In Defence of Our Good Farmers

Farmers are under attack again by some environmentalists and it is grossly unfair

Photo by Laurie Byrne on Unsplash

“In my lifetime, meeting any farmer who has any empathy for nature whatsoever has been a dramatic and exciting oddity. You [James Rebanks] are the exception, not the rule. So while I sympathise that the new schemes are not generous enough, and far from ideal, I also feel angry that nearly all farmers have spent the last half century expunging nature from our landscapes without a care in the world.”¹

These were the words of Ben Goldsmith, an environmentalist and financier with strong connections to the current Conservative Government (and Boris Johnson in particular). They come in light of statistics of precipitous declines in farmland birds and insects that are irrefutable and worsening² (although the comment from Ben originated from a discussion about the legacy of the disgraced politician Boris Johnson - who Ben claimed had done much for the environment in his time as Prime Minister of the UK - a highly dubious claim). The claims of Mr Goldsmith echo those coming from increasingly vocal ecomodernist and celebrity environmentalist circles - “farmers are to blame!”.

The reaction from the farming community was swift and aghast. Such a sweeping generalisation ignores the plethora of nature-conscious farmers up and down the country, farmers who are delighted by the sight of a barn owl in the cool evening light, and who have made (at great personal expense) significant nature-friendly improvements to their farms. But, detractors like Mr Goldsmith point to the graphs of steep declines in farmland biodiversity post-1970, statistics that are hard to ignore and give weight to Mr Goldsmith’s claims. Surely it is the custodians of the land who bear the brunt of the responsibility for these declines? This decimation of wildlife has happened on their [the farmers] watch and is the result of them reneging on their stewardship responsibilities. The logic seems sound. But is it fair?

In times not too long ago, I would have said a hearty “Yes!”. During my Conservation and Environment Bachelor's degree, it was the standard opinion among students (myself included) that farmers were the bad guys - reckless destroyers of the environment, only caring about productivity and clueless as to the names of wildflowers and farmland birds. Such a view of farmers as the ‘villains’ in the environment is common currency among ecomodernists, with decries of sheep-wrecked landscapes, rivers laden with nitrates, cows causing global warming, and insectless skies coming from their ranks. There is some merit to these claims; it would be disingenuous to deny so. Some landscapes are “sheep-wrecked”, the stocking density being too high. Pesticides have contributed to insect declines (although so too have mowing regimes, urbanisation, transportation trends, and climate change) and many farmers have liberally used fertilisers with deleterious effects on our rivers when the fertilisers run off into them. There are many “bad egg” farmers - as the deep scars on our landscapes testify.

But are ‘the many bad eggs’ in the majority? I would now argue a strong “No”. The ‘Good Farmer’ is a much more common species than the ecomodernists would have us believe and ‘A Farm Free Future’ would not be the eco-friendly utopia they dream of. Farmers have a key role to play in the stewardship of nature in this country³ and many are already doing above and beyond their fair share, even if the likes of Mr Goldsmith fail to notice them.

It could be much worse. One only has to look ‘across the Pond’ to see some truly monstrous farms both to the north and south of the greater American continent. The 18,000 dairy cow factory farm that went up in flames and the Midwestern fields whose overly tilled loose soils caused the multicar pileup a few months ago are two stark examples. We simply do not have tragedies of this scale in the UK, and any farmer who tries to farm in such destructive ways would most likely be hounded out and shunned by their peers. But, in America too, the charge of farmers as universal ecological villains would be unfair. From American fields have arisen two of the best farmers of the modern era, Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson. UK farmers could learn much from the example of these two men, and their philosophies and practices need to make much greater inroads in the UK agriculture scene.

Back though to the UK and returning to the question “Is it fair?”. To answer this fully, one needs to consider the economic standing of UK farmers. Their economic (in)security would give most of us (if we were in a likewise position) a severe mental breakdown. Many farmers barely break even and have to work unsociable hours to keep food on their own tables. Furthermore, in the UK, farmers often hold their farms in insecure tenancy agreements which could see farmers turfed off their lands - lands they have invested sweat and blood into - at short notice. These injustices contribute to the high rates of suicide observed among farmers - a great travesty that brings shame to our country.