Jules Pretty is Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex, Colchester. He is author of The Living Land (1998) and Regenerating Agriculture (1995), co-author of Unwelcome Harvest (1991) and Fertile Ground (1999), and author of the forthcoming One Last Agricultural Revolution (2002).
Ever since its beginnings some ten to twelve thousand years ago, agriculture has passed through long periods of stability punctuated by bursts of rapid change. Such revolutions have led to the emergence of collective water management in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Bali; water harvesting in the deserts of Roman north Africa and the north American south-west; forest farming by the Mayans and peoples of south east Asia; our own agricultural revolution of the 1700-1800s; and of course modern industrialised farming in the post-war period of the mid-twentieth century. Once again, the time for major change is upon us.
The immediate context for this is the devastation caused by the foot and mouth crisis, following hard on BSE and other food safety concerns. The farming sector is in undoubted crisis. But the longer term context is provided by the gradually accumulated evidence of the social and environmental costs of industrialised agriculture. The Government is committed by its manifesto to setting up an independent Commission on Farming to examine the future of the sector. Now is the time for fundamental reform.
For a decade or more, we have tinkered with policies and practices. Now we need nothing less than a wholesale reconstruction, based on radical thinking. This short paper sets out a five point plan.
The present pass
Throughout the history of agriculture, many commentators and farmers themselves have contributed to such thinking in timeless and classic texts – those that define a moment, or characterise the ideas and emotions underpinning a whole rural culture. Marcus Cato’s Di Agri Cultura did it 2200 years ago; Jethro Tull, Robert Bakewell and Arthur Young did it in the 1700s; Stella Gibbons and her Cold Comfort Farm did it for the depression of the 1930s; and most famously, Rachel Carson did it in the 1960s with Silent Spring. The most recent contribution is Andrew O’Hagan’s extended essay The End of British Farming,1 in which he painfully tells us about 'evidence of what is wrong … in the British land itself', and then asks 'how did we come to this?'
O’Hagan’s stories take us into the kitchens and barns of pig farms in Suffolk, arable farms in Kansas-style landscapes of Sussex, remote hill farms in Cumbria, and finally to a sheep farm in the Scottish borders for the brutal conclusion. For the narrative ends as the hired killers swagger in to destroy a Lockerbie farmer’s prize sheep herd. It is foot and mouth that is this year’s crisis, but it spells the end for some. The herd has been built up over generations, but in one day is destroyed amongst the bickering between vets, killers and Army logicians, and there’s blood all over the floor.
O’Hagan’s account is shocking and compelling. He describes the end of British farming as we have known it.
For most of human history, the daily lives of humans have been played out close to the land. For a hundred thousand generations, we were hunters and gatherers. We have been agriculturalists for five hundred generations, industrialised for eight to ten, and have had industrialised agriculture for just two. Once again, the time has come to change from one system to another, to replace the bad with the good, and to find ways to define exactly what we want from our rural, farming and food systems. In this process we will come to see modern industrialised farming, I believe, as a temporary diversion.
Paying the price
Over recent decades we have unquestionably become very good at producing food. The past fifty years have seen British wheat yields increase from 2.6 to 8 tonnes per hectare, barley from 2.6 to 5.8 t/ha, and daily milk yields per cow more than double. But at the same time, the number of farms has decreased from 439,000 to 240,000 – that is eleven farms for every one of those 18,000 days. And the labour required to produce this food has fallen dramatically. A great success – but only if your measurements of efficiency are narrow.
For the costs of industrialised farming have simultaneously been very severe. Modern agriculture has caused significant pollution from pesticide and nitrate leakage. This costs £135 million each year to remove from drinking water - costs paid for by water consumers, not by the polluters. (Indeed, the farming sector effectively receives a hidden subsidy by not having to pay to clean up the mess.) It has brought a severe loss of rural biodiversity, from practices such as the removal of hedgerows, monocultural planting patterns and use of pesticides. You have to wonder at the marvellous and extraordinary diversity of foods on the shelves of supermarket stores, in comparison with the modernised mono-landscape of much of our countryside. We have the food, but no longer the skylarks or poppies or corncrakes. And industrialised farming has led to harm to human health through BSE, pathogens and antibiotic overuse. Overall, the total costs of environmental and health damage from agriculture are estimated to be £1-2 billion a year2.
