Who should run the countryside? This was the banner of an event was hosted by Relu (the Rural Economy and Land Use programme) on Nov 16 this year in Gateshead, UK. It was a day-long opportunity for people from all walks of life to take part in activities coordinated by Relu researchers and debate major questions about the future of the UK countryside.

For one of the debates, I  argued that, although food security and maintaining a healthy environment are both important, food security – or more accurately the competitiveness of UK agriculture – is at this time more important in policy terms. This is not an either-or question, but I think we need to achieve a sustainable balance between food production and maintaining a healthy environment.

Levelling the land

Nationally, I question if we have lost track of the importance of the agricultural competitiveness of our rural environment in favour of environmental protection.

Policy steps in the 2000s reduced spending on competitive agriculture and made the environment a priority, directing resources there through the  two major environmental organisations  Environment Agency and Natural England. And the majority of Rural Development Programme for England funding, which aims to connect agricultural and economic development and promotes environmental stewardship and community sustainability, is also channeled into the environment

What’s more, of the three supposedly equal elements of profit, the environment and social outcomes emanating from the Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food (the Curry Commission) it was the environmental element that was predominantly picked up. I was a member of the Commission

We also have a plethora of environmental NGOs competing with each other for income, in part, I think, by painting a very black and sometimes inaccurate picture of efficient farming.

Moreover, we have a generation of students who have chosen careers in environmental studies, which is welcome as part of the wider life sciences, but we have seen, until recently, a decrease in interest in crop science and the applied skills to grow food and protect it against attack. (The recent increase in courses, especially at Master’s degree level, in food security-related areas, one of which has been described on this blog, is heartening.)

As a result, we have seen a significant reduction (PDF) in our self sufficiency of indigenous food production and, as illustrated in the Total Factors of Productivity that Defra have produced in the past, since the 1980s UK farming has become relatively less competitive than most of its major competitors in terms of  the national efficiency of  productivity factors compared to the majority of Western EU states and the US.

Finally, the present EU Commission proposals for CAP Reform from 2013 again illustrate how powerful the environmental lobby is across Europe; the existing Greening suggestion for Pillar 1 would involve 7% of subsidised EU land being taken out for environmental enhancement. Not only is this ill thought out, but it would potentially undo much of the good work completed or underway in the UK under our existing environmental schemes.

England my home

Why should we worry about food security? A succession of governments did not, arguing that we were a relatively wealthy nation and could afford to buy food in.

And by food security I am not referring to 100% self sufficiency, we are not even suggesting we should produce 100% of indigenous food (the current total in 2011 was 74% (PDF)). What we should be doing is providing a significantly higher percentage of food that we can produce reasonably competitively.

What has changed?  From 2007-2008 a combination of food shortages and resultant political turmoil, higher and more volatile food prices, a greater awareness of climate change, rising global population, dietary change and water scarcity has created political unease and a change in rhetoric. The media and consumers have also changed their perception because food, particularly the price of it, is now front page news.

The question remains to be answered – does it matter in economic terms if we put more resources into becoming more competitive, efficient and secure with our home produced food and energy? Well, yes it does.

Let us accept that we are thinking in terms of sustainable competitiveness as opposed to short term exhaustion of resources and that we do need to reduce our carbon footprint. More home production of food gives us greater control. More home production will reduce food price volatility, improve our trade balance, create employment opportunities and a more competitive industry will be less dependent on subsidies that may be cut in the future.

Finally, in most cases well managed land adjacent to well managed conservation is better for the environment than letting land revert to scrub or the prevalent dominant species.

Zeitgeist

So we need a policy that balances efficient sustainable food production with well managed intelligent environmental care. But we need to be quite clear what our objectives are.

As it goes, at the Gateshead event, the food security team that I was on not surprisingly lost the debate; the abstainers were in the majority which is illustrative of the present status quo!

But I still maintain that in production terms we need to become world leaders again, and fellow food producer Jim Godfrey has spelt out some ideas on how to do this on a previous blog post here.

We need common cause and understanding between farmers and conservationists, and in relation to the environment we should concentrate on healthy soils and beneficial insects, but above all the area that needs our attention at the moment is the commercial side of the balance.

About Mark Tinsley

Mark Tinsley is a farmer and produced arable crops, potatoes and vegetables on 600ha in South Lincolnshire. He is Chairman of the Commercial Farmers Group, a non-executive Director of NFU Mutual, Chairman of the potato cooperative Nene Potatoes Ltd., a member of Lincolnshire Local Enterprise Partnership Advisory Board and was a member of The Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food (the Curry Commission).

Aquaculture has been the subject of two recent high profile reports. The first, entitled Blue Frontiers, begins by asserting ‘There is a pressing need to elevate the debate on the future of aquaculture and to place this in the context of other animal food production systems, including wild capture fisheries’. The second report made the front cover of Time Magazine and poses the question ‘Can farming save the last wild food?’

