By Jake Cohen
“Listen here Jake.” He grumbled sternly with his strangely warm Welsh accent. The accent was so unfamiliar to me I could only associate it with bubbly TV presenters. But his icy eyes told me otherwise as he glared up at me. I had clearly offended him.
“You never ask a woman her age and you NEVER ask a farmer how many sheep they have.”
I was initially unsure if he was joking, as the disconcerting silence was filled by my nervous high-pitched giggle. He assured me he was not and forcefully took the squished Welsh cakes from my hand, which I had not quite got around to offering him.
“You’re clearly not from a farming background” he rightfully pointed out. I knew as much about farming as I do trigonometry. I felt so out of my depth and so out of place here. I had been thrust from an entirely different world where I was just as lucky to see a goldfinch as to avoid stepping in dog poo in my local urban park.
A fish out of water
I’d never seen any expanse of real land and had no idea about countryside culture and certainly about utilising or altering land for farming. I didn’t know that when us city-folk think of ‘wild’ land, there is in fact no such thing. The truth is all our land across the UK has been changed in some way to benefit us. We are part of the ecosystem, and we have changed the land alongside other species who have evolved with us. The untouched wilderness of even the most remote mountainous regions of mid Wales have been so drastically and fundamentally altered that not even a fragment of what once stood is left. I will explain this later.
His house was full of clutter, but it was the giant fishbowl which caught my eye – full of dirty green water, with algae clinging to the sides, but no fish. I nervously sat down on a creaky cold wooden chair with uncomfortable spiny back supports and spotted a children’s drawing of a Ukrainian flag propped up against a homemade birthday card with the number 60 printed on it. Clearly whoever printed it needs to take a look at their colour ink. This restored my faith – this guy is still a human. I fought my inner demons and told myself to ‘fake it ‘til I make it’.
“Your birthday is it?” I asked as he was waiting for the kettle to boil. I noticed his ‘Barry’s’ Irish teabags, and assumed, as I had learned very quickly from most of Wales, that he despises the English and wouldn’t dare buy Yorkshire Tea or PG Tips.
“I’ve been here long enough to be bitter and angry. I’m a grumpy old man.” He confessed. Again though, there was a warmth in his voice, a vulnerability. I got a sense that he had been pushed to the edge, lived a hard life. As well as the physical strain he endured as his callused, dry handshake showed – he had experienced emotional, financial strain. It was later I learned about the ever-changing hardships that upland farmers have experienced, having to change their practices so immensely to navigate through different and conflicting government policies. Sheep farmers in Wales make all their money from government subsidies. If they weren’t subsidised, farmers would make a significant loss. Therefore, they are at the mercy of what the government decides is important and what to pay them for. In the past this has been to ramp up sheep numbers and maximise land use efficiency. This has led to catastrophic ecosystem change in the Welsh uplands and therefore a plummeting decline of biodiversity and wildlife.
He sat down opposite me and plunked my tea down. The mug had a rather garish Welsh dragon on it. Of course.
“So, what do you want to argue about then…”
Conservationist complexities
I’m a conservationist. When I tell people what I do – they assume that I am a vegan and that I spend my Saturdays at Extinction Rebellion rallies. My friends tease me for saying over and over again; ‘it’s more complex than that’ – because as conservationists know, ecology is complex, it needs to be complex and it’s that complexity that we are losing, which is perhaps the most vital component of the ongoing biodiversity crisis.
Ecosystems are precariously delicate and every species within it, from the top predator right down to micro-organisms and everything in between plays a role in change. These webs have evolved together, so if you remove or alter one minor interaction or species – this in turn has the potential to change everything within. In the simplest terms (and the example often used) – the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone fundamentally changed everything in its ecosystem, including the flow of water, fish, birds, invertebrate communities. The predation of deer had a knock-on effect, everything changed, and wildlife thrived.
The tipping point
The reason most wildlife is under immense pressure is mostly not entirely known for individual species, but an overarching loss of biodiversity can be attributed to two reasons; loss of habitat and the intensification of agricultural practices. In human speak – we’ve changed the way we farm drastically and 71% of land in the UK is at the mercy of farming practices. We hear about the use of fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals that farmers use on livestock. For example, sheep dips used to protect them from parasites. These are all chemicals designed to kill anything in its path, can take years to become inactive and are being used more frequently in recent years. These products are ever evolving with bans being rolled out every few years and we really don’t know what we are putting in our soils, rivers and environments.
It is important for us to understand and recognise that farmers have been incentivised and encouraged to use chemicals by large chemical companies and the government, to drive efficiencies. They enable the farmer to alter the land to their every need, provide reliable, resourceful and cost-effective feed for their livestock and prevent illness. Efficiency defines everything that farmers do, it is deeply entrenched in their psyche over generations – are we all not looking for more efficient ways to do our jobs? The question becomes, how do we showcase how farmers can move away from chemicals in ways that ensure they are able to fairly and equitably receive compensation for their work?
