What will we all have to eat ? There would be rioting on the streets and farmers would be blamed for food shortages !

they could be right, as oil based fert and chemicalswill be too dear by then.(they are already)

Who ,l wonder, from the Green Party will decide who lives and who dies from starvation if this misguided policy is adopted

Must admit I was quite liking the sound of the Green manifesto up to this point. Would all our food imports need to be organic too, or are they happy to export the problem?

Either way, they are going to make it expensive to take the car out for a KFC family bucket.

Much as I favour organic production, I have done a great deal of research over several decades for a book I will most probably never attempt to publish, and I am convinced (from my research) that it is impossible to feed the world organically unless we reduce the level of the human population to about what it was 200 years ago - maybe 150 allowing for additonal knowledge. It is impossible to permanently sustain agricultural production without at least replacing those nutrients removed by every crop. I did not think that one up myself, it is a simple fact - plant nutrients are not inexhaustible in the soil. Replacing them on a global scale by only organic means is a physical impossibility.

Additonally, and this is what all the pundits in the UK fail to take into account, is that in a "normal" British winter, many pests are killed off. In a "normal" soft-temperate or warmer climate, all these problems survive through the winter and cannot (I use the word advisedly, and with experience) be kept under control by organic methods.

This just goe to show theat the Greens are living on in cloud cockoo land! Theya re simply making promises for the sake of making them wth no real thought as to the implications. But as they have little chance of sending an MP to parliment I guess they have little to loose!

      Pre 1960s, or at least some time in the past, we were more or less all organic farmers anyway. If these methods had been able to fulfill the demands for the future, we would still all be farming that way. No farmer likes to spend money on fertilisers, sprays etc., but where would we be today if the farms were still producing 7 ton per acre potato crops, 30cwt per acre cereal crops, selling off the beef cattle or not producing much milk over winter because of insufficient winter keep.

     I have nothing against organic farming. I wish I could afford to do it. As long as most are farming intensively the organic farmers may struggle to get a price for their product. If we were all organic, then the population would struggle to get a product for their price.

ally, i cant recall any hunger here in the 60,s.

who has benefited from the technological advances? cerytainly not farmers.

food is now cheaper than dirt and farmers are treated like dirt.

the 4 ton wheat crop has put rents up and farmers to the wall.

Glasshouse,

                This Evening a chap approached me outside my Garage and asked me if I would like a Flyer from the Green Party.I told him I did not want his Literature,he then said what was my Address.I remembered Hhs and his Report so I said to him what do you do for a living.He replied that was his Private Business and nothing to do with his representing the Green Party.I told him that my Livelihood and Millions of others together with the thought of Millions being Hungry would be the result of Ideals from Academics who have never had to Earn their Money and never take the replications for their Actions, thoughts or Practices, so how do you earn your living !

 Glasshouse the population of India and China has doubled since 1960,so too has the greater part of the third World,try and grow ten acres of Suds with thirty tns of FYM only,you may have good Fertile Soil up there but you will be lucky to get six or seven tns per acre if we listened to this twadle. Then try and grow one Hundred Acres and see how many Heads you need to produce that amount of FYM and how many Acres you will need to keep them.

  Certain food is cheap: Pop down to Sainsbury's and see the price of Broad Beans ,French Beans,New Potatoes ,Lamb,Beef etc. If you sell Lambs in Autumn you will be robbed,Fat Cattle aussi.Through the Internet Farmers in NZ were able to see what Lamb was making in the UK and the Supermarkets from the UK could not rob our fellow Farmers in NZ as they have done for years.

 Prince Charles's Meat is Organic,let the Public have a year or two with his Meat, Common sense will come back like a whirlwind.Production per acre probably down fifty to seventy percent,quality back to pre Agricultual Revolution Standards.I wish I could find that Pratt that came to testify the rights of Green Living on my Patch.

 Prince

Lady Balfour and her colleagues were confidently predicting in the 1920s that conventional agriculture was destroying the soil, and that all agriculture would be organic within 50 years. Of course there were some very bad conventional farming practices at the time, along with some really evil "organic" pesticides, but to a large extent we have learned from them (remember that the NFU campaigned for, and got government approval for, withdrawal of organo-chlorine insecticides two years before anyone had heard of Rachel Carson). Perhaps we need fully organic agriculture in 50 years time, but it may always be in 50 years time.

yes bb, i dont need converting, but who has benefited? not us.