Both reports make important points. Between 1970 and 2008, global aquaculture production grew (PDF) at an average rate of 8.4% per year, and aquaculture remains one of the fastest growing food producing sectors measured in terms of year-on-year percentage gain. Furthermore, because the world’s fisheries are yielding all they can, there is simply no option but to farm seafood if growing human demand for animal protein is to be met.

Both reports also emphasize that fish and shellfish are intrinsically more efficient converters of food than terrestrial animals, because they do not maintain high body temperature or grow heavy skeletons to support themselves against gravity, prompting the comment in the Blue Frontiers report that ‘because vegetarianism is unlikely to ever be a voluntary choice for the overwhelming majority of people, as global demand for food rises, finding ways to be more ecologically efficient consumers of animal food will become increasingly important’.

Limited horizons

However, animals have to eat and when they are farmed intensively this usually means feeding them ingredients that might otherwise serve as food for people. Such inputs are not necessary for less intensive farming methods, where livestock graze on natural pasture or are fed on agricultural wastes but, as Simon Fairley points out on this blog, there are natural limits to how much can be produced in this way. He describes this as ‘default livestock production’, beyond which, he argues, that feeding ‘grain to livestock to provide luxury goods for consumers in industrialized countries is manifestly unjust when a billion people in the world are undernourished.’

When it comes to seafood, I think harvesting fish from the world’s wild fish stocks might be thought of as the aquatic equivalent of default livestock production and this has already reached its natural limit. Aquaculture can supplement it by farming its own grazers, like the filter feeding mussels and scallops and by growing certain fish (mostly species of carp) in freshwater ponds fertilized with agricultural wastes to stimulate production of natural feed. Such methods contributed well over half the 52 million tonnes of fish and shellfish produced by aquaculture in 2008, with further growth possible in many undeveloped and developing countries.

However, rightly or wrongly, most recent developments in aquaculture have been driven by consumer demand in industrialised countries for seafood that supplements or substitutes for products from natural fisheries. Carp do not meet this standard, while fish like salmon, sea bass, tilapia and Pangasius (‘tra’ and ‘basa’) do, as do shellfish like shrimp, and the intensive methods used to farm them use feeds that, in turn, violate Fairlie’s standard for nutritional justice.

From which the question follows: given the intrinsic metabolic efficiency of aquatic animals, could their intensive farming ever be ecologically efficient enough to put such concerns to rest?

Advance, aquaculture

In part, the answer has to do with another point made in the Time article, namely that ‘farmers have had thousands of years to improve agricultural methods and breed domesticated animals like cows and pigs with maximum efficiency. Modern aquaculture is just a few decades old, and as producers have become more experienced, they’ve cut down on pollution and bred more-efficient fish’.

Could future advances in aquaculture breeding, nutrition and husbandry ever lead to intensive animal farming that allays concerns about ecological efficiency? And could the well demonstrated nutritional benefits of seafood help to tip the scales when making this evaluation?

But another part of the answer is something that neither report considers, namely the development of a future marine agronomy, which I detailed in my previous post.

The potential for the large-scale farming of marine plants (macroalgae or seaweeds) is vast. Decades from now, production of marine biomass for processing into food for people, feed for farm animals and biofuel could equal or exceed the biomass produced by terrestrial agriculture today. It could do this without using land or freshwater and, by tapping the vast resources of nutrients in the deep oceans, it might also do it without fossil fuel-based fertilizers. And again, because aquatic animals do not need to burn carbohydrate to keep themselves warm, there is a natural synergy between extracting protein and fat from biomass for aquaculture feeds and carbohydrate for bioenergy.

The concept holds the promise of self-sustaining, ecologically efficient production of aquatic animal and plant food, and offers the prospect of correcting today’s human nutritional injustices. The call in the Blue Frontiers report for an elevated debate on aquaculture’s future is timely and the need for it is urgent.

About John Forster

John Forster has worked as an aquaculture scientist, manager, fish farm owner and consultant since 1965. He moved to Port Angeles, Washington, from the UK in 1984 to start salmon and sturgeon farming operations for Stolt Sea Farm before founding his consulting practice and Columbia River Fish Farms Inc. in 1994.

As farmers we want a competitive farming industry because that is what will be sustainable in the longer term.  A competitive industry is profitable, more resilient, better able to withstand financial, disease and other shocks; it is more likely to reinvest, better able to provide good working conditions, environmental benefits, and give greater choice, innovation and value to consumers as well as being less likely to require subsidy.

Over the last 20 years we have seen the output of UK agriculture decline, mainly as a result of less land in production and less livestock.  The UK’s self sufficiency has decreased too, and the average yields of our major crops have at best only marginally increased over this time, the notable exception being sugar beet. The pig sector has decreased substantially as a result of UK welfare legislation and subsequent under re-investment, whilst the poultry sector has increased substantially due to well targeted research and investment in buildings.

Industry focus

To help the farming industries become more competitive and address the food security challenge we require more research and development.

