Fitting Sustainable Farming Into a Policy Straightjacket

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Written by Vicki Hird, from Sustain, this is the third blog of the Farming the Future series. Their project; Making Voices Heard is a collaboration between Sustain, The Landworkers Alliance, Pesticide Action Network UK, Sustainable Soils Alliance, and Farming Working Party of the Sustain Alliance.

Each month, the A Team Foundation will be showcasing a grantee from the fund and how the support is helping to achieve their goals and ambitions.

We’ve had a wild two years and it is not calming down. That’s a strange sentence to write as policy work should be calm and logical and evidence-based and so on. But if you combine the challenges of working under an endless Brexit political storm, with reshuffles, a new set of laws and evolving policies, alongside the urgent challenges of a climate and nature emergency and a food system that remains largely wedded to the cheap and nasty – you get wild.

 Our project funded by the Farming the Future programme was called Making Voices Heard and was aimed at ‘Ensuring that ‘Farming the Future’ concerns are embedded in imminent policy, legislation and future farm funding’. It started in the midst of the chaos last year and was an essential resource so we could support those championing better farm policies. We did help make voices heard in the corridors of power and continue to do so. A few thoughts on what’s been achieved so far:

Setting farm policy in the right direction

The Agriculture Bill - the legislation on farm payments and standards to replace the European Common Agriculture Policy - will be the first UK Agriculture Act since 1947. As such it is central to our story. 

When the first iteration of this Bill was published in late 2018 after months of feverish consultation, it was hailed as potential game changer; laying out a new financial support system based on the public paying for specific public goods, like nature and access, plus support for productivity, marketing and even a nod to making supply chains fairer. There were many serious concerns about how the Bill will deliver - particularly as it’s largely powers without accountability, and the lack of a decent budget. 

But it was innovative and held potential in delivering land based carbon savings and other key environment targets. We worked with partners including Landworkers Alliance, Soil Association, CPRE and many others to lobby for changes needed including getting agro-ecology recognised as a key target for support, as well as on public health, soil, ensuring supply chain fairness, worker conditions, strong budgets and many other amendments. We were part of a huge and unprecedented alliance of stakeholders demanding new legal protection from unsustainably produced agri-food imports. It was a fevered time of lobbying where I wished I had a flat next door to Westminster. I lost track of how many oral evidence MPs sessions I’d done and became a serious Ag Bill geek. 

But then it all faded as the Bill stalled and finally fell for a second time at the December Election. The loss of momentum was damaging and also scary for anyone working on the land.

Like a phoenix, a new Bill has been presented and we start again. But this time we were thrilled to see several of our’s and other’s amendments inserted – such as:

•                  inclusion of financial support for soil health, and a mention for agro-ecology, Yay!

•                  significant changes to the Fair Dealing clause to ensure all the supply chain can be covered under the new statutory codes and a few other useful clarifications. A real win.

•                  new requirement on the Secretary of State to deliver multi-annual funding plans and report on progress.

•                  a new requirement to undertake a regular Food security review (though this needs work).

We remain, with all other stakeholders, very concerned at the lack of legal tools to stop the threat of new trade deals undermining our standards and ability to enhance farming and food standards. And it is concerning how much of the Bill still gives the Secretary of State powers not duties so they could, in theory do little. We have given yet more MP evidence sessions and briefings and we are asking them again to table amendments as the Bills moves (faster) through parliament.

Meanwhile, a new farm support scheme is being created

The Environmental Land Management System (ELMS) is the UK’s replacement for the EU farm payment system. It has had 3 years in gestation and is still far from finalised. I have been on stakeholder groups and helped others to inform the design of this vital new scheme – day long ‘deep dives’  into payments methodologies for instance; what should be paid for and how the guidance will work. ELMS has had a hard gestation but given the complexities of creating a whole new scheme to replace the CAP, plus 3 Secretaries of State and numerous Ministerial shifts, it is not surprising.

 We are working to ensure whole farm agro-environmental approaches are not disadvantaged in the new scheme. A new ELMS discussion document was finally, after much delay, launched in February and outlines (some of the detail) of the proposed Scheme for England. The paper is also a discussion document aimed at getting the farm and wider stakeholder community to respond to the current design. There are also several years of tests and trials of the design ideas. We are pleased to work with Landworkers Alliance on a successful bid to undertake one on horticulture farms, agro-ecological issues, and community engagement. 

 At the same time, Defra published a wider farm policy paper which touched on wider policy objectives and proposals including an animal health and welfare pathway, support for productivity, and the new National food Strategy.