Transitions over time
In upland farming particularly, where we used to grow rich wildflower meadows to feed our sheep in the winter, we now grow a single species of grass in our fields, which (with the help of products) grow quickly and more efficiently, that feeding sheep through the winter is reliable and dare I say, easy. Wildflower meadows would have hosted over a hundred species of flower supporting a complex web of invertebrates, mammals, birds, fungi – the list is mind boggling. Every part of the plant is important from the root to the tip, providing unique and important roles in the ecosystem, altering soil structure, leaching nutrients from grasses, nitrogen fixing, swapping nutrients with other species and communicating with each other. As just an example, each species of butterfly typically has an intertwined relationship with just one species of plant – laying its eggs and feeding on it. Its success that year would be totally dependent on the abundance of this plant. Wildflower meadows are incredible and beautiful.
Contrary to popular belief (perhaps myths spread through our love of gardening), in many cases lots of nutrients in soils is not a good thing. Many of our habitats and soils have evolved in nutrient poor conditions and the plant life there is dependent on that. If we add nutrients to the soils, these species can’t survive. This is true of most upland habitats and species. In this case, it is important that our wildflower meadows remain nutrient poor. It’s vital that they are cut or grazed and that the cuttings are removed, in order for these wildflower meadows to come back again the next year. If they were left, not cut or grazed – they would accumulate too many nutrients and quickly revert to scrubland, or single species fields. So, farmers cutting these fields and using the hay to feed their sheep in the winter enabled these meadows and therefore biodiversity to thrive. Through hundreds, if not thousands of years of this practice – species have evolved alongside the farmer and grown dependent on their methods.
We have, in fact, lost 97% of our wildflower meadows since WWII, where the recent intensification of our agriculture began. Now, we spray our fields with pesticides and cover them in synthetic fertilisers. An absolute godsend for farmers, boosting efficiency. But leaves a single species grass monoculture. In the way of wildlife this supports…well, very little.
My point here, is to highlight just one example of new technologies and products which are revolutionising the way we farm, as well as the dependence of wildlife on human farming practices. I haven’t even brushed the surface on the complexities of the relationships between biodiversity and farming. My point is to highlight the two most important and defining factors in biodiversity loss; loss of habitat and intensification of agricultural practices and how these are intertwined. I don’t want to diminish the importance of rising temperatures and climate change, but my intention here is to point out that there are more alarming, more pressing matters at hand when we think about this world and the life it supports.
Convincing the unconvinced
There was no one in the pub. It was the smallest I had ever been to and felt more like someone’s living room than an actual establishment. A stench of real ale and boiled cabbage hit me, but I was perhaps more stunned by the realisation that they served food here. There was a small but cosy fireplace with stacks of roughly chopped wood bundled next to it. The walls were decorated with shooting paraphernalia – delicately crafted sticks and old rifles clung to seemingly any space they could find. On the bar, in prize position was a neat stack of Welsh regiment badges, just next to the only beer on tap – Butty Bach – which actually had quickly become my favourite beer. I had taken the run-down rustic looking truck, with big off-road tyres covered in mud so as to gain respect with the farmers. I knew now that if I rocked up in an expensive looking, clean truck there would be comments. Annoyingly, I was late and they were all already inside.
Eight men sat at the only table and they all suddenly stopped talking and looked at the door when I walked in. There were no smiles, just piercing gazes and stern faces to greet me. A mixture of shapes and builds, but all middle-aged white men – all looking at me with anger and frustration and perhaps a scrap of pity for this pathetic young boy with a garish London accent, with not the faintest clue about farming, coming to tell them to change their ways. In their eyes I represented the opposition, a party to destroy and tear down everything they and their ancestors had achieved, their pride and professions.
I know that conservation and farming can go hand in hand. And it was my job to convince them that through collaboration we can achieve land with an increased biodiversity, create a home for our dwindling wildlife, whilst also boosting both the productivity and economy of their farming practices. Hmm, good luck.
Miles and Miles of Bugger All
The land I manage is common land. When you buy a nearby farm this is likely to come with a suite of rights on the common. The right which is mostly exercised is the right to graze livestock. Farmers have been using this right for thousands of years and see these upland commons as an extension of their fields. It is deeply entrenched in them to keep this land grazeable, to maximise efficiency of the land by doing everything in their power to ‘improve’ it.
The word ‘improve’ is used to indicate an area of land that has been so intensively managed for livestock grazing, has had all biodiversity and soil health stripped away that it has nothing left but a few pathetic species palatable to sheep. A rather negligent word which took me a while to get my head around. If you have ever heard the term ‘improved grassland’ this is an indicator of land which has been the opposite of improved – it’s been destroyed through heavy fertiliser application, ploughing and overgrazing which, by the way, the government pay for and reward through their backward payment schemes.