For these reasons it is entirely wrong to think – as we have for so long been told – that we have a ‘cheap food’ policy. Food only appears to be cheap when we focus on the price in the shop. In fact, each of us pays in three different ways for our food. First at the till. Second via taxes for subsidies - an entirely legitimate and progressive way to keep down food prices, incidentally, as the wealthy pay more tax, and the poorest spend proportionally more of the income on food. And third to clean up the environmental and health problems of modern agriculture. In truth, food is expensive, and the sooner we appreciate this fact the better.
Crazy economics
The economics of farming today are crazy. A savoy cabbage costs 13 pence to produce, is sold by the farmer for 11p, and by the supermarket for 47p. A Suffolk farmer can own 2000 pigs but still not make any money. Best beef is sold at auction today for 79p per kilo, when in 1995, before the confirmed link between BSE and new variant CJD, it received almost double.
In fact, for every pound we spend in the shop now on food and drink, just 9p in that pound gets back to farmers and rural communities. Half a century ago, it was between 10 and 12 shillings (50-60p) in the pound. Yet at the same time farming as a whole receives £3 billion of public subsidies each year. We spend more on food, the profits of food manufacturers and supermarkets rise (the profits of the big four supermarkets rose 38 per cent in the four years to 1999), and less and less trickles down to farmers. Is there any wonder that they and the countryside are in trouble?
A radical reconstruction
It is our narrow thinking that has led us down this road to crisis. And there is no going back. It is no longer enough to lightly green the edge of farming, making it slightly more environmentally-friendly to suit a few marginal environmentalists. Or of making occasional nods to those concerned about animal welfare, or rural jobs, or food quality and safety. The change in thinking and practice must now be radical.
The question we must ask is: what is farming for? To produce food, yes; but also to produce many other goods. It is the positive side-effects of farming that offer a new way forward. More sustainable farming is very good at producing public goods – things we can all enjoy and that contribute to the economy. Farming produces landscapes we want to visit and enjoy. Each year, day visitors and tourists spend 700 million days in the countryside, bringing in vitally-important spending money. Farming can also absorb carbon in soils and trees to provide new carbon sinks, thus helping to mitigate climate change. It can hold water in wetlands to provide flood control. It can produce the farmland birds we all feel are part of our heritage. It contributes to rural jobs. Many of these may end up being significant new sources of money for farmers.
This is the future for farming – as a multifunctional sector, building natural and social assets in the countryside, whilst providing us with wholesome food sourced from farms we trust.
This will, of course, require reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy. But we have known that for twenty years. The CAP is today’s Godot, and waiting for it to change incrementally to a more sustainable system will send farming and the countryside to an early grave. The British Government must continue to press for CAP reform, but must not let failure act as an alibi. The British Government spends £3 billion each year on nationally-determined agricultural priorities. It can change these now.
Sustainable agriculture must become the primary goal for agricultural and rural policy. A more sustainable agriculture seeks to make the best use of nature’s goods and services as functional inputs. It does this by integrating regenerative processes (such as nutrient cycling, nitrogen fixation, soil regeneration and natural enemies of pests) into food production processes. It minimises the use of inputs that damage the environment or harm human health. Put simply, it is agriculture that minimises negative externalities and maximises the positive side-effects. To move towards the goal of sustainable agriculture I propose a five point national plan for reconstruction.
