"A New Land Army" ??? The Food Crisis - highlighting the need for - and giving opportunity for change - in our food systems.

We need to make small farms like this less 'exceptional' perhaps ??.

Time for a new “Land Army”??

As a long time agroecological farmer and grower, I’m presently trying to make sense of the current ‘food landscape’ as it unfolds, and possibly unravels, in the face of the Coronavirus crisis.

The cracks are starting to show, in what many, perhaps, felt was a robust, and endlessly productive system of farming, and food production.

However, the absence of migrant labour to do field, and harvest work, and other constraints on production, and distribution of food in the UK, is very likely to cause shortages of certain foodstuffs, before long.

 This was already going to be a problem, post-Brexit – but now it would seem the issue is doubly pressing.

The whole topic is of very personal interest for me on many levels.

 It also feeds into how the food politics landscape can, and indeed must change over the coming months and years, if we are to achieve quality food security – surely a cornerstone of human health and well-being on so many levels

I’ve frequently been asked, how all this disruption has affected my business, of late, and I’m happy - but hopefully not too smug - to report that the answer to that is “Not all that much really”.

If anything, there’s been an upswing in interest, and business.

Having been involved in farming, and food production, one way or another for the whole of my life, its often easy for me to forget, just how far removed from their food sources the majority of the population has become.

Who grows, and processes it, how, and where??

As someone who manages to makes the bulk of their living from producing food for their immediate community – mainly vegetables and eggs – I’m definitely in at the business end of all this – whilst also involved in the campaigning, education, and research, side too.

Not having been born, or married into agriculture, I’m also very aware of just how difficult it is to get to this ‘happy place’ where it is possible to make a stable income from producing good food for the local population.

But a combination of some luck, early training - a National Diploma in Agriculture, and experience – working on many other farms and holdings, plus enormous amounts of help and encouragement from others, has brought me to what now feels like a tremendously privileged position.

- Living on our land, working alongside good people, producing quality food, and making a modest living.

But this shouldn’t be a rarefied occupation, only available to the lucky few, who have somehow negotiated the many hurdles placed in the way of landless farmworker without external funds – to becoming an agroecological farmer, and economically viable business operator.

I’m referring mainly to fresh vegetable production here, as that it’s my principal activity here on the farm, but much of this can equally apply to other food stuffs.

The farming, growing, and direct sales system here on this small farm means that we grow a very  wide variety of crops – over fifty - which builds resilience to any partial crop failures,  and in many cases means that pest and disease build up aren’t really a problem, so long as good rotational practices and soil care are observed.

Added in to that, a slightly more relaxed attitude to ‘weeds’ so that natural insect predators are a present, ready, and willing pest control squadron – working for free.

It’s not a case of being anti mechanisation, or technology either - Some moderate mechanisation is used here, initially for larger scaled cultivations, and compost / soil amendment distribution, but after that, it is mostly skilled human labour that plants, maintains and harvests crops.

So labour requirements are spread out more manageably over a whole year’s cycle of growing – which in turn makes for stable labour requirements over that whole year – meaning local people can be part of the workforce all year round.

Two flocks of laying hens in mobile coops, clear crop aftermaths, and contribute extra value and income to the veg box scheme through which our produce is marketed.

So far so good.

However, there are a multiplicity of barriers that present, before we can expect to scale up, and transition to this becoming seen as the resilient ‘new normal’ in terms of food production and distribution, on a more nationwide scale.

One issue that comes up repeatedly is the difficulty of gaining secure and affordable access to Land -   – to allow food producing businesses to be viable in the long term – High rents or mortgages, and insecure tenancies make this unsustainable.

There are also problems around the lack of appropriate training, finance availability, and access to markets, in addition to other sticking points, such as planning regulations.

But all of these topics are being addressed in their ongoing campaigns by The Land workers Alliance.

These issues are ongoing, their existence has just been brought into sharper focus by recent events.  

And meanwhile, back in the slightly less fortunate world, our current predicament, is starting to highlight just how nebulous that illusion of abundance on our supermarket shelves really is

 ‘Just in time deliveries’ through long and complicated supply chains – often from overseas - has created too may links in the chain – it only takes one of these to break, for the whole system to fail.

And we need to acknowledge how ‘artificially cheap’ most food really is - relative that is to everything else that has massively increased in price in our ‘basic needs’ budgets.

So, food banks have become a ‘necessary’ evil, because accommodation, and other costs have risen way above affordable levels for those on the very lowest income.

That the environment, public health, and workers were already suffering, as a result of these artificially low returns on food production, was already fact, before the current crisis

As I see it, we’ve got the system, and its ‘complexity load’ back to front.

Industrialised agriculture, has oversimplified the production end – in order to ramp up short term production and profits - banks or agronomists selling inputs will encourage this – so we have pest susceptible monocropping – over use of heavy machinery – and requirements for a type of labour which is both monotonous and hard on the human body.

 Often using season migrant workers, or others with insecure labour status.

Added to that, the toll on a human psyche, that can arise from spending long days operating machinery with no better company than the tractor radio.

Meanwhile the complexity involved around getting produce to market means that the multiples tail, is wagging the dog of production.

Produce is grown for shelf life, uniformity, and cosmetic appearance, not to supply good nourishment to humans.

At each stage from field to supermarket there is another ‘extractive device’ taking away some of the return to the farmer, packaging, transport, refrigerated storage – costing energy, creating waste, and arguably extracting nutrition from the food itself.

The high material input costs of diesel, and agrochemicals needed to facilitate the scales at which produce is grown, extracts another tithe from farmer, without making any contribution to the rural economy, or to real livelihoods.

Surely it would be better all round, for more of these inputs costs to be going towards wages paid to skilled craft workers, giving meaningful year-round employment, to those suited to it, and creating long lasting jobs in our countryside and peri-urban areas?

Real fresh food, eaten close in time and location to its source, tastes really good – so we want to eat more of it.

 It becomes a ‘virtuous circle’ of appetite.

All this is already happening here on this farm, and on several other holdings UK- wide, but we are relatively few and far between as a result of the conditions within which we operate.

If we want more fresh produce on peoples’ plates – and thereby contributing to better public health overall then it would seem to make far more sense to turn around this system of complexity where possible, and shorten the supply chain, from field to fork.

Have a robust food web of local producers and consumers – interconnected in reality – but using online tools as well, to facilitate distribution.

 Rather than trying to maintain the present, rather shaky, long linear rope bridge of supply – those separate, but fragile links in the chain either hold together – or they fail together as is being illustrated now.    

So perhaps that the notion of a plucky “Land Army” as is being proposed in some quarters, is yes, a necessary but hopefully only temporary fix – in our present food emergency.

But its aspirations, and tone are still speaking to that somewhat aggressive, extractive, mechanistic, ‘quick fix’ method and attitude to production, that could be said to have landed us in this unstable predicament in the first place.

We can’t go back to normal after all this is over – and many would argue we shouldn’t even try, particularly if we want a better system that puts good food back where it should be - as a source of human nourishment, wellbeing, health and  social enjoyment – the lack of which many are probably feeling right now.

This will require a lot more hands directly on the land – a deindustrialised food revolution even – take ingenious, hardworking people, back to the place from which all food, and nourishment springs – well managed land itself.

And we can use the modern methodologies, and knowledge that we already have - those which harmonises with the natural processes of ecology which are already available to us.

The exploitative, harmful, and deeply unsustainable model of food production currently in existence needs to change – not only because of this health crisis – but also because of the climate, ecological, and animal welfare crisis that was pressing on our heels just before all this happened.

So, yes, In the short term, this year and perhaps the next, it may well be imperative, instructive even, for gangs of students or unemployed youngsters to go out to the fields to help with the necessary field work, and harvest.

But I hope that also, they can get the message that it doesn’t have to be vast acreages, of one monocrop, where the human body has to work at the speed of the machine – that’s inhumane – and in truth can’t be kept up as a lifelong occupation.

 We can do it differently – it’s happening right now – some of us are already doing this stuff – surviving, and even thriving on the land.

In the longer term we need some of that “Land Army” to become a sustained, longer-term workforce, valued, and recompensed properly, for the critical work they do to maintain and enhance the health of our nation.

Food and farming need to be recentred as vital, and vitalising to human society, ecology and economy – recognised as a ‘Public Good’
There’s nothing inherently wrong with trade, and commercial activity, done for monetary gain,  so long as it’s done on fair terms – Which means a sustainable income is available for the farmer or grower,  whilst affordable good food is available for everyone – not just the privileged few.

Ruth Hancock is lead grower at Fresh and Green Vegetables, a medium scale vegetable box scheme in East Devon, which has been operating since 2003.

 Ruth is a Coordinating Group member of The Land Workers Alliance, she also runs occasional learning, and skill sharing events at the farm.