To deal with the increasing hot summers and very wet winters, farmers will have to change how they farm and what they farm. Nature-based solutions will be vital and they can feed us. But the whole food system creates over 30% of UK emissions and is the biggest cause of nature decline. Transitions are hard, especially when farmgate prices and deals are not supportive and well-designed public support is slow in arriving. Farmers are taking to tractors in protest.  

Professor Tim Benton, Chatham House Director, describes how Net Zero and environmental policies, became a major just transition flashpoint in Europe, intertwining political interests, ideologies, and food supply. “The farmer protests are a prime example of where sustainability risks being derailed because insufficient thought has been given to the need for a ‘just transition’ – one that brings people most affected by the transition on the journey by preserving their livelihoods.”  These protests caused rapid set of U-turns on good new environmental policies, such as on pesticides even though many of their concerns were around poor trade deals and unfair supply chains. But greening was the casualty.  

Combined with enormous barriers, complexity, non-joined up government, and resistance to change, a just transition in food is never going to be easy. It somehow seems simpler in the energy sector* where transition is measurable and the pathways well defined via renewables, decarbonising industry and retrofitting. It clearly creates new jobs. But it is irritating that reports and articles on a ‘just transition’ often focussing on energy, ignoring food.  
 
Yet farming and the whole food system has always looked like a far trickier proposition. The natural systems underpinning production, such as soils, are wickedly complex. There is also a huge, intricate, untransparent, global supply chain, and a huge level of processing and value adding beyond the farmgate.  

How do you decide who handles what and so which part to change and where resources are needed? The major dietary shifts that evidence shows are vital, have been promoted without adequately considering what that really means for workers, for farmers and the opportunity costs of changes. Farmers are already under such pressure to deliver at low cost and to exacting specifications. It is no wonder they may find deeper changes hard to envisage. 

What would a UK just transition entail? 

So, we need to be smart, inclusive, and economically literate, with fair tools for a just transition. We need to understand the needs of those who will be affected - from the upland sheep farmer to the worker filling sausage rolls – what drives their decisions and what new opportunities arise?  

And we need to explain how many of the changes can help. For instance, by reducing inputs or improving soil health and functioning, farmers can build resilience against climate challenges including drought, whilst reducing costs and generating new, diverse income streams. Our research, The Farming at The Sweet Spot report demonstrated how farmers gained up to 45% increase in commercial return for nature-friendly farming. Agroecological food systems, such as organic and related activities (such as on farm marketing) can create more job opportunities on and off farm. Research shows related work, such as improving woodland and conservation work, could create 16,000 jobs often in areas experiencing the most severe underemployment.  

Jobs post farmgate will change too. What farmers produce will change as they diversify production, reducing the high carbon or high nature negative crops or livestock. So, jobs in food transport, processing and retail will shift. It is crucial to consider what changes mean as such businesses may be a key employer in a town, to ensure fair wages and conditions, and not outsource overseas to lower standards.  

How can we ensure a just transition?  

We need to work with the whole sector, including workers, not just point at it. And we need the kind of policies that will help the transition in the entire system including: 

• Financial support for nature friendly farming and conservation-based transition. We have calculated the budget needed for this to deliver on government aims for environment and society including nature, net zero and adaptation, water pollution at £4.4bn. Added support is needed for managing some land primarily for nature including for those affected. 

• New resources for advice and skills training for farmers and workers and new entrants as these are substantial changes in practice including on data. Agricultural colleges and other land-based skills providers must ensure the agricultural workforce understand and have the skills needed.  

• Engaging local communities including workers and encouraging new entrants. The expertise of local communities, farmers and land managers should be used to prioritize how farmland could provide for people, wildlife, and food production.  

• A new Land Use Framework, long overdue, to help manage the competing pressures on land and bring people together, locally, and nationally for better decision making and to identify the new opportunities, employment, and enterprises as well as trade-offs.  

• A food systems approach across government to ensure farmers producing more diverse, agroecological food can find the right infrastructure (e.g. milling, processing, cold storage, abattoirs etc), so investment, markets and retail opportunities can ensure their produce reach a receptive market.  The barriers are considerable but just a 10% shift in the food retail market towards more sustainable local food systems could yield up to 200,000 more jobs,  

• New supply chain regulation - to ensure all supply contracts are fair, a larger proportion of the end price reaches the producer, so it is possible to earn a living through farming sustainably without driving up food prices. Most of the food pound never actually reaches the farm. Yet they are being pushed to make significant changes, which means new costs which the taxpayer cannot fund in entirety.  

Find out more about farming and The Wildlife Trusts

*I know climate and energy campaigners… it never has been easy.