THE AGENCY OF NATURE FRIENDLY FARMERS AND ‘CLIMATE PUSH-BACK’

Our role as Food Producers, Nature Restorers and Climate Calmers

Farming with Nature has extraordinary agency to counter the impacts of climate disruption and ecological degradation; But let’s be real too about the challenging context of entrenched mindsets and interests, epitomised by the outcome of COP30 (held November 2025), and the media silence following the recently held National Emergency Briefing on Climate.

THE EVIDENCE IS COPIOUS AND GROWING. To manage moderate control of our disrupted climate scientific evidence is clear, there must be the following mutually reinforcing actions;

• The immediate reduction in Fossil Fuel use and emissions,
• The re-sequestration of carbon into natural carbon-sinks and finally,
• Planet Surface Cooling

It’s not so much that climate science is being contradicted, it’s simply being ignored.

Big Industry’s solution to our changing climate is more ‘Big Industry’ (maintaining the status quo).  All well and good, but not while it has an umbilical dependence on fossil fuels with their polluting, ecologically degrading, climate-warming emissions.  Incidentally climate emissions often overlook the seemingly innocuous but actually dangerous amounts of cloud-gathering water vapour.

THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY IS NONE-THE-LESS CHALLENGED. There were 1600 lobbyists at COP30 (the largest ever).  It is darkly ironic that they even managed to get those words ‘fossil fuels’ removed from the COP30 agreements!  Unsurprising too that COP30 had the largest attendance of agricultural industry lobbyists ever.  Maybe they are feeling the pressure too?

 

What of the ‘Big Influencers’? 

The Tony Blair Institute says Carbon Capture is a key solution – but it’s widely acknowledged to be unproven and would arguably maintain the status quo for ‘big industry’ requiring energy-hungry infrastructure.  Bill Gates says we should deal with human suffering as a priority. Of course he is right but much suffering  is due to the impacts of climate breakdown, affecting subsistence farming and resulting in forced migrations. He also believes the solution is industrial and hi-tech (ie ‘energy-hungry, big industry’, again!).

As for THE FINANCIAL AND INSURANCE SECTORS, they continue to dangerously down-play the risks of climate catastrophe based on the work of economist William Nordhaus (Nobel Laureate). His economic modelling concluded that because most ‘work’ and ‘workers’ are indoors (or underground), the impact of climate disruption would be relatively minor only affecting global GDP by 2% at 3dC of warming. This is at complete odds with the science.  Although his work has been disproven and rejected as ‘scientifically illiterate’, it continues to form Government policies arguably giving policy-makers the justification to ignore the science and maintain the status quo.

Positive recent news however that the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulatory Authority is tightening its  mandatory regulations on climate risk reporting and disclosures for all banks and insurance companies.

THE BIGGEST INFLUENCER; Recent public surveys demonstrate that most Britons believe in the human causes of climate change, are worried about its impacts and that our respective Governments are not doing enough about it.  Why aren’t our Governments doing more when they see the clear evidence?  Well, that has a great deal to do with the unscrutinised and excessive access the fossil fuels and ancillary industries have to our politicians and our weak lobbying laws. A subject for another time maybe!

 

Where does this put our farming? 

What can we do as an industry inspite of confusing policy leadership and market signals?  The commodity market is dictated by extreme volatility.  The growing ‘Public Goods Market’ (ie biodiversity, flood mitigating natural defences and soils, natural carbon sequestration etc), whilst evidently desired by the public is immature and susceptible to political and big business vagaries.

Farming here in the UK and globally can implement those mutually reinforcing actions listed at the beginning of this blog.

Our agency lies in the soils of our farms. Healthy functioning, biodiverse soils are vital to our life-supporting climate. With approx 44% of the earth’s surface farmed, this is 44% of the land surface soil area that farming affects. Some two-thirds of which are permanent grassland (FAOSTATS). This level of access and control over soil and grassland is the basis of global-scale solutions to this global issue.

Grass and other green vegetation are immense global coolants and controllers of water-vapour.  As ‘evapo-transpirators’ they reduce ground-surface temperatures and cycle water-vapour.  Grassland is emerging as crucial to managing global climate change. Some scientific modelling suggesting that on a European scale, cooling from perennial grassland could counteract 50% of future warming, with an impact potentially three-times greater than carbon emission reductions. Together with soils, farming too has significant agency with the growth and management of green vegetation in particular grass.

Recent modelling of soil carbon sequestration at the UK national scale by the University of Lancaster (the first of its kind), concludes that our soils can continue to be net sequesters of carbon if we remain below 2dC coupled with increased species-rich grassland restoration.

Nature Friendly Farming, pump-priming biodiversity with reductions in agri-chemical use, extensive hedgerow and other agroforestry creation and species-rich grassland restoration is a powerful pointer to what is achievable on our farms.

We can (and many of us do), make decisions on our farms inspite of pervading politics and market signals, but we need to go further and as businesses we need to remain profitable.  Policy-makers need convincing that with their support and essential regulation of the ‘public goods market’, we can make  significant headway to restore nature as the fundamental basis to ‘climate-calming’.  To achieve global-scale change this needs global-scale political, business and market support. ‘Team Humanity’ achieved something not dissimilar only six years ago (remember 2020 and Covid?). This is a global emergency.

  Evidence

The role of soils in carbon and water-vapour ‘sequestration, have recently come up the scientific agenda though too sluggishly up the political agenda.  There are initiatives such as the UNFCC  ‘4 in 1000’, an initiative of COP21 (2015), the small incremental increase of 0.04% soil organic matter in our soils, which focussed solutions on regenerative farming. Recently the ‘Global Cooling Pledge’ launched at COP28 and expanded at COP30 has an urban focus on the rocketing energy demands of cooling systems in built-up areas due to the heat (another indicator of the extraordinary disconnect with reality of William Nordhaus who set such a dangerous precedent for tacking the existential issue of climate change back in 2018!).

None of this will be effective unless we drastically reduce fossil fuel use and cut emissions globally as the first and highest priority. Science advises us that our best efforts will fail to achieve these essential outcomes unless we can keep global warming below 2dC (‘catch-22’). The more dysfunctional our climate becomes, so too all the natural processes that have maintained our biosphere for millenia and not least the soil’s ability to sequester carbon will weaken.

  Food Production

For us farmers focussed on our  ability to produce food and maintain profitability, there is increasing positive evidence and demonstration  that an agroecologically low-input farming system using reduced (to zero), agri-chemicals and fuel use, can produce sufficient food on a UK and European scale. It will inevitably require change and must on an industrial scale involve drastic reductions in food waste (which emits staggering levels of methane).

As a livestock grass-based farming family business, we have a positive view based on our experience of those decisions to go zero agri-chemical input, zero-cereals (including straw), reduced machinery use with nutrient-dense food production.

For all of us without exception however “While soil is a potentially powerful ally for climate mitigation and adaptation, nothing can replace rapid cuts to fossil fuel emissions” (Professor Julia Davies, Chair Professor of Sustainability, Soil Carbon Scientist, University of Lancaster, December 2025).