Last month a new global assessment revealed that the UK is lagging behind developing countries in efforts to make agriculture more sustainable. The research, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, shows that 163 million farms across the world are using environmentally-friendly production processes of some kind. However, farmers in West Africa, India and Bangladesh in particular are seemingly more willing to rethink their production systems and introduce sustainable practices than their British counterparts.
The report is said to have persuaded the UK government to do more to encourage farmers and growers to redesign their production systems, with Professor Nic Lampkin, one of the authors of the report, stressing that the UK has reached a “tipping point” in agricultural production.
One British scheme to do just this was launched last month in Northern Ireland, where the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) confirmed that the second tranche of the Environmental Farming Scheme (EFS) was open for applications. The scheme follows the UK government’s 25 Year Environment Plan, unveiled in January, and is primarily designed to improve biodiversity and water quality. It will compensate landowners for taking environmentally-friendly measures on their farms, with key options highlighted by the RSPB including the provision of winter feed crop for wild birds, the retention of winter stubble, and the creation of arable and pollinator margins.
According to a study by the nature conservation charity, numbers of yellowhammers, house sparrows and tree sparrows shot up considerably thanks to a 2006-2011 agri-environment scheme at certain farms in Northern Ireland. The population of the red-listed yellowhammer species rose by 78 per cent, house sparrows were up 46 per cent, and the tree sparrow population expanded by 27 per cent. The charity says this is evidence that land management can be influential in boosting farmland bird populations, with conservation advisor Sean Woods “urging as many farmers as possible to enter EFS to help nature thrive on their land”.
One vegetable producer that has already been involved in environmental measures of this kind is Roy Lyttle, whose business produces a range of seasonal vegetables, including spring onions, leeks, celery, beetroot and chives on the Ards Peninsula in County Down. Lyttle is well aware of the importance of environmental management in agricultural production, having won the Farming Life and Danske Banke Award for Wildlife Friendly Farmer of the Year in 2016. That year he planted a large area of wild bird cover – a spring-sown crop mixture which is left unharvested over winter to provide food for seed-eating farmland birds like yellowhammers and linnets.
Looking ahead to the EFS scheme, RSPB senior conservation scientist Kendrew Colhoun says: “We see it as a critical component as part of our work to maintain biodiversity across the countryside in Northern Ireland… an agri-environment scheme can deliver for key species if the correct mix of EFS options (such as ones to provide summer and winter food and nesting habitat) are targeted to the right places and coupled with advice.”
If that happens, and the government delivers on its promise of a ‘Green Brexit’ based on delivering ‘environmental goods’, maybe the UK can start to catch up with some of its international counterparts in the sustainability stakes. The danger is that, free of European legislation, it instead backpedals and reassumes its old position as the ‘dirty man’ of Europe.