The UK Government invests about £420M per year into agriculture and food research, but my feeling is that much of this investment is in research for publication, policy and safety. What we need is a change of emphasis to more research for development and into knowledge transfer and uptake in the agricultural industry. 

To do this effectively we need a strategy for UK agriculture developed by the agricultural industry which we can take to Government and the research community so we can ensure we have research which is focused on our priorities. 

Agriculture is very different to the pharmaceutical industry which has a more linear pipeline from research to product.  Agriculture is a fragmented, multi-faceted industry which requires interaction between researchers and the practitioners to solve problems. Hence, the Commercial Farmers Group has set out its four areas for research:

1. Genetic improvement in crops and livestock exploiting the latest biotechnology (GM) methods to increase productivity (output per unit of input), to control pests and diseases, to reduce environmental impact and to increase nutritional benefits to human health.
2. Increased productivity and reduced environmental impacts of crop and livestock production systems through precision technology developments, such as using automated real-time diagnostics for disease detection in crops and livestock; individual electronically controlled feeding systems for pigs and dairy cows; investment in high quality buildings to reduce environmental impact.
3. Improvement of soil structure using crop management systems with lower energy input (per unit of output), such as no-till systems and controlled traffic wheelings in crop production
4. Prevention and control of crop and livestock diseases to minimise the incidence and impact of both endemic and exotic diseases, including surveillance and monitoring of existing and emerging diseases.; development of more vertically integrated livestock systems to reduce animal contact between herds and flocks.

Policy progress

Food security has come to the forefront of government policies around the world.  The UK can take credit for providing much intellectual leadership through Sir John Beddington’s “Perfect storm” concept and the Royal Society’s “Reaping the Benefits” report. The EU, too, has published its vision for agriculture in its proposals for Common Agricultural Policy reform; part of this vision is for a competitive EU agriculture and Caroline Spelman, the UK Secretary of State for the Defra, has stated she wishes to see a competitive UK agricultural industry. 

Organisation is important to achieving the desired goals. BBSRC has included food security in its revised strategy and the research institutes it funds, which  includes Rothamsted Research, the Institute for Animal Health and the John Innes Centre, who are aligning their research programmes to this strategy. The bringing together of different farming sectors under the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board is a welcome move to create greater critical mass and the joining up of their research programmes.

The newly formed Technology Strategy Board (TSB) Sustainable Agriculture and Food Innovation Platform has started to help fill the research gaps between the BBSRC, AHDB and the private sector. 

We have a good starting point. Now we all must work together to help UK agriculture to be more competitive and to fulfil our part in ensuring global food security.

About Jim Godfrey

Jim Godfrey is an arable and pig farmer from Lincolnshire.  He is a member of the Commercial Farmers Group, BBSRC Council member, chairman of the TSB Sustainable Agriculture and Food Innovation Platform and a non executive director of the Rural Payments Agency. He is a former chairman of the Potato Marketing Board (now the Potato Council), Scottish Crop Research Institute, The International Potato Centre in Peru and the Alliance of the 15 Consultative Group on Agricultural Research Centres (now CGIAR).

I research the health and welfare of chickens reared for meat, but last year I spent six weeks working with BBC Countryfile as part of the British Science Association’s Media Fellowship scheme for research scientists. At the BBC I had the chance to act as researcher and scientific adviser for a feature looking at the rise of huge indoor ‘mega’ dairies and pig farms in the United States.

The mega farm debate is highly polarised. I heard equally passionate arguments that mega farms pollute the environment and destroy rural communities, and from others who believe that they’re the only viable way to keep meat and dairy products affordable back here in Britain.

Estimates vary, but population growth predicts that we will need around a 40% increase in global food production by 2030. UK Government food policy supports ‘sustainable intensification’, which means increasing farm production per hectare without compromising the environment or the wellbeing of farmed animals.

Intensifying livestock farming has already shown a phenomenal capacity to raise yields. In 1990 the average UK dairy cow produced 5151 litres of milk. In 2010-11 it was 7,406 litres – nearly half as much again.

We’re used to the idea of chicken farms housing tens of thousands of birds for eggs or meat, but British people seem less comfortable with large scale dairies and pig farms. Proposals for an 8000 cow dairy at Nocton in Lincolnshire met with considerable opposition before they were (scaled back and finally) withdrawn in February 2011. Midland Pig Producers’ plans for a 2500 sow pig farm in Derbyshire are the target of the Soil Association’s ‘Not in my Banger’ campaign, launched in January  2011.

For and against

Those in favour of scaling up argue that it makes everything cheaper per animal and so more efficient. Moreover, if producers can then afford to invest in the latest technology or equipment, or employ specialist staff, higher standards of animal care and disease prevention should follow. There can be environmental trade-offs too: housing large numbers of pigs or cattle indoors makes it easier to collect slurry for use as fertiliser or to install an anaerobic digester and turn it into energy.

