Series Four Reflection

Working on and in the business

Looking back at Izak van Heerden’s advice on working on as well as in a business [episode 34], Emily stressed the importance of first realising there is a difference between the two.

“I think a lot of people think that by doing the job, that's the job. But in business, and especially with the complexity of farming businesses and the way things are going, taking time to step away from it, is the key.”

Taking a helicopter view to see the problems and challenges is vital, but harder on your own, so she advises: “Having somebody to help you do that is so much more powerful. Somebody who can help you gain the perspective we need to not hyper-analyse problems or completely ignore them all together because we can't see them.”

The future direction of nature recovery

Moving on to the rewilding episode with Jim Bliss [episode 35], Emily is worried the benefits of nature are going to be overlooked by a government looking for environmental outcomes because “the best thing you can do for nature is nothing.” She believes government needs to focus less on those outcomes and more on making “the economics of farming different for nature.”

Her suggestion reflects Jim’s concept of ‘active rewilding’. She says, “we really need to think about how nature recovery integrates with our farming systems” and questions what we recover, given we are in a time of adaptation to “a hotter, more volatile, more crowded future.

“Creating redundant spaces on a crowded island achieves nature outcomes, but it doesn't achieve overall resilience and economic wellbeing or sustain the vibrancy of the countryside.”

Emily’s view is to design “human nature interactions that bring everybody mutual regenerative benefit.” She says this needs to be about procuring land use change and involves the whole agri-food supply chain, because “all the money is somewhere else. It's not in farming.”

Ways of being a farmer

The definition of a farmer is ever evolving, according to Emily, in response to Rhian Marchant’s description of how she balances jobs both on and off the farm [episode 36]. She feels having all begun as farmers, growing our own food, there’s been a gradual specialisation of skills by those who “were good at it” and made it their profession.

But having to supplement a farming income, whether through a second job or diversification, is “exploiting human capital to prop up the food system. It's not sustainable to the extent that you can't keep doing it.”

She says farmers need to look at sharing skills and resources rather than driving themselves on to do more and more: “Maybe the future of ‘farmer’ is that we all collaborate and contribute more, because that is the only way we can get more. We can't get more from one person. You can get more by sharing brilliance.”

Farmer collaboration

The strength of collaboration and the benefits of scale can be seen in farm clusters [episode 37], but how can working together be encouraged when farm budgets are under pressure?

Creating more cooperative structures like those used for buying groups is a possibility suggests Emily, potentially including the wider community, “because every community, every person in the community, as well as the farmer is invested in the outcomes within that catchment.

“We see these as being exclusively farmer problems, but there are an awful lot of people who may also want to come in and share in the natural outcomes of spaces.”

Using baseline data to influence policy

Emily is a strong advocate of Professor John Gilliland’s baselining work and the value of data [episode 40], stressing it needs to be available at farm level: “Once we've got better data, we are in a stronger position to say, actually, this is what agriculture is contributing.”

Looking beyond carbon to a full energy efficiency audit is also a must: “Carbon that is being omitted from your system is effectively lost energy. The bigger your fossil fuel footprint, the bigger your carbon footprint, the more money you're spending on stuff that arguably you could find ways to start to trim down.”

She supports carbon audits assessing renewable energy investments, input reductions and improvements to soil health: “It's not just the baseline, but it's the benchmark, it's the advice, it's understanding the relevance of this information to how we farm. We need to get much closer to that as an outcome. And it's super interesting.”

Opportunities for farmers

To wrap up the series, when asked about the current opportunities for farmers in these turbulent times, Emily turned to her study of agricultural policy design around the world.

She looked at “small, crowded islands with complicated food security relationships with their nearest neighbours”, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Cuba and the Isle of Man, seeing their situations as the most closely aligned to the UK.

But unlike the UK, these countries see their identity “as being intrinsically linked to their ability to feed themselves”, indicating to Emily: “We keep people farming because it allows us to live, it allows us independence, and it allows us to retain our cultural identity as a place. This is our food.”

Emily believes this is where the opportunity lies for the UK, moving away from a commodity mindset: “We have is 75 million hungry people on our doorstep who need to eat at least three times a day. And every time they eat, it should make them happy. And that is what we can do.”

Listen to the full episode at https://www.cornishmutual.co.uk/news-advice/farming-focus-podcast/ - also available via Spotify and Apple podcasts.

Emily Norton is a farmer and independent strategic advisor. She works with farmers, investors, politicians and businesses on rural policy and emerging trends and has expertise in natural capital’s influence on land, food and farming. She qualified as solicitor before undertaking an MSc in Sustainable Agriculture. She writes a regular opinion column in Farmers Weekly and holds non-executive board positions at various organisations, including the Duchy of Cornwall.