STORY OF THE WEEK

WL op-ed: Philip Lymbery, Compassion in World Farming

There is a crisis facing humanity. And we have a simple choice: extinction or regeneration.

iT was early morning, and a tractor was pulling a plough. Back and forth it went, ploughing its lonely furrow. Behind the tractor, dust clouds spiralled and caught the sun, creating an aura. A timeless symbol of the season. Only, something was missing: there were no screeching gulls following the plough in search of worms.

I took a closer look. The tractor was ploughing across a footpath, giving me a bird’s-eye view of the newly upturned soil. As I stared down, do you know what I saw? Nothing. There were no worms, beetles, or bugs desperate to get back into their world turned upside down. The soil was lifeless. It was like sand. We could have been walking on the moon.

That field should have had millions of worms in every patch the size of a football pitch. In each hectare, there should have been 13,000 species of life with a collective weight of a five-tonne elephant (Griffiths et al. 2019).

But instead, there was nothing.

The field was planted with maize, a crop commonly used as animal feed. Continually treated with chemical pesticides and artificial fertilisers, the soil had degenerated and was washing away into the river.

The Opportunity

Living here, I see the good and the bad of farming first-hand. I see how farmland wildlife has changed: once-common skylarks have all but disappeared. Native grey partridges are now rare among the many red-legged partridges introduced for the local shoot.

That said, there is still much to celebrate in the countryside, including the return of the red kite and the buzzard, two magnificent bird species that were once all but eradicated. I can still find orchids in the pasture and at the edges of woodlands. Most years, bramblings and woodlarks visit. Tiny harvest mice live among the lupins near a picturesque old church.

But for how much longer?

There is no escaping the sense that society in general seems to live as if in an endless summer, with lifestyles based on short-term thinking and a belief that things will just last forever. Come what may.

But that summertime of consumption without limits feels like it is now starting to end. We are perhaps beginning to recognise the consequences of living beyond our planetary boundaries. The world’s leading climate scientists have delivered a final warning as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.

Carry on as we are, and we face a perpetual winter. The pandemic gave us a collective taste of that perpetual winter. It showed how society is vulnerable, fragile, not to be taken for granted.

We urgently need a new spring. The good news is there are beautiful, life-affirming, compassionate solutions to help us get there. But with time running out, we need to focus on where we can have the most impact. It is no longer a choice.

The Culprit

So, what is responsible for about a third of greenhouse gas emissions; more than any other sector? Food.

Animal agriculture alone is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s planes, trains and cars put together.

What accounts for 70 per cent of all fresh water use in the world? Food.

Yet, when governments the world over come together to discuss climate, food barely gets a mention. It is lowest on the list at global climate talks. It’s the elephant in the room. What this tells us is that the answer to addressing the climate and biodiversity crises, water conservation issues, and meeting our SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) targets lies in transforming our food system.

This will mean moving away from industrial animal agriculture to one that is based on nature-friendly, regenerative approaches to farming for food.

Of all terrestrial vertebrates on Earth, 96 per cent are farm animals and only 4 per cent are wild creatures. Let that sink in… then consider that around 70 per cent of birds in the world by weight are domestic poultry.

In the last 50 years, we’ve lost more than two-thirds of all our wildlife. This is happening because of the way we’re farming — because we’re moving towards industrial and intensive agricultural models which deprioritise animal welfare, biodiversity and environmental health.

Thankfully, when it comes to food, animal welfare and the environment, society is starting to gain a much greater appreciation of how things are intertwined. There is a growing recognition of the principle of “One Welfare” — which understands that the future health of people relies on the wellbeing of animals and a thriving ecosystem. That we are all in it together.

Joining the dots with an open mind quickly gets us to the point where we can see that harming animals, harms us all. So my plea isn’t just about compassion for animals. It’s a plea to do the right thing for the future of humanity.

Compassionate Solutions

In a world with more mouths to feed and shrinking planetary resources — land, water, and climate stability — sustainability won’t be enough. Being able to do tomorrow what we can do today simply won’t cut it.

Instead, we need solutions that are compassionate and regenerative — working with nature in ways that put back into our natural bank account: rebuilding soils, water and wildlife biodiversity while producing nutritious food in ways that ensure all animals can flourish in high welfare farms.

These can be summed up in three “R”s: Regeneration, Rethinking Protein, and Rewilding, not least of the soil.

