Food security is, always, an issue of national concern. Ensuring this security embraces a number of different sentiments that appear to be pulling in very different directions.
Three main strands emerge from this: maximising outputs; farm sustainably in the environmental sense; and farm resiliently in the commercial sense.听
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Maximising output, which has its origins in wartime pressures, has tended to prevail as the main driving force in farming.
improvements to yields have been won through scientific and technical advances and these have transformed the farming sector.
However, improvements to yields do not necessarily translate into a sustainable environment or a profitable farm business.
Just consider, it is perfectly possible to produce cereals on a concrete apron in central London. All it takes is copious amounts of fertilisers and artificial soils.
Of course, this would be catastrophic for the economy in cost terms and also disastrous for the environment when applied to farmland.
鈥榊ou can try to expel nature with a pitchfork, but it will always return'. This observation comes from the celebrated Roman poet, Horace.
Whether we like it or not, even in a landscape that is managed for food production, nature is fickle and always haphazard.
The managed landscape, which is now our natural landscape, has evolved over centuries by a process of creating islands of order out of oceans of disorder and chaos through farming.
To maintain this order, energy is constantly being expended in different forms of work.
There will be a place where a minimum amount of effort will produce a maximum amount of economic benefit without compromising our natural resources.
This is the point of maximum sustainable output (MSO).听
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Energy
Farming has access to two very different forms of energy.
There is the solar energy that drives photosynthesis, on a micro-scale, and the weather, on a macro-scale. It is, essentially, free.
The challenge is to use it completely and effectively.
The other source of energy is the industrial energy embedded in the artificial farm inputs that substitute for an absence of natural resources.
This energy is certainly not free.
Even worse, the industrial energy inputs, while certainly driving up outputs, can never be recovered physically (as calories) or economically (through low value, high bulk food commodities) and their extensive use will also adulterate the natural environment and destroy profitability.听
Grass is a wonder-crop; it grows without creating the nitrogen deficits in the soil that are associated with growing cereals.
Converting grass into food products is most effectively done by ruminants and their multiple stomachs.
Replacing grass with artificial concentrates, full of industrial energy, is not only expensive but by turning the animal into a monogastric beast it declines to exploit its unique values endowed by evolution.
Cereals will always create a nitrogen deficit.
Addressing this is the most demanding challenge in farming. Fertilisers will do the job but at the expense, ultimately, of natural soil fertility.
The answers are to be found in the inclusion of livestock and crop rotations.
The net effect will be reduced cereal output, but as 40% of arable land is devoted to the production of grains for animal food, with a livestock sector working at MSO and not needing bought-in feed this resource would be available for reassignment.
It is probable that 80% of all farm businesses are unable to cover their fixed and variable costs on their pre-support income. Support payments transform this to the extent that only 20% fail thereafter.
This undermines the idea of driving output for food security and masks the underlying decapitalisation of natural assets that continues unabated. A phenomenon that has yet to register with too many.听
However, farmers can take comfort. Whereas industries and great corporations come and go as society changes, our need for wholesome food does not.
Farming has a permanent and profitable place in the economy.
The Profitable Farm
These issues and more are explored, modelled and discussed in Chris' new book The Profitable Farm, which he co-authored with Brian Scanlon. Readers of Farmers Guardian can make use of a 20% discount, via the QR Code.
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