No food security without nature and climate security

• Farmers urge reform of how Wales produces and supplies its food as paramount to safeguarding farming’s future
• NFFN calls for a rethink of systemic issues within food systems that weaken farming’s transition to widespread sustainability, including food waste and addressing the right outputs in the right areas to maximise benefits and avoid unnecessary trade-offs

The Sustainable Farming Scheme’s successful rollout will be key in supporting a food-secure nation by enabling ambitious environmental delivery on farms. But it must be backed by equally ambitious action on food system change, says the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN).

The NFFN’s The Need for Change report sets out why farm payments for improvements to soil health, biodiversity and climate mitigation ensure viable food and farming in Wales.

At a time of global food insecurity resulting from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the report argues that fragilities in the food system have long been present. Current research predicts that the land’s overall productive capacity will reduce due to climate change, increasing supply and demand pressure.

Hilary Kehoe, NFFN Wales Chair, said: “The Welsh Government’s draft proposal for the Sustainable Farming Scheme sets the direction of travel for farm payments and there is an opportunity to recognise the intrinsic links between healthy food, biodiversity recovery and climate adaptation. These schemes can help reduce farm dependency on input-heavy systems, making our landscapes more adaptable and food production less impacted by market pressure or environmental stresses. Healthy soil is key for every farm to recover from extreme and unpredictable weather without relying on costly inputs that are becoming increasingly unavailable to many farmers.”

“Payments that help secure a transition to nature-friendly farming will be crucial in building the foundations of a more sustainable and equitable food system. But while the SFS is a strong start, we cannot look at farming in isolation. We need broader changes to our food system that tackle food waste issues and help more people have to access nutritious, locally produced food that supports our farmers.”

The report, part of the NFFN’s Rethink Food campaign, highlights systemic issues including food waste, extractive supply chains and diminishing farm returns in the face of increasing input costs that point to the need for boosting food and farm resilience.

The report recognises how decades of prioritising specialisation over diversity have come at the expense of farming’s profitability. In 2020, the cost of animal feed, fertilisers and pesticides amounted to nearly £8 billion across the UK – over double that paid out in farm subsidies each year. In 2021, these costs rose by an additional £160 million, largely due to rising gas prices.

High-input, fossil fuel-based systems make farms susceptible to market volatility and price fluctuations while simultaneously damaging soils, increasing problems with pesticide resistance and making farmland ecosystems less able to recover from extreme weather or self-regulate pest or disease outbreaks.

According to the report, the quantity of land used to feed animals and grow crops for bioenergy, including the volume of food wasted along the supply chain, are contradictory to food security:

• Wales produces 19,551 tonnes of fruit and vegetables per annum on 931 hectares of land – 0.1% of total land. The five-a-day fruit and veg requirement of the Welsh population is 566,803 tonnes per year, meaning Wales produces only one-quarter of a portion per head of the population per day (1)
• If Wales were to produce more of its fruit and veg, it would required 29 times the amount of land than is currently used for its production

• In the UK, around 9.5 million tonnes of food were wasted in 2018 post-farmgate, equating to roughly 15 billion meals with an estimated value of £19 billion and accounting for 36 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions
• This volume of wasted food would require an area close to the size of Wales for production
• If every UK household stopped wasting food for one day, it would do the same for greenhouse gas emissions as planting 230 million trees yearly

The report sets out seven areas for achieving change, including prioritising the right outputs in the right areas, harnessing opportunities for producing a wider diversity of foods and improving the link-up between strategies for food, agriculture, trade and land use.

It recommends that payment schemes support farmers in creating greater ecological and agricultural diversity, including wider crop choices and livestock breeds, to help farms manage natural or economic shocks with less reliance on inputs. With the right incentives in place, farming can be the backbone of a resilient food-secure future that effectively safeguards nature, improves soil health and helps achieve net zero.

Hilary Kehoe, NFFN Wales Chair, said:

“As farmers, we have considerable opportunities to make significant and meaningful changes on our farms that will help our businesses become more viable in the long term while contributing to the good of people, rural communities and our natural environment. Resource-intensive farming does little to mitigate the growing and very real impacts of our warming climate. Farming in harmony with nature provides the solution to climate change and biodiversity loss while prioritising sustainable food production.”