Oxford Real Farming Conference 2020 and massive agriculture policy reform

This is a critical time for new environmental and agricultural policy. We are at a precipice of an ecological and health emergency, and a crisis of farmers’ livelihoods. Many authorities have declared a Climate Change Emergency, but they don’t really know what to do next. This conference is a place where farmers and their partners come to influence policymakers, on how to make positive steps forward.

The Australian media is currently exploring all sorts of strange ideas, like the growing of more seaweed. What they deliberately ignore is Australia’s grassland, which is a vast, fast and resilient carbon sink, that need more diversity and innovation, like the use of cover crops for grazing and regenerative techniques. New policies that encourage and make pasture-based livestock farming viable, is in everyone’s best interest.

Food produced in an environmentally friendly way - that is in harmony with nature - is becoming increasingly important.

The world’s eyes are currently on Australia, in disbelief at the determination to keep the status quo in place, through apathy, lack of policy change and inaction on multiple environmental crises. Extreme bush fires, dust storms, wind, hail storms, and flooding have been common as of late. Fortunately there are other countries who are taking the lead in reform of agriculture policy. Surprising allies are also stepping up.

This year the annual Oxford Real Farming Conference 2020 had great lineup of speakers. It took place on the 8th and 9th of January. Alicia Miller wrote an overview and said that diversity and social justice were strong themes this year, and so was inclusion. The program of the sold-out event was yet again packed to the rafters, and those who missed out can listen and even watch certain sessions via the archive. Over 1,000 delegates chose from 118 talks on topics ranging from climate, agroecology, access to land and increasing diversity etc. Watch the highlights video below:

Video: The Oxford Real Farming Conference 2020 was held on January 8th/9th at the Oxford Town Hall, and nearby venues. Over a thousand delegates attended, choosing from a packed programme of 118 talks.

Biggest agriculture policy reform since the 1940s

““We need a new international framework for trade in sustainably produced food. One of the opportunities that we can now grasp is to lead in setting up that framework.””

The Brexit deal has been signed. England is currently at the epicentre of massive policy change and the measuring of natural capital. A new ag bill has been introduced with plans to protect the soil, and plans to change the way payments are made to farmers. Organisations like the Sustainable Food Trust and the National Farmers Union are making inroads with new framework - in the policy landscape - that will see more sustainable and regenerative systems flourish. In this interview with the BBC, Patrick Holden and Minette Batters (president of the National Farmers Union) discussed the most significant policy change in decades. Patrick said that since the second world war, farmers have been forced by policy measures to use farming practices that have been destructive to the soil. This new bill potentially offers incentives to farmers for practices that can rebuild the soil fertility. Farmers will be rewarded for doing ‘public good’. Watch the video below about rewilding Brexit Britain, because farmers have all sorts of anxieties about what something like this could mean. Australia is already paying one farmer in Victoria to sequester carbon back into the soil, however, the Australian government are not doing nearly enough to expand on this. Some American states are passing healthy soils legislation or paying farmers to respond to the ecosystems they’re working with by building soil, preventing drought, and encouraging the growth of carbon sequestering perennial grasses.

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Minette described this as a massive reset moment and the most significant change in legislation since the 1940s.

This will shape the future of food security and self sufficiency for decades to come. She described this and the ORFC as a chance for global leadership to lead the recovery of our planet. This is a chance for the government to lead in the challenge that the world face.

Also listen to this independent conversation between Patrick and Minette, about the future of UK farming post-Brexit, international trade, the opportunity for change etc. Also discussed is the need for more grasslands, to increase soil fertility, and how ruminants are part of the solution.

Recently, HRH Prince Charles pleaded for a new economic model. He pleaded with world leaders and businesses to rapidly shift to a new economic model that revolutionises the interaction between nature and global financial markets. "What good is all the extra wealth in the world, gained from business-as-usual, if you can do nothing with it except watch it burn in catastrophic conditions?" "There are trillions of dollars in sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, insurance, and asset portfolios looking for investible and sustainable projects with good long-term value and rates of return," he said. "It is time to align sustainable solutions with funding in a way that can transform the market place."

Who will benefit from policy change?

The value system change - that is effecting the economics of many countries - is palpable in the general population. New economic models and the potential economic empowerment of the small-scale farmer are stirring all sorts of fears amongst those who support the status quo. Australian raw milk supporters may not be aware, but England is currently experiencing significant pressure to adopt plant-based diets, especially from those who want to capitalise. England and the UK are at the precipice of great change, and alternative food production systems are lining up to replace industrial agriculture, and some are also looking at perpetuating the status quo by rebranding.

