The Future of Agriculture E-Book

Sarah Bearchell

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 198

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Record rain fall and extreme climates have become a common occurrence around the world. The television news shows farmers standing in front of their flooded fields; the ground too wet to harvest one season's crop, or to plant the next. Our climate is changing, but agriculture is not just the victim of climate change - it is one of the major drivers too. Our food systems are responsible for around a third of all greenhouse gases. In this book, Sarah Bearchell explores how agriculture is using targeted breeding, automation and precision inputs to produce more with less. She considers how we can reduce our impact by addressing problems in our food system, from packaging and transport to the incredible quantities of waste. As consumers, we can make small changes straight away and push for long term change in the wider system. Agriculture can become a force for good, but it needs our help.

Leseprobe

 

 

Published in the UK and USA in 2025 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

email: [email protected]

www.iconbooks.com

ISBN: 978-183773-175-6

eBook: 978-183773-176-3

Text copyright © 2025 Sarah Bearchell

The author has asserted her moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset by SJmagic DESIGN SERVICES, India.

Printed and bound in the UK.

Appointed GPSR EU Representative: Easy Access System Europe Oü, 16879218

Address: Mustamäe tee 50, 10621, Tallinn, Estonia

Contact Details: [email protected], [phone]

To my ten-year-old self: You did it! You wrote a real book!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to thank my parents for letting me explore the countryside and giving me a piece of garden to tend for myself – and to my children and dog for keeping me outdoors, observing both nature and agriculture. My first lessons about soil came from my grampy Archie on his allotment, but I also gained further knowledge from the staff at the universities of Oxford, Aberdeen and Reading, as well as those at the Scottish Agricultural College Aberdeen (now Scotland’s Rural University College – SRUC – Aberdeen), Rothamsted Research and the Royal Horticultural Society, Wisley.

This book would not have been possible without the staff and resources at Oxfordshire Libraries, or without the years of knowledge imparted by Farming Today. And I cannot end this section without thanking my family, particularly my sister, Rachel, and my friends for their encouragement throughout this project.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1Agriculture in a changing climate

2The Great Balancing Act

3Innovations – Genetics

4Innovations – Precision Plants

5Innovations – Automated Animals

6The big question – Meat?

7Farm to Fork

8Seeds of Change

Further Reading

INTRODUCTION

Agriculture shapes the human habitat – in the UK it creates what estate agents might call ‘a view’. From the rolling hills covered in drifts of white sheep to the network of drystone walls on the dales and the patchwork of different coloured crops in the lowlands, it’s not actually nature we are admiring; it’s a landscape shaped by humans in the pursuit of food. However, in 1987, Jared Diamond, an American polymath, described agriculture as ‘The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race’. While that sounds dramatic, agriculture has irreversibly changed both our environment and our lives – both for the better and for the worse.

In its broadest sense, agriculture encompasses food, fuel and natural fibres; it includes forestry, aquaculture, fisheries, livestock, arable (wheat, barley, oats, oilseed rape) and horticultural (fruit, nut and vegetable) crops. It is a huge global industry and the consideration of its current and future status is the work of entire universities and research institutes. This book has much narrower scope, but while I have concentrated on land-based food production in the UK, there is much in common with practices in northern Europe and I have included examples from further afield to illustrate more widespread issues.

I am an agricultural botanist by training, completing research projects in fungal diseases of arable and horticultural plants, but I have been working outside the field for many years and returning to it has given me a perspective which I was previously lacking. In the last twenty years, food systems (by which I mean the way food is grown and reaches our plates) have become much more complex, with ingredients being shipped around the world for our pleasure. Today, just four companies control 90 per cent of the global grain trade, one animal carcass might be butchered and sent to multiple countries, and agriculture has intensified to maximise profit – though not necessarily for the farmer who raised the produce.

Agriculture and climate

Climate change is already impacting all areas of the Earth. Glaciers are accumulating less ice and melting more in summer, ocean temperatures are rising, as are sea levels. We are seeing more frequent and intense extreme weather events, which cause damage to property and infrastructure and costs millions of pounds to repair each year. According to the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2023 had the highest global temperature since records began in 1850 and the ten warmest years since 1850 have all happened in the last decade.

How will agriculture survive in these conditions? Our first thoughts are around how we can respond to produce crops in a changing climate, but we also need to consider that agriculture is partly to blame for the change.

A landmark study, published in 2021, demonstrated that over a third (34 per cent) of total greenhouse gas emissions came from agriculture. Just take a moment to think about that. One third of all emissions. It genuinely shocked me when I first read it. It is a huge impact but it doesn’t tell the whole story – we also need to consider habitat loss, soil degradation and the damage to water supplies caused by over-extraction and pollution from agricultural run-off.

