Earlier this month I witnessed something I thought I would never see – The organic movement successfully opposing the withdrawal (albeit temporarily) of an environmentally damaging pesticide. I speak, of course, of the copper based fungicide ‘Cuprokylt’, used by some organic potato growers to manage late blight. I accept that this means that we now may not see the massive reductions in organic potato production that were forecast, and that in itself is a good thing. My beef is that we’re in this situation because we failed to do what we should have been doing for at least the last 10 years.

For those of you who have a more active social life than me, and therefore perhaps don’t follow the ins and outs of pesticide regulation with quite the same zeal, this is the background: In 2015, the application to re-register ‘Cuprokylt’ was declined on the grounds of insufficient / out-of- date data. That meant that, as of the beginning of this year, it was not available to UK growers. However, a few weeks ago an emergency authorisation for its use was approved, bringing it back into service at least for the forthcoming season.

Copper based fungicides have always been permitted in organic growing, and this has allowed us to develop production systems based on the assumption that it’s always in the back of the cupboard when we need it. That in turn has allowed us to grow blight susceptible varieties of potato that we would not have otherwise been able to, and the organic market has grown very much enamoured of those varieties. Which is basically why, after a decade or more of copper reduction/ elimination being on the agenda, we still seem to be hopelessly dependent on it.

There are two basic problems with that: One, it accumulates in the soil to the detriment of soil life and ecology. Two, that being the case, its use runs contrary to the most basic tenement of organic farming, that of promoting and maintaining soil health. The latter issue is political as much as practical. Every time we take a stance on, say, banning Glyphosate, our critics cite our attitude to copper as evidence of, at best, inconsistency and at worst hypocrisy.

I am, I like to think, a pragmatic person. I accept that operating in the real world means that it’s not always possible to put all the organic principles in to practice all of the time.  Sometimes there is no alternative but to compromise. But in the case of blight on potatoes – and this is the crux of my argument – there are alternatives, which I discussed at some length in an article in the most recent issue of Organic Farming Magazine. The Sarvari Research Trust, Agrico and Greenvale, have all invested enormous resources in developing a suite a blight resistant varieties. Collectively they have range that covers the whole gambit of tastes, textures, culinary uses and maturities.

So you could argue, and I do, that the issue is less a technical one and more a marketing/ supply chain one. Many retailers, with some honourable exceptions, are reluctant to change their ranges to include more resistant varieties. They have a tendency to throw up their hands and say ‘We just give our customers what they want. If they prefer susceptible varieties, there’s not much we can do about it’.

This, and I’m being polite here, is complete nonsense. If, as a retailer, you really are committed to organic and sustainable farming then you need to bring your customers along with you. If we treated consumers more as active participants in sustainable food systems and less as passive purchasers, we might find them far more accepting of change than we imagine them to be. That has certainly been the experience in the Netherlands on the back of excellent and inspiring work by the Louis Bolk Institute and key retailers, and I see no reason the same should not be true over here.

For the moment, we are where we are, as they say. I just hope that the temporary authorisation is just that – temporary –  and it serves as a catalyst for action. Organic potato producers can live without copper, but it needs concerted action right across the supply chain.

Round about now would be a good time to start.

Tony Little grows organic seed of blight resistant potato varieties for Sarpo Potatoes Ltd, and works with the company to expand their grower base in Wales

I write this in a state of heightened anticipation, for next month I start a new job. I will be the ‘Community Supported Agriculture Development Worker’ for Wales at the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens. It’s part of a wider community growing project called Tyfu Fyny (welsh for ‘Growing up’) and funded through the Rural Development Plan for Wales, for which I am suitably grateful.

For those of you not familiar with ‘CSA’ it’s a local food system with a difference. That difference is that rather than buying a fixed amount of produce for a fixed price, consumers – or members as they are usually known – often pay a regular subscription to a local farm and receive a share of the produce. Why is that important? Because it shares the risks as well as the benefits of food production between farmers and society, risks that usually fall full square on the shoulders of producers. It helps farmers become truly resilient, something so often talked about but so seldom seen. It puts cash into the business when it’s needed most at the beginning of the season and it guarantees a market and a fair price at the end. And because demand is totally predicable, waste is reduced or even eliminated. (More on CSA)

