A crisis is looming in the systems that feed us.
More than a third of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the way we produce, process and package food. It is also a major driver of the declining diversity of life on Earth. Solving these problems will require radical reform of agriculture. But so far the burden has fallen on relatively light shoulders: individual farmers and you, the consumer.
Across Europe, widespread frustration in rural communities is turning into anger that could derail efforts to make farming more sustainable; Protests against environmental measures are emerging in countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and, most recently, Wales.
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Modern farming methods are depleting natural habitats and adulterating soil, crops and seeds with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. There are forms of agriculture that combine habitats and crops and provide nutrients to the soil in other ways, such as planting more crops that can convert nitrogen from the air into a biologically useful form, such as legumes.
So why aren’t more farmers embracing these changes?
Read more: Why the humble legume could be the answer to Europe’s fertilizer addiction
frontier farming
“Governments must meet net zero targets while farmers struggle to make ends meet in a difficult economic environment,” says Alex Heffron, a PhD candidate in geography at Lancaster University.
“Farmers receive very little of the retail value of their produce. Dairy farmers in the UK typically receive less than 1p of the retail value of a 480g block of cheese.”
Heffron says the profits farmers hope to make from growing food are being pressured by rising costs of feed, fuel and fertilizer, as well as interest rates and energy. Many see new regulations and reforms designed by European governments to promote greener agriculture as the final straw.
Welsh farmers’ businesses were subsidized based on the amount of land they managed. New subsidy schemes in England and Wales aim to pay farmers for public goods such as how much habitat they can create or carbon they can store.
The Welsh plan will ask farmers to plant trees on 10% of their land to get paid. Heffron argues that tenant farmers may not be able to get permission from landowners to do so, while mortgage farmers may be rejected by banks concerned about the impact planting trees will have on the value of the land.
Read more: Why are farmers arming themselves? view from wales
He warns that the plan will ultimately not benefit food production or the environment:
“With subsidy levels decreasing, some UK farmers will be forced to increase their sales. Some farms are already being bought by large investment funds for the sale of carbon credits to companies looking to ‘offset’ their timber production and emissions; “This is a practice that has been criticized as greenwashing.”
A 2019 analysis by earth system scientists Simon Lewis (University of Leeds) and Charlotte Wheeler (University of Edinburgh) found that such timber plantations are a pale imitation of naturally regenerating forests, as they store a tiny fraction of carbon by comparison.
Read more: Scandal over plantations being called ‘forest restoration’ puts climate goals at risk
“The scale of this challenge requires a new form of policy, rooted not in austerity but in renewed public spending on food and agricultural systems, combined with urgent action against the parts of the supply chain that hoard all the profits,” says Heffron.
Whose job is this?
A handful of companies control the supply chains that collect, process and sell food. Walmart dominates the grocery market in the US, while Tesco dominates 27% of the equivalent market in the UK.
When such a company announces that it will achieve net zero emissions by a certain date, for example, workers at every link in the supply chain must do the heavy lifting. Unfortunately, employers may lack the necessary tools, says Albert Boaitey, a lecturer on global agri-food supply chains at Newcastle University.
Read more: Farmers are bearing the brunt of big food companies’ decarbonisation efforts – here’s why
“For example, a cattle farm in Brazil that supplies beef to a multinational retailer abroad will have to comply with emissions reduction measures imposed by the EU. [the] retailer,” he says. For example, investing in selective breeding programs that produce cattle that eat less feed and emit fewer greenhouse gases.
Boaitey’s research suggests that farmers are less likely to make these changes if beef processors (usually large firms lower down the supply chain) do not pay for these changes. It highlights a report by Barclays bank that revealed UK retailers canceled contracts worth more than £7bn with suppliers in 2021 because they failed to comply with sustainability standards.
“Even though our results were published several years ago, the situation remains largely unchanged,” he says.
You may have realized that the responsibility for building a sustainable food system also falls on you. Given promotional campaigns encouraging you to switch to plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy, the calculation suggests that consumer demand alone could drive a shift away from the most harmful food operations.
But how realistic is this? How much power actually exists in the supermarket aisle? Benjamin Selwyn, a global food system researcher at the University of Sussex, is skeptical, arguing that many of the companies producing vegan burgers and yoghurts are also large producers of beef, milk and cheese.
Read more: Meat and dairy industry giants wield factory power behind many vegan brands
The type of food we grow and how we grow it must radically change. Heffron argues that a coordinated response aimed at transforming the entire food system is the only way to do this, and that governments and large corporations that dominate these complex systems (and most of their revenues) are best positioned to lead the way. .
It will be business as usual, with the onus remaining on cash-strapped producers and consumers at opposite ends of food supply chains.
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