The work was done by Monica Crippa and colleagues from the Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) and the statistics division at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), both based in Rome. The database uses an existing emissions database (EDGAR) combined with land-use emissions data from the FAOSTAT database. This land-use data includes the things we do to the land to obtain our crops, from the tilling of the soil to applying fertilisers and pesticides and the systems created for distribution.

When you look at individual country data, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says that just 10 per cent of their total greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, but these are only the direct emissions. The paper considered the whole system from production to consumption, including processing, packaging, transport, retail and waste management. They suggest that direct emissions from agriculture plus the emissions from land use and land-use change (for example, ploughing up grassland for cropping) are responsible for 71 per cent, with the remainder from supply chain processes. Around a quarter of emissions come from energy production for everything from pre-planting to the actual farming, processing and distribution. (UN FAO)

Greenhouse gas emissions are compared using carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent or CO2e values. These are based on the global warming potential (GWP) of the gases as quantified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Carbon dioxide is set at 1, but methane has 28 times the global warming effect, so its GWP is 28. Other gases have higher values but are less common; nitrous oxide, released from artificial fertilisers and manure, is 265 and hydrofluorocarbons have a value of 12,400. However, these are rare in agriculture, being manufactured for use in cooling, heating and cleaning. The CO2e value is produced by multiplying the amount of gas by its GWP value and is measured in tonnes.

Around half of the emissions are carbon dioxide, and 35 per cent CO2e is methane from livestock production, farming and waste treatment. The remaining greenhouse gases include nitrous oxide (N2O) and various fluorinated gases. Interestingly, it was discovered that food transport contributes less to emissions than packaging which helps to protect produce and give it more ‘shelf appeal’. I was surprised to learn that around 96 per cent of food transport emissions were from local or regional transport by road and rail towards the end of the journey rather than through international freighting. It occurs as food is broken down into smaller units for distribution.

The Conference of the Parties (COP)

I found a lot of surprises while writing this book, chief of which was the lobbying power of large agricultural companies, particularly at the United Nations Climate Change ‘Conference of the Parties’ (COP). These annual meetings are attended by governmental representatives, regional organisations and what are described by the UN as ‘non-governmental actors’. They centre on the Paris Agreement, which was adopted at COP21, held in France in 2015: this aims to limit global warming to below 2 °C, preferably 1.5 °C, compared to pre-industrial levels.

In 2023, the Climate COP28 took place in the United Arab Emirates and was notable for the agreement to move ‘away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science’. While that took careful wording to achieve international agreement, you might have noticed there was no actual requirement to reduce the use of fossil fuels and different signatories will inevitably interpret the deal in different ways.

From an agricultural perspective, COP28 was a big one: it devoted a whole day to the impact of food and agriculture on climate – which, despite its huge contribution towards greenhouse gases, had largely escaped attention since the first Climate COP back in 1995.

By the end of the meeting, a ‘Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action’ had been signed by more than 150 countries. It recognised both the threat to agriculture, water and food security caused by climate change and how agriculture and food systems have the potential ‘to drive powerful and innovative responses to climate change and to unlock shared prosperity for all’. It noted that ‘any path to fully achieving the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement must include agriculture and food systems’, but with a combination of ambiguous language and its non-legally binding status, it can only really be considered a step in the right direction.

The key recognition was that ‘the fundamental principles of food security and nutrition emerge as intrinsic human rights’. According to the global Hunger Index, in 2024, 733 million people lacked access to sufficient calories and around 2.8 billion people did not access a healthy diet. Some of these people could be helped with education and by making cheaper, nutritious food available, but others have been subjected to misinformation about the balance they need in their diet. We have an opportunity to shift the narrative on food and dietary patterns to reduce overconsumption for some and improve the nutrition of others.

Currently, around 4 per cent of climate financing goes to food systems, and remember, this sector is responsible for around a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. If we truly are to reach our climate goals, we need to concentrate our efforts and dedicate some finance to this sector. This was the topic for COP 29 in November 2024, where poorer countries were asking for £1 trillion a year by 2035 to help the world stay within the 1.5 °C limit agreed in the Paris Agreement. Despite discussions continuing until 3am, nobody left happy, with richer governments and public financiers such as the World Bank offering approximately £240 billion. It was a hugely disappointing result, leading António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, to comment, ‘The world must pay up, or humanity will pay the price. Climate finance is not charity, it’s an investment.’

I referred earlier to my surprise at COP, because international agreements are definitely the way forward, even when we consider that every country has its own interests to protect. My main surprise came from the presence of ‘non-governmental actors’, who could be wildlife organisations, individual farmers, think-tanks, all with their own agendas, but at COP28 there were record numbers from industrial agriculture companies and trade organisations.

