Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
New research demonstrates – again – how deceptive the concepts of productivity and efficiency are in agriculture. Huge increases in labor productivity and modest increases in land productivity are gained by a massive increase of use of external resources, while natural capital is depleted. Is that efficient?
Perhaps I should essay a brief report here on things I heard and learned at the 2018 Oxford Real Farming Conference that I attended a couple of weeks back. If I try to lay it all out in connected prose I’ll probably come grinding to a halt after about 5,000 words, so I thought I’d present it mostly in the form either of little news snippets or of one-sentence assertions…the latter being things I heard people say, or thoughts I had while listening at the conference.
I am in no position to understand contemporary high level Brexit debate, argument and ultimately the compromises that will need to be made, but I do want to spend a little time drawing together some thoughts, reflections and evidence on the place of farming and gardening in feeding us into the future as our government negotiates on our behalf in these central areas of policy making.
My guess is that traditional mixed farming strategies will come into their own again if, as seems likely, we move towards a more energy and phosphate constrained future.
There’s a lot of agitated Facebook chatter among my political friends locally about the labyrinthine tactical voting logics and ways of trying to stop Brexit in its tracks, while others claim to feel politically homeless and unrepresented by the political parties. What, only just now? Ah well, let’s get an election post out of the way…
We therefore present here a blueprint for a new agricultural support scheme for the UK, drawn up by The Land and the Land Workers’ Alliance. It is based on work carried out on behalf of the European Greens, and a longer exposition of these suggestions is available online.
Many sustainable farming practices offer an alternative, bringing increased opportunities for knowledge sharing, co-working and often a greater level of appreciation from consumers, local communities and the public.
While there remains a good deal of uncertainty, it is clear to me that Brexit provides an opportunity to advocate for a more sustainable approach to agriculture, to boost its profile on what will be a new national policy agenda for food and farming.
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We no longer have rights to share this content as Seedstock are moving to a subscription model. As of 21/12/16, this content is still available to view at this link.
The conflict in Syria and the rise of Isis have displaced half a nation of people and generated the largest humanitarian crisis in the world today.
Report shows that small farms provide most of the world’s food because they are often much more productive than large corporate farms, yet the land available to them is shrinking.
