What’s wrong with the way we grow?
At Future Farming Hub, our team is perpetually focused on the urgent need to change the way we produce our food in order to meet growing demand in a sustainable way. We spend a lot of time talking to governments, press, industry, researchers and trying to communicate with the general population to increase awareness of the issues we face. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has shown us all exactly how fragile our food supply chains are and awakened us all to the pressing need to change.
Even before the pandemic began, we were faced with a colossal task; producing enough food for a global population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050 would require an increase of 70% in agricultural productivity. In the UK, we’re facing a range of issues in our food production that mean we must implement changes to the way we produce and distribute food. We strongly believe that information, education and the sharing of knowledge is key to change. With that in mind, we’ve highlighted a few of the key issues we’re facing below. As the Covid-19 crisis continues, we will seek to share information and empower readers to make changes in their own personal consumption habits and to press for greater change on a global level.
What’s topsoil and why should I care?
Topsoil is the uppermost layer of soil, which is high in nutrients and organic matter and is therefore essential for crop production. It is estimated that the UK has lost 84% of its topsoil since 1850. Currently, the world grows approximately 95% of its food in the topsoil and large losses of the topsoil result in less food production and reduced nutritional content of the food that is. If we continue as we have the world will have run out of topsoil within 60 years.
Agricultural land crisis
As our populations increase, so too does the need for housing. Much land that could be potentially cultivated for agriculture has already been assigned for housing. While this helps the problem of housing shortages, it exacerbates the problem of producing food to feed an ever growing population.
Seasonality
Within the UK, the relatively short summers mean that there is a lot of work to do in a short weather window. This already precarious situation is complicated further by the shortage and cost of labour champions for this concentrated period and an increased likelihood of being affected by adverse conditions and climate change in comparison to food production that is steady year round.
We need to talk about water
Agricultural irrigation accounts for 70% of water usage worldwide — not only is this a phenomenal amount of an incredibly valuable resource being used but intensive pumping for groundwater results in the degradation of aquifers (water-permeable rock aiding transmission of groundwater). The use of fertilisers and pesticides to aid crop production also results in run-off from fields which in turn leads to pollution of waterways.
Sustainability and global supply chains
The sustainability of the export market also needs to be examined. These often consist of long chains that are easily broken, meaning farmers can be left with an abundance of crops that cannot be stored (due to a shortage of storage facilities) or sold. Therefore, it goes to waste and leads to a loss in revenue.
Pesticides
Modern day agriculture relies heavily on pesticide use to keep crops pest and disease free, with neonicitinoids and pyrethroids being the most commonly used pesticides. It is often reported that the amount of pesticides used has halved since 1990, but this is untrue. The “amount” actually refers to the weight of compound used and the reason for the decrease in weight used is because the compounds have increased in toxicity, so although less weight of pesticide is used it is actually more toxic. One frightening example of toxicity belongs to certain neonicitinoid pesticides. An incredibly small amount (1g) of several neonicitinoids can kill 125 million honey bees, and is 10,000 times more toxic than DDT, which was banned in the UK in 1984.
In the period of 2000–2016 there was an increase of 232% in the application of neonicitinoids (insecticides). These neurotoxic chemicals are active against most arthropods and work by travelling systemically through plants, protecting each of the tissues. There are many ways that pesticides can be applied, as foliar sprays, seed coatings, soil drenches and in irrigation water. This means that they can be pollutants of water and soil, as well as being detrimental to wildlife. The consumption of dressed seeds has seen a decrease in farmland bird species and has been implicated in the death of many small mammals. Bees and other pollinators are poisoned by pesticides, and residues have been found present in foodstuffs for human consumption.
From 1990–2016 there was a 63% increase of the areas treated with pesticides and the number of times crops are treated with pesticides has also risen. In 2016, 95% of potatoes, 85% of oilseed rape and 55% of cereals had all been treated more than 4 times with pesticides. Re-application of pesticides is understandable, especially if it rains soon after application, but many farmers apply them prophylactically, when they are not really needed. This in turn leads to increased environmental pollution.
The pressure on farmers to increase the quantity of plants produced from existing farming areas (yield) is immense just as concurrently the chemical tools (i.e. pesticides) that farmers rely on to produce current yields are being restricted. As pesticides are withdrawn from the market to protect the environment, farmers are expected to maintain the same yield and quality of crops, meaning a significantly lower income for the farmer.
Fertilisers
The use of fertilisers has also impacted heavily on the land in which we grow our crops. It is well known that there can be run-off from fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides, but there is also a huge carbon footprint generated in the manufacture of fertilisers. Finding an alternative to using fertiliser is difficult though, particularly for crops like the potato. Potato has a low phosphorus efficiency compared to other crops, so requires a high phosphorus input through fertilisation. The rock phosphate used in fertiliser is largely mined in politically unstable countries, with most set to run out of their domestic supplies in the next generation. This means that a new form of fertilisation will need to be found or farmers will somehow have to try to maintain/increase yield with reduced fertiliser input.
An ageing farming population
As of 2016, the average age of the British farmer is 59. Statistics from across Africa revealed a similarly ageing population — the average age of agricultural workers in 2016 was 60 despite the fact that almost two thirds of the continent’s population being under the age of 24.5. There needs to be greater understanding amongst the general public of the skill involved in and value of farming globally.
What do we do next?
The purpose of the blog today is to highlight the issues we’re facing so we can start considering how to tackle them together. We certainly don’t have all the answers but we have some ideas on changes we can all make and we’ll be sharing more of those thoughts here both through the pandemic and beyond. You can find out more about the Future Farming Hub here.