 

 100% organic is pie in the sky, especially considering the strict approach of registered organic systems. However, a significant proportion of UK' farmland will need to be farmed using organic-based systems and by this I mean:

1. significantly less pesticides of the type used now (new ones may have been produced using GM techniques)
   
2. significantly less artificial P or N
3. integrated arable/livestock with composted waste used to maintain fertility (compost being the key point, not slurry of non-composted sludge etc) - the compost will be vital for maintenance of fertility through the work of soil mycorhhizae*

 *healthy soil biodiversity is fundamental to effective nutrient cycling; mycorrhizae can mobilise P from mineral soil as well as other elements; this area seems to be missing off the radar of the farming industry at present. Note that mycorrhizae are destroyed through applications of artificial fertilisers and some non composted waste as well as pesticides used against fungi and probably other pests). 

Farm machinery will also have to be operated using electricity/batteries as diesel will become prohibitively expensive.

The potential for reversing the exodus of working rural population should also be seen as an opportunity. There are now 2.5 million unemployed. Could we consider questioning the current orthodoxy (bigger farms, bigger machinery, fewer farmers, more farmer suicides/loneliness, few/monoculture crops, specialisation, lack of rural housing) and putting more people back living and working in the countryside. What is the point of fossil-fuel-energy intensive farming if it can't produce as much food as may, for example, some agroforestry models? (And moreover by continuing as we are we make people effectively homeless, contribute to unemployment, ill health and thus increase the cost in supporting them on benefits). We could also grow a lot of different food crops that we don't grow now. (e.g. why don't we grow more pulses for human consumption - fodder beans grown for cows are actually quite tasty!)

A debate on land reform is needed and should be considered  part of a package for increasing the resilience of people and farming against future pressures from climate change and all the rest. For instance, when farms are sold, to offer them for community buyouts, as happens in Scotland? And look at enabling good quality rural cohousing and community landshare schemes to happen (this would in many ways reinvent farming 'families' - and make the people side of farming more sustainable in the long term). Community supported agriculture is I believe something which should grow in the UK - it has barely started as yet, but there are a few examples (e.g. River Bourne  Community Farm www.riverbournecommunityfarm.org.uk and the Hosking farm in Shropshire)

 Personally, I think that the farming industry and policy makers are continuing to follow an orthodoxy on farming which may not be valid in the long term for many reasons whether it be an ageing and declining farming population, unsustainable fossil-fuel based practices, environmental damage (e.g. metaldeyde in water) and continuing biodiversity loss.

 Finally, we have to stop the speculation on land, and consider whether support should be permitted for horse-keeping where the horses are not working or being used to maintain land of biodiversity value. These is at their worse around the urban fringe. 1.3 million horses in England use a lot of land which some would say should be (a) better managed and (b) used to grow food.

Colin Tudge and others have I believe some useful contributions to this debate, which needs to be mainstreamed.( See www.peoplelandfood.com and go to the Oxford Real Farming Conference next year. )

I say we all need to WAKE UP to the huge problems that affect society and for which sustainable farming in the future could help to resolve. This means opening our minds to new models of farming that may be very difference, in some places, to what happens now.

 

 

 

Sorry, but no. If people can make their 'new models of farming' profitable, that's well and good but profitable is not something I'm seeing here.

Sue (to cut your sign-in short) I will go beyond Malcolm and say that I perceive you even lack any experience of  farming, whether profitable or not.

I tend not to follow mainstream conventional UK farmers in the need to make a profit, I think it is not essential for the future of mankind that farmers do actually make a profit. Obviously it IS essential to them as individuals that they do make a profit, but it is not essential for the rest of the world that they make a profit - in the short term. In the long term unless the world's farmers (beyond subsistence level) make a profit, there will be no farmers, therefore no food and you and the rest of the world will starve to death. All farmers will survive beause they will be able to survive on food that they produce. They might not have a particularly wide food choice (I am much better placed than I was when I lived in the far North of Scotland) but they will survive. 

I will not address all the points in your post, but two in particular interest me. Please explain your meaning of the need to use less artificial P. I find it quite amusing that the Organic fraternity in the UK are quite happy to use rock phosphate from Tunisia, involving the immense environmental cost of shipping the rock to the UK, particularly in view of its extremely slow P release rate, yet object to UK sourced P that is far more environmentally friendly - it appears, from an outsider's view, on the grounds that it has a quicker P release rate due to a "chemical" interference. Straight ground rock has such a low release rate that I question its effectiveness as a means of increasing food production.

The second point is your idea that fuel will need to be electric. I am aware of trials in the Iberian Peninsula that indicate it is possible to produce 900 litres of oil (suitable to power machinery) from one hectare of land. Please explain the reasoning behind your statement.

