Food systems are in a “dark place”, a panel of prominent farmers and food producers warned at a discussion in London last weekend. But the speakers also agreed that a fundamental shift in thinking about food and farming is taking place – with potentially game-changing consequences.
The discussion formed part of the Food on Prescription Conference at this year’s Integrative & Personalised Medicine 2024 event.
Chaired by GP and health coordinator at Farmer’s Footprint, Dr Sally Bell, the session heard contributions from Sustainable Food Trust founder, Patrick Holden, the criminal barrister turned author and regenerative farmer, Sarah Langford, and community supported agriculture (CSA) advocate, Ben Raskin, on the theme ‘Nutrition is not enough: exploring food systems that heal body, community and planet’.
In his introductory statement, Patrick Holden said that he believed that “the biggest determinant of human health is food”. He warned that current food systems were in “a dark place” and that chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilisers remained a mainstay of conventional farming, while ultra-processed foods often dominated supermarket shelves. But Holden said he was “hopeful of seeing big changes” as growing number of farmers recognised the benefits of farming sustainably. Citing his own experiences, he said: “We are now in our 50th year of farming organically and sustainably in west Wales. We’ve never used any agri-chemicals — and as a result our crops and animals are healthy. And I think the system we are using is eminently scalable.”
“We’ve never used any agri-chemicals — and as a result our crops and animals are healthy. And I think the system we are using is eminently scalable”
Holden said that he had recently started growing carrots again after securing a contact to supply them to schools in Caernarfonshire. “That contract guarantees us a price of £1.60 per kilo, which has given us the confidence to grow carrots again. They are also taking the outgrades. Selling to supermarkets before meant that 50% of the carrots would be rejected for being bent, or something. The school caterers are slicing and dicing them, so it doesn’t matter whether they’re a bit wonky. This kind of new thinking gives me cause for optimism, because we have more people now focused on finding ways to get really good food to people.”
Sarah Langford, said that when she “accidentally became a farmer”, she turned away from the conventional farming practices her family had followed for 70 years and adopted “a different narrative or paradigm based on type of farming that was happening 100 years ago”. These were the ideas that would be “foundational for the organic movement and the Soil Association … in which land, plants, animals and soil were seen as bound up together, and one of the same”.
Langford quoted the Soil Association founder Eve Balfour’s observation five years before the foundation of the NHS that “if there is to be a national health service, it should be agriculture”. Langford said it was “a daunting but exciting time to be in the changing world of farming”. A shift towards more ecological approaches to farming showed how positive “radical changes in biodiversity, soil health and structure could be achieved in the course of a few years, with potentially enormous benefits as the soil “gets back its own biome… which nourishes plant root systems in a similar relationship to bacteria in the human gut”.
Ben Raskin defined industrial farming as “where you reduce food to a commodity and where the only driver, really, is profit – even where producers don’t want that to be the case”. He was hopeful of a shift towards a situation where “every farmer’s aim was looking not just at profit, but also at environment and – just as importantly – at community.” But he urged caution on some aspects of the emphasis on farming delivering ‘public goods’. “It’s great that we’re being paid for biodiversity, but if we’re not careful what we see happening is big landowners kicking their tenants off their estates because they want to get the rewilding payments. So we need approaches that support the environment, but we also need to support healthy food production”.
Asked by session chair, Sally Bell, about how to navigate the current proliferation of food labels – organic, biodynamic, regenerative, grass-fed, nature-friendly and so on – Holden said: “I think that If you want to buy food with quality and integrity, organic is your best bet at the moment. It’s good that lots of commercial farmers are moving towards more sustainable methods. And we, the consuming public, need to understand more easily what the various labels mean. I don’t think it’s helpful to get into a battle that says regenerative is better than organic – all that sort of stuff. That just causes divisions, and I don’t think we need that. I’d rather that we find ways to join these labels together, that helps us make the right decisions.”
Touching on that other highly polarised debate – land sharing versus land sparing – Holden stressed that “the boost in diversity we have seen on our farm has been going on in the field, not around the edges”. He added: “I’m old enough to remember when the field used to be an extraordinary habitat, where crops could coexist with insects, small birds and butterflies and everything else. The reason that has gone is that we use chemicals in agriculture. All we need to do is move to a biologically based system and we will see wildlife coming back. So, I think we need a more educated approach to these ideas that we need to be rewilding and replanting forests.”
“Food and nature are not opposites. They are not in competition – they are the same”
Developing the theme, Langford said: “Food and nature are not opposites. They are not in competition – they are the same. You can have a field that is full of biodiversity, and also growing food, and also sequestering carbon and also establishing fungal networks under the soil by dramatically limiting chemicals”.
She said that switching her farm over to organic had initially been “quite terrifying after 45 years of that soil being entirely dependent on things being added to it”. But she added that the changes had been “dramatic, rewardingly dramatic”.
Commenting on the similarly contested subject of livestock production, Holden said: “We are actually a grass fed nation, if you now what I mean. I think this idea that we’ve all got to move to a plant-based diet is misleading. What we need is the right kind of plants, and where the are grown, and the right kind of animals. And animals will be needed if we are going to move to a truly biologically-based regenerative farming system. And I’ll give you an example. We cannot grow healthy carrots without a long-term restorative phase in our rotations, where we probably grow five years of grass and two years of arable crops, one of which might now be carrots. The only way we can turn grass into the fertility building period, and food that people eat, is through ruminant animals – that’s cows and sheep. A lot of people think they’re part of the problem. They think they are part of the climate problem, but our farm is carbon negative because the carbon sequestration achieved partly by the interaction with the ruminants more than offsets the methane emissions of those animals. So, I think there needs to be a whole new national debate on the role of livestock and animals in sustainable food systems. Because if we don’t eat the right kind of animal products the agricultural transition we need can’t happen.”
“I think this idea that we’ve all got to move to a plant-based diet is misleading. What we need is the right kind of plants and the right kind of animals. And animals will be needed if we are going to move to a truly biologically-based regenerative farming system”
In a final question, the panelists were asked for their advice on how and where to buy the most sustainable food. Ben Raskin said: “The closer you can get to where your food is produced, the more you will know about how it is produced – and you will be able to establish a baseline of trust. A lot of organic farmers go well beyond the requirements of certification, for example. Packaging is another issue, but it’s quite hard to make the best choices here. I personally buy from Riverford. But, basically, my advice is do your research.”
“Choosing better is easier than it has ever been easier”
Sarah Langford said that the internet was making choosing local easier. “On the internet, or on Instagram, you’ll be able to find those small farmers near to you, or who will sell direct to you. In that sense, choosing better is easier than it has ever been.”