A senior UN official has said U.K. agriculture costs the country more in terms of environmental degradation than it contributes in food production. Asad Naqvi, programme officer for the economics and trade branch of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) said net farm income was worth over $1 billion less to the economy than soil erosion and water pollution cost the country.

Speaking at a conference on agricultural development in Paris, Mr Naqvi, said factors such as soil and water contamination, degradation of resources and loss of biodiversity resulting from farming practices made the industry unviable; he estimated the cost of the damage to be $8.36 billion (£5.23 bn) a year, compared to a net farm income of $7.10 billion (£4.44 bn) in 2010. image expired

He said the environmental costs to the USA were $34.7 billion a year and in Germany, which is the second most heavily subsidised farming economy in Europe, costs were nearly twice those of the UK, at an estimated $2 billion a year.

Mr Naqvi announced to the conference, "It's time to reverse the trend caused by earlier misallocation of funds. [Some in the developed world] may have to sacrifice their quality of life and their economic growth to live inside the limits of the earth."

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) continues to advocate a move towards ‘agroecological’ farming, which uses science to work with rather against nature. It claims yields can increase under such methods as the practices are more resilient, particularly in the face of climate change. UN special rapporteur Olivier DeSchutter laid out the claim before the Human Rights Council in Geneva earlier this year. The FAO released DeSchutter’s report Agro-ecology and the right to food in March