Some opponents worry about a decline in small farms: rising UK milk yields over the past decade were accompanied by expanding herd sizes and a drop in both the total number of dairy farms and of cows. Others fear that housing many animals so densely creates a disease risk or restricts their normal behaviour to an unacceptable degree. Big farms sometimes claim to have a smaller carbon footprint but it’s not clear how such claims factor in things the public pay for. These could include the environmental costs of pollution incidents, or government-funded infrastructure such as programmes in America that supplied arid areas with water and allowed dairy farming to expand into the west coast.

Ultimately, it’s not easy to add up the costs and benefits. Every farm is different and animal welfare, economics and environmental costs and benefits can’t even be measured in the same currency.

Reality check

Recent proposals like Nocton and Foston have attracted attention because of their scale, but many of the considerations are not unique to mega farms. It is true that very high yielding dairy cows have been bred to put so much of their energy into milk production that their health, fertility and even lifespan have been affected. But these specialist breeds are used in many small farms too – intensive farms are not necessarily large, and vice versa.

And are mega farms really so different from what we already have? In 2008, over two-thirds of fattening pigs raised for meat in the UK were produced on units housing 1000 animals or more. When does medium become big? When does big become too big?

People often struggle to define exactly what it is about very large scale farms that makes them uneasy. Many have an instinctive resistance to animals being kept indoors. The majority seem unaware that British weather means that almost all of our dairy cows are housed indoors for around six months of the year anyway.

Perhaps the truth is that people’s fears about the future of farming are really a reflection that their lives are quite distanced from its present. And when we do get closer to reality, the choices get even tougher.

However much we value the idea of cows in wide open fields or pigs rooting around in the mud, beliefs and behaviour at the supermarket don’t always tally. If the price goes too high, most shoppers will go for the cheaper option. That can sometimes mean a backward step to imports from countries with less stringent standards.

 The conversations I had during my research for Countryfile made me realise that there is something all sides agree on: whatever its size or production system, each farm is only as good as its staff. Unless there is a massive change in consumers’ habits, there is an argument that animals, the environment and customers’ wallets might all benefit if we focus less on the type of farm and more on demanding – and supporting – rigorous standards from all UK farmers.

About Becky Hothersall

Dr Becky Hothersall is a post-doctoral researcher in the Animal Welfare and Behaviour Group at the University of Bristol’s School of Veterinary Sciences. Her research uses behavioural and cognitive approaches to try to understand subjective experiences like pain and hunger in other species. Becky is particularly interested in how animal welfare can be integrated into the wider sustainability agenda within farming.

My first 13 years of farming saw endless lorry-loads of fertilisers and chemicals coming on to the farm. The controls on their usage, and the consequential problems, were evidently increasing. I re-examined what I was doing and who the gainers and losers were.

Conclusion: I needed to cut down the inputs, improve sustainability, stay friends with the consumer and re-enliven my soils.

We all want to produce sufficient food to supply the full nutritional requirements of the human species, whilst attempting to live in harmony with the natural environment and its finite resources. Simple… except it’s not.

Livestock farmers appreciate that every farm has a maximum stocking rate, beyond which animals will be underfed without importing food. We need to reduce the numbers of animals farmed, because the supplies of grain and proteins are going to become pressurised by the reducing quantities of available fertilisers, oil and other inputs.

We need to appreciate the finite nature of natural key resources upon which agriculture depends. Oil, phosphate fertiliser and access to fresh water being the principal inputs. The use of ‘fossil’ water reserves illustrates the problem, and whilst it’s not a problem in the rainy UK, it is in many countries from which we import food, often to feed livestock – as seen in the staggering scale of imported GM soya from Brazil to feed British cows for example.

Farmers are the largest consumers of these resources. With what responsible logic can we justify feeding livestock tonnages of grains and proteins? As Simon Fairlie has described on this blog and in his book Meat: A Benign Extravagance, it’s a horribly inefficient way to produce food. If only we could stand back and assess it logically and not feel threatened by our own, as farmers, vested interest. 

Big problems

Why not embrace the findings of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development  which concluded that “business as usual” was not an option? 

Reducing feeding grains and proteins to livestock will save natural resources, and indirectly improve people’s health. Furthermore, huge areas of currently crop-producing land would then grow grass, still to support livestock, enabling preservation of fragile and diminishing soils by minimising soil erosion.

Some may think these policy shifts equate to less food for most people. It may for a few, but it won’t necessarily for the majority. And would that be a bad thing? Astonishing food wastage occurs through over consumption – people becoming fat – also known as the obesity epidemic in politically-correct language. We now have more obese people in the world than hungry, and the vast majority of this is avoidable. When did this become acceptable?

Perhaps these policy shifts would make food more expensive. Then we’d all eat different diets, with less meat, and those over-consuming will necessarily reduce intake. This would also lead to less waste minimisation during food processing and domestically: nobody in 2011 should accept the 18 million tonnes of food waste. Whilst some is unavoidable, a huge amount is careless at best.

