creates.

Land is constantly called on to deliver solutions through responsible, sustainable food production, whilst meeting climate change, environmental and social objectives too. But there is scant regard for the implications for farmers and farming, noted Emily Norton, OFC chair and head of rural research at Savills.

There is a tolerated blind spot where the focus on consumer price trumps all else – including nutrition, quality, choice, production system, food security and social values. That needs to change.

Farmers are recognised as the greatest assets in supply chains, delivering great outcomes, but are the least respected, agreed Forum for the Future’s Lesley Mitchell. Supply chains extract all the efforts of farmers, as if they were their own, and provide too little reward. She felt producers were running out of patience. “Farmers aren’t going to continue to dig themselves into further debt.”

Shifting that is a priority, but needs stronger engagement from policymakers.

“If it is a structural priority for the country, it needs policy direction, not leaving to the market.”

Defra minister Mark Spencer denied that political and market structures were failing farmers and society, and that farmers were being inadequately recognised for meeting environmental, societal and climate change targets. But he did accept that risk and reward was not being shared correctly across supply chains. There was “a role for government in ensuring those conversations take place” – but not for regulating it.

Government role

Daniel Zeichner, shadow Defra minister, said food security mattered to Labour, and it would address imbalances of power within the industry if elected, with more public procurement, a national land use framework, and a food security policy aligned to environmental and climate change needs.

With so many overseas farmers producing food at lower costs, but also lower standards, more work was needed on trade deals, he added. “Sustained leadership must come from Government.”

To fully tackle the ‘one planet’ climate and biodiversity crises government-led system changes are needed, agreed Jane Davidson, Pro Vice-Chancellor Emeritus at University of Wales Trinity Saint David. The Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 is pathfinder legislation making sustainability the central organising principle of Welsh government. It made Wales the only country in the world with legislation to deliver on global sustainability goals. Other nations need to follow, she said.

OFC Patron HRH The Princess Royal Princess Anne called for “really targeted investment and changes in farming systems to address supply chain problems, with costs not borne by primary producers alone”. Net zero transition will have to be funded, one way or another, so rules need to be right, so UK agriculture can advance without a huge extra burden, she added.

Regenerative economies

Rules-based trade to incentivise innovation is key, the USDA’s Jason Hafermeister maintained, enabling higher output with a reduced footprint to meet 2050 food supply without eliminating “nearly all the world’s wild spaces”.

The USDA is investing $3bn across 25m hectares to adopt new practices, measure outcomes and drive change. Regulation can discourage bad practices, but won’t encourage new ones, he said. Demand from the $500bn US ag market is key, and a large global market the only way entrepreneurs will invest in food production. “Trade rules must not discriminate regionally.”

But Kimberley Botwright of the World Economic Forum highlighted the challenges already being felt through geo-political turmoil. “Deals need to reflect that complexity” and national interests mean different levels of ambition and speed, leading to different costs in different markets, raising competitivity issues, and potentially trade wars. “Collaboration around issues like subsidies, and carbon pricing, are key, with mutual recognition of technical requirements to reduce friction.”

Environmental legislation, especially through the criminalisation of ecocide, will increasingly deter bad practice, at farm and corporate level, maintained Jojo Mehta of Stop Ecocide International. Its goal is for the crime of ecocide to underpin a preventive global legal framework to protect nature, climate and the world’s common future. The International Criminal Court could adopt it within three years. Belgium already has. Such clear direction will help accelerate innovation, she argued.

Baroness Kate Rock, who recently reviewed tenancies, recognised the need for further structural changes so tenanted land can engage in regenerative practices requiring a longer-term view. ELMS also needed to be more tenant-friendly. A tenant farming commissioner would help.

Radical collaboration between 1000 global agriculture researchers is delivering sciencebased decision-making to drive local, national and regional ag policies, said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a climate change scientist with NASA and Columbia Climate School, who gave the Frank Parkinson Lecture. The MAC-B model breaks down silos to fully account for all aspects and drive better policymaking.

Nature-based solutions

Too many corporates fail to pay for benefits derived from ecosystem services created and sustained by farmers, noted James Alexander of Finance Earth. Water companies saving water treatment costs where farmers manage soils more effectively, but paying farmers nothing for the benefit, were an example.

Nature needs to be made more “investable”, to help deliver the £50bn funding gap needed to redress nature issues over coming decades, without corporate greenwashing, said RSPB’s Beccy Speight.

Hampshire farmer

Jamie Butler typifies what is possible, creating a large new wetland to deliver saleable nutrient credits so local housing developments could progress in Hampshire. Whether other schemes could be stacked onto the same area, generating multiple incomes, was not yet clear.

Farmer innovations

Dung Beetles for Farmers entomologist

Sally-Ann Spence reckoned the 9t/ cow/year of cow pats can be much better managed, especially by more careful use of anthelmintics. Encouraging dung beetles not only reduces pasture fouling and parasite counts, but also boosts nutrient and organic matter content, raising productivity, she advised.

Agroforestry also has a viable place, if trees are planted with a clear focus on income, said Abi Reader, a mixed farmer from Wales and deputy president of NFU Cymru, who has planted 5000 trees/ ha in alternating strips. Strip one is willow, aspen, lime and cherry, generating an income every 3-6 years via biochar for sequestered carbon construction materials, with heat for polytunnel veg. The other strip is Polish Sida, a hi-protein, high-biomass crop with scope to replace soya in animal feed.

Clearly, farming is capable of doing so much. The question is whether the rest of the supply chain, and policymakers, can act more fairly, and so release farming’s full potential.

SUPPLY CHAIN SHAKE-UP

Regulation to rebalance supply chains is urgently needed to bring fairness, more equitable allocation of added-value, and shared investment in net zero, argues the 2023 OFC/Savills/WWF Annual Report. Years of putting efficiency ahead of values is coming home to roost, said OFC Chair, Emily Norton, with farmers suffering fraught relationships, unpredictable contracts, unmet production costs, burdensome supply charges and unjust notice agreements. “We’re at the verge of a food production crisis,” added report author Lesley Mitchell of Forum for the Future.

The supply chain’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels leaves it very vulnerable to disruption and to farmers disproportionately absorbing rising costs, and having to bear the risk and cost of GHG mitigating infrastructure and practices, while processors in the middle of the chain secure the largest share of ‘opaque’ profits. An ambitious cycle of improvement is needed, to bring reciprocity, shared negotiation, predictability, stability, confidence, and resourcing to invest and innovate.