Understand food and the issues farmers face

I RECENTLY visited the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum (one of my favourites).

Beautifully situated in the South Downs National Park, the museum has gathered together hundreds of old buildings from the south of England and rebuilt them in a spacious parkland setting.

Tudor cottages, Georgian farmhouses, Victorian railway workers’ cottages, schoolhouses and chapels all find a place. It’s fascinating to wander in and out and imagine what it must have been like to live in these buildings so long ago.

One thing is clear: These people had a much closer connection to the land and their food supply than I do. For me, and I guess for most people, food supply is “can I get it at the supermarket?” The vagaries of the weather, whether the harvest this year was good or bad, are something I have the luxury not to have to think about. But for our ancestors, whether they had a good crop this year or not was the difference between being comfortably fed and starving.

A survey of children and young people conducted by the British Nutrition Foundation showed, amusingly, how disconnected they were from the source of their food, with many uncertain of where much of their food came from, beyond the supermarket.

Children confidently asserted that cheese came from plants, fish fingers were made of chicken — surely the clue is in the name? — while pasta was made from animals. Even among teenagers, 11 per cent thought tomatoes grew underground and 27 per cent that fruit pastilles counted as one of your five-a-day (they wish!).

Even the Government was until recently so complacent about food supply that its food security policy was called “Leave it to Tesco” confident that, no matter what, the big supermarkets would fill their shelves with an abundance of food from every corner of the earth.

Tesco, incidentally, were not amused by suddenly finding themselves responsible for Government policy, issuing a firm rebuttal.

They pointed out that there were urgent issues in UK agriculture to safeguard, not just food supply, but the environment on which food security is based.

Improving soil health, animal welfare, protecting forests and habitats was the proper business of government, they pointed out, not commercial organisations. I’m not a farmer and my knowledge of farming, such as it is, has been gleaned from The Archers on Radio 4 and two wonderful trips to the Yeo Valley organic farm in Somerset.

But even I can see that farming is a difficult business with many farms operating on low margins, grappling with supermarket contracts and constantly shifting government policy. And this is before even considering the changing weather patterns brought about by climate change.

In January, the House of Lords published a report bringing together the predicted results of climate change on UK farming. It doesn’t make for good reading. Although rising temperatures may make for new opportunities — for example vineyards, of which we have several in this area including one on the outskirts of Henley along the Fair Mile, the general picture for UK agriculture is higher temperatures bringing increased risk of pests and diseases, soil health deterioration, drought, yield reductions for crops and heat stress for livestock.

Oxfordshire is a largely rural county — 74 per cent of the county land area is farmland. So it’s encouraging to see that the Climate Change Adaptation Route Map for Oxfordshire 2025-2030, published by Oxfordshire County Council, includes a specific section for farmers recognising that climate change poses risks to the types of crops that can be grown.

Raising awareness of alternatives or ways to protect existing crops would, therefore, be beneficial from a food and economic perspective.

I got an insight into what it is like to be on the sharp end of grappling with changing weather patterns while trying to feed the nation by speaking to some local farmers about how climate change is affecting their farms.

This spring was one of the warmest and sunniest on record in the UK. Local sheep farmer, Sam Austin, is already experiencing the adverse effects of prolonged drought. His sheep are becoming more prone to fly-strike, a painful parasitic disease, and the shortage of grass on his pastures meaning that food has to be bought in, at considerable cost.

Iain Tolhurst has a small organic farm on the Hardwick Estate in Whitchurch where he has farmed for more than 50 years. He is well known for his work on sustainable farming and was awarded an MBE for it.

Iain pointed out that there is “weather” and there is “climate”. Weather changes day to day while climate is about the longer-term average. It is the long-term trends that are important and he has definitely seen changes in the climate with a steadily warming trend.

Like most fruit and vegetable growers he has invested in irrigation systems to help him through prolonged periods of drought. He also believes his sustainable farming system has helped him to build resilience to climate change.

The farm uses no external fertilizers, instead relying on building soil health within the farm by encouraging fungi and bacteria naturally within the soil. By ensuring the soil is always covered with a crop or green manure he prevents soil nutrients being leached by rain. Encouraging natural predators and plant resistance means he doesn’t need to use pesticides or herbicides either, restoring the natural balance of nature.

Iain’s farm produces delicious fruit and vegetables at a much lower carbon footprint than conventional produce and can be bought at the Veg Shed on his farm. He has an organic veg box scheme at www.
tolhurstorganic.co.uk

Some good news…

China is the biggest emitter of global warming gases so it’s especially good to see that in April, its wind and solar capacity for power generation exceeded capacity from fossil fuels for the first time. Simultaneously China’s imports of coal dropped by 18 per cent as renewables cut into coal-fired power generation.

China is investing in renewable energy, currently building nearly twice as much wind and solar capacity as the rest of the world combined and has committed to reaching “peak emissions” by 2030 and net zero by 2060.