Where do we see farming in 50 years?

martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
We've had some enthusiastic young people around this weekend and we were discussing what we imagined would be a perfect agro-ecological system to aim towards, ie where we saw farming in 50 years time and, by extension, what shoud we be doing now to get to this state of agri-nirvana?
 

DrDunc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Dunsyre
UK farm land covered in houses for the huge expansion in population.

Subsidised foreign produced food filling the shelves.

Massive unemployment and inflation,food shortages. Children dieing of malnutrition and hunger.





No, I hope that isn't the scenario in 50 years, but it is likely to be unless the government has an epiphany and supports agriculture.

Successive conservative governments have consistently imported cheaper foreign coal, steel, cars etc in preference to supporting our own primary and secondary manufacturing industries.

This short sighted economic strategy has destroyed most of what made Britain great.

British farming is likely to be sold down the river in preference for buying cheaper subsidised food from Europe in return for allowing the financial sector tariff free access to European markets.
 

Spud

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
YO62
Look back to where farming was 50yrs ago, in 1966. What was different, bar technology, in real terms?
Yields have risen a little, but not much in the last 30yrs, most of that been down to fertilizer. Mixed farming was more common, but with bigger arable farms like @Clive and @dontknowanything to pick two out incorporating more livestock, sustainability is returning. Wheat rape and tenerife farming is becoming less common. We are having to (almost) learn organic farming methods to combat the fast reducing armoury of chemistry at our disposal. Rotation has never been so important. This will continue, imo.
I can see margins getting tighter, but not necessarily prairie farming taking over. I certainly see simplification of operations and specialization of crops like veg (thats already happening)
In 50yrs I'll be doing well to still be here, but hopefully I've got a good 30yrs farming to do first!
 

martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
If we could leave the Government out of it for the minute, I'm really more interested in where you'd like to see 'your farm' in 50 years time. Like Gator and PP I'll be taking a roots only view by then, but it is a valuable exercise to ask yourself 'where are we going with this' rather than just carrying on planting whatever the seed salesman sells us and applying whatever the agronomist tells us and so on, ad infinitum.

There's been a lot of chat in the press about how there's only 50 harvests left in UK soils, whether that's wrong by a few years is irrelevant, our current, chemical way of farming will hit the buffers sooner or later. More importantly it is no fun, there is no joy in it, whereas agro-forestry, for example, has actually made forum members (literally) skip with joy...

We don't have to be passive with this, surely farmer's spirits haven't been crushed so far that they might as well be slavering dogs waiting to be told what to do by their masters, whether it's Her Maj's Gov or those nice people who made a fortune selling Zyklon B to the Nazis and who now make agrochemicals.

Watching what nature does and working with it has proved to be much cheaper and much more fun for us and also more profitable, not least because it's not all about money, every hour I don't spend on a tractor is an hour cheated from the grave as far as I'm concerned. So, where are we going?
 

Spud

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
YO62
If we could leave the Government out of it for the minute, I'm really more interested in where you'd like to see 'your farm' in 50 years time. Like Gator and PP I'll be taking a roots only view by then, but it is a valuable exercise to ask yourself 'where are we going with this' rather than just carrying on planting whatever the seed salesman sells us and applying whatever the agronomist tells us and so on, ad infinitum.

There's been a lot of chat in the press about how there's only 50 harvests left in UK soils, whether that's wrong by a few years is irrelevant, our current, chemical way of farming will hit the buffers sooner or later. More importantly it is no fun, there is no joy in it, whereas agro-forestry, for example, has actually made forum members (literally) skip with joy...

We don't have to be passive with this, surely farmer's spirits haven't been crushed so far that they might as well be slavering dogs waiting to be told what to do by their masters, whether it's Her Maj's Gov or those nice people who made a fortune selling Zyklon B to the Nazis and who now make agrochemicals.

Watching what nature does and working with it has proved to be much cheaper and much more fun for us and also more profitable, not least because it's not all about money, every hour I don't spend on a tractor is an hour cheated from the grave as far as I'm concerned. So, where are we going?