• Regeneration

Regeneration of the countryside through high-welfare, nature-friendly or regenerative farming involves restoring animals to the land as rotational grazers or foragers where they can express their natural behaviours — running, flapping their wings, grazing — making for happier animals with better health too. Regenerative farming cuts reliance on chemical pesticides, fertilisers and antibiotics, reducing costs to farmers and creating a varied landscape bursting with wildflowers that lure back pollinating insects like bumblebees, as well as providing seeds and insects for birds and other wildlife.

• Rethinking protein

We need to reframe our relationship with protein by reducing our consumption of meat and milk from animals. Combining regenerative farming with a serious reduction in the number of farmed animals can create food systems that are genuinely sustainable. Based on scientific assessments within the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet, we can see that saving the planet will require drastic reductions in consumption of animal-sourced foods.

Evidence shows that by the middle of the century, our consumption of animal products globally must be reduced by more than half (Willett el al. 2019, Loken et al. 2020). In high-consuming regions such as the West, deeper cuts will be needed. For example, the UK and EU would need reductions of two-thirds, whilst in the US, a reduction of four-fifths is required.

By rethinking protein, meat from farmed animals would come only from higher welfare, nature-friendly regenerative farms. Consumption of animal-sourced foods would be reduced through replacement with plant-based and other alternative proteins. These could include cultivated meat from stem-cells grown in a bioreactor, and precision fermentation — the production of protein from the action of programmed microbes. These alternatives, together with eating more fruit, vegetables, and legumes, holds the key to more planet-friendly, balanced diets.

• Rewilding the soil

The third “R” in our planet-saving repertoire would be Rewilding the soil. This can best be achieved by returning animals to the land and keeping them regeneratively — as part of mixed rotational farms. Where they can turbo-boost soil fertility by feeding that elephant’s weight of biodiversity that should be under our feet. Farmed animals living their best lives. Experiencing the joy of life. Huge amounts of carbon could be locked up in healthy soil. Much more water would be conserved for crops. And a vast array of biodiversity would be restored to thriving farmland.

A Compassionate Future

We urgently need a new dawn for people, animals and the planet; the big question is, how do we get there, and fast? The answer is by truly embracing those beautiful, life-affirming, compassionate solutions represented by the three “R”s.

Transformation of food systems needs to be a central theme in global conversations on climate, water, biodiversity and achieving the SDGs. Every time governments meet to discuss climate, or food security, or biodiversity, or the SDGs, or global development, there should be a concerted focus on addressing that elephant in the room — industrial animal agriculture.

In this way, we can create the much-needed single-minded clarity that means ending the war on the planet and building peace through nature-friendly food systems. It means embracing food systems that are truly nature-based, inclusive, livelihood-sustaining, and carbon-capturing. It means making decent, nutritious, planet- and animal-welfare-friendly food a basic human right, not just a privilege for those who can afford it. It means moving to a regenerative food future.

The choice before us remains extinction or regeneration. There is still time to act. But we are beyond the eleventh hour. We have just seven harvests left to save the Sustainable Development Goals. We have just sixty harvests left in our soils to save the future for our children. For people, animals, and the planet, the clock is ticking. There is no time to lose. What we do now will define the next one thousand years.

We have to move to regenerative farming, embrace beautiful, life-affirming, compassionate solutions; regenerative solutions that bring back wildlife, that restore soil health, that help to combat climate change and that benefits humanity everywhere, the animals who live wild alongside us, the animals we farm and the earth itself, its soils, its waters and its abundant biodiversity.

Philip Lymbery is Global CEO of Compassion in Farming International, a former United Nations Food Systems Champion, an award-winning author and a regular columnist in The Scotsman. This article draws from his chapter in the newly published ‘Regenerative Farming and Sustainable Diets: Human, Animal and Planetary Health’ (Routledge 2024) which is available in hardback, paperback and open access e-book.

He is the author of the best-selling book, ‘Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat’ (Bloomsbury 2014). His latest book is ‘Sixty Harvests Left: How to Reach a Nature-Friendly Future’ (Bloomsbury 2022). He also co-edited ‘Cultivated Meat to Secure our Future: Hope for Animals, Food and Environment’ with Philip Vandenbosch (Lantern Books 2024). Find Philip on Twitter @philip_ciwf

Note: This Op-ed article was first published in Wicked Leeks (Riverford’s important consumer magazine) on 22nd October, 2024