2025 saw the hottest summer on record: drought conditions, reduced harvest yields to their lowest for 5 years, winter feed stock already being fed to supplement for hungry livestock short of pasture, and since then we have had record-breaking rainfall followed by widespread and devastating flooding of farmland.
With the knock-on effect toward even greater food inflation and a UK Government policy apparently tilting against farming and business communities in both the Treasury and DEFRA. Furthermore, neither seem to be aware of how essential British Agriculture’s role is in National Food Security, landscape management, nature recovery, productivity and profitability: all necessary for delivering a thriving rural economy.
So a difficult starting point to identifying what sustainable farming is – often quoted as a goal worth striving for by many environmentalists, specialist advisors and policymakers alike. But in reality very few periods in agricultural history have seen genuine lengths of stability or sustainability. Historically it was post-war periods and occasional events such as the early- to mid-Victorian era that gave rise to a strong demand for food, allowing profitability, investment and innovation in machinery, farmstead buildings, land and forestry. Better soil management and cropping techniques, cross breeding livestock bloodlines and early mechanisation were all signs of true farming stability.
However, not withstanding the two World Wars and the Great Depression of the 1930’s, successive years of greater home-grown produce continued to outstrip demand, partly through advancing research and development in the 1950’s, ‘60’s and 70’s, leading to many western governments adopting a cheap food policy through subsidised food production – a model typified by the European Union’s notorious Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – and based upon the five principles of the Treaty of Rome to both support agricultural production and guarantee supply of affordable food to the consumer.
Now, post Brexit and after the end of the DEFRA Transition of support from the CAP to our own UK Domestic Agricultural Policy (DAP), now all support in the new scheme is channelled toward Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMs) – ‘Public Funds for Public Goods’ – plus a promised Sustainable Farming Incentive – and we still find ourselves at the mercy of an unstable global marketplace. Furthermore, with sub-standard imports guided in through low tariffs from various free trade deals to threaten our dwindling self-sufficiency reserves, and all in a time of World instability through multiple war zones, we see farmer confidence at an all-time low.
So how can we rebuild that confidence toward a new era of sustainable farming? Maybe the answer lies with the next generation of forward-thinking farmers and land managers. Acutely aware of increasingly stark predictions by climate scientists who predict a ‘perfect storm’ by 2050 – the triple threat of 2 degree temperature rise, water depletion and exponential migration as well as world population rising to 10 billion in just 25 harvests, concentrates the minds and offers a golden opportunity for sustainable farming to become a key part of the solution rather than the ‘blame culture’ of the perceived problem.
Evidence of this change and movement toward more regenerative farming methods can be clearly identified by the engagement and willingness to adopt such methods within the next generation. Determined to do things differently from their disillusioned parents and grandparents, they desire to capture the best practise of their forefathers and incorporate it with today’s smart technology. They have a greater understanding of soil health without relying on chemical intervention, crop rotations to combat new disease challenges, restoring and working with nature for the benefit of the wider ecosystem, farming less intensively with reduced inputs and lowering overall carbon footprints.
Adapting to climate change and its associated weather extremes by growing more drought-resistant deep rooting plants such as Chicory, Lucerne or Alfalfa and novel protein crops, together with smarter on-farm solutions to mitigate soil erosion and local property flooding by ‘slowing the flow’ of high rainfall run-off and, conversely, measures to better capture water through rooftop rainwater harvesting and investment in on-farm reservoir storage. New methodology? – or a return to practises of old where every farm had effective drainage systems and ponds…
Ultimately, for farming to return to long-term sustainability we need an acceptance by every government and society in general that for us to both manage and maximise the full benefit of farmland, whilst equally protecting our precious soils, through food production and the appropriate positioning of renewable energy to match the demands of society, all have to be balanced without any political interference and with a fair return from the marketplace to match the true cost of its production. Only then, when in profit, can the business of farming start to feel confident to invest in the future of sustainable agriculture. We live in hope….
Martin Howlett
Beef & Sheep Livestock & Arable Farmer.
Tamar Valley National Landscape Partnership Chairman.
Cornwall & IOS Local Nature Partnership Board Member.
Cornwall National Farmers Union – Environmental Rep.