Conservation Ag

It’s a hot topic at the moment but does anyone fully understand what Conservation Ag really is?

 

 

“Farming for the future”, “Sustainable Agriculture”, “Farming Environmentally”, “Greener Future” are all terms which have been thrashed around in our industry recently. Not only are we talking about it but it is also regularly discussed on a much wider scale by the local press, national news and in parliament, namely by environmental secretary Michael Gove.

Love or loathe Gove’s policies, he is managing the UK’s environmental plan so we need to take note. Conservation Ag is talked about when he tells us that he is aiming to make “the UK home of the highest environmental standards” and along with his “Green Brexit” policies which have made headline news countless times in the past year.

His extremely ambitious Brexit plans which also inevitably mean the end of the EU farm subsidy system means, whichever way you look at it, the agricultural industry is going to need/ be forced to make some pretty big changes over the next few years. So there is likely to be a big question we are all asking:

Is Conservation Ag the answer? How do we make changes to farm more responsibly?

---

Conservation Ag isn’t just about being greener and more sustainable. We’ve looked at this slightly differently and believe there are 3 factors which need to be considered when deciding how we can farm more responsibly; Profit, Environment and Social.

Considering all 3 is important when deciding on responsible farming practices. Making changes to only one or two will have detrimental effects to the other, all 3 need to work together, just like a triangle where the emphasis on each side can differ with varying degrees of focus, but ultimately all must remain and must be nurtured.

 

 

When looking to make changes to farm more responsibly, the decisions often go hand in hand to reduce impact on the environment. These changes to farming practices aren’t possible unless you end up in the same or better financial situation afterwards meaning it must be profitable. Less obvious, is how to make sure these decisions are socially responsible too. We believe it is the unspoken, misunderstood factor to becoming more responsible when farming.

We believe everyone has a part to play so as an example let’s consider what we do as a thriving agricultural machinery dealer in the South West. The easiest decision maker for most of us is PROFIT. Like all businesses, we need to be profitable for us to remain trading so a change is not possible unless it is profitable or has long-term gains in the future. The ENVIRONMENT matters to us, we live in a beautiful area of the UK and we want to keep it that way and we do make conscious decisions to reduce our impact on the environment as much as we possibly can; reducing emissions, recycling, energy efficiency and so on….

The final side of the triangle, SOCIAL, may seem a little less obvious. As a local dealer we actively support our immediate community and surrounding areas but there is much more to it than that! A big area of social responsibility where we can really make an impact is supporting our customers to make changes to farm more responsibly. They’re working on local land daily using machinery and systems we sell so it’s our job to make sure we provide the right tools and knowledge to reduce social impact on the surrounding areas. This includes selling the latest technology for machinery which collects field data to tell farmers in real-time how efficient they are, so they can make changes straight away when working. Also providing training as to how to farm more responsibly and introduce them to new products to improve farming processes. Not forgetting this all needs to make the farmer profit with minimal environmental impact!

 

 

There’s a lot to consider and we’re really at the beginning of this 3 factors idea for Conservation Ag, but the possibilities you can derive from it for change are endless! During 2018 we are going to share as much as we can find out about Conservation Ag and how we can all make changes to become more responsible.

We’ll have blogs from supporters and researchers of Conservation Ag as well as case studies from some of our own test farms which we have been working with to see if we can crack the answer…. Is Conservation Ag the answer? How to we make changes to farm more responsibly?

Look out for more updates coming soon ….