Late last year, the BBC screened a documentary called “Meat, A Threat to Our Planet?” about intensive farming. Both farmers and consumers hit back on social media, partly, because the BBC edited out a short part about a sustainable and regenerative pasture-based production system; filmed with innovative farmer Joel Salatin. There are sustainable, highly nutritious and desirable animal sourced food production systems, and pasture-raised animal products has many health benefits. Many are angry about the push for a plant-based diet on everyone, which is also a push towards highly-processed vegan products. This documentary screened on Australia’s SBS on the 22nd of January. Other somewhat similar food policy and public nutrition narratives are also attempting to make inroads into Australia on policy level, in a more subtle manner.

Also on the ORFC panel was environmental campaigner and vegan George Monbiot who participated in a heated debate. Most already knew what to expect from him, due to the pre-publicity for his tv program that promised a “radical takedown of food farming”. Monbiot’s argument, that we need to shut down animal farming, and turn to lab-grown meat and vat fermented protein brewed with specialised bacteria, was hard to swallow in a room full of regenerative farmers and foodies. He is keen on food being biologically created in factories. From farming to "ferming", he called it. According to this report, farmers at the conference were respectful and reasonably attentive as Monbiot harangued them, but a few boos did break out, and the author remarked that it was a wonder that Monbiot wasn’t chased down the street.

““We are on the cusp of seeing possibly the greatest economic shift for 200 years. In food, the greatest technological shift in 12,000 years...””
— George Monbiot

George Monbiot was in a new British documentary called Apocalypse Cow: How Meat Killed the Planet, and presented the UK as stripped of woodland by grass-eating sheep, crowded with the “agricultural sprawl” of industrial farms, and with streams polluted by manure. Monbiot insisted that the British countryside isn’t a picturesque escape, but an ongoing ecological disaster. If most of the food we eat could be grown in a lab, he argues, then a fraction of the space currently reserved for farming would be needed. He completely misses the potential of agriculture itself as a carbon sink. Environmentalist Dr Vandana Shiva hit the nail on the head when she said of Monbiot’s recent column: it struck her as a dystopian vision of the future, with no people working the land and humans eating 'fake' food produced in giant industrial factories from microbes. In addition, the UK’s Channel 4 has been accused of a massive conflict of interest for screening two films attacking the meat industry after it made a seven-figure investment in a vegan food company.

Investigative journalist and food writer Joanna Blythman - who received a thunderous applause - demanded Monbiot apologise to everyone in the room for implying that he was the only one who cared about climate change. She pointed out in her presentation that lab grown and fermented protein will likely be key ingredients in ultra-processed diets, which are not palatable for many people. They want REAL FOOD, because the direct connection with the soil is vital to keep people healthy. Joanna also blasted the EAT-Lancet Commission ‘planetary diet’ which calls for a drastic reduction in meat and dairy, and doesn’t meet her criteria for health, or living within planetary limits. “For me, any diet that automatically leaves you nutritionally deficient in essential micronutrients, a diet, which by definition, isn’t nutritionally complete enough to sustain healthy human life is a non-starter.” She also said that people who want to produce food in labs and factories will take the culture out of agriculture. “I believe it’s ultra-processed food that’s creating problems, not meat or our native butter,” she said. “For 30 years I’ve campaigned against factory farmed foods. Don’t smear all livestock farming,” she ended.

One of the questions from the audience put to George Monbiot was: “Does your vision of a future without farming put food entirely in the hands of corporations?” The vast majority of the conference centred around farmers and people who mostly think that ruminants and eating (some) meat have a role to play in farming and diets.

Additional Reading:

False claims and miracles from the new vegan religion

In conversation: Patrick Holden and George Monbiot

‘Cultured meat is fool’s gold’: Environmentalists lock horns over controversial documentary

A farmer’s view of the Oxford Real Farming Conference

Save the Planet—by Destroying Farming?

