Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
There is only one difficulty with this scenario, and that is a big one, whose presence
loomed more and more ominously in the background as I read further into the report
without its being acknowledged. One has to read over two thirds of the way through before
there is any mention of yields, and yet these are crucial. The kind of ley-based mixed farm-
ing that Azeez (like myself) advocates has every possible advantage over chemical arable
farming, except one: that, in Europe anyway, it has much lower yields. This is partly be-
cause the tonnage per hectare of organic grain production is barely two thirds that of chem-
ical farming; and partly because if our non-organic cropland is converted to organic farm-
ing, then around a third of it will have to be converted into leys. This means that if grain
production levels were to be maintained nationwide, more permanent grassland elsewhere
would have to be ploughed up for arable, obliterating in a rather shorter time all of the soil
carbon gains that could be made over 20 years by putting existing arable over to grass.
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Some idea of the extent of extra cultivation required and the inroads made into permanent
pasture can be seen by comparing Tables B and E in Chapter 9, which compare chemical
and organic provision of precisely the same diets.
This is not what Azeez intends since she states that there will be 'carbon gains from
mean that grain production would be cut by around half, and that the UK might become
much less self sufficient in food. Azeez does not give explicit details about what we could
produce, apart from citing a report by Philip Jones of Reading University, estimating that
the production (not necessarily the consumption) of white meat would fall by 70 per cent.
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Jones' report, which was commissioned by the Soil Association, anticipates that under
organic agriculture, as well as this drastic cut in white meat production, self-sufficiency in
grain would fall from around 100 per cent to 60 per cent, and in milk from around 90 per
cent to 60 per cent. The recompense would be a 68 per cent increase in beef production
and a 55 per cent increase in lamb production, but this would only make up about half the
loss of white meat. We would either have to reduce meat and dairy consumption (a solution
that Azeez mentions, but not until page 126, and then only briefly) or alternatively import
meat, milk or animal feed from elsewhere. Where might these come from? Azeez suggests
'there is significant potential to increase production in temperate regions: in Central and
Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia agricultural production is now only 60 to 80
per cent of 1990 levels.' But an expansion of arable production in these regions might res-
'ghost acres', we would be emitting 'ghost carbon'.
The prospect of sacrificing the UK's food security for such modest gains in soil carbon is
unthinkable, especially when these gains might be negated by additional cultivation abroad.
The Soil Association's report is, in a sense, a disguised argument for reducing meat con-
sumption. By comparison, the Permaculture scenario depicted in Table F in Chapter 9,