If you successfully answer these points then I have a few more questions for you - all based on the one post already made.

sueinthatcham:

100% organic is pie in the sky

The problem people of the Green Movement movement have, is that their eyes are so firmly focussed on their dream of the future, that they forget to look backwards to ask why we are where we are?  Farming throughout history was labour intensive back breaking work, so much so, that most people had the time and energy only to grow what was necessary for themselves, They did not create much surplus and what they did was taken by the political elite of the day.

Their only source of energy was human and animal labour and a bit of water and wind power. But along came coal and steam and the rest is history.

The message of the Greens can be distilled down to 'Be more frugal, less wasteful and eat well.' I subscribe to those ends but the rest of their message involves rolling back the clock and that is simply not going to happen.

Just as Grand Opera is the pinnacle of dramatic musical art form and will always be a minority interest, so too organic farming. Both involve expensive forms of human endeavour  and so mass production is here to stay in both music and food.

sue, land reform is definitely needed.

the farmers of england are disappearing fast, whereas in scotland, we are hanging in there better.

maybe nick clegg as pm will return his party to its land reforming focus of 120 yrs ago.

the dukes of england, farming 5 or 6 thousand acres each, funded by the taxpayer, is not a model for rural prosperity.

in scotland we have the duke of buccleuch with 240,000 acres, that is also wrong.

glasshouse:

the dukes of england, farming 5 or 6 thousand acres each, funded by the taxpayer, is not a model for rural prosperity.

Glasshouse, As on most topics I agree with you, but would add that the Dukes as you call them are more likely to be Foreign Nationals, Local Authorities or Pension Funds all of whom rent out to Tenant Farmers.

As for the situation in Scotland, do you not also have absentee landlords such as Paul McCartney and other celebrities. I seem to remember that over many years these noveau-rich have been buying up chunks of Scotland for their own purposes?

I guess however that we have to be careful with land reform as we certainly don't want to end up like Zimbabwe or the way South Africa looks like going.

peter, if they still rent on proper terms, not fbt, then its not so bad. what i hate is large in hand operations, or operated by velcourt etc.

peter, scots tenants are surviving better because we dont have defra.

also the historic sfp helps keep the landlord at bay.

inherited tenancies and the right to buy all conspire to keep tenants alive in scotland

Peter, your post about land reform in Zimbabwe reminded me of the planned reform following the "Carnation Revolution" here in 1974. For those of you interested it is called that because the soldiers who made the coup carried their rifles with carnations stuck in the barrels.

The proposal was to hand the land over to the peasantry and get rid of all the big holdings - especially in the Alentejo. I understand it was partially implemented and then the land returned to the previous owners.

Sueinthatcham,

                     Pardon me for saying this but you must be more precise on your arguments and not use wishy washy theory's and trendy cliches.For Agriculture to move forward the Capital base of the Industry probably has to change from an Investment for actual Capital Security to a Production visa Profitability senario but remember the Land of the UK financed the Industrial Revolution so there is the quandry.Bankers want the Security,Farmers want the Land but both want differing results on the equation.The Banks want to see as much return from the Capital borrowed against as possible [Hence Glasshouse's outbursts ] and the Farmers want cheap land to grow and perform their Agricultural practices on in an enviroment that will not pay for Agricultures products.That said there are the Waitroses and the Coops who will both promote and pay for Homegrown food.

  Your Ideas on Soil Fertilty need some explaining and on past Research and Education you could give a deeper explaination on what you are trying to say.If I might say as an old Fart now, "there is never something for nothing, three Tons/ acre does not come out of the Air and a lot of Research and hard work has gone into obtaining these feats.

  If I might say this happy Village thing has never existed.When many Folks were employed on Farms it was the life of Drudgery,even of late years.

  To think that Animals could produce enough Manure to replace Bag Fert is silly try and envisage how many animals to produce enough for a 800 acre Farm.

Electric Tractors: Interesting but another DoDo at the moment.To plough one acre of Land will take roughly one gallon of Diesel.One Gallon of Diesel is approx 58 kwH. 30% efficent,18KWh. a10% loss from an Electric motor would need 20 kwH to plough that acre,produced from Oil ,Coal no savings, from Wind, Solar,Atomic,up in the Air.

 Sustainable Farming has many interpretations, if it is energy, go and have a cold shower.

bb, what will happen when oil/gas becomes too dear to make nitrogen?

the general population are living in a fools paradise of cheap food and expensive houses.

the relentless clearing of country folk into towns or abroad has to stop, and be put into reverse.

glasshouse:

the general population are living in a fools paradise of cheap food and expensive houses

Yes, but it would be a folly to think that the same population would vote for a government who would remove the CGT exemption for principal private residences, which is the main driver of house prices being divorced from their real value. Its like expecting pensioners to vote for a reduction in pensions, which incidently is what will have to happen. Or nurses foting for NHS job cuts, wihch is also an inevitability.