By using less land to grow feed for animals, substantial areas of current cropland could be afforested, recreating the lungs of the world, and some land can switch to energy production to be used locally.

Furthermore, these significant changes would dispense with the temptation to tinker with nature’s genetics by utilising GM crops. Other nicely developing breeding techniques, such as marker-assisted breeding, will enhance yields and improved resistance to attack, whilst keeping our customers onside.

Hard solutions

Delivering radical change is difficult. Nobody would suggest otherwise. But we don’t have the choice, and the sooner we start the less Draconian the action will need to be.

If we won’t do this for society, and ultimately for our children’s sake, and continue to prefer prevarication then we drive the car towards a cliff edge. Either we make a reasonably gentle turn now, or continue taking risks, hoping for unknown options for our salvation will appear later.

Are farmers big enough to do this? It will obviously have negative implications for the capital values of many of our businesses. But, do we, as part of a bigger society, have any realistic alternative option?

About Oliver Dowding

After leaving agricultural college in 1976, Oliver returned home to the family farm in South East Somerset, a traditional dairy and arable farm, extending to over 900 acres. 

In 1989 the decision was made to convert the entire farm, including 300 dairy cows and 200 youngstock immediately to organic status, which became the subject for a TV programme. The farming area has subsequently shrunk and the dairy disbanded.

Oliver has been involved with a variety of national agri-political posts and interests, including chairing the NFU organic committee, and as vice-chairman of the leading organic dairy co-operative, OMSCO. 

He is an active journalist and campaigner, particularly on health and environmental issues.

The eradication of the long-feared cattle disease rinderpest, announced by OIE and FAO June 2011, is a momentous achievement. John Anderson has already written on this blog about the lessons learned during the rinderpest eradication programme, which I’ve also described on video.

If we can do it once, we can do it again; the only question is: what should be the next target?

For better or worse, many people in developing countries are dependent on livestock (sheep, goats and cattle) for their food, or for trade. Sheep and goats (or ‘shoats’ for short), in particular, form the mainstay of 100s of small-scale livestock keepers in rural communities, both for the milk they give and the meat they provide. Anything that improves the health of shoats reduces poverty and improves local health and welfare, which improves education levels, which again improves general welfare in a virtuous cycle.

The next target

One of the common diseases of shoats in developing countries is peste des petits ruminants (PPR), sometimes known as goat plague or kata. The disease was first described in West Africa, which explains the French name. PPR is now found in almost every country in Africa north of Mozambique, as well as the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and through into China. It can cause high mortality – up to 90% – and its relentless spread seems unaffected by the current individual national attempts at mass vaccination which are not well integrated.

PPR is caused by a virus of the same group that causes rinderpest, and which shares many of the same characteristics: the virus spreads by close contact between animals (no insect or tick vector), it  has only one serotype (so a single vaccine protects against all known forms of the virus), and an effective vaccine and equally good diagnostic tests exist.

The basic tools that were used in the eradication of rinderpest are therefore in place to do the same job on PPR, and there is growing acceptance in international bodies such as the FAO that PPR eradication is possible and should seriously be considered. I discuss this in this short video too.

Achievable aim

That’s not to say we couldn’t make some improvements. There was never a DIVA vaccine (which allows one to Distinguish Infected from Vaccinated Animals) for rinderpest, and it meant it was never possible to keep scanning for disease while vaccination was going on. Several labs, including my own, are trying to make DIVA vaccines for PPR and I am sure one will soon exist which will help in the overall programme.

The experience of rinderpest eradication was that getting good local involvement in tracing disease was critically important, and kits are being developed that will allow sick animals to be tested for PPR in the field, allowing much more rapid disease identification and therefore more rapid responses. We also need to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the distribution of PPR in both domestic livestock and wildlife because various species of wild goats and gazelles are susceptible.

None of these are insurmountable problems. There are a large number of livestock diseases for which we have no vaccine, like African swine fever, or which are too varied to be tackled with a single vaccine, such as Bluetongue, for which you need 25 different vaccines.

In contrast, ridding the world of PPR lacks only the willingness of the richer countries to fund the work and of the countries where it exists to work together to get the job done.

Perhaps the most important lesson that we learned in getting rid of rinderpest is that we can aspire to not just control and continuously try to manage a veterinary disease, but to remove it permanently on a global scale, thereby eliminating the threat as well as the cost of control from all future generations.

About Michael Baron

Michael Baron has worked on the basic biology of rinderpest and PPR at the Institute for Animal Health for the last 20 years. He is a self-confessed lab rat who would like to think that he can help the people who do the real work on controlling these diseases, out in the field, by providing some of the tools they need.

Carbon dioxide is the most commonly recognised enemy in terms of its contribution to greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, and certainly the biggest culprit in terms of volume, but there are other gases, closely tied with food production, that are also major targets for reduction.

Farming is responsible for about 8% of the UK’s GHG emissions (up to about 19% when the road to consumption is included) but about 40% of its methane emissions, which mainly come from livestock, and 76% of its nitrous oxide emissions, which are mainly due to fertiliser use.

