As far as I am concerned the conference season is over for another year although some of my colleagues are off to Ireland next week for the Progressive Farming Conference. And whilst it is always good to catch up with old friends and colleagues, I am always looking for themes and trends which will enable farmers to progress. Reflecting on the three conferences that I have been to this winter, the scene set by the main speakers highlighted a food chain that is unfit for purpose. Thank goodness some of the other speakers could find something to cheer the audiences with.

Stephen Devlin author of Urgent Recall from the new Economic Foundation argued, at the Real Oxford Farming Conference, that the UK food system was unfit for purpose with the environmental impact being in the region of £5.7 – £7.2 bn. per year, was energy intensive, using 8 times the energy that it produces, that most of the employment were poorly paid and the whole chain was very complex, witness the horse meat scandal.

Alan Buckwell at the Organic Producers Conference argued that whilst European agriculture was one of the most intensive systems in the world the current system was failing to meet most of the environmental targets that were currently being set. At the same time, it was difficult to define a set of targets or even to measure many of the current sustainable criteria. The one area where most would agree, was that we will need more knowledge if we are to meet the current policy agenda.

Tim Benton at the Soil Symposium argued that in terms of climate change business as usual was not an option and that if we were to achieve the required change in greenhouse gas emissions that governments are signed up to then major changes in the way we produce food will be needed. That global warming will increase the variability of crop yields and the overall effect will be falling yields and increasing uniformity of agricultural systems increase the risk. On the other side, a more diverse cropping system gives lower fluctuations to income and improvise the human diet and biodiversity.

Looking for positive notes some common themes appeared. One was the role of diversity. Alan Buckwell quoted a German study which showed that at any yield level there was a 5 fold range of the farm diversity whilst anecdotal evidence of this abounds there is little good science to support the hypothesis. Jeff Lowenfels, author of Teaming with Microbes and Teaming with Nutrients from Alaska highlighted the diversity in the soil and the importance of the soil food web in making plant nutrients available.

Carlo Leifert from the University of Newcastle was able to debunk some of the myths around the nutrient value of organic food citing 343 peer reviewed papers that found organic food was in general significantly higher in antioxidants. He went on to show that these higher levels were due to the reduced level of fertiliser use and not to do with pesticide use. He also showed that the levels of cadmium were lower in organic crops and again this was the due to lower levels of fertiliser.

At both the Organic Producers Conference and the Real Oxford Farming Conference there were a number of produces who had found a way to market their produce directly to the consumer, with Community Supported Agriculture seeming to be at the forefront of many discussions and also some new routes to market. The pasture fed livestock guys were making much about their systems and I know from some experience that this can be made to work, although at this stage it does seem to be confined to the suckler beef guys supplying local markets.

Going back to the soils question there seems to be a couple of themes that need taking on board:
1) Is that diversity is highly important in all sectors not just a decent rotation with nitrogen fixers and nitrogen scavengers but also within crops and between crops as either a catch crop or cover crop or bi crops.
2) Some to the drivers for zero tillage systems arguing that it is the only way to build soil organic matter but recent research show that zero till system simply concentrate the organic matter in the surface and do not distribute it across the soil profile and into the wider rooting zone.
3) Elaine Ingham argued for the complexity of the soil food web and the role of soil fungi as the only way to build sustainable soils, but more of that later.

So yet again I come away from a conference season with more ideas to help farmers but with little good evidence that many of the techniques and technologies can be applied on a large scale without considerable risk. Perhaps the challenge is to try and persuade a few to try some of the strategies and try to monitor the project all the way through.

William Waterfield