National Food Strategy work 

This cross-departmental initiative (commissioned by Michael Gove when at Defra) will be covering the ‘entire food chain from farm to fork’. So we are lobbying hard on agro-ecology and new routes to market alongside other key areas.  Henry Dimbleby, heading this up, has managed to keep the NFS alive through all of the political upheavals and has secured cross-party and cross-sector support. After public engagement this year, the review will publish a final report in winter 2020 with recommendations that will shape a National Food Strategy (as a White Paper) which should ‘be delivered within 6 months’. 

How well this Strategy will get to grips with (and how much the Government will take forward and resource!) the need for a radical reform in farming plus the supply chains and dietary shifts needed to embrace an agri-ecology, fair approach remains to be seen. We have provided evidence and are working with the NFS staff and supporting members in engaging with this initiative. If the NFS acknowledges the truth in the evidence showing the harm of a business as usual approach – then it should shake the whole system up. 

Trade with the EU and the rest of the world is more than chlorine chicken

As previously noted, we’re looking to get amendments into the Agriculture Bill to stop agri-food imports undermining our standards and farmers. Government spokespeople repeat the mantra that food standards will not be undermined but then fail to put in legal constraints and parliamentary oversight to deliver on that assurance. Consumers have repeatedly said they do not want hormone- injected, chlorine-rinsed, antibiotic-intensive food. These processes often mask terrible animal welfare conditions. The UK should be leading the way in high quality, high welfare food, not bending over backwards to please the United States or other countries.

To conclude, if such a thing is possible in these turbulent times, as we have decided to definitely leave the EU and all that entails, some clarity (however unpalatable) is emerging. Some green shoots of hope are sprouting as we work with other stakeholders to help form the new, revolutionary farm schemes and better regulation of supply chains. Yet glowering over our efforts, we have the ever present threat of trade deals designed by the big ag and big food industry and not for our benefit. We also need to make sure  land based climate policies do more good than harm!

Pushing a farm and food  revolution supported by supply chain and consumer/citizen action that’s good for farmers, workers, the environment, animal welfare and our health, remains, as ever, vital. However wild it gets.  

 Follow Vicki on twitter (@vickihird and @UKSustain) and sign up for Sustain farm updates here.

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Vicki Hird, Sustain

Vicki Hird is an award winning author, expert, strategist and senior manager who has been working on environment, food and farming issues for over 25 years. As part- time Sustainable Farm Campaign Coordinator at Sustain, Vicki manages the farm policy and related campaigning and provides comment and guidance on these issues.

She has launched many major food and environment campaigns, from local to global in scope, has blogged frequently and published numerous reports and articles on the sustainability of food systems and published Perfectly Safe to Eat? (Women’s Press 2000).

She has an academic background in pest management and is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and the RSA. Vicki is on the board of Pesticides Action Network, and the Keo Foundation, was chair of the Eating Better Alliance and has sat on numerous government advisory groups over the years. She also runs an independent consultancy undertaking campaigning and research.

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Why is the Precautionary Principle so vital?

By Robert Reed, A Team Foundation

Sustainable food production is the apex between human and environmental health. Being good custodians of our planet gives the inherent benefit to one’s self also. Clean soil, air, and water should create clean food, diets, and overall wellbeing. This is true even if you reverse the chain; wholesome nutrition requires eating healthy and cooking with clean ingredients.

However, this interconnected perspective is still lost amongst the conditioning from the past. Throughout the world, industries and people, work with a silo mentality; a perspective that sees and works within the parameters of only one self-defined area, and everything external of that is considered void. This is an outdated ‘reductionist’ thinking method, ill-suited for the challenges of the 21st century. 

We, as a species, are at a point in our evolution where holistic thinking is the only way forward. Necessity is the mother of all innovation, and from which, new systems are emerging.

The natural environment works in a multidimensional continuum (it all arises simultaneously at once, everywhere), and this patchwork of beings all relate to one another – ourselves included (A wonderful video about interconnectivity in nature: How the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park changed the rivers).

Imagine a wing of an aeroplane, there are many rivets holding it together. If the wing lost one or two rivets during a flight, it will be more-or-less secure and its function in-tact. However, there is a threshold, if enough rivets are removed, the wing (and the plane) loses its functionality. This is the basic premise of environmental collapse. The environment we are a part of.

