Adaptability and change are at the heart of farming

It’s challenging, inspiring, and very tiring, and I always find the Soil Association conference ‘re-fuels’ me for the rest of the year. On the way home I got to thinking about the journey I had been on over nearly 40 years working in farming, and how that related to the very diverse subjects discussed there.

I started my farming career back in the 1970s, leaving school to join the Agricultural Trainig Board’s apprenticeship scheme.  This took me to a fairly large and diverse estate on the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire where I learned from the various staff there, while also spending time at the local agricultural college.  I remember very well the discussions we used to have when having our ‘tea and bait’ breaks about the progress farming had made and was continuing to make around that time. 

We had 100 hp 4 wheel drive tractors, reversible ploughs, and combine drills that placed both seed and fertiliser together. We had cabs on tractors and combines, sometimes even with cooler units added to avoid melting. We’d removed hedges to make fields bigger and more efficient, and had hi tech chemical and fertiliser programmes that almost guaranteed success. We had huge 120 cow dairies, barley beef systems that meant you didn’t have to make silage or hay. Lambing sheds resembled intensive care maternity wards, while 2000 pigs only needed 2 acres of concrete and buildings. At the time we thought we were the bees' knees and that farming would never, ever again see such progress and change. Looking back now, how naïve and wrong we were. 

Nearly 40 subsequent years of practical farming and development and support work in organic farming for the Soil Association, and I am absolutely convinced that farming has to adapt to work in harmony within ecological cycles and natural resources. This can’t be niche, and it shouldn’t be seen as a high cost luxury needing premiums. It’s an approach that must be the very centre of our farming methods.

Back in the 70s our challenges were to increase production and efficiency so that the public could access cheap and convenient food.  Completely understandable, but few had the foresight to see where things would go wrong. Now we have new challenges – food security is still high on the agenda, but we also have climate change, and increasingly expensive and scarce inputs and resources.  We also can’t abandon recent emphasis on the environment and animal welfare. Then there’s a western world population with high levels of obesity and diet related illness, with many Asian countries aspiring to eat the way we do!

In reality, farming has always changed, and farmers are brilliant at adapting and responding to signals.  That is one of the most useful tools that we have in the box because the challenges of the 70’s were not a patch on the ones ahead.

Phil Stocker is Director of Farmer and Grower Relations at the Soil Association.