A five point plan
1. Switch subsidies from production to the multifunctional side-effects of farming
Both the CAP and national subsidies need entirely to be switched from being production-based to providing positive incentives for land management with social, economic and environmental benefits. This can be done by offering direct subsidies for adoption of sustainable methods. An important policy principle suggests that it is more efficient to promote practices that do not damage the environment rather than spending on cleaning up after a problem has been created. Some agri-environment schemes have been extremely successful at supporting farm transformations that produce both private benefits for farmers and public ones for the environment and rural communities. Farmers who produce public goods that all can enjoy, whether biodiversity, landscapes, clean water or flood protection, deserve public support. Under current rules, a fifth of government support can be switched to the Rural Development Regulation for these purposes, as the French have done. In the UK, it is less than 5 per cent. Establishing this clear principle inevitably leads to the need for fundamental reform of the CAP.
In particular, such subsidies must provide preferential support to family farms over large agri-businesses. Current agri-environmental programs help large farms more than small farms. Operators of large units can afford to farm at least some of their land less intensively, in return for stewardship payments, whereas for many operators of small units, the payments are not generous enough for them to be able to forego intensive production techniques. Support payments must be designed to benefit smaller farmers.
Current agri-environmental schemes have contributed greatly to ‘greening the edges’ of agriculture. Losses of bird habitat, historic features, and natural and scenic landscapes have been substantially reduced. Where most of these schemes fall short is in restoring the farmland biodiversity that was lost during the twentieth century. Where mixed crop-livestock farming has dramatically decreased and crop systems have narrowed to two or three main cash crops, the schemes have failed to restore diversity. What is needed is an aggressive effort to restore legume-based rotations in arable areas through the creation of a targeted scheme to help underwrite this effort. Such a scheme would have multiple benefits, one of which is the reduction of externalities caused by high application rates of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, a reduction in soil erosion and related productivity losses, and beneficial wildlife habitat provided by a more biologically diverse crop rotations.
2. Develop a new ‘Greener Food Standard’
Organic farming is now established in the market-place. But not all farmers feel able to make the jump in practices and thinking to organic farming. The price premium for organic food also takes it out of the reach of many consumers. There is therefore a strong case for a new intermediate food standard – what might be called a Greener Food Standard - which would push the market towards more sustainable environmental practices than the current norm while not requiring the full commitment to organic production.
There are of course already a variety of food standards in the marketplace. But none have the integrity and consumer trust associated with the ‘organic’ label. Indeed, the proliferation of such standards makes most consumers simply confused. A single intermediate standard accepted throughout the industry – in the way that European ‘eco-labels’ are now used in other sectors – would eliminate such confusion, giving consumers a powerful steer towards more sustainable food choices. At the same time, it would give farmers more incentive to improve their environmental practices. Such a standard should be based on so-called Integrated Farming Systems, which draw on best practice from conventional and organic methods and integrate farming and land management practices across the whole of each farm.
Clearly the definition of a Greener Food Standard would need detailed negotiation among all stakeholders in the food industry – farmers, retailers, consumers, NGOs, government – but there is every reason to believe that agreement could be reached. The standard would need to comprise agreed practices, for different kinds of farming, covering:
There would need to be an independent system of verification and accreditation such as that run by the Soil Association for organic food. Ultimately it would clearly be desirable for such a standard to become global, like similar environmental standards for forestry and marine products. But a UK standard would be an important start. A Greener Food Standard, based on a substantial transition towards sustainability – the reduction of external costs and the increase in external benefits - could go a long way to shifting both farmers and consumers towards a more sustainable system.
3. Use the tax system to encourage more sustainable farming
Environmental taxes seek to internalise the environmental costs of production, requiring polluters to pay for the damage they cause and thereby providing incentives to reduce it. The market prices for agricultural inputs and products do not currently reflect the full costs of farming. Such green taxes offer the opportunity of a `double dividend’ by cutting environmental damage, particularly from non-point sources of pollution, whilst promoting welfare. Environmental taxes have begun to be applied in many countries: pesticide taxes in Denmark, Finland, Sweden and in several states of the USA; fertilizer taxes in Austria, Finland, Sweden, and again several states of the USA; and manure charges in Belgium and the Netherlands. The government has been consulting on a pesticides tax for three years, but has not yet made a decision. Such a tax should be introduced, and further taxation of other agrochemicals that cause harm to the environment and human health be considered.