The environment is a network of innumerable species. This network, the ecosystem, is resilient to all the shocks that we humans place upon it. There are many scientists who claim our actions have brought us to the tipping point of the planetary boundaries; potentially driving Earth into a new state of existence.

Rén - The Chinese symbol for Man

The Chinese symbol for Man has many entertaining interpretations with unity and interconnectedness as a common theme. Created by two lines, the first is propped up by the latter. I see it as Man being propped upwards by the Earth. Others found meaning in how we as humans should treat each other. Either way, it’s a symbol, but for me, it is one that shows the underlining connection to all.

What we do is what happens to us. If we disregard another (be it the environment or another human), the effects return to the source (dressed in a different form).

Thinking in this manner (holism) is one thing, applying it, however, is most definitely a challenge. The reasons why holistic systems are so beneficial is that they are diverse and complex; ironically, the same reasons why there is such resistance to adopt them.

We cannot say that we know with absolute accuracy, what consequences occur from our individual actions. Impacts go beyond our field of vision and our feedback loops, they are external, eternally rippling outwards.

Imagine, therefore, a new product - for ease, let’s say a pesticide - is developed and about to be released, one that has a “successful” potency against certain crop-munching insects. As users, neighbours or customers, we cannot personally guarantee its safety and thus, we place our trust in organisations, certifying bodies and national law so that this product doesn’t cause detrimental harm.

Let’s say those institutions didn’t exist, negative consequences could manifest in many forms. Perhaps when the pesticide is mixed with a different ‘on farm’ chemical it becomes a poisonous substance, or, it may obliterate a specific native population of invertebrates (with larger consequences in the ecosystem and food chain). One stat has been playing on my mind recently; we – Europe as a land mass – have lost 33% of our farmland birds. Why? -  Simply, habitat and food; a loss of hedgerows, wooded areas, insects, worms. What if the bird population falls so far that the decline goes beyond a sustainable threshold? What does that mean to the native plants dependent on seed dispersal through avian digestion? What does it mean for predators? What does it mean for other bird life? For our own pleasure in the morning, how sweet will that dawn chorus be? And in time, what does this mean for our own culture? Ad. Infinitum.

This line of thought is exactly why there is a piece of policy legislation in place called The Precautionary Principle. Where there is insufficient scientific evidence available to make an authoritative decision, the Principle suggests to not go ahead as the risk is either unknown or too high – common sense right?

There is a chance that this piece of policy (along with other environmental protections) may be scrapped during Brexit; opening the doors for the silo thinking. The PP is a preventative against harm when we do not know the extent of the outcome.

In March, the APPG for Agroecology and Dr Rupert Read (University of East Anglia) created briefing papers that highlighted the importance of the Precautionary Principle in Government policy. The briefings inform the ongoing environmental protection debates at the House of Lords, where they are reporting on the amendments to the Government’s EU Withdrawal Bill. There are two papers, one is specific to the House of Lords and the EU Withdrawal Bill, the other focus on the role that the Precautionary Principle has in the context of Climate Change and Animal Welfare.     

The Bill itself omits many environmental safeguards. Debates are already occurring in the House as the overarching dialogue continues until the deadline for reporting; May 8th. There has been an update this week that provides some sense of clarity. On Monday, the Lords defeated the Government. The proposal to make amendments to the EU Withdrawal Bill (that would maintain the environmental protections and human rights) was passed. If enough MPs agree with the amendments, the consequence will mean that the Government must revise the initial EU Withdrawal Bill. 

However, there still remains a gaping hole. When the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, proposed his visions for a ‘Green Brexit’. Mr Gove and his team acknowledged a problem, the current regulator, the European Court of Justice, will not be in effect after Brexit and so, Mr Gove proposed a new watchdog to take its duties. The Government maintain the status that environmental protection will be the role of the watchdog, but what is the use of a watchdog that has no teeth?  

The issue is that the watchdog hasn't materialised due to the opposition from other members of the cabinet. They want to be free to arrange international trade deals as they please, in the name of the economy and industry. And this has the potential to leave the environment wide open to negligent practice.

While these debates are ongoing, the APPG still supplies evidence, while also working on the consultation for the Agriculture Bill; another critical piece of policy work. Meanwhile, Greener UK, (a united front by organisations such as Client Earth, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Woodland Trust to name only a few) are still spearheading the efforts to safeguard the existing environmental protections.

Earlier this month, GreenerUK released this blog post; Green Brexit? Not unless the prime minister stands up to her grey ministers, which acutely sums up that current state of play.

The need for enlightenment continues… well, at least Spring has arrived.

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