Linking Sustainable and Healthy Diets to Farming Outputs

This heated debate was about how the UK should move towards a sustainable diet that is linked to sustainable farming - and what this diet looks like. Listen to the audio, or watch the video. Sarah Sands from BBC Radio 4 Today Program chaired this session with speakers:

  • Patrick Holden dairy farmer from the Sustainable Food Trust (40:00)

  • Richard Young, Sustainable Food Trust (23:33)

  • Joanna Blythman, journalist and author (12:45)

  • Peter Segger from Blaencamel Organic Farm (35:05)

  • George Monbiot, journalist and author (02:10)

““But as part of its great food transformation Eat Lancet and people like George, actively want to stamp out the existing multiplicity of distinctive and diverse food cultures, that are predicated on local history, seasons, traditions, cultivars, breeds and artisan methods. And they want to replace them, with a monocultural globalised diet, one that is centred on factory and laboratory food.” ”
— Joanna Blythman

Many environmental NGOs are now advocating plant-based diets as a solution to climate change, yet is this approach to eating compatible with the productive capacity of sustainable farming systems in the UK? What can the UK produce in a truly sustainable way? In order to answer this question, we need to differentiate between livestock that are part of the problem—feedlot beef, intensively reared chickens and pigs, intensive dairy—and livestock products that come from systems which can be part of the solution.

Joanna Blythman said: “But as part of its great food transformation Eat Lancet and people like George, actively want to stamp out the existing multiplicity of distinctive and diverse food cultures, that are predicated on local history, seasons, traditions, cultivars, breeds and artisan methods. And they want to replace them, with a monocultural globalised diet, one that is centred on factory and laboratory food. They would replace this culinary richness, this wonderful natural biodiversity, with a top down, ‘we know what is best for you’ diet. They would take the culture out of agriculture.”

Peter Segger, is a self-confessed vegetarian and organic vegetable farmer and raised the issue of nutrition. He said that the Government is doing little to address the shocking decline in nutritional value of fresh produce, and that this jeopardises future health and sustainability.

Patrick Holden ended the session by asking for people to work together. He implored George Monbiot to reconsider his stance against farming and grazing animals in particular. Speaking directly to him he said, “We need your support. We need to get back to producing food in harmony with nature without diminishing our natural capital.” Patrick’s family farm produces raw milk cheese in Wales.

Watch this video as George Monbiot gives some further explanation to this position on lab grown food, while Patrick Holden argues for regenerative agriculture as the way forward. Despite their vastly different views, there is a shared sense of concern for the future wellbeing of both the people and planet. Both consider themselves environmentalists, and have a dislike of the effects industrial agriculture and intensification are having on the environment.

Extinction Rebellion? Unusual Allies are Allies After All

This may be hard for some farmers to accept, but surprisingly, there is also an Extinction Rebellion Farmer Group, setup by Sarah Shuffel after becoming “fed up of farmers being blamed for global warming.” They are hoping for policy change that will include climate and ecological emergency, carbon capturing, livestock in arable rotations, cover crops etc. so that climate friendly farming becomes the norm. “If farmers were paid enough to store carbon, all our problems would be over,” said one farmer. Listen to the ORFC session here.

Also at the conference, was speaker Gail Bradbrook who is a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion (XR) They launched in October 2018 and are now in 72 countries. “We’re in active rebellion. It’s not a protest movement. We’re not campaigning. The system is broken. There is no credible plan, and it’s time for mass participation in civil disobedience,” she told the audience.

“I have definitely not come to this conference to tell you how to farm. I have come to thank you.”

“I feel quite tearful every time I have thought about it actually. I feel in the depth of myself, gratitude to you for the work that you’ve been doing over many years.” “It really shows me the values that you are here for, the connections you have to the land, and the values of the economic system that don’t appreciate what you are doing. I imagine much of what you are

doing has been hard, underpaid and undervalued. From myself, I appreciate that the fact that you’ve come here; to feel support, to debate, to share, and to innovate together.”

“I do not accept the moves that they try to make to separate the environmental movement, from the farming community, or working people. We are natural allies.” Watch the session here.

“As far as I’m concerned the front line for the ecological crisis in the UK lays with our farmers – we are natural allies,” she said.

“Government needs to spend more time with people who understand nature friendly farming, so that we can address multiple crises in a way that provides multiple solutions.”