DeSmog (a journalistic and activist website) analysed the delegate list and found a doubling of people representing agribusiness since the previous year – not a surprise, given the day devoted to the topic. Of the 340 agribusiness interest people, over 100 attended as part of country delegations. At first, it might sound encouraging that governments are considering their food production as key to the world’s climate: good news. However, let us look closer at who they are and what they achieve. Those 100 delegates are much less likely to be small-scale farmers than companies who bring in lots of profit to countries, and as part of a country delegation, they can sit in on the diplomatic negotiations. This gives then insight into political thinking and enables them to lobby in their own commercial interests – which might be more biased to technological solutions which they can sell, rather than ways to significantly reduce emissions.

Changing agriculture

COP meetings give us the opportunity to consider UK agriculture in a wider context. We have often been shown the example of Amazonian rainforest clearance to demonstrate the impact we are having on nature as we seek new land to grow more food. However, nature clearance has also happened in the UK for crops and livestock – it just happened over a much longer time period. We chose not to notice it until research showed that the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries on the planet. Technology has enabled us to put marginal lands into production in the name of food security, and successive governments have encouraged greater intensification, increasing stocking rates and reducing rotations, making agriculture reliant on chemical inputs. We will consider changes in agriculture in Chapter 2.

We’ve become accustomed to eating a diet that comes from all around the world – expecting out-of-season fruits and vegetables to be available all year, to the extent that the absence of salad items from shops in February 2023 made headline news. These gaps on the shelves, and those which appeared during Covid-19, helped to raise awareness of how vulnerable we are, but concerns over food security seemed to largely evaporate once the supply was restored. And the reasons for those absences can be quickly forgotten, too: in 2023 it was unseasonably cold weather in the Mediterranean, but unusual weather is impacting all kinds of crops, as we’ll see in Chapter 1.

Over time, people in the UK have become detached from farming, not appreciating the effort it takes to grow our food or the impact it has on the planet. While we all believe in food security, we have little idea how to achieve it in the face of climate change, and this is not helped by the lobbying power of big agriculture companies, who like to tell us how their work is natural, sustainable and good for the planet. And some of it is, but we will need greater transparency in our food systems to hold them to account.

A change is needed, and the desire for one is starting to gain momentum. Technology and automation are helping to increase yields and reduce food waste. We have new crops appearing due to our greater understanding of genetics. We can adapt to a declining agricultural workforce and more stringent environmental rules on the application of agrochemicals through precision farming. We can increase the yields of animal products through the use of technology, although we also need to consider consumption levels. Take one look in the vegetable section of most supermarkets and you will see cosmetically uniform produce. Food of equal production effort and nutritional value has been diverted from the supply chain simply because it is a bit wonky or has a blemish, leading to immense (and completely avoidable) food waste.

A lot of these measures feel like they will help us to continue our existing style of agriculture. If we make enough incremental changes, it seems reasonable that they will add up to make change. But add up for who? Is it for the people selling us these tiny developments, or for the farmers on the ground and the ecosystem around us? Maybe what we need is a more fundamental rethink of agriculture, where we consider its place in the ecosystem. If we support farmers to make major changes and teach consumers to be more aware of their food, then surely we could affect real change.

The excellent news is that agriculture has a history of innovation and adaptation, undergoing revolutions in practice as well as adopting smaller changes. We are going to need to draw on that ability for the future of agriculture in a growing, changing world.

AGRICULTURE IN A CHANGING CLIMATE

1

Has the weather noticeably changed since your childhood?

I remember winters in the 1980s with deep snow, where the road to the next village was blocked by snowdrifts for weeks. I’m sure I remember snow and ice on the ground for months at a time … even though it was probably considerably less! There is scientific proof for this, too, with Meteorological Office data showing a decrease both in the number of days where sleet and snow fell, and in the number of days where snow was lying on the ground.

I now live in Oxfordshire, only about twenty miles south of my childhood home, and here a light dusting of snow creates great excitement among my children (and me, if I’m totally honest). In the twenty years I have lived in my current house, we have had proper, sledge-able snow about three times. I remember floods, too. Swathes of river meadows around the Rivers Tove, Nene and the Great Ouse were underwater for weeks every year, but these were the low-lying, willow-strewn riverside meadows, which flooded every year.

As a regular listener to Radio 4’s Farming Today programme, I’ve had a creeping feeling that flooding patterns were changing – becoming more frequent, longer-lasting and affecting land which is usually spared. However, things came into sharp focus from the autumn of the 2023–24 growing season. This period saw the wettest eighteen months since 1836, and it had a huge impact on agriculture. The effect was compounded by changes in government funding and export issues related to Brexit. A perfect storm. There is no pun intended: it genuinely wasn’t funny for farmers.