In our upland commons, this has meant drainage, burning, and cutting. All these activities, together with years of intensive sheep grazing have left our uplands bare. They are also referred to as MAMBAs (Miles and Miles of Bugger All). To be clear though these are all activities, which have been rewarded by government subsidies and our upland commons, are absolutely fundamental to the way in which our hill farmers run their businesses and they are totally reliant on this land being palatable to sheep. After WWII, via government driven initiatives, numbers of sheep grazing on our uplands exploded and remained so for decades. I will explain why this has been catastrophic for our ecosystems.
Our ecosystems have evolved alongside grazing herbivores which are now extinct. The tarpan – a wild horse, wild boar, aurochs – the ancestor of our modern-day cattle, elks, bison, even elephants! (Note, none of these species is in any way similar to a sheep). These grazers would have had predators to keep their numbers in check – wolves, lynx, bears. The herbivores all grazed in different ways, with separate ecological niches and different shaped mouths, appetites and palates. Our flora has evolved delicately alongside them, they have defence mechanisms and are all interconnected in this web of ecological arms race dynamics.
Natural defences
A good example of a defence mechanism that is easily visible today is in the holly tree. You may think that holly has spiky leaves, which in our urban spaces it does of course – but this is actually the trees defence mechanism. The leaves are naturally rounded with soft edges and this allows maximum sunlight exposure to capture as much energy as possible. Historically, if a grazing herbivore started munching on the leaves of a holly, the tree would respond by making its leaves sharp and inedible.
You can still see this today in grazed woodlands, where the holly has sharp leaves on the lower branches to stop grazing animals and has soft rounded leaves on the higher branches to maximise sunlight exposure. The reason we only see spiky holly leaves in our parks and urban areas is due to our obsession with hedge trimmers.
So, this all applies to our upland flora where a mixture of grazers and grazing methods have been replaced directly by one species, in excessive abundance, which wasn’t here in the first place – the sheep. I find sheep annoying anyway, apart from maybe in February when the tiny lambs mistake me for their mothers – but they are rather fussy eaters. They selectively pick and choose the softest, most juicy vegetation they can get their gross tongues around – soft grasses, wildflowers, young dwarf shrubs, new emerging tree saplings and basically everything apart from the rougher and drier species, which they leave untouched.
Large scale habitat loss
Through centuries of a single species grazing our uplands this has decimated the plant life and left just a few species, which are uncoincidentally the ones which the sheep don’t like to eat. There was once a mosaic of species rich acidic grasslands supporting a whole plethora of vegetation, which evolved delicately alongside numerous species of herbivores, with specific defences and interactions.
This, in turn, provided homes for thousands of invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles and birds, wrapped in a delicate web. These are now sadly, pretty much non-existent, or at the very least in steep plummeting decline – now just a few woody, scrappy species remain. MAMBA. Thanks to intense grazing pressures from an animal which does not and never has belonged in the ecosystem.
Losing hope
As an example, the curlew rely on our uplands in Wales to breed, as they have been pushed out of just about any other habitat by us and these breeding areas represent their last true strongholds. I say strongholds, but this species is precariously poised on the edge of extinction in Wales and the last few pathetic individuals are predicted to be extinct in Wales by 2033.
The word pathetic might seem harsh, but this is a species which has evolved to breed in colonies; there is safety in numbers and their populations are so low, they are pressed to breed in seemingly random patches of ‘improved’ grassland in the uplands – totally alone and wholly vulnerable and exposed to anything really that fancies a quick and easy treat. Crows, foxes, red kites, buzzards, badgers, ravens, even sheep! I’ve seen these chicks at just a few days old, I’ve been through the heartache of watching them being picked off, I’ve dealt with the grief and I feel helpless. They are helpless. They don’t stand a chance. It’s too late.
The slender-billed curlew was recently declared extinct and we need to act to ensure that we do not lose our native Eurasian curlew. While I worry that it may be too late to save my local curlew, we still have the chance to save them in other parts of the UK and organisations like WWT, Curlew Action and the RSPB are all working to protect these precious birds.
That said, there is a gargantuan effort to save them across Wales and the work being done is admirable to say the least. My point is that conservationists work tirelessly and are stuck in an endless cycle of anguish. We are a minority and our work is consistently undermined by a government pushed agenda of, and I say it again, the intensification of agriculture and a loss of habitat; farming.
Without being able to properly restore habitats by introducing grazing herbivores which are long extinct, there is an easy, quick answer. This solution relies on our farming communities, it is dependent on conservationist and farmer working collaboratively towards a common goal. The irony is in all of this that the hardy, woody species left behind on our uplands are unpalatable to sheep – our hills are dominated by mat grass, purple moor grass, bilberry, bracken and soft rush – all of which are left by the sheep, but all of which now dominate our uplands. There is no food left for the sheep.
Nature-friendly solutions
Conservationists want to create space for other species which once were there and allow the more delicate species of flora to come through to support our wildlife