In their words. Here is some of what producers told me:
The base problem, from the farming revenue point of view, is a simple profit and loss problem: it’s costing more and more to be a producer. And when you’re in that mindset, the least risky thing to do is just try doing what we’ve always done.
People go on about the risk of regenerative agriculture, but it’s very low risk, because if you make mistakes, which everybody does because we’re experimenting, they’re not expensive mistakes.
The reason why we talk so much about risk in farming is because the margins are already so tight. If the margins weren’t so tight and you had additional profit to play with, you’d be implementing some of this stuff anyway, because in the long term it makes operational and financial sense.
It was the most effective cheap food policy, because it meant that farmers would continue farming despite the fact that retailers and supermarkets would push down on prices. Farmers already get paid to produce food. The one thing you get paid for as a UK farmer is calories.
If I was doing the government scheme, I’d say: we’ll pay you as a farmer to baseline your soil organic matter, then we’ll pay you to do these interventions, and then we’ll also pay you to measure it.
My fear is we’re getting into a state where more and more insurance is going to be required, and there’s going to be less and less capacity in which to take it. And I don’t think that can come from just pricing the risk, because it’s starting to get to a point where it’s just too expensive to transfer.
If everybody eats three times a day, how have we created a food system that makes everybody sick and ruins the planet?
If you tally up all the hours you spent learning about this, and then it didn’t work, that’s where it feels like you’ve put too much in and not gained enough reward. So the risk was too high. Pay farmers for their time in learning that stuff and in implementing that stuff.
Leave a Reply