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Martin Harper told delegates that farming will have to adapt to climate change, while reducing its own contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, and play its part in helping wildlife and wider society adapt to the effects of climate change.

He said, “The production and environmental challenges facing farming are inextricably linked: the natural environment provides the resource base on which production is completely dependent, and farming itself plays a major role in shaping the environment.”

Looking forward to 2050, Mr Harper referred to the government Foresight report, produced last year, which recommends radical changes in policy and increased cooperation between nations, NGOs, consumers and industry to combat climate change and increase food production. Mr Harper said, “The system is failing in two major ways: hunger remains widespread, while simultaneously a billion people are risking damage to their health by over-consuming. Secondly, many systems of food production are unsustainable, degrading the environment and compromising the world’s ability to produce food in the future.”

The RSPB welcomed the concept of sustainable intensification outlined in the Foresight report. Harper said the organisation wholeheartedly believed in the need to increase production, albeit without turning much more land to agricultural production and with diminishing impact on the environment.

He talked about the National Ecological Assessment, also published in 2011, which showed the value biodiversity brings to the UK, through the provision of “ecosystem services” such as pollination and carbon storage. He said the report’s findings emphasised the need for further consideration for the environment.

Though Mr Harper acknowledged the massive positive impacts of the changes which came about as a result of the ‘green revolution’, he pointed out that the boom in agricultural production coincided with declines in several farmland species. He explained, “Declines in populations of wildlife associated with farmed land are well documented. In the UK, as in Europe, farming is the dominant land use and biodiversity is inexorably linked with how this land is managed.”

Mr Harper continued, “Agriculture has shaped Europe’s biodiversity over the centuries, with the result that many of Europe’s most valuable species and habitats today are dependent on the continuation of certain agricultural practices.”

Between 1970 and 2009, populations of breeding farmland birds across the UK declined by 49 per cent, while in England butterfly populations reliant on farmland declined by 39 per cent between 1990 and 2009. The RSPB director explained, “Butterflies and birds are indicators of the state of wider biodiversity, so a decline in these groups is taken as indicative of a wider decline in the species that make up agricultural ecosystems.”

RSPB investigating “realistic” solutions

Mr Harper reported that the charity’s own farms are contributing to efforts to reverse this loss. He discussed their successes of Entry Level Stewardship and agrienvironmental schemes on Hope Farm in Cambridgeshire, which the RSPB says is providing “realistic solutions” for farmers and birds.          

Mr Harper told delegates that, by applying a mix of agrienvironment options, Hope farm is able to provide sufficient high-quality habitat to allow wildlife to flourish, while keeping impacts on food production to a minimum. The 181 hectare farm is managed conventionally; it operates a four year rotation of wheat, spring beans, wheat and oilseed rape. It also grows 1 hectare of bird seed mix, 0.9 ha of nectar flower mix and 0.05 ha of beetle bank. It has 100 skylark plots.

The Farm has been under entry level stewardship agreement and also has commitments under the Campaign for the Farmed Environment, of which the RSPB is an NGO partner. Mr Harper said that, overall, around 8.5 per cent of the farm’s land is out of production, either under agrienvironment options r research trials.

He said that the farmland bird indicator on the Hope Farm site has increased over 200 per cent since the RSPB took over management. Furthermore, butterflies, bumblebees (which are also a threatened species), moths and fungi appear to be benefitting from the management. Increases in crop yields have remained consistent with other arable farms in Cambridgeshire over this period.

However, Mr Harper acknowledged there is still work to do; he said that several water bodies surrounding the farm have been assessed as ‘at risk’, primarily from phosphate pollution. He said efforts were underway to address this in a way which would not hamper productivity.

The RSPB also manages an organic farm in the Pennines, which produces cows and sheep. Mr Harper repeated the Foresight report’s authors’ message of cooperation, emphasising that technologies in isolation could not be relied upon to provide a “quick fix” to complex challenges; he said that only by working cooperatively can farmers, politicians, NGOs and other stakeholders drive change.

Last year, NFU president Peter Kendall warned that uptake of stewardship campaigns such as the CFE had dropped off over fears of what CAP reforms would bring. In December, Farming Minister Jim Paice offered assurances that, should environmental measures form part of pillar one, farmers would be able to opt out of agrienvironment schemes without incurring penalties.

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