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““The ORFC and XR both aim to achieve harmony between humanity and the rest of creation – and both acknowledge that for this, ‘Real Farming’ is essential.” ”
— Colin Tudge - ORFC founder

Colin Tudge, who co-founded Oxford Real Farming Conference in 2009, has said the two groups are both fighting ‘industrial agriculture’ which is ruining the environment. Colin, who is also a science writer, warned that ‘governments, big industry and big finance’ are not doing ‘anything like enough’ to deal with the combined threats of global warming and mass extinction. “ORFC seeks to underpin and help bring about an approach to agriculture that is based on the twin principles of agroecology and food sovereignty – which is what is meant by ‘Real Farming’. Real farming can ensure a fair deal for everyone. For farmers (we need many more than we have now), for society at large (good food for everyone forever is possible), and for the biosphere – the natural world.” Listen to Colin in this video.

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While Colin was speaking at the annual event, members of Extinction Rebellion (XR) staged a week of protests outside of the original, corporate-sponsored Oxford Farming Conference. The Oxford Real Farming Conference was started after farmers became disillusioned with mainstream farming narratives, and founded their own event to challenge Oxford’s corporate farming conference.

Jane King, arts coordinator of Extinction Rebellion, said: “The Oxford Farming Conference has been running since 1936 but today it seems to be less about farming and more about the interests of the UK’s multi-billion pound industries that control farming and therefore the land. Nature is our life support system. Restoring our ecosystems is the best chance we have of dealing with the Climate Emergency. Restoring nature and our natural carbon sinks (e.g. soil, woodlands, wetlands, grasslands, moorlands, peatlands and oceans) to capture carbon from the atmosphere, is at this time the only feasible solution to avoid climate catastrophe. No man-made means of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is currently working at sufficient scale.”

Animal Feeds: What We Feed Livestock Matters

On the first day of the conference, dairy farmer Christine Page presented a session on the much maligned cow.

She has a micro dairy in Shropshire on her 70 acre pastoral farm that produce cow and calf friendly raw dairy. Her cows enjoy a 100% pasture-based diet (which is not a monoculture of ryegrass fed with chemical inputs), which she describes in great detail on her website Smiling Tree Farm. They are raised exclusively on diverse pastures, wildflower meadows, and browsing trees. She also produces Pasture for Life dairy and meat, which is a certification label for the 100% pasture-fed meat and dairy consumers desire. She says that diversity and herbs impacts on the nutrient-density and flavour of the dairy and meat, that cows have bio-digesters that evolved eating grass, and that the grazing of regenerating pastures pump the carbon cycle.

What we feed livestock matters, because it relates to about half of the agricultural land on the planet, 80 percent of which is grasslands.

Listen to her presentation at the 19 minute time marker, which is a radical shift away from traditional dairying, and a new food production system that is increasingly in demand with consumers:

Ethical Dairy: A Massive Government Investment

The Scottish government has just made a massive investment of £340,000 government funding to boost to farming projects across Scotland. Rainton Farm’s The Ethical Dairy will be focus of a £60,400 project run by Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) to implement an "ethical model" which would see cows and calves kept together for five months rather than being separated within 24 hours of birth.

““As we face a global climate emergency, investing and supporting innovative research within our agricultural sector has never been more important.” ”
— Scottish Rural Affairs Minister Mairi Gougeon

If successful, this model could be a template, and be extended to other farms in a bid to make Scotland a leader in ethical dairying. Colleen McCulloch, of Soil Association Scotland, which helped set up the Rural Innovation Support Service (RISS) group that brought the cow with calf project together at the farm of David and Wilma Finlay, said keeping calves and mothers together has benefits beyond their welfare. "David and Wilma are at the forefront in Europe of turning this high-welfare dairy system into a successful, commercial operation," she said. "Keeping calves with their mother has benefits beyond welfare, for example, for rose veal and beef supply, as well as grassland management and biodiversity - but it is commercially challenging." Raw drinking milk sales is illegal in Scotland, but raw milk cheese is the high-value product that makes this viable at this organic dairy with a herd of 125. Listen to this recent BBC interview.

Jenny Phelps from the Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group reports that one of the most memorable sessions for her was the discussion of the impact of intensive dairy production on mental well-being and the pressure experienced by the herdsmen, the land, the cattle and wildlife. Russ Carrington noted the joy when the herdsmen - Charles Ellett - joined the Ethical Dairy, where the land, wildlife, animals and people are valued with kindness and respect. She said it was an inspiration and highlighted how different it could be if we support a change in our food production systems for the benefit of our farmers, who work so hard. The Ethical Dairy in Scotland produce raw milk cheese.

Several speakers connected to raw dairy farms in the UK also spoke at the event, but only a few of the 118 presentations are available via the archive.

