Farming for Change

Farming for Change - Food, Farming and Countryside Commission

FFCC has today published Farming for Change: mapping a route to 2030. The report introduces new research showing agroecology can produce enough healthy food for a future UK population and explores how this new technical modelling challenges and develops our thinking about a new food and farming system.

The research also addresses the big questions: How do we feed a growing population, healthily? Respond to a changing climate? Create a resilient, secure and fair farming system? Tackle the nature and health crises?

Farming for Change: mapping a route to 2030, explores these questions in detail and reveals the research that shows that, with the right enabling conditions, we can grow enough healthy food for a future population while

eliminating synthetic fertilisers and pesticides
nearly doubling amount of land available for green and ecological infrastructure (ponds, hedges, meadows etc.)
releasing 7.5% of current agricultural area for more flexible use
reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture by at least 38% by 2050 (with potential to offset 60%+ of remaining emissions through an afforestation scenario)
all without compromising food security or offshoring food production and the associated environmental impacts.

In its 2019 report Our Future in the Land, FFCC argued that “farming can be a force for change, with a transition to agroecology by 2030”. Its new report, Farming for Change: mapping a route to 2030, published on 7 January, provides further signposts for that route, through the difficult and sometimes polarising arguments about how best to solve the intertwined climate, nature and health crises.

Read the report here