Farming, Food and Nature by Joyce D'Silva Carol McKenna

Author:Joyce D'Silva,Carol McKenna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2018-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

A healthy and sustainable future

Despite the visible separation affecting our current thinking, I have always believed that it is possible, if we farm in harmony with nature, for the vast community of bacteria, fungi, soil-invertebrates, wild flowers, insects, amphibians, birds and small mammals to coexist in a balanced way with a food production system – even if the farmer, in this case me, is determined to produce as much food as possible.

Britain’s conservation organisations recently acknowledged in their State of Nature report that despite their best intentions to design stewardship schemes to protect our wild plants and animals, there has been a relentless decline in all the key indicator species over the last 50 years (Hayhow, Burns, Eaton et al., 2016). All this raises the question of whether there is a better way of encouraging an abundance of wildlife on Britain’s farms? And that is where direct observations of my own farm, 40 years after its establishment, can be drawn upon.

Regrettably my own farm in Calon Wen in Wales has not been subject to biodiversity audits over the last four decades; thus my observations are not based upon good science, and not peer-reviewed. Nevertheless, they provide at least anecdotal evidence of the point I’m trying to get across. Come and stand in our yard and listen to the incredible abundance of bird song, or take a plunge, as I do most days, in our spring-fed farm pond and witness the incredible diversity of nature, including hundreds of freshly metamorphosed toads and mating dragonflies crawling up the banks, all flourishing in the very heart of our farm. It’s not that we’ve got every species in the book, but I’m certain that we have much higher numbers of birds, such as house sparrows, starlings, chaffinches, owls, tits, swallows and birds of prey that feed on the lower links in the food chain, including the countless species of insects (which gravitate to our cow pats) which aren’t, of course, killed by wormers such as Ivermectin, and which proliferate and coexist where nitrogen fertiliser and pesticides are not used.

Why is this the case? Because if you farm in harmony with nature, without the use of chemical inputs, each field becomes a food source, rather than a monoculture of ryegrass, or wheat, or oilseed rape, where virtually nothing lives except the cultivated plant.

There are other changes needed to ensure a sustainable, and economically viable future for farmers in the UK. A return to mixed farming, involving a fertility-building phase, primarily of grass and legumes, accompanied by grazing ruminants, is part of the solution. In terms of addressing climate change and nutritional quality, contrary perhaps to widespread public opinion, grass-fed ruminants are nutritionally and environmentally part of the solution. We must avoid throwing out the grass-fed ruminant baby with the bathwater of feedlot beef and industrial livestock production. Instead, it is important that we are able to differentiate between livestock systems that are part of the solution and those that are part of the problem.

I strongly believe that a healthy diet should work backwards from the most sustainable way to farm.

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