Farmers have plenty to talk about at the moment, and they took the opportunity to do just that at the South of England Agricultural Society’s 2024 Farming Conference.
A lively question and answer session, chaired expertly once again by BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today presenter Charlotte Smith, not surprisingly strayed into issues such as inheritance tax and food prices as well as focusing on the theme of the well-structured evening.
For this year’s well-attended event, the society posed the deceptively simple question: “What is our land for?”, and brought together four passionate, articulate and well-prepared speakers to debate it.
The panellists, Sentry managing director Paul Christian, journalist and author Tom Heap, interim chief executive of the South Downs National Park Authority Tim Slaney and Iford Estate managing director Ben Taylor, each had a ten-minute slot in which to answer questions before being quizzed by the audience.
What gave the evening an extra spark was the fact that on some issues speakers took decidedly different stances, making the event, held at the South of England Showground in Ardingly, West Sussex, thought-provoking as well as interesting and entertaining.
Most notable was the difference in the approaches taken by Paul Christian, who was unequivocal in his view that land was essentially only for growing food, and Ben Taylor, who has turned much of the Iford Estate over to “nature and space” as a reaction to the “increasingly risky” job of trying to make a living from food.
With author Tom Heap taking a more nuanced perspective, and Tim Slaney focusing on the different approach needed in protected landscapes such as the South Downs, it made for an at times lively debate, enjoyed not only by the audience at Ardingly but by the many others who logged on to, and submitted questions via, a live broadcast.
Tom, a regular presenter on BBC1’s Countryfile who has also made many BBC Panorama documentaries on food, energy and the environment, said land needed to be used for many things alongside food production, including absorbing carbon, generating energy, storing floodwater and growing biofuel.
Pointing out that the UK needed to improve yields, producing more food on the same area of land and with less chemical inputs, he stressed that it should not ‘offshore’ its need for more food by encouraging other countries to put more untouched land into food production, further damaging the environment.
He welcomed regenerative farming methods and took issue with those who criticised the movement for being “vague”. He claimed that in fact it was “not vague but open sided”, challenging farmers to leave land in a better state at the end of each harvest but allowing them to decide on the best way of achieving that goal and to choose whether or not they still used some chemical inputs.
On energy production, Tom said he was a “big fan” of solar PV but less keen on biofuel, which he said needed much more land to produce an equivalent amount of energy. He claimed the climate credentials of biofuel were “dubious” and pointed out that a small solar array on a domestic roof produced enough energy to run two electric vehicles doing average mileages.
Paul Christian, whose role at Sentry sees him looking after 23,000 hectares of land and producing 200,000 tonnes of produce annually, as well as advising clients on a further 40,000 hectares of land, was unequivocal in his view. “I’m making a stand for food production,” he announced.
He was quick to add that, following the recent budget, he felt farmers were “on their own” and would not be getting any help from the Labour Government, and he claimed that with the demise of the Common Agricultural Policy there was now no coherent plan for agriculture. The Government, he said, should “stop talking about farmers and start talking to them”.
Land, he said, was for growing crops, whether that was for food, feed or energy. A passionate advocate for local food production, he said crops should be used for “making food in the UK or feeding animals in the UK”.
Pointing out that by 2050 the world’s population was likely to need 25% more food, he finished his presentation with a one word comment. “Climate,” he warned.
Tim Slaney said he would “not apologise” for the nature recovery focus in places like the South Downs National Park but said they could also be used for producing food. Like Tom Heap before him, he stressed the possibility of ‘stacking’ uses on areas of land, including in protected landscapes.
Referring to the Government’s focus on environmental issues and the sustainable farming incentive payments that have replaced basic payments, he stressed “food is also a public good”. He said education was needed to take the public “beyond the love of Bambi” so that venison became more acceptable as a foodstuff, particularly given the amount of damage done by deer.
Ben Taylor, who manages a 1,200 hectare mixed farming business on the Iford estate, including 700 acres of arable and 160 suckler cows, alongside areas of stewardship, is leading the way on selling biodiversity net gain credits to developers and other companies looking to offset their environmental impact.
He said that with prices too low and costs too high, along with too much regulation and the difficulties posed by the changing climate, the odds were stacked against producing food as a way of earning a living. He said that he could count the number of times he had made a decent return from growing food over the past 25 years on the fingers of one hand.
As a result, while still producing food on his best land, he had diversified much of the estate into leisure, open space and environmental uses and into setting up the Iford Biodiversity Project, which he said was “more enjoyable than the harvests of 2022, 23 and 24”.
In a challenging remark that summed up a fascinating debate, he said he felt “no moral obligation” to produce food and was instead focusing on giving customers what they wanted in the shape of open space and nature.
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