Talking agriculture to farmers

agroforestry

At the moment I’m leading a course on agroforestry for young farmers at an agricultural college. Their ages range from 19 to 25 and most already work on or run a farm, for the most part producing milk, some producing beef and the rest producing vegetables. 2% of them are organic and the rest use a variety of synthetic chemicals, they are all mechanised, farms ranging from 40 to 120 hectares and only one leaves his animals in the fields during the winter. Most of the farms are carrying debts, import soya from overseas and the vet is never far away.

The cows are all milked twice a day, run on pasture during the summer and sillage maize is the most important winter feeds. In the region around 296,000 hectares are put to maize production and most of it goes to silage. The region is much better known for it’s rainfall than for droughts and wildfires are rare.

So far so good. The students, for the most part, are going to take over the family farm on which they work already and whilst they are in an agricultural college they have learnt how to run the farm from their parents. They see no particular reason to change something that they see as working fine. This despite the debts, the vet visits, the price increases we have seen for synthetic fertilisers and perhaps most importantly the low wages they receive. The latter has pushed farmers across the country to protest often using their tractors to dump produce on roundabouts and in front of the buildings occupied by those they see as being the cause of their financial worries.

Anyway, I was hired to teach them about agroforestry and this is proving somewhat difficult as they see no good reason to plant trees in their fields. So how am I going to convince them that it’s in their best interest to head in this direction?

The arguments that I present about the benefits of agricultural diversification, in the case of agroforestry the fruit, nut or timber crop added to the milk or beef production are seen as being an added work load rather than an added income. No-till and direct sowing into plant cover are techniques that they don’t see as being necessary and find a bit complicated. They think that running, sheep or horses with the cows (mixed grazing), which is how their great-grandparents ran the farm, is probably illegal, which it isn’t. Discussions about the importance of biodiversity lead nowhere, in fact the only subject that gets them going a bit is the trade treaties which allow cheaper imports which effect the prices at which they can sell their products. Yet they are quite happy when a trade treaty gives them access to cheaper animal feeds.

You can see my difficulties and I’ve still got 3 days of courses to lead! I’ve got to find a way to present agroforestry in a way that speaks to them and a way to get them to see the advantages. In this I’m lucky, things have changed, a few years ago it was even more difficult because agroforestry wasn’t recognised in the politics of the common agricultural policiy in Europe, it is now. Today there are quite a number of farms that have gone in this direction so there are local farms to visit and more and more information about how to set up and run an agroforestry farm. That said I still need to find something that will help me communicate with them. I’ve decided to use farm income as the way forward and to couple this with some discussions about the low social status generally accorded by the public to those who produce our food.

To start with I’m going to point out that ‘a penny saved is a penny earned’ and then discuss how they can reduce expenditure. There are now several organisations that have set up to help dairy farmers reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and there are now plenty of farms that have gone down this path. In general the different approaches to reduce emissions have also increased farm income. The other thing I can present is the whole carbon trading market, which frankly is a bit complicated. Farmers can, for example, switch to agroforestry and sell carbon credits as the trees are drawing down and stocking carbon. Presenting this is a bit of a hard sell because the income that can be generated isn’t that much so I’ll have to point out again that the trees, fruit, nut or timber also provide another income.

What about the social status thing then? This is a bit of a problem, the general public know little about how farms work and for the most part see farmers as essential but not necessarily very bright and often a bit smelly. The current agro-industrial system means that farmers struggle to earn enough money and are overburdened with the paperwork and administration that they have to do to get grants, sell their products, track their animals etc. If people wonder why fewer and fewer people want to become farmers these are two of the reasons. I’m going to discuss this subject and more importantly see how these young farmers feel that they could act to acquire a better social status. One way connects to the greenhouse gas subject, many farmers feel unfairly under attack because of their greenhouse gas emissions. You may have read about how we have to eat less beef to ‘save the climate’ you rarely hear that we must eat less cheese or drink less milk, yet dairy cows don’t belch and fart less than beef cattle. Mixed messages and sensationalist news reports about beef aren’t helping anybody. Eating less beef is good for our health and good for the environment but we must remember that farmers have been encouraged to produce beef, they have invested in the machines etc that they felt they needed and now they are being told to reduce their production.

If we transition farming towards agroforestry, if we encourage the adoption of low greenhouse gas emission, if we switch to cultivation techniques that increase soil carbon then farms can become major allies in our fight to limit global heating. Farmers can be seen as leading the ‘fight to save the planet’. We deserve your help, and a better recognition of what we do which is producing the food without which none of us will survive for long.