There is a lot of pressure on agriculture to reduce emissions of these gases because methane is about 20 times and nitrous oxide around 300 times a more powerful GHG than carbon dioxide.

The devil in the details

To address the nitrous oxide (N₂O) problem, a recent event at the Royal Society, ‘Nitrous oxide: the forgotten greenhouse gas’, reviewed our current understanding of the processes by which N₂O can be produced or destroyed and discussed approaches for combating N₂O release.

I work on GHGs too. At Rothamsted Research my group’s work focuses on N₂O, which is mostly produced by two processes in soils carried out by microbes.

First, N₂O is a small but important by–product of a process called nitrification, which is the conversion of ammonium to nitrate. It’s part of a natural cycle and an essential soil process as dead plant and animal material decays and is converted back to the building blocks of new organisms. The second process is denitrification, the conversion of nitrate to nitrite, N₂O and N₂ — the nitrogen gas that forms 78% of the air we breathe. It is also a natural process and happens when oxygen is in short supply, especially when soils are very wet, and produces large but short–lived peaks of N₂O.

The ‘Need for nitrogen’ to make crops grow was also detailed on this blog by Ian Crute. It can come from fertiliser, legumes (biological fixation) or recycled manures, but fossil fuel-based fertiliser nitrogen dominates and is used to produce about half the world’s food. We will need more food and more nitrogen as the population increases toward nine billion, or more.

Unfortunately, some of this nitrogen will end up as N₂O whether it comes from synthetic fertilisers or natural manure. The question is can we help our farmers to be more efficient and get more nitrogen into their cops and less into N₂O?

Working the problem

Obviously we should not (and could not) try and stop natural processes such as nitrification or get rid of the microbes. But we wonder if we could find ways, when the soil is wet and denitrification happens, to encourage the microbes to convert nitrate to dinitrogen (N₂) instead of N₂O, all the time?

We have used our 168–year-old Broadbalk experiment on wheat production at Rothamsted, and a very special laboratory system that enables us to collect and analyse all the gases that come from the soil, to find out what controls the microbes and their production of N₂O.

Our research shows that, perhaps not surprisingly, the amounts of nitrate and carbon (the microbes’ energy source) are very important: they must be in balance. So farmers need to get the right amount of nitrogen to their crops.

The structure of the soil is also important – a soil that holds enough water to supply crops but does not easily become saturated (waterlogged) and so deprive the plant roots of oxygen is important. And we were surprised to see that a soil made wet before it becomes really saturated with water produces less N₂O than one dried before suddenly becoming saturated. It seems that the microbes behave better when accustomed to being wet!

However, if climate change happens as predicted then in the UK we will get more very dry weather followed by sudden wetter periods which our research suggests will increase N₂O production and exacerbate climate change even further.

No laughing matter

Elsewhere at the meeting, Robert Portman brought us the good news that the GHGs methane and carbon dioxide reduce the depletion of ozone. Unfortunately N₂O increases ozone depletion as well as being a very potent GHG, so it’s bad news all round.

Paul Crutzen, the Nobel Prize winner in 1995, and Keith Smith have made some detailed life cycle calculations that reinforce the view that most first generation bioenergy crops, such as wheat and oilseed rape, don’t deliver any fossil fuel saving. But sugar cane does because of the biological nitrogen–fixing microbes associated with sugar cane roots. (Not everyone agrees with this story so there is some good research to be done understanding what is happening.) Second generation bioenergy crops such as willow and Miscanthus) have a good carbon balance, but only if no or very little nitrogen fertiliser is used.

Some long–term opportunities for reducing nitrous oxide emissions were suggested. For example, Liz Baggs and colleagues at the new James Hutton Institute (also a subject of this blog post) have a range of barley varieties that seem to emit different amounts of N₂O.

But, at the moment, as I and Lars Bakken said at the meeting, the best practical options to mitigate N₂O release are managing soil pH and excess nitrogen inputs, and maintaining good soil structure to avoid soils becoming saturated with water and depleted of oxygen.

About Professor Keith Goulding

Professor Keith Goulding joined Rothamsted Research in 1974 after completing a Master’s degree in Soil Chemistry at Reading University and then a PhD in soil chemistry at Imperial College in 1980. He studies how plant foods (nutrients) in soils become available to growing plants and the best ways of augmenting these with fertilisers and manures without polluting air and water. He is a visiting Professor at the University of Nottingham, a Fellow of the Institute of Professional Soil Scientists and a Chartered Scientist. He was awarded the Royal Agricultural Society of England’s (RASE) Research Medal in 2003 for his research into diffuse pollution from agriculture and elected an Honorary Fellow of the RASE in 2010. He received a Nobel Peace Prize certificate for his contribution to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for which the Panel and Al Gore were jointly awarded the Prize in 2007. He is currently Vice–President of the British Society of Soil Science.

