Eau dear

I met up with someone yesterday who works for a chemical company. We see each other periodically to put the world to rights and swap stories. This train of thought is entirely down to him but is worthy of attention. I haven't really thought about this before.

Here are a few things that are entirely normal about how we think about food:

- Consumers want to know where their food is coming from. 

- Consumers want to know where an animal was born, reared and slaughtered.

- Consumers want to know that the chemicals that are used in farming are safe.

- Consumers want to know when they buy beef lasagne it is beef lasagne.

- Consumers want to know that the animal they are eating was well looked after.

- Consumers want to know what farmers are doing with the taxpayers money they get.

- Consumers want to know about all of the above but they want it better and cheaper.  

- Consumers want to know they can have all this and a beautiful countryside. 

Here are a few things that in comparison are not normal about how I think about water:

- I live in Belgium, I have no idea where my water comes from. I didn't in England either.

- I don't know where my water started, what was done to it, or what it went through.

- I have no idea what chemicals are put into my water, and I don't think to ask.

- I presume that the water I drink is actually water, but it could be anything.

- I have no idea if the people giving me water look after it properly.

- I presume water companies sometimes get taxpayers money but I have never asked.

- I don't know if I want my water better and cheaper, I pay on direct debit and don't think.

- I don't link the countryside and water together when I am filling up a glass.

So I spend a lot of time getting hot and bothered about food and farming and environment and energy and politics and do you know I never ever think about water. I turn a tap on and presume that what comes out of it is what I think it is, that it is safe for me to drink, that getting it to me hasn't harmed the environment and that I can afford to buy it.

A strange thought isn't it? Is this because the water is always abundantly there and I don't have to go to a shop to get it? Do we need a shortage to make me appreciate it more? Why do I think about the coffee I drink, the vegetables I cook and the meat I eat but I don't think about the water to make the coffee, the water to cook the vegetables and the water the animal drank?

Reasons to be cheerful

Sometimes there are a few things that come our way all at once that make us unhappy. It is useful to remember though that somewhere hopefully there will be some nuggets of something positive. As this blog ACTUALLY deals with food and farming rather than general health and wellbeing here are some agricultural reasons to be cheerful:

1. General trend for pesticide use is down

See here 

2. Farmers are using less man made fertiliser 

 See here

3. Milk prices for hard pressed dairy farmers are looking rosier

See here 

4. Over time there has been increasing amounts of land in agri-environment schemes

See here

5. Also, Higher Level Stewardship shows a positive trend

See here

6. The trend for nasty stuff going in water is down down down

See here

7. Stupid people are tipping less crap in places they shouldn't be 

See here

Enjoy your day and remember that it is often helpful to think of the good things.

Shear Pleasure

Sometimes you just need some time away. I have just come back to Brussels from a week in Scotland. I spent the biggest chunk of the week shearing sheep with a good friend of mine who is a shearing contractor in Aberdeenshire.  

Shearing is a great leveller, and also binds people together. I first learnt when I was 16 after I took myself off to a course on a farm in Lancaster, and I am still friends with people from that time. I then tried and tried after that to get on to as many farms as possible. I hate driving machinery and I am also terrible at it, so my route to gain farm experience was through shearing. It worked.

You're either serious about shearing, or you leave the job to someone else. I love it. It is sweaty, hard work and most farmers are more than happy to call it a spectator sport, roll wool and make cups of tea instead. Shearing for me is a way to think about nothing in particular for a while - I am too busy concentrating on holding the sheep, making a good job and gently perspiring in the agricultural equivalent of running a marathon in a sauna. 

I was hotter than the actual sun for most of the week

I have done a fair bit of thinking since. Re-wind. I read this before I went away. I read this often. And this. I went to a meeting in Brussels on sustainable agriculture where the platform was dominated by an anti-pesticide campaigner with no room for moderate debate. I get into Twitter debates about animal welfare. I went to the Natural History Museum in London recently and saw their wildly outdated depiction of modern agriculture. Then yesterday I read this.

You know what? I don't recognise this as the farming industry I have just been practically involved in for the past week. I didn't see millionaire subsidy junkies; I saw farmers building their businesses on what of late has been little return. I didn't see huge faceless agribusiness operating; I saw family farms working hard to make sure their farm was in a better state for the future. I didn't see a barren decimated landscape; I saw rolling productive countryside and farmers bursting with pride in the sunshine. I was bursting with pride myself.

And here I am back in Brussels. I can still feel a twinge in the bottom of my back, and I know that this week away has done me some good. I am reminded why I do what I do. Next year when I go shearing, I think I'll invite George, Mark and Philip. We could get a holiday cottage together. I could take them to meet some farmers I know. I could teach them to shear sheep if they fancied it. 

Wouldn't we have a lovely time in the countryside together?  

Thoughts on the State of Nature

All over the news this morning is the 'State of Nature' report that has been developed by a coalition of 25 environment NGO's.

You can read all about the report here, and I think there is a launch event with David Attenborough today. Take a read of the full report here. It talks about two-thirds of species being in decline. I need to read the report in full (it is pretty lengthy) and my initial thought process is from the headlines in the press. 

 

The Today programme has led with the report this morning, and it was noted that 'the culprits are the usual subjects - intensification of agriculture and urban sprawl. Business as usual is not acceptable.'

I think it is pretty obvious that business as usual is not acceptable, but I am not sure that 'the usual culprits' in the form of the intensification of farming tells the whole story. It looks to me like farming has been doing anything but intensifying in the past few years.

It seems to me that there has been a huge amount of work done by farmers who have realised that business as usual (and by this we presume the report means very intensive agriculture with negative environmental impacts) is not the way to operate.

I thought I would take a look at few graphs dotted around because it is easier for me to see things in a picture.

 

This is what fertiliser use looks like at the moment:

This is from here - take a look

This is what water quality in rivers looks like:


You can see this here on page 22 

This is how much we spend on biodiversity (which has dropped recently, presumably with government cutbacks):



Take a look at this here on page 42

This is what the Farmland Bird Index looks like - used as a wider barometer of the health of the countryside:



You can see this here as well, on page 61

On these figures farmland birds continue to decline, but at a much lower rate than over the past 40 years. Yes, there is much work to do. I hope however that the report takes account of all of the work that farmers are doing highlighted in the graphs above, and the record numbers of those in agri-enviornment schemes. It will be interesting to see what the effect of the crazy weather we have had of late has on the environment in the future as well. There is much to discuss.

 

Perhaps the most interesting underlying graph in all of this is the one related to how much the UK spends on biodiversity. We are in the final stages of CAP reform, and it is clear that the relationship between pillar 1 payments direct to farmers and pillar 2 payments for rural development and the environment will be even sharper in focus very shortly. The 'State of Nature' report is a line in the sand in this debate, hence the attention it has received so far.