Farming for the Future Programme

1
Farming for the Future Programme

• Jo Bray
• Climate Change and International Team
• Farming for the Future
• Food Farming Group, Defra
• Sustainable Water Management Workshop
• 10 November 2008

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Benefits of Agricultural Land

• Agricultural land provides a range of benefits to
  society, including
• production of food and non-food crops
• regulation of air quality and climate, protection
  from soil erosion and flooding, purification and
  regulation of water.
• significant non-material cultural benefits such
  as land for recreation and valued landscapes
• a range of semi-natural habitats, supporting
  important biodiversity

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Environmental Profile of the Agricultural Sector
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Defras Farming for the Future Programme

• A farming sector that is viable and sustainable
  in the long-term will make a major contribution
  to the delivery of Defras two PSA targets on
  securing a healthy natural environment and
  avoiding dangerous climate change.
• The economic and environmental outcomes we are
  seeking are embedded the Departmental Strategic
  Objective of A thriving farming and food sector,
  with an improving net environmental impact.
• Farming has a major role to play in delivering a
  wide range of other Departmental objectives,
  notably in respect of CAP reform, protecting
  public health and the economy from animal
  disease, animal welfare, the food chain, climate
  change, landscape, biodiversity, soil, air and
  water quality, countryside access, renewable
  energy and waste management.

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Defras Farming for the Future Programme

• New Farming for the Future Programme set up in
  spring 2007
• Complements the Governments Sustainable Food and
  Farming Strategy (SFFS) the overarching
  framework for delivering the Governments goals
  for the food and farming industry
• The programme is aimed at delivering the
  behaviour change necessary to realise our long
  term vision for farming

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Vision for Farming

• The vision identifies an English farming sector
  in 2020 that
• is valued for the quality, safety, and
  environmental and animal welfare standards of the
  food and other products it makes in other words,
  profitable and competitive domestically and
  internationally
• works together collaboratively to meet the
  challenges it faces, and which manages risks
• embraces its environmental responsibilities
  tackling climate change, managing water, air and
  soil and sees them as essential to its long
  term economic success, rather than a threat to
  it and
• is, above all, innovative, self-reliant,
  successful, and confident about its future and
  which expresses that confidence outwardly.

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FFF Projects

• Agriculture and Climate Change mitigation and
  adaptation
• Nutrient Management
• Integrated Farming
• Cross-compliance development
• Skills for Farming
• Farm Health Planning
• Strategic development and stakeholder buy-in

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Links to other projects / programmes

• Water quality catchment sensitive farming
• Soils policy
• Rural Development Programme for England
• CAP

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Agriculture and Climate Change

• Agriculture is responsible for around 7 per cent
  of the UKs greenhouse gas emissions.
• Defra has set up a project on Agriculture and
  Climate Change and is working with the Rural
  Climate Change Forum, and the Farming Futures
  communications project to develop and disseminate
  advice to farmers and land managers on their role
  in mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
• The project also includes looking at the
  feasibility of a sector emissions trading scheme,
  promoting the uptake of anaerobic digestion and
  collaboration with other countries including
  Germany China to take forward joint work on
  sustainable agriculture. It is underpinned by
  research into good practice on mitigation and
  adaptation.

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Developing New Policies GHG Policy Instruments
Project

• Recently let a project to ADAS to look at
  potential policy instruments in greater detail.
  Key aims to
• Analyse the abatement potential, relative to the
  baseline, of current, extended and potential new
  policy instruments, including
• Regulatory
• Economic (cap-and-trade, project based schemes,
  price based changes, grants, environmental
  stewardship)
• Voluntary (advice / communication campaigns,
  voluntary codes, farm assurance schemes etc)
• Identify most cost-effective package of policy
  instruments (taking account of interactions)
• Develop detailed options for the design and
  implementation of these instruments

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Climate Change Mitigation and Water

• Agricultural practices for the mitigation of GHGs
  could intensify water use, leading to reductions
  in streamflow or ground water reserves.
• For example, bioenergy crops could have a higher
  water use than the landcover they replace
• Some practices may affect water quality through
  increased leaching of pesticides and / or
  nutrients

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Climate Change Adaptation Project

• The overall objectives of the project are to
  help
• make the agriculture sector environmentally and
  economically sustainable in a changing climate
  and
• protect, restore and enhance agricultural
  ecosystems, to maintain the current multiple
  benefits we obtain from agricultural land and
  help manage the broader impacts of climate change
  on the country as a whole.

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How Will Climate change Affect Agriculture?