One of the items on the G8 agenda at the 37th summit being held May 26-27 in Deauville, France, is the transition to a green economy. Agriculture can play a substantial role in helping to stimulate growth, secure rural livelihoods and reduce poverty in an environmentally sustainable manner.

Prior to the G8 summit, Farming First has launched an online infographic The Story of Agriculture and the Green Economy. Using data from leading research organisations, the infographic tells the story of agriculture’s potential contribution to building a green economy, through more sustainable supply chains, knowledge-sharing, innovation and improved food security. It aims to demonstrate to world leaders that their priorities of both feeding a growing population and building a green economy can be addressed through agriculture.

Agriculture is a top economic driver. Image: Farming First

In 2009, the G8 made a pledge of $22 billion to food security by 2012.  Two years on, and with their commitments yet to be achieved, G8 leaders need to make concrete, transparent plans to fulfil their pledges to tackle food security and food price volatility, as well as contributing to the realisation of a green economy. This ‘double-win’ should take top priority for policymakers.

Agriculture’s solutions

Farmers are key to the future of a green economy.  They grow the crops needed to feed, clothe and produce energy for the world. By investing in farmers today, we can meet the needs of 9 billion people in 2050.

In his recent book The New Harvest, Harvard professor Calestous Juma identifies three major opportunities that could transform agriculture in Africa into a force for economic growth: advances in science and technology, the creation of regional markets in Africa, and more entrepreneurship. These three principles can be applied to agriculture across the world. 

As a sector, agriculture is critical to people’s livelihoods, accounting for 37 per cent of the world’s labour force. Of these, 97 per cent live in developing countries, where it is women farmers who grow the majority of food. Most of these farmers practice subsistence agriculture. Farmers need access to key inputs and training in better agronomic practices that will help them to improve the quantity, quality and diversity of their crops and combat changing weather patterns, soil degradation and pest problems. By investing in storage facilities to reduce post-harvest losses, transport links to access markets and communications systems to share knowledge, farmers can more reliably increase the amount of crops they grow and bring to market.  Better business boosts farmers’ incomes and stimulates local business, and has a ripple effect into the community, helping to improve local food security.

In the wider landscape, more sustainable agricultural practices can help protect the environment and the habitats within it. Worldwide, agriculture accounts for 34% of the land area and 70% of water consumption. A variety of practices, such as conservation agriculture, and technologies such as drip irrigation or improved rainwater harvesting, can help manage natural resources more sustainably. By increasing crop yields, natural habitats are protected from being cultivated, and forests can continue to capture carbon and mitigate overall emissions related to climate change.

From knowledge to action

Our infographic provides evidence of agriculture’s importance for demonstrating the complementary link between the environment and growth, and yet the sector is a victim of underinvestment.

G8 leaders need to support advances in agricultural research and development to further our progress towards the goals of food security and the green economy. Governments need to address the uptake gap that leaves the most vulnerable farmers unable to access the agricultural innovations that could radically change their productivity and their livelihoods.

Agricultural policies should be science-based and farmer-centred, allowing for a mosaic of solutions to be available from which farmers may choose according to their local needs.

About Isabelle Coche

Isabelle Coche is from CropLife International and is a Farming First spokesperson.

I recently spent several years investigating the environmental impact of livestock production for a book called Meat: A Benign Extravagance, which stimulated the debate on the real carbon foot print of rearing animals for food, particularly when the Guardian’s George Monbiot wrote his ‘Let them eat meat – but farm it properly’ critique.

The first lesson I learnt was not to trust any of the statistical clichés that are passed around like a relay baton. For example, the commonly cited figure of 100,000 litres of water required to produce a kilo of beef is nonsense: it refers to the total amount of rain falling upon the land grazed by the cow, rain which would fall – and drain away or be transpired or excreted by living creatures – whether or not the cow was on the field.

Similarly, the inefficiency of livestock at converting vegetable food into animal protein is habitually exaggerated by opponents of meat eating. Globally, for every kilo of meat or dairy protein produced, approximately 1.4 kilos of vegetable protein are ingested by livestock. Since meat protein is viewed by many consumers and food analysts to be superior, and since meat provides variety in a diet, this level of inefficiency is arguably acceptable.

The FAO’s calculation that livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of anthropogenic carbon emissions is, at the very least, a heavily massaged statistic. Most of the CO2 emissions they attribute to all livestock are derived by applying out of date emissions for Amazon deforestation caused by beef cattle which comprise barely one per cent if the world’s livestock. Their figures for methane and nitrous oxide take account of the emissions caused by livestock, but do not factor in the replacement nitrous oxide and methane emissions that would occur if we did not farm livestock, such as nitrous oxide from the fertilizer needed to replace manure to produce crops, or the methane emitted by wild animals or forest fires resulting from undergrazing.

The correct figure is more likely to be 10 per cent or even less. So why do the FAO economists plug the inflated figure of 18 per cent? It appears to be because they want to depict extensive livestock, especially cattle, as the villain of the piece and so argue that intensive farming of pigs and poultry in factory farms is a more viable alternative.