It would be a brave farmer who would choose to live in a world where food prices relate to their actual cost - three years of market fluctuations and they would be begging for government money. I'd do it, but while we seem able to impose one set of rules (environmental / welfare / economic) on ourselves but then happily import food from countries which do not share these rules seemingly without tarrifs, it would seem to be impossible.

I'd happily see villages increase in size, if only to get some rural bus services. But the only way to do it would be some government act to get rid of these venomous "overage" or clawbacks on development land, or for the stupid prices for development land to be reduced some way. Oh, and I would make sure there were no more of these stupid 3 story townhouses, or houses with no gardens too.

Sometimes the best medicine tastes the nastiest.

 We are all at fault (I include myself in this) on these blogs for trying to put into a few words some ideas we have relating to the conundrums the countryside and farming is and will face. We are talking here of complex systems.

 To address the problems of the future a whole range of options have to be on the table. My concern is that systems (farming, manufacturing base, financial, land tenure, planning - you name it) are in parallel cul de sacs resulting in major social, economic and environmental disbenefits (although most importantly we do have food to eat). I think I am right when I say there is a concensus that 'business as usual' at least in farming cannot continue. The arguement is about how to navigate through the immense challenges we are already facing plus those anticipated for the future.

 We will all need to open our minds to doing things differently and also to living differently (and I don't anticipate going back to subsistence farming either). Intensive livestock kept mainly indoors (where the waste can be controlled, captured and reused) will need to be part of the solution (and in my view pigs should stop being kept outside as soon as possible as they are the cause of significant diffuse pollution).

 Having worked in farming and conservation now for more than 25 years, I have seen many changes in the countryside which have had profound and damaging social and environmental consequences. These are well documented by farming, conservation and rural groups (e.g. see Stuart Burgess's most recent report.) I know that many farmers are lonely and suicidal. Some don't even have feed reps coming to see them anymore. Does the guy driving the tractor across 100-ha fields really have a quality job either? He's not even getting any exercise and by now must have run out of talking books.  And probably he can't find an affordable house to live in. Rural cohousing would offer him at least some prospect of interacting with other likeminded people (note rural cohousing is not the same as subsistence communes but a means by which people can live in proximity sharing some resources - just like old fashioned extended families used to).

Inherent soil fertility on conventional arable is gone (1.5% OM if you are lucky). Biodiversity is continuing to decline - there are many figures on this, whether farmland birds, lowland herb-rich grasslands or just wild flowers in the countryside. Pesticides at worrying levels continue to be found in watercourses (e.g. Metaldeyde).

 Oil based fertilisers and fuel will get increasingly expensive. We have to navigate a way out of that one - no arguement there.

 We are all getting ringfenced by Tescos - my local town (Newbury) having just had a major new shopping area built is doomed, as is our market (now only one butcher and one veg stand). Supermarkets are another example of simplification at the expense of diversity.

 Like I said, impossible to put in a few words how to solve the planet's problems and tackling the problems with the financial base of farming (let alone farming) requires a sea change among economists, politicians and the rest. The New Economics Foundation has some ideas on this.

 My brain hurts just thinking about all this stuff.

 

 

 

 

 Hi.

 Phosphate: rock phosphate reserves are limited and will be exhausted in the not too far distant future. E.g. the US is considered to have around 25yrs worth of reserves. I do not have all the figures although one paper does say "World phosphate reserves are sufficient to supply the world with the required amounts and types of needed phosphate products for some centuries to come. Meanwhile, it is worth mentioning that high grade and economic reserves are being depleted, which could result in mining slightly more costly resources and/or lower grade phosphate rocks." I would have to do more research to come up with precise figures. I have nothing against using P but indications are it is going to be less available (and increasingly expensive) to use in the future. Here's an interesting website: http://phosphorusfutures.net/peak-phosphorus

Biofuel: perhaps if biofuel from UK farmland was used solely for powering tractors this would be fine. But the most recent research is indicating that biofuels (e.g. from rapeseed) can be more polluting than fossil fuels. They also displace foodgrowing. So more thinking needed here. Farmers Guardian featured a new tractor powered by fuel cell or electric (can't remember which) last year.

 You are right that I am not a farmer, but have friends that are (none are organic). I have plenty of experience in running a business and all that entails.