Fine from a producer’s perspective, but what do consumers get out of it? First and foremost, access to locally produced, fresh, often certified organic/ biodynamic food. But there is much more to it than that. Building direct relationships between producers and consumers is at the heart of CSA thinking. Members often visit the farm regularly to pick up their shares, help out with production or packing, or to attend one of the social gathering that are a regular part of many projects. And in doing so get to meet not only the farmer, but each other. I once heard CSA described as ‘a bit touchy feely’. If that means getting to know people you wouldn’t otherwise meet, learning new skills, understanding where your food comes from, getting some fresh air and exercise and having a few beers at the harvest party – then yes, it is. And that’s a good thing – Touchy feeliness is what humans use to build relationships and it’s how we keep our communities together. It’s how we make our societies function properly and, in my view, we need more of it.

Anyway, back to the job. There are 11 of these projects in Wales at the moment, and a large part of my job will be to strengthen them. That means helping them to build their membership numbers to a level where the projects are financially robust; helping producers understand their businesses so they get their prices right; promoting and explaining the concept of CSA to the general public; facilitating access to land for those projects needing to expand; and making the case for a policy environment, post Brexit, that supports rather than hinders these exemplars of ‘public good agriculture’.

I’m also there to grow the movement as a whole, which essentially means helping new projects to establish. Eleven projects, by any measure, is not a big number (although there are to my certain knowledge another 4 in development) and if CSA is going to make a serious contribution to feeding the nation then the number of projects has to increase by an order of magnitude.

Ten of the eleven are entirely or mainly based on fruit and vegetables and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But given that more than 95% Welsh agriculture is livestock based, there is a serious mismatch between what Wales produces, what people need for balanced and healthy diet, and what Welsh CSA’s collectively and currently offer. Addressing that mismatch will be one of my priorities. It won’t be easy. There are good reasons why things are as they are: a lack of killing, cutting and packing facilities for small scale livestock producers; strong seasonality especially for lamb; and a whole different level food safety legislation for meat and dairy produce. But it is possible.

The other issue is that of reach. At the moment, there is a strong bias towards rural communities and small towns. Banffosfelen in Carmarthenshire has, for the sake of argument, 500 people and 1 CSA. Cardiff and Swansea, with populations of 350,000 and 250,000 respectively are served by the same, single, number of projects. In Wales at least, we are simply not feeding the cities, and if we’re going to be of any significance in the wider world of food and farming, we need to start doing so.

I don’t, by any stretch of the imagination, have to do it alone. The CSA Network UK is well established and within its membership has a breadth of knowledge and experience on which I can and will draw constantly. Wales has its own regional network, which brings together the expertise and local knowledge that will be the life blood of the project. It will be challenging – the post would not have been created were it otherwise – but it will also be exciting, satisfying and, knowing the CSA community as I do, a lot of fun.

I can hardly wait!

If you have children, you have no doubt been on the receiving end of many a “God, my parents are thick” moment. Sitting in the plenary session of the ‘Sustainable, Organic and Low Input Dairy (SOLID)’ conference last month, I had cause to reflect on one such moment. For reasons that now escape me, my then 7-year-old daughter and I were talking about what cows eat. I had barely started on the ingredients list of a modern dairy ration when she cut me off with a particularly withering look. “Dad,” she said, “you’ve got that wrong. Cows eat grass. Everyone knows that!”.

Well, it seems that after decades of feeding cattle everything under the sun, the dairy experts are coming round to her way of thinking. With the cost of feed ingredients (both monetary and environmental) going ever upwards, and the milk price ever downwards, the case for increasing milk from forage has strengthened to the point where it is practically cast iron. According to Sinclair Mayne of AFBI Northern Ireland achieving it is largely a question of improving soil management, taking advantage of recent developments in grass and clover breeding and a flexible approach to grazing, supported by a farmer led knowledge exchange programme. All of which, it seems to me, is within the gift of most dairy farmers in Wales particularly since IBERS, home to a great deal of breeding expertise and the Grassland Development Centre, is right on our doorstep and a new Farming Connect programme is being rolled out.

But does more milk from forage automatically mean a significant reduction in yield? Not necessarily so, argued Chris Reynolds of Reading University. He outlined a number of strategies to minimize the negative effect of lower protein diets on milk and milk protein production, including feeding higher energy diets, synchronizing supplies of rumen degradable protein and energy, and feeding rumen-protected proteins and essential amino acids. All of which suggest production can be maintained on a diet of less than 17% protein, well within the reach of a forage rich diet. The Finns are already on the case. Heli Ahonen of Juvan Luomu Ltd showed that organic cows in Finland could average more than 8000 l/year without using soya, relying instead on good quality grass-clover silage, cereals, a little oilseed rape cake, field peas and faba beans.

