I’m fed up with talking about the weather, but I can console myself with the fact we have grabbed every opportunity so far and progress is not too bad.Farmers 'must give up nitrogen fertiliser'
FARMERS must give up nitrogen fertilisers to ensure a sustainable future for agriculture, the country’s leading organic lobby has warned.
In a stinging attack on ‘intensive farming’ Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, said business as usual was ‘not an option’ for the nation’s farmers.
Instead he said industry must face up to facts.
“We must give up nitrogen fertilisers and build soil fertility through crop rotation instead.
“I believe this one move will bring the most far-reaching change in agriculture since the agricultural revolution – and the most important.
“To respond adequately to threats of climate change, loss of biodiversity and food security we must make decisions that will hurt. This is the inconvenient truth,” he said at the renegade Oxford ‘Real’ Farming Conference yesterday (Tuesday, January 5).
Because the measure would halve the production of cereals nationwide Mr Holden said there must also be a fundamental change in diet.
“Half of our cereal is fed to pigs, poultry and dairy. We will therefore need to change the way we feed our livestock and we will need to eat less meat and more vegetables.”
He admitted consumers would need to pay more for sustainably produced food.
“In the 1970s we spent around 20 per cent of our income on food. That figure has now fallen to around 10 per cent. We pay too little for our food.
“This will be a huge and painful change but one that British agriculture and society needs to make,” he said.
Mr Holden attacked ‘flawed’ agricultural policy that had ‘failed’ to protect Britain’s natural resources.
He said policy makers had developed an industrial food system that was ‘short-sighted’ and ‘deeply unsustainable’ and too often encouraged a ‘mutually exclusive’ relationship between farming and nature.
“The idea that we need to protect nature from agriculture is a flawed concept. Agriculture should always be linked directly into nature,” he said.
The inability to create an informed debate on the sustainable farming had been the Soil Association’s ‘greatest failure’ as an organisation, admitted Mr Holden.
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