Beyond the Fields: Hidden Environmental Costs of Agriculture

How Good Agricultural Practice May Be Harming The Environment.

It could be said that we farmers have become adept at promoting ourselves as 'guardians of the countryside' but behind the bucolic image there lies an environmental footprint. Most of us farm to sell food and take advantage of products and technology in this endeavour but there are a number of owners of agricultural land who indulge in a 'lifestyle choice' (and we seem to be surrounded by them) but for those of us who have to make a living from food production financial commitments  have to be met though I would question the New Zealand mindset 'you can't be green if you are in the red'. These comments are coming from a dairy farmer in west Wales milking fewer than a hundred cows and with few sheep, poultry and bees - a truly mixed family farm.

In the UK dairy industry there are some truly impressive production figures, not all of which can be attributed to genetics. We are encouraged to calve our cows at 24 months of age. This entails constant supplementary feeding of cows and calves. Milk powders contain palm oil, and cattle feed contains soya. This means we are culpable in the destruction of rainforest. Hiding behind 'sustainable sources' means that the areas of former rainforest were cleared more than ten years ago.

Another dilemma I have is scale. Modern technology allows fewer people to manage larger units successfully which has a knock-on effect on the wider community. Consider automated calf-feeders, robotic milking, robotic scrapers, automated TMR feeding and health-monitoring collars...where is the limit?

We farmers have a phrase, 'farming the tarmac', namely moving grass around which uses lots of tractor power and as we get bigger more grass has to travel further. In an ideal world, the muck should be returned to the land where the feed came from. Sadly, this is not always posssible, which results in an oversupply of nutrients which in turn become pollutants and pollution fines have become just another production cost.

As farmers we are in privileged position when it comes to planning applications for our enterprises. A recent article in the dairy press entitled, 'How to secure planning permission for 1,000 cow dairy unit' told of a farmer who achieved this goal but at a cost of £300K. On paper big dairy units appeal to county planners citing employment opportunities and economic vibrancy (never mind the much- publicised inability to find local employees). With cow numbers such as these, the idea of cows grazing in a field becomes increasingly unlikely. Considering that one of the five pillars of good animal welfare states that 'animals should be allowed to exhibit natural behaviour', in my mind a cow is a self-propelled grazing machine in a field, at least for six months of the year. The grazing cow creates depressions for nesting birds as well as their cow pats being an ecosystem in their own right creating habitats for numerous insects which in turn support clouds of swallows and insectivorous animals. Whilst on the subject of dung the use of Ivomectin products results in the dung being being toxic, I think it should be banned. The list goes on, Neonictinoids, Fiprinol and Roundup, the latter considered the regenerative farmers friend, has recently paid out  £8.78b in compensation, so how safe is it?

Where do we go from here?