June 2023 was hot, but then a southerly shift in the jet stream led to wet and windy conditions through July and August. This made harvest difficult because the crops were too wet. If you harvest with too high a moisture content, the grain could become mouldy in storage, making it worthless. The only option is to dry it. Leaving it to stand and dry naturally is the cheapest option, but you are subject to the weather, and it means you can’t prepare your field for the next crop. Using an on-farm drier has direct energy costs, and if you send high moisture content grain to the grain merchant, they’ll take a cut of your payment to cover the cost of drying. It’s an annual dilemma for farmers, resting on the use of a moisture meter and expertise of the team. You can experience some of the tension of moisture monitoring in the harvest episodes of Clarkson’s Farm (Amazon, 2021–present). Despite my initial cynicism about the series, and the fact it makes me shout at the TV, it’s actually really engaging and insightful viewing.

After a wet cereal harvesting period, the 2023 rains continued. By October, a lot of land was too wet for farm machinery. Autumn-harvested crops like swedes and potatoes remained in the ground, as farmers hoped the weather would clear and the soil would dry the next week, or the next. But it didn’t. It just kept raining.

Farm machinery is heavy. The average UK tractor weighs 5–6 tonnes, and that’s before you add over a tonne of equipment and counterweights. Some specialist machinery, like sugar beet harvesters, can weigh over 30 tonnes, which results in a combined weight of over 60 tonnes when fully laden with harvested beet. Taking heavy machinery onto wet, slippery ground causes compaction, where the soil particles are squeezed together so that water, air and plant roots can’t penetrate. You can see a lesser effect on footpaths across arable fields – in the well-trodden areas, the soil becomes smoother at the surface and plants do not grow. That’s just from the repeated tread of humans and some animals – nothing like the weight of a tractor.

It is difficult to drill seed into compacted soil. You get uneven sowing and seed emergence, which can lead to issues later in the growing cycle and reduce yields by 10–20 per cent. Areas of compaction are easy to spot, because plants often appear yellowed or stunted as their roots can’t extend to fully exploit the nutrients and water in the soil. They are also more susceptible to drought if their roots are trapped in the rapidly drying upper layers of the soil.

Relieving compaction takes time, fuel and specialist equipment, like subsoilers to create vertical cracks in the soil. For extreme situations, there are contractors who can inject compacted areas with compressed air, something I’ve seen in use at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where they were reducing compaction around specimen trees in order to reinvigorate the root growth.

The cost of treatment shows why farmers would rather avoid compaction if at all possible. That’s primarily achieved by staying off the land when it is wet, but that’s not always possible, so some machinery has wide, low-pressure tyres, more axles to spread the load or even tracks like a digger. However, all of these cost money and have an impact on the handling of the vehicle. Better to stay off the land.

Of course, it’s not just farm machinery which is heavy and can damage soil structure. According to a 2019 study, the average British dairy cow weighs 617 kilograms, with all that weight being transferred to the ground through four small hooves. Cattle grazing on wet ground causes poaching, where their feet churn up and compact the soil, damaging the pasture and increasing the potential for injury. In the autumn of 2023, the wet ground meant that livestock were brought inside earlier than usual, leading to higher food and bedding costs which were not matched by increased sale prices.

Some farmers managed to sow their winter crops, only to see them disappear under flood waters. While crops and soil can recover quickly from brief flooding, long-term standing water weighs down on the soil and excludes oxygen, resulting in the death not just of the crop, but also soil-dwelling invertebrates, fungi and bacteria. This can alter the soil composition and affect its health for years to come. It also takes more effort to plough the ‘tight’ soil – increasing time and costs the following autumn. The loss of an established crop to flooding will cost a farmer thousands of pounds due to wasted seed, washed out agrochemicals and the time and labour invested.

It was hoped that spring 2024 would bring better weather. But by ‘turning out time’, in March, the ground was still too wet for livestock to be returned to the fields. They remained indoors, with the associated increase in food and bedding costs. When some pasture was still wet in May, farmers predicted it would take until July for the grass to be productive enough for grazing.

The cold, wet spring delayed the sowing of short-cycle outdoor horticultural crops, like lettuce; this lengthened the period when the crop needs to be imported and thus increased shelf prices for consumers until the weather improved. Delaying the sowing of long-cycle arable crops like spring barley, wheat and oilseed rape is a gamble in the UK. Our temperate climate gives a finite growing season, and later-sown crops have less time to grow and mature, leading to lower yields. Farmers had to make a pragmatic decision whether to risk the costs of labour, seed, fertiliser, pesticides and fungicides in such an unpredictable season. Some chose to sow alternative crops, like field beans, which attract a lower sale price than grains but could help replenish the soil and protect it from erosion through the rest of the season.