So the question for the conference was not whether, but by how much, we should increase milk from forage. The Pasture Fed Livestock Association was clear on the matter – all the way. 100% forage diets were, in their view, not only achievable but in the long-term necessary.  For spring calving herds this may well be so, but if we want a year round supply of milk (and there are no signs that society is ready to accept milk as a seasonal product) we need some autumn calving herds. And for them, a 100% forage diet is an altogether different, and altogether difficult, matter.

We can argue about exactly what we are aiming at until the cows come home. But at the end of the day, conference was agreed we can, should and will make significant progress in increasing milk from forage. Maybe that’s enough. At least for now.

Presentations and reports available here

When the possibility of the UK leaving the EU first raised its head, I confess I was rather complacent about the whole thing. Frankly, I thought it had a snowball in hell’s chance of actually going anywhere. I simply tuned out UKIP’s small minded bigotry and carried on regardless.

How wrong could I be? Since then, the ‘out’ campaign (for that is what it is, regardless of whether the starting gun has actually been fired) has really gained momentum, and I have grown increasing concerned. This morning’s Telegraph tells me that that 47% of the population want out. Now I’m worried. Brexit will be seriously damaging to farming and seriously damaging to Wales. If you are a Welsh farmer it will be catastrophic.

The basic thrust of the argument seems to be:

• Britain is a net contributor to the EU. If we get out we’ll have more money to spend on British people. God knows we need it.
• We wouldn’t have to let in immigrants who take our jobs and sponge off our welfare system. Then everything will be fine.
• We won’t have to put up with any more of those ridiculous and petty regulations. Common sense and good old British pragmatism will reign once more.

It’s all hopelessly simplistic and hopelessly wrong.

The UK is a net contributor. But that’s only true if you look at it as a single homogeneous unit. But it isn’t is it? Wales is a net beneficiary to the tune of several £Billion. Same goes for the other ‘Less Developed’ and ‘Transition’ regions including the South West and parts of the North of England, Northern Scotland and Northern Ireland. It depends not only on where you are but what you do. Farmers and people in rural communities are heavily dependent on the EU Common Agriculture Policy and the Rural Development Plans, which pour £Billions into our rural economy. But surely if Westminster government used its windfall to continue to support these areas and these businesses everything would be OK? Perhaps. But the chances of that happening are, let’s be generous, slim. There is precious little evidence that farming, the environment and the rural development are priorities for Westminster, and plenty that they aren’t. Ask anyone who works or, more to the point used to work, for DEFRA. I suspect that Health will swallow it whole and it won’t even touch the sides!

The idea that immigrants are dragging the UK economy to its knees is misguided. More than that, it’s just nonsense. Even the Treasury says so. I quote ‘Immigration is beneficial to the economy because new arrivals are likely to be of working age and contribute in taxes’. And how do many of them make those contributions? By working on our farms and horticultural units. If ever there was an industry that needs free movement of labour, it’s ours.

And what about all that regulation? If we left, we would still have to comply with a whole raft of legalisation to trade with EU. Where do you think the lion’s share of our lamb, beef and milk ends up? If we did cast off the EU shackles, something would take its place. People don’t just make up regulations for fun, you know. They have a purpose, even if it’s not always clear. True, Brexit would enable us to put in place a system closer to the UK’s needs and priorities, but before you get too excited, remember this. Our frustrations with what we see as petty meddling are as much to do with interpretation and implementation as with the regulation itself. The institutions, and indeed the people, who will do the interpreting and the implementing in the brave new world will be the same as those who are doing it now. Plus le change, I suspect.

I can see that if you lived in one of the more affluent areas in Britain and your world view was confined to your own little bubble, the idea of Brexit could seem quite attractive. But it would be disastrous for whole swathes of the country particularly the more rural areas. As I hope I highlighted in my last blog, it’s these that meet societies most basic needs. If these were to suffer, the implications would be felt right across the country.

It’s in everyone’s interests to give Brexit an unequivocal thumbs down.

For as long as I can remember we’ve been worried about the lack of young blood coming into farming. All sorts of reasons have been put forward for this – access to land, low profitability, a poor image, low profile with careers officers in schools, and so on. I’m going to put my head above the parapet and suggest another; the way in which farmers present themselves.

