The global financial crisis was still three years away, but in 2005 a financial pall was already hanging over Bradwell Grove Estate in the Cotswolds. Rising oil prices – affecting in particular chemical fertiliser, had rocketed while crop prices stayed low. Manager of the 3500-acre farm, Charles Hunter-Smart, found that “revenues were not covering high running costs,” largely due to the substantial cost of the chemicals used to drive crop productivity.

Making a financial loss was not the full story. Bradwell Grove’s use of chemicals had depleted the land and its biodiversity. Hunter-Smart felt the immense pressure of failure; one of the factors behind the rising sickness and mental health issues among farmers across the land. A neighbouring farm’s shift to organic farming inspired Charles to do the same.

But a question of uncertainty loomed over Hunter-Smart then, as it still does for many farmers today; can a farm survive on organic’s lower yields? In the past 15 years, Bradwell Grove has made higher margins under a chemical-free organic approach than a conventional one. Its organic soil content is on the up. And the biodiverse farm has proved to be an excellent home for nesting corn buntings, grey partridges and a dozen other red-listed species. “You could say we shifted from chemistry to biology,” according to Hunter-Smart.

Bradwell Grove has made higher margins under a chemical-free organic approach than a conventional one.

However, perhaps the subject every farmer needs to get a grip on is neither chemistry nor biology, but economics. Wales-based pioneer in organic farming, Patrick Holden, explains the farming problem: “We have never paid the true price for food. Farmers have been remunerated for food, and the traditional assumption is that they would take care of the environment as part of the deal.”

But that was never true. The price farmers received had to be supplemented by a subsidy, without which conventional farming would have collapsed. Market prices plus subsidies failed to incentivise farmers to use environmentally-friendly methods. The food system’s social and wellbeing costs rarely, if ever, got a look-in.

Post-Brexit, the subsidy scheme is in complete flux. The phasing-out of basic payments means that some farmers are facing a 70% reduction in their incomes. According to water expert at Mott MacDonald, Brendan Bromwich, “in places like Cumbria and the Yorkshire Dales, farmers are seeing the writing on the wall in terms of their incomes, so they are increasing the stocking rates of sheep.” This is very unhelpful in terms of carrying capacity of the land, but farmers facing declining incomes feel that they have no choice.

Farmers are not the only ones suffering from the crisis in food. In 2021 The Guardian newspaper reported that according to government data, farming was the most significant source of water pollution in the UK (see box, Water: deeper into the dilemma). The health sector is yet another participant in the food system affected by a flawed system. It makes zero choices on what food is grown, its nutrient density, or how much gets consumed and yet every single day the health system pays out to cover the social and wellbeing costs caused by the food system through cardiac failures, strokes, cancers and hip replacements. 

Every single day the health system pays out to cover the social and wellbeing costs caused by the food system.

Can bottom-up activities on farms such as Bradwell Grove drive a difference? Wales Transition Lab, an initiative from North Star Transition, brings together over thirty leaders from across food, health and the environment to drive bottom-up actions that reshape the working of the food system in Wales (see box, Wales Transition Lab). But bottom-up actions lack scale or impact. Do we need a new set of regulations, incentives and subsidies from the government?  In truth, the subsidy system is being rethought in each of the four nations of the UK and each nation is bringing out its own version in the next few years. But farmers need to take action now in a farming cycle that lasts longer than the time it will take for the new incentive schemes to arrive. What judgements should they make today?