Sustainable farming: why we need to transition and how

20th May 2025

Our CEO, Harry Barton, explores the challenges farming is facing across Europe, why we need to transition to sustainable farming, and how.

I’m looking out of my window on a stunningly beautiful spring morning, the mist enwrapped trees casting long shadows across the wave-like hills. On the opposite side of the valley is a large, steep sided field extending up to the crest of the hill.

You can see where former hedges have been grubbed out; others shaved back to little more than pencil lines streaking across the landscape. This field is usually a healthy green, but like many around here, in the last couple of weeks it’s faded to sickly yellow, thanks to a dose of herbicide that’s killed off the vegetation.

Now I’m watching it gradually disappear under a coating of dark brown slurry spread by a huge tractor. It’s due to rain tonight and the chances are much of this will end up in the stream at the valley bottom.

There is nothing unusual about this practice. A mile away you can see much larger fields on even steeper slopes that are regularly left ploughed and bare all winter. The soil pouring off the hillsides after heavy rain and covering the country lanes in thick brown silt.

At other times you can see long pipes pumping liquid slurry onto the fields. Two miles distant up on the high moor, you can gaze across a huge vista of closely cropped, poor quality grass. No tree or shrub in sight, the product of decades of heavy grazing and burning.

The reality of farming in the UK and Europe

Agriculture is the dominant land use across much of Europe. It’s varied – here in Devon it’s mainly small, livestock farms, whereas in East Anglia you have much larger, arable ones.

In southern Europe you’re more likely to find land in specialist cropping, such as olives, fruit and vines. Eastern Europe has a larger number of smaller, mixed farms. But there are some common trends across the continent.

First, the number of farms is in steep decline, with small holdings going out of business and bigger ones expanding. And secondly, the greater part of this farming is to the detriment of nature.

The statistics about intensive farming’s impact on wildlife hardly need repeating. Whether you’re looking at rare plants, birds or pollinators, the trend is one of steep declines.

Even in protected landscapes like Dartmoor it’s depressing – less than one sixth of the legally protected habitat is in good condition, and it’s getting steadily worse. Overgrazing by sheep is almost certainly the main culprit.

It’s not just nature that’s suffering. Soils are the bedrock of farming and home to 60% of terrestrial biodiversity.

UK arable soils have lost half of their organic carbon, and soil degradation was calculated in 2010 to cost £1.2 billion every year. It’s much the same story across the continent – 63% of Europe’s soils are degrading, and three quarters have excessive nitrogen levels.

And then there’s water. Water stress affects 30% of Europe’s population, and that figure is expected to rise with climate change. In 2021, only 37% of surface water bodies achieved a good ecological status, and only 29% good chemical status. As with biodiversity and soils, the single biggest contributor to the problem is intensive agriculture.

Wherever your sympathies lie, and whether you’re farming in Ireland or Slovakia, there are some things you can’t escape.

First, keeping soils productive is going to become increasingly challenging. Fertilisers and agrochemicals are among the largest costs to farmers, and some, like phosphates, have a finite supply.

Then there’s climate change, the growing spotlight on water quality, diets changing towards plant-based food and dramatic changes in technology. The Food Standards Agency recently announced that meat, dairy and sugar grown in laboratories could be on sale in the UK within two years.

Is sustainable farming feasible?

Most experts agree that farming is going to have to change. The question is, what will it change to?

Throughout the post war years, a debate has raged between the needs of nature on the one hand and food security on the other.

Intensive farming has pushed wildlife to the edges and it’s hungry for land. It’s the most common reason for the destruction of pristine habitats like rainforests.

But others argue that if you take land away from farming, or move to less intensive methods, food prices will go up.

In 2021, Henry Dimbleby’s independent commission published a National Food Strategy for the UK. Dimbleby signalled a possible end to this tension, arguing that there is enough land in the UK to meet all our needs, provided we make some changes.

First, we should produce food where it is most sensible to do so. Highly productive farming should focus on the best soils. Other areas, like the uplands, are best used for nature recovery, carbon stores and forestry.

Secondly, we need to halve food waste. The land needed to grow all the food that’s thrown away each year would cover the whole of China.

Thirdly, we need to eat 30% less meat, because meat is far more energy and land hungry than plant-based food. In the UK, 77% of farmland is used for livestock grazing, but that only produces 18% of our calorific intake.

Dimbleby set out a three-part model – one third of land for nature, one third for low impact/low output farming and one third for highly productive farming. We would eat more healthily, produce much less CO2 and leave space for nature to recover.

How to transition to sustainable farming

This all sounds fantastic. But little has happened since the report was published, and agriculture remains stuck in its intensive model. There are many reasons for this, but I would argue there are four key areas where we need to do better.

Leadership

The first is leadership. The government of the time largely ignored Dimbleby’s report, although the new administration has started to implement some elements of it.

