January is conference season for the farming industry. The long standing Oxford Farming Conference’s (OFC) theme is ’embracing change’, with views being offered from the DEFRA Minister Michael Gove and balanced by thoughtful presentations from a variety of practitioners and academics. It promises lively debate, as do the delegates for the alternative assembly at the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC), a more iconoclastic, alternative and eco-centric gathering, held in parallel with its big brother. The latter, given my interest in nature conservation, is to be my destination.
Change can be as exciting as it can be controversial. Despite appearances to the contrary, it is a continuous process in farming at every level, from the arms race with nature in the fight against pests and diseases to embracing the modern environmental imperative. Changing economic conditions, personal circumstances and political vacillation add to the challenge. The ability to weather change external to the business must come from the ability to effect change from within. Farmers are good at harnessing technology and diversifying their incomes. Good management, well defined and enumerated, is an essential farming tool. That is how most of us tackle change.
If I was the organiser for either of the conferences I would suggest a theme based on ’embracing continuity’. I would have keynote speakers on ancient trees, the biology of undisturbed soils, naturalistic grazing systems and the science of producing the world’s food from only 10% of the global land mass. In my audience I would plant a question for the minister along the lines of how we protect the irreplaceable and reward productive long-termism, how policy can protect the good activity from change, and foster productive changes that are already underway.
A Darwinian minded speaker would exhort evolution from the survival of the fittest and a philosopher would seek to define this in terms not just relating to financial outcome. The fitness definition should include the ability of the business not just to make profit but to leave its natural capital in a better condition for future generations.
Our own local South of England Agricultural Society held its conference in November, focusing on where farming will be in 50 years. Speakers from within the industry spoke of technical challenge and future technology, soils and family succession. I listened happily, cocooned in the ivory tower that is agriculture. However, my mind’s eye conjured an image of the Fastnet lighthouse, perched on its singular rock withstanding the full force of the Atlantic – economic storms, gales of nature loss and squalls of unsustainability all blowing powerfully. Oddly, nobody present stood to champion the notion that the mighty structure should be reinforced to encompass a seismic land use change to deliver biodiversity, belying the clarion call for this that comes not just from the inner farming community but even louder from the population at large, who underpin our markets.
On our own farm, in 50 years, I see my children and grandchildren running the operation, harvesting naturally produced meat coming from an area of wilderness to which birds and insects have returned in swarms. Wet woods managed by beavers, herb rich meadows interspersed with reedbeds containing bitterns will form the environment of the estate. To achieve this utopia I ask for change to deliver an unwavering continuity of commitment to protecting the finance and policy that can make it possible. It is not so much change that is needed, but determination and long-term vision.
Farmers love old sayings, and my father often told me that ‘fine words butter no bread”, a sentiment shared by the usually practical farming community. Yet the conference season is a sell-out, the minister is there to listen and all is to play for as a new domestic agricultural policy is being formulated. My prediction is some change and some continuity, and a hope that so much good that is starting to be done on farms round the country will not be undone… that the baby will not be thrown out with the bathwater!
