Most of the agricultural co-ops were present at the SAOS conference in Crieff last week and as usual there were some very interesting speakers, including Oonagh Chesney from Fane Valley, a big Northern Irish Co-op, Digby Sowerby from the Environmental Farmers Group in England, and Allene Bruce from SAOS who highlighted opportunities to displace food imports. But it was a speech from the chair of the Scottish Food Commission, Dennis Overton, which caught me unaware.
Unfortunately, I didn’t hear all his speech on local supply chain opportunities because he made a statement right at the start which got me thinking and distracted me from what I am sure was a very interesting presentation. The statement was effectively that our countyside is ‘nature depleted’, and we are in the bottom 10% of countries in the world for biodiversity.
He also said that we no longer get insects stuck to our windscreens, a statement often used with very little scientific basis, and from my own equally subjective opinion, not accurate.
Having also spent much time documenting wildlife on our own (non-organic) farm, I am not saying we are perfect, but we have several coveys of grey partridge, skylarks in every field and curlews aplenty, so my own experience jarred with what was being said. There is certainly more we could do, but I don’t recognise the picture being painted of an arable landscape devoid of biodiversity and wildlife. Before we go any further, I don’t want to give the impression that Mr Overton was making things up – he is a highly respected fellow, and worth listening to – so I did a bit more digging on the internet to try to understand where he was coming from.
I soon found an excellent blog by Henrietta Appleton on the GWCT website which I think explains the discrepancy between my view and Mr Overton’s one. The Natural History Museum has created a global Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) which summarises the change in ecological communities in response to human pressures such as land use change, population growth, and landscape simplification.
According to the blog: “It does this by comparing current biodiversity with a baseline of species from near undisturbed sites. The BII value, therefore, will decrease as the human influence on natural ecosystems increases.”
Because 70% of the UK is farmed, the BII does as Mr Overton suggests: place us in the bottom 10% of the world’s 240 nations, if we use the starting point as the British Isles before man set foot on them.
Assuming we must continue to grow our own food on these islands, particularly given the current political upheaval, I would strongly suggest rewilding on a large scale is not a sensible course of action, and neither can we all convert to organic farming as it would lead to much reduced yields and much higher prices for food when people are already struggling to make ends meet.
Ms Appleton’s blog suggests a more realistic measurement for our biodiversity: the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) produced by Yale University. This index doesn’t compare farmland to wilderness, but instead uses indices based on habitat intactness. According to the EPI, the UK is in the top quartile of nations for biodiversity, not the bottom one.
I fully agree with Mr Overton that we need to do more to restore biodiversity in the countryside, but I think using the extreme metrics of the BII is bound to turn farmers off as it bears no relation to what they see on the ground, and the EPI is arguably a more realistic point to start from.
If our biodiversity is more intact than the BII suggests, according to one of Reform’s newest recruits, Robert Jenrick, Britain is broken.
If our country is broken, which I dispute, it is populists and opportunists like him who have broken it. If you suggest to the seasonal workers who come here every year from Romania, Kenya or Kazakhstan that our country is broken they will laugh in your face, which is what they did to me when I asked them what they thought.
I’m sure all the many foreign nationals who work in the NHS, care homes or hospitality would do the same. A big part of the reason it isn’t broken, of course, is because they are here, doing the jobs we can’t or won’t do.
Scotland’s latest Reform signing, Malcolm Offord, is, I think, driven by other motives, and I would prefer to focus on the economy. But he has jumped into bed with the people who dragged us out of the EU in the first place, triggering the small boats crisis. How many were there before we left the EU?
There were none – because the Dublin agreement allowed the UK to return illegal immigrants to France.
If the economy is to grow, and I agree with Malcolm Offord that it must, it needs fit, ambitious, hardworking young people to drive it, and Scotland’s population is shrinking and ageing. Offord wants to grow the economy and send back immigrants – he can have one or the other, but he can’t have both.
I try to look for the positive in most things, but if you think Reform is the answer, the disgraceful lies and threats to friends and democracy coming from across the Atlantic are a clear signal of where this brand of populism leads.
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