In the EU, where the Green New Deal had proposed radical transformations to agriculture along similar lines to Dimbleby, there was furious push back. Tractors blocked streets in the Netherlands, Germany and Brussels.

Since then there have been political moves to water down many of the green proposals. Governments lack the strength and courage to stand up to the powerful food and farming lobbies.

Policy

Secondly, if a new direction for farming is going to work, it needs to be backed up with the right policy, subsidy and regulation.

Historically, subsidies have generally rewarded intensive production or been allocated on a land ownership basis, favouring the large over the small.

In the UK we’ve moved to a new system with the Sustainable Farm Incentive. But a lack of ambition and insufficient funding mean that the SFI has done little more than prop up the status quo.

We need schemes that are designed to help the transition to truly sustainable farming. That offer realistic payment levels, that are properly monitored and that guarantee financial support longer term.

I’ve worked in the environmental sector for over 30 years, and it feels as if history just keeps repeating itself.

New visions and policy frameworks are put forward, but we always end up with a variation on the status quo after intense lobbying by vested interests. Why does this keep happening?

There is a powerful counter narrative to the shift towards greener farming. It’s about keeping farmers on the land, keeping traditional systems going, keeping food cheap and increasing food security at a time of uncertainty.

Trade wars with the USA and the conflict in Ukraine, one of the world’s biggest grain producers, have given strength to these voices. Simplistic, ill-informed messaging can all too easily be used to portray nature restoration as prioritising butterflies over food security and livelihoods.

But food security is a complex thing. It’s not just about how much agricultural products you produce in your own country.

It’s about adaptability and resilience in the face of shocks like conflict or disease. It’s about secure trade routes, transport networks and supply chains, health and affordability.

As the food charity Sustain puts it, ‘true food security’ is predicated on sustainable farming, restoration of nature and growing what we need for good nutrition that is accessible and affordable for everybody.

In other words, there is a lot of common ground between the two conflicting narratives. This gives me a lot more hope for the next two areas where I think we can do better.

Collaboration

The third area for focus is collaboration. Farming is a tough and often lonely way of life – rates of depression and suicide are high.

Farmers often feel they are being “done to”, given conflicting advice, misunderstood. Any change to sustainable farming needs to be designed and implemented collaboratively with farmers at a local level.

One of the best ways to do this is to involve farmers in the analysis of the problem and the design of the solution.

Here at Earthwatch, we specialise in citizen science. This is where non-professionals take part in data collection and analysis using soil testing kits and biodiversity monitoring tools, for example.

It is a highly cost-effective way to gather a lot of data over a wide area. It’s also a way to give farmers back ownership and control of knowledge, so they can make informed decisions, measure their impact and evidence achievements.

When people have a sense of ownership of problems and potential solutions, they’re much more likely to act upon them. Changes in technology, such as drones and apps, mean there is ever more potential for farmers to become experts, and masters of their own destiny.

Innovation

Finally, innovation. It would be unfair and inaccurate to say that there’s no innovation in farming, but as a sector it has remained stubbornly resistant to change in the face of environmental pressures.

Admittedly it’s hard to change a complex system. Fiddle about with one part of it and the rest shape-shifts like an amoeba. But complex systems have many leverage points, and there is room for innovation in all of them.

Innovation works best if people share ideas and talk to other players in other parts of the supply chain – banks, suppliers, retailers, insurers and experts. At Earthwatch we’ve helped to set up Knowledge Exchange Networks, so that these innovations can be co-created, funded and supported.

Like seeds, innovations start at a local level and small scale. If they are nurtured by a strong partnership and backed by strong evidence, they can scale up and ultimately help shift things at the higher political level.

One example is the Brabants Bodem project in Van Gogh National Park in the Netherlands. Here, farmers are awarded subsidies on a county level, based on their performance against green KPIs. These include the proportion of their land given over to nature features such as hedgerows and species-rich herbal leys. The project has led to a recovery in populations of butterfly diversity and bird numbers.

Working together to solve the farming puzzle

Farms are as diverse in their specialisms as they are in geography and size. But most people in agriculture want the same things.

They want to make a surplus. They want to create a good product. They want a sense of pride and ownership in what they do. And they want to mitigate against risks.

All these point to transforming towards the true definition of food security, one based on resilience and working with nature. And good quality evidence and genuine collaboration can only help.

Shifting towards a more sustainable farming and food model is a puzzle we are going to have to solve for the sake of nature, our food and ultimately our own survival. It will take a great deal of political courage to do so, and we haven’t yet found all the answers.

At Earthwatch we believe it’s entirely possible, but it may be that we need to start at the bottom and work upwards, rather than from the top down. If we are evidence-led, if we are genuinely collaborative and if we allow innovations to take root, it may just be that the answers find us.

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