Reality Cheques - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 54

system, beginning, in particular, with the maintenance of soil fertility:
'Obviously it is not only sound business practice but plain common sense to take steps to
maintain the health and fertility of soil.' 2
But during the enquiry, some witnesses disagreed, and called for a
'specialized and mechanized farming' - though, interestingly, the farming
establishment at the time largely supported the idea of mixed farming.
But in the end, the desire for public subsidies to encourage increases in
food production took precedence, and these were more easily applied to
simplified systems, rather than mixed ones. The 1947 Agriculture Act was
the outcome, a giant leap forward for modern, simplified agriculture, and
a large step away from farming that valued nature's assets. Sir George
Stapledon, a British scientist knighted for his research on grasslands, was
another perceptive individual well ahead of his time. He, too, was against
monocultures and was in favour of diversity, arguing in 1941 that 'senseless
systems of monoculture designed to produce food and other crops at the cheapest possible cost
have rendered waste literally millions of acres of once fertile or potentially fertile country' . 3
In his final years, just a decade after the 1947 act, he said:
Today technology has begun to run riot and amazingly enough perhaps nowhere more
so than on the most productive farms. . . Man is putting all his money on narrow
specialisation and on the newly dawned age of technology has backed a wild horse
which given its head is bound to get out of control.
These are wise words from eminent politicians and scientists. But they
were lost on the altar of progress until now, perhaps - as new ideas on
agriculture have begun to emerge and gather credence.
Agriculture's Unique Multifunctionality
We should all ask: what is farming for? Clearly, in the first instance,
farming produces food, and we have become very good at it. Farming has
become a great success, but only if our measures of efficiency are narrow.
Agriculture is unique as an economic sector. It does more than just
produce food, fibre, oil and timber. It has a profound impact upon many
aspects of local, national and global economies and ecosystems. These
impacts can be either positive or negative. The negative ones are worrying.
Pesticides and nutrients that leach from farms have to be removed
from drinking water, and these costs are paid by water consumers, not
by the polluters. The polluters, therefore, benefit by not paying to clean
up the mess they have created, and they have no incentive to change their
behaviour. What also makes agriculture unique is that it affects the very