Sustainable Farming: Why We Need to Transition and How

Our CEO, Harry Barton, explores the challenges farming is facing across Europe, why we need to transition to sustainable farming, and how.

I’m looking out of my window on a stunningly beautiful spring morning, the mist enwrapped trees casting long shadows across the wave-like hills. On the opposite side of the valley is a large, steep sided field extending up to the crest of the hill.

You can see where former hedges have been grubbed out; others shaved back to little more than pencil lines streaking across the landscape. This field is usually a healthy green, but like many around here, in the last couple of weeks it’s faded to sickly yellow, thanks to a dose of herbicide that’s killed off the vegetation.

Now I’m watching it gradually disappear under a coating of dark brown slurry spread by a huge tractor.  It’s due to rain tonight and the chances are much of this will end up in the stream at the valley bottom.

There is nothing unusual about this practice. A mile away you can see much larger fields on even steeper slopes that are regularly left ploughed and bare all winter. The soil pouring off the hillsides after heavy rain and covering the country lanes in thick brown silt.

At other times you can see long pipes pumping liquid slurry onto the fields. Two miles distant up on the high moor, you can gaze across a huge vista of closely cropped, poor quality grass. No tree or shrub in sight, the product of decades of heavy grazing and burning.