One of the advantages of environmental taxes is that the revenues raised can be recycled back into subsidies for environmentally improved practices. In this way environmental problems can be tackled ‘from both ends’. Use of the revenues of this way is also likely to increase the acceptability of the tax.
At the same time it is well established that organic farms and those adding value and/or selling direct to consumers create more jobs than conventional farms. These small businesses can be the driver of rural economic growth. They should be rewarded with reduced tax regimes, through national insurance or council tax rebates. Small rural enterprises below a defined size would be eligible, and would therefore be encouraged to engage in employment-creating activities.
4. Develop new markets for positive side-effects of farming, particularly carbon
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the recent Bonn agreement have established an international context for the reduction of carbon emissions and increases in carbon sinks through the principle of financial and technological transfers to land management. Agriculture can sequester carbon when organic matter is accumulated in the soil, and when above-ground woody biomass acts either as a permanent sink or is used as an energy source (biofuel) that substitutes for fossil fuels. There is now great international interest in carbon trading systems. These need actively to be developed to provide new opportunities for additional farm income, thereby ‘joining up’ the Government’s climate change and farming policies. Systems accumulating carbon also deliver many other public goods, such as improved biodiversity and clean water from watersheds, and policy makers may also seek to price these so as to increase the total payment package.
5. Establish a Royal Commission on Sustainable Food and Farming
Moving our food and farming systems towards sustainability will not be easy. The Government has announced its intention to set up a new Commission to examine the future of the agricultural sector. But a short-term enquiry will not be enough. This should be new a standing Royal Commission on the lines of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Its task would be to address how the sustainability objective in agricultural, food and rural policy can be achieved.
A Royal Commission on Sustainable Food and Farming would examine, for example, how agriculture can be better integrated with development and housing policy in rural areas on ecological principles, and how both better access to the countryside and better protection of important habitats can be achieved. There is a particular need to involve whole rural communities in participatory processes for rural regeneration. Rural economies benefit when stakeholders within the system are connected up so as to help create social capital. A Royal Commission could examine how new social institutions in rural areas might be encouraged, such as farmers’ groups, community co-operatives, or community councils.
At the same time the objective of sustainable agriculture requires a radical rethink of government institutions and the way they work. The new Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (in which 6,000 civil servants from the old MAFF have been brought together with 500 from the former DETR) will need to develop new ways of working, particularly with non-government organisations and civil society groups, and with regional development agencies and local authorities. Getting the institutional mechanisms right will be a key task in the drive towards sustainable agriculture.
Conclusion
It is not all crisis. There are good things happening in farming. Organic farmers employing large numbers of people; farmers’ markets and box schemes to promote direct links between consumers and producers; responsible corporate practice for land stewardship; and careful protection of some of the jewels in the biodiversity crown. But to encourage these developments there can be little doubt now that a fundamental shift in policy must be made. Marcus Cato said this on the first page of his book: “And when our ancestors would praise a worthy person, their praise took this form: good husbandman, good farmer; one so praised was thought to have received the greatest commendation.”
It is time to re-establish the trust and the praise. It will not be easy. But that time has come. It requires nothing less than another agricultural revolution.
Notes
1 Andrew O’Hagan, The End of British Farming, Profile Books and London Review of Books, 2001.
2 Pretty J, Brett C, Gee D, Hine R, Mason C F, Morison J I L, Raven H, Rayment M and van der Bijl G. 2000. An assessment of the total external costs of UK agriculture. Agricultural Systems 65 (2), 113-136; and Pretty J, Brett C, Gee D, Hine R E, Mason C F, Morison J I L, Raven H, Rayment M, van der Bijl G and Dobbs T. 2001. Policy challenges and priorities for internalising the externalities of agriculture. J. Environ. Planning and Manage. 44(2), 263-283 © August 2001 Fabian Society
This paper, like all publications of the Fabian Society, represents not the collective views of the Society but only the views of the author
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