Last words…

Real food gives us a chance to regenerate the earth, our health, our food economies, our food freedom and food cultures through real farming, like pasture-based livestock farming.

““We need the wider public to realise that herbivore (grass-fed livestock) are essential for climate change and soil health. Young people are being misled, they are being told to eat vegetables alone, which require cultivation and can, if not done well, cause habitat degradation around the world.””
— Jenny Phelps, Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group

More pasture!

In essence, it is all about the grass that is overgrazed, and the vast grasslands and forests that are destroyed, in order to plant monocultures of grains and ryegrass to feed animals. Destroying forests and grasslands, by planting monocultures of grain, releases massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, which is partly why carbon emissions are a problem. Some believe that fertiliser is the biggest pollution problem and contributing to warming the planet.

To reiterate: restoring nature and our natural carbon sinks (e.g. soil, woodlands, wetlands, grasslands, moorlands, peatlands and oceans) to capture carbon from the atmosphere, is at this time the only feasible solution to avoid climate catastrophe. No man-made means of carbon capture and sequestration is currently working at sufficient scale.

Some farmers are rearing livestock in a way that takes better care of the planet using methods that grow soil organic matter which draws down carbon, without the need for chemical fertilisers and pesticides. They are rearing fewer animals that don’t overgraze - allowing the land to recover. They are also managing a variety of animals in order to protect the planet’s biodiversity. Many consumers can respect this way of farming, because it reconnects them to how food is produced.

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The problem is that red tape on small-scale farmers, that prevents them from selling high-value pasture-raised animal products directly to consumers. Farmers are currently not being paid fairly by the system, which is at the heart of the problem, especially here in Australia. This has to change. Regenerative farming methods increase the nutrition of pasture and other plants grown in the soil. There are great benefits for the environment, animals and humans. Direct farm-to-consumer sales ensures consumers get the food they desire, the story on how the food is produced, the farmer is paid fairly, and the farmer can farm in a more nature-friendly manner.

Less grain!

Animal products should not be just another cheap commodity on supermarket shelves. Humans have been influencing the land and environment for the sake of food for centuries. Humans’ need for food and profit completely altered the Australian continent’s natural makeup.

The modern global food system is dependent on open land for monocropped cereal grains, which is fed to animals and humans. The agriculture industry and farmers of every kind have cleared trees at a rate of 5 million hectares a year to make room for crops like corn, wheat and soy. The easiest ways to do this are either spray the area with an herbicide that kills

plants, or by lighting fires to burn and clear the land of trees, shrubs and grasses. This is called swidden, or slash-and-burn agriculture.

These unsustainable agriculture practices are leading to The Heat Dome effect, where bare land leads to a heat-creates-more-heat effect. Australia is getting hotter because industrial agriculture creates vast areas of bare land, and decimates soil microbiology needed for nutrient-cycling and carbon sequestration. Policy reform at government level is essential. Livestock should not be receptacles for vast amounts of corn and other grains. Diverse species pasture habitats - that protect the soil - should be grown for them to eat.

““Pastoral farmers feel devalued by the simple media messages that fail to distinguish between industrial and pastoral systems.” ”
— John Meadley, Pasture Livestock Association / Pasture for Life
““As we face a global climate emergency, investing and supporting innovative research within our agricultural sector has never been more important.” ”
— Mairi Gougeon, Scotish Rural Affairs Minister
““All of our food comes from soil. When we begin to destroy the biology of the soil, we destroy the food network that give us life.””
— Paul Stamets, mycologist, author of “Mycelium Running”

Also at the conference were speakers from Pasture-Fed Livestock Association, Compassion in World Farming, National Farmers Union, Sustain, La Via Campesina, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), GM Watch, Beyond GM, Soil Association Land Trust, Forum for the Future, EcoNexus, Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR), Landworker’s Alliance, Food Ethics Council, Rare Breeds Survival Trust, Pesticide Action Network UK, Friends of the Earth, Soil Association, Nature Friendly Farming Network, Global Justice Now, Biodiversity International, Food Ethics Council, Food Manifesto Wales, WWOOF, The Organic Research Centre etc. There are too many to mention…

Posted on January 26, 2020 by ARMM Admin and filed under Regenerative farming, Raw Milk regulation and tagged raw milk articles oxford real farming conference 2020 sustainable food trust extinction rebellion #orfc2020.