Impact of food production must inform climate policy
Your editorial on nature-friendly farming (12 August) rightly points out that a reduction in meat and dairy consumption is the most effective way to provide food security while protecting nature and biodiversity, and curbing emissions. There’s ample evidence that more food can be produced on less land if crops feed people directly, rather than farmed animals. What’s missing so far is the necessary leadership to effect change. The Conservative government failed to take up the national food strategy recommendation of a 30% reduction in meat and dairy production by 2030 or to follow the Climate Change Committee’s advice to reduce meat consumption by 35% by 2050. Well done to those councils, most recently Calderdale in West Yorkshire, that have passed motions to lead the way on this.
A shift is needed away from regarding meat dishes as the norm. If restaurants and cafes offer food choices that are 50% plant-based, this could easily nudge behaviour towards more sustainable eating. The emissions and environmental impact of food must be part of climate policy everywhere.
It is good to hear confirmation in the recent Natural England report of what many farmers had already observed: that the public funding of farm wildlife schemes is increasing numbers of butterflies, bats, bees and birds (Wildlife boosted by England’s nature-friendly farming schemes, study finds, 9 August). There are, however, serious threats to the continued success of these schemes, which have been introduced over the last 25 years.
First, the payments now being offered under the post-Brexit schemes are effectively lower than over the previous 20 years and are unlikely to allow farmers to continue to provide this public benefit. Second, it is estimated in the report that farm food production will fall by 25% as a result of the change of land use from food to wildlife habitat. And third, the increasing regulation, which reduces the ability to control overpopulations of some very successful predators.