• All the services provided by agricultural land
  are likely to be affected by climate change
  directly or indirectly.
• At the same time, the ecosystem services provided
  by agricultural land will become increasingly
  important for human and environmental well being
  as the climate changes.
• Water is going to be one of the big adaptation
  issues

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Evidence Needs

• So we need to know
• how vulnerable both agricultural production and
  natural ecosystems on agricultural land are to
  negative effects resulting from changes in water
  availability (both flooding and drought)
• what farmers and land managers can do to reduce
  their vulnerability
• what farmers and land managers can do to help
  reduce negative effects on the natural
  environment and wider society e.g. managing
  floodwater reducing the risk of water pollution
  using water at a sustainable level that doesnt
  unreasonably affect the environment or other
  parts of society

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Knowledge Gaps Identified

• Water availability and quality
• There is little information on how specific flow
  pathways for water transport, and therefore
  pesticide transport, might alter under a changing
  climate.
• It is difficult to predict the effect of climate
  change on soil water at regional or local level,
  due to the number of different interacting
  influences.

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Knowledge Gaps Identified

• Flood management
• The relationship between land use management and
  flood risk management can be shown to work in
  theory but there is limited evidence so far of it
  working in practice.
• The distribution, timing and intensity of
  rainfall and subsequent water flow are difficult
  to model. River flow and flooding will vary from
  river to river with local effects on sediment,
  erosion and biodiversity.
• Cultivating energy crops such as miscanthus in
  riparian margins may potentially affect flood
  risk. However, further scientific understanding
  is needed to assess the potential flood risk
  impacts
• Can wet woodlands and wetlands be used as an
  alternative to some current land uses to
  potentially manage flood risks (among other
  benefits)?

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Knowledge Gaps Identified

• General
• Studies have been done on the effects of climate
  change on some existing crops but not all.
• Further information is required on the potential
  for new crops that would be suitable under
  expected future climate/water conditions
• Do we know enough about likely future changes in
  demand for water?

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What is nutrient management?

• Nutrient Management is all about the on-farm
  management of feed, fertiliser and organic manure
  
• It is widely recognised that there is a problem
  with the oversupply and inefficient use of
  nutrients within agriculture and that this has
  harmful impacts upon human health and ecosystems
• Nutrient Management provides a holistic approach
  to addressing a range of interrelated
  environmental outcomes
• Also addresses problem of Pollution swapping
  where policies/activities designed to deal with
  one environmental media inadvertently have an
  adverse effect on another (e.g. nitrates vs
  ammonia)

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Nutrient Management strategic linkages
Nutrient Management is at the crossroads of a
range of environmental outcomes and impacts
Air Quality e.g. IPPC, NECD
Water Quality e.g. CSF, Nitrates
Biodiversity e.g. EBS
Soil Quality e.g. SFD
Nutrient Management
Climate Change e.g. Trading schemes, Anaerobic
Digestion
Fertiliser Safety i.e. Ammonium Nitrate (AN)
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How is Defra responding to the nutrient
management problem?

• Development of a Workstream as part of the
  Farming for the Future Programme
• Building on work on the Nutrient Management
  Steering Group (2004-2007)
• The aim of the Nutrient Management Workstream is
  to reduce nutrient oversupply in the ecosystem
  through maximising the efficiency of the nutrient
  cycle on farm and thereby help deliver
  environmental outcomes for air, water, soil and
  climate change, and biodiversity

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Nutrient Management to protect water

• Careful management of livestock manures can
• limit nitrate leaching to groundwater
• avoid excessive build up of nutrients and
  contaminants in soil and
• Changing what is in animal feed will change the
  manures to deal with. This can
• reduce surplus nitrogen being lost to the
  environment
• limit the unnecessary accumulation of phosphorus
  in the soil which will reduce impact on the water
  environment and
• Following a nutrient management plan will ensure
  efficient use of  fertilisers (and organic
  manures) and can
• limit nitrate leaching to surface and
  groundwaters
• prevent the unnecessary accumulation of
  phosphorus in the soil which will also reduce
  impact on the water environment.

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Nutrient Management Workstream Current Project
Organisation

• Project 1 An agreed integrated package of
  environmental targets and KPIs (key performance
  indicators) for nutrient management
• Project 1b quantitative scenarios for managing
  synergies and conflicts between the economic
  performance of agriculture and the environment
  and between different environmental media
• Project 2 Recommendations for best on-farm
  methods to achieve targets
• Project 3 Recommendations for aligning the policy
  levers to achieve the targets
• Project 4 Requirements for changes in EU
  legislation identified
• Project 5 Action Plan for delivery against the
  agreed targets

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Horizon scanning

• 1 year Govt response to CCCs advice
• 5 years 2013 2nd carbon budget starts new EU
  directives, e.g. pesticides
• 10 years 2018 3rd carbon budget underway
  (2017-2022) effects of climate change will be
  felt and more severe reporting on adaptation
  changing demand for water in agriculture?