Where do you want to go @martian ??
We've adapted our rotation for two main reasons - sustainability and to supply gaps in the market. Our expertise also comes into it, do what you do well, and do it better.
 

martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
Where do you want to go @martian ?

I don't know, that's why I asked the question. I'm hoping for some clever ideas that I can pinch and pretend that they were mine...

But, I expect that we'll be growing a lot more poly-cropping of one form or another, Andy Howard's brilliant Nuffield report is full of teasing ideas of how agriculture might develop, we need imaginative growers to experiment a bit and work out how we can separate crops grown together at harvest-time.

Bio-mimicry is the key, nature has had hundreds of millions of years to winnow out crap ways of growing stuff, all eco-systems you look at around the world have evolved with thousands of different creatures interacting, from the tiniest bug through plants and fungi to the giant herbivores; clever farming systems in future will somehow mimic the most sucessful of these, so doubtless animals will be involved, clever self-propelled harvesting and fertilising units that they are.

I suspect trees and shrubs will get a look-in too, farming in 2 dimensions is so terribly 20th Century.
 

britt

Member
BASE UK Member
Trees and bushes have to be the ultimate notill crop for food and fuel.
Fossil fuels will have been largely replaced by electric power derived from sun, wind etc. as power storage gets better.
.Given the march of the vegetarians and their "enlightened" view of animals rights and welfare, I find it hard to see livestock being more important than they are now.
But since when did the future go where anyone forecast.
It only takes one discovery that none foresaw to send things off in a whole new direction.
I'm just off to find my 1960s share certificate in the company that was developing jetpacks and hover cars. Anyone know what they might be worth these days ?
 
I was thinking about this the other day too.

One possible eventuality would be the separation of food production from (land,) soil (and labour). The world's first automated lettuce farm has, I think, just opened in Japan. Hydroponically grown under LED lights on multiple stories. What happens if it turns out that it doesn't matter whether or not there are 50 harvests left in our soil (which I think is a silly claim anyway because it extrapolates in a linear fashion from a curve tending towards equilibrium)? As has been said, the stone age didn't end because they ran out of stone.
 

orchard

Member
What about the bronze age?
I was thinking about this the other day too.

One possible eventuality would be the separation of food production from (land,) soil (and labour). The world's first automated lettuce farm has, I think, just opened in Japan. Hydroponically grown under LED lights on multiple stories. What happens if it turns out that it doesn't matter whether or not there are 50 harvests left in our soil (which I think is a silly claim anyway because it extrapolates in a linear fashion from a curve tending towards equilibrium)? As has been said, the stone age didn't end because they ran out of stone.
 

martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
Well, luckily we have got the technology, or at least the knowledge, to farm in such a way as to 'save' our soils. Or even improve them.

I hope that it will become so much more profitable to farm in a soil regenerating way using minimal bought inputs, that it will become standard practice and the Government doesn't need to get involved. But that assumes farmers behave in anything approaching a rational way, which would be a rash assumption indeed...
 
Well, luckily we have got the technology, or at least the knowledge, to farm in such a way as to 'save' our soils. Or even improve them.

I hope that it will become so much more profitable to farm in a soil regenerating way using minimal bought inputs, that it will become standard practice and the Government doesn't need to get involved. But that assumes farmers behave in anything approaching a rational way, which would be a rash assumption indeed...

Just remember, you don't have the monopoly on unfaltering rationality! A good book read for you is 'Thinking Fast and Slow' by Daniel Khaneman. Or, what is possibly a more readable commentary, 'The Undoing Project' by Michael Lewis. Once you've read those you may even be able to see your own irrationality as well as the more obvious irrationality in others.
 

martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
Just remember, you don't have the monopoly on unfaltering rationality! A good book read for you is 'Thinking Fast and Slow' by Daniel Khaneman. Or, what is possibly a more readable commentary, 'The Undoing Project' by Michael Lewis. Once you've read those you may even be able to see your own irrationality as well as the more obvious irrationality in others.
Thanks for the homework. Just started on The Master and his Emissary by Iain McGilchrist which is about the two halves of the brain and is completely fascinating.
I was wrong to bring rationality into this, you're right. (or left if we're talking brain sides)
 

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