Less is more

Once one has winnowed out all this anti-livestock and anti-ruminant bias, the fact remains that the model of livestock farming currently pursued in the industrialized countries is flagrantly unjust and unsustainable.

To feed the entire world the levels of meat currently enjoyed in the USA, Europe and the OECD countries would require massive quantities of grain to be fed to livestock wastefully at a conversion efficiency of about four to one.

My key conclusion is that within every agro-economy there is a certain amount of meat – what I call default livestock production – that has very little environmental impact because it is basically a byproduct of an agricultural system designed to produce grains and other vegetable products. This includes meat from livestock such as pigs and poultry fed on crop residues and food waste, cattle, sheep or goats fed on grass or legumes that are an integral part of the arable rotation, and animals fed on surplus grain necessary to provide a buffer in the event of a poor harvest.

Any meat consumption above the default level requires dedicated feed crops to be fed to livestock at an inefficient rate, involving extravagant use of land, fertilizer and water. To provide this diet for all of the world’s nearly seven billion people is not sustainable; and to feed, as we do, vast quantities of grain to livestock to provide luxury goods for consumers in industrialized countries is manifestly unjust when a billion people in the world are undernourished.

About Simon Fairlie

Simon Fairlie worked for 20 years as (among others) an agricultural labourer, vine-worker, shepherd and fisherman. He was co-editor of The Ecologist magazine for four years before joining a community farm in 1994 for 10 years. He now runs Chapter 7, an organization that provides planning advice to smallholders and low income people in the countryside and is the editor of The Land, an occasional magazine about land rights.

It’s time to engage the public with the difficult choices that lie ahead, says Les Firbank.

Food and farming have rarely been away from the headlines in recent years. One of the ongoing themes has been the alleged departure of modern food production and distribution from so-called ‘natural’ practices. We have seen it in the controversies over genetically modified (GM) crops, the rapid spread of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001, and the risks to human health from BSE in cows and salmonella in chicken eggs.

But as concerns rise about food security and prices, it’s becoming clear that agriculture must try to square the circle between increased production of abundant, nutritious, safe food and maintaining the environment in a more crowded world. Unfortunately, this is far from easy and may require a rethink of public attitudes to food and farming.

For example, everyone agrees that we shouldn’t waste food by giving it to crop pests. So what’s so wrong with insecticides? The days of Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ are long behind us; current pesticides, when applied correctly, are much more environmentally benign, are applied in lower doses, are well regulated and levels of residues on food are well below safety levels.

Alternatively, many crops worldwide have a gene that kills those beetle larvae foolish enough to eat them, reducing pesticide use. This gene comes from soil bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis, and has been introduced into the crops using genetic modification.

Genetic modification is hardly natural; the present generation of GM crops were developed by moving genes from one species to another, and it is possible to create ‘designer’ genes from scratch. But nor is current conventional plant breeding; this often involves using radiation or chemicals in a scattergun approach to generate lots of random mutations. Why should some methods be more acceptable than others?

Difficult decisions

We want to be environmentally friendly. During the 1990s, this seemed to be a simple matter; organic farms were good because, typically, they are home to more wild plants and animals.

Now the choices are becoming more complex: the higher levels of biodiversity can come at the price of lower productivity, and slow-growing livestock release more greenhouse gases (PDF) (GHG) in their lifetime than do those in more intensive systems.

More environmentally-friendly livestock systems of the future may involve keeping the animals indoors: productive, good for GHG emissions and control of pollution into watercourses, but hardly consistent with current ideas of more ‘natural’, free-range farming.

Furthermore, the increasing global demand for meat and dairy products is being met largely by feeding livestock with crops grown on land that could be used to grow crops for people, using fossil-fuel based fertilisers that take a lot of energy to produce. Should we try to use more food wastes in livestock feed, even though such practices led to the outbreak of the cattle disease BSE?  Or is it simply too much to expect that we can meet the rising demand for affordable meat sustainably?

Looking at food labels and marketing material from the food industry, it would be easy to assume that much of our food comes from small, family farms raising a few crops and a few happy, smiling animals. This is a very nostalgic view of productive, environmentally-friendly agriculture that, for the most part, is decades behind us.

We may well need radical changes in the way food is produced if we are to produce abundant nutritious food in an environmentally sustainable way; radical changes that are likely to appear even less natural, even further removed from farming stereotypes. A new generation of food controversies is bound to emerge.  

The food debate is already high on the agenda. Now we need to move on from discussing the issues one at a time and engage the public in the difficult choices ahead.

About Les Firbank

Les Firbank has worked for many years on the relationships between agriculture and the environment. He led the UK Farm Scale Evaluations of GM Crops and has researched the impacts of organic farming on wildlife. He is one of the team undertaking the forthcoming UK National Ecosystem Assessment and is currently based at the University of Leeds.