By way of illustration, I was on a stand at a food festival next to an organisation who shall remain nameless. Every couple of hours they put on a short show about farming for the general public. If I had known nothing about it previously, these are the messages I would have taken home with me:

• The single most important thing when you are farming is knowing exactly how many animals you have at any one time and being able to identify them individually by electronic tags in their ears. This is because of some stupid regulation, passed down by Government and the EU. Do they know how many people are in this country at this precise moment? No, of course they don’t.

• Farmers work in atrocious conditions. They are perpetually cold and wet. They frequently have to go out in blizzards. All year round if they are unfortunate enough to live in Snowdonia.

• Farmers work for slave wages. Everybody screws them all the time. They live on a pittance. Meanwhile people in nice warm offices get far more money for doing far less, and its not nearly as important as farming and growing.

I exaggerate to make the point but not, I assure you, by much. Is this really how farmers see themselves? As helpless victims of overbearing bureaucracies, an oppressive and aggressive food system and Mother Nature at her most vindictive? And if so, is it any wonder that the youth aren’t flocking in?

I have a different version. I think farmers are amazing. They are providers of some of society’s most basic needs. They grow the food that nourishes us; help to generate the clean energy that keeps us warm and lights our way; it’s within their gift to improve our drinking water and reduce flooding. They are the guardians of land and the environment on which ultimately we all depend, now and in the future. They are ecologists, engineers, nutritionists, animal health care professionals, managers, business people and marketers. All at the same time. How many people can you say that about?

I’m not suggesting that we omit or misrepresent the tough stuff. There are difficult aspects of the job, but that’s true of all walks of life and people know and accept that. In my experience, the good things outweigh the bad by a country mile. Far more importantly, I think most farmers feel the same. Scarcely have I met one who did not care passionately about the farm, the stock, the soil and the land. When they are not actually farming, they are talking about it. Incessantly.

All of which belies that fact that, secretly, most farmers love what they do and wouldn’t want to change it for anything else. But there seems to be some sort of code of conduct that prevents them from sharing that openly with the rest of society.

Go on. Break the mould; tell the world why it’s great to be a farmer. Our future depends on it.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the agriculture in Wales, and I spend a lot of time listening to Welsh Government and other commentators on its future. One word crops up again and again and that word is resilience. And rightly so, for our food and farming system is fragile in the extreme.

Consider this. Practically all Welsh agriculture is based on just 3 products; lamb, beef and milk, and we export nearly all of it. Any ‘shocks’ to any one of these  – price volatility, collapse of export markets, animal health crises, fluctuations in exchange rates, regulation changes, exit from the EU – have disproportionately larger impacts on Wales compared to other countries with a wider production base. Of course many of these things are not independent of one another, so they can and do happen all at the same time to more than one sector.

In case anyone thinks I’m having go a livestock producers, I’m not. They are vital for nourishing the nation, cycling nutrients on the farm, habitat management, biodiversity and a great deal more. However, if we want a more resilient system, basing it on a very small number of products, whose fortunes are dictated by factors by and large outside our sphere of influence, is not the way I would go about it.

Diversifying the production base by strengthening arable and horticultural production, has to be the way to go, and there is massive potential to do so in Wales. There are over 4,000 ha of Grade 1 and 2 land in Wales, over 95% of which is currently under grass, and many more thousands more of Grade three land that could grow crops, albeit in more challenging conditions. We grew crops in these areas in the past, and there is no technical reason why we could not again.

Seed potatoes on Penbryn Farm, Tregaron

I don’t pretend that it’s easy – I’m in the process of introducing horticulture to an upland sheep system, so I know! Access to machinery, lack of skills and knowledge after a generation of specialised livestock production, the relatively high risk associated of horticultural enterprises and other factor conspire to make to it all rather challenging.

But it is absolutely necessary. No one really thinks the status quo is satisfactory. Over the 14 years I have been working in Wales I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of farmers I’ve spoken to who think that specialised beef and sheep production is a sound foundation for a profitable, and therefore resilient, business, and the annual farm income figures from the Farm Business Survey at IBERS tend to bear me out on this.

If our farming and food businesses are going to live, thrive and survive into the future – and our communities with them – we have to make fundamental changes. We’d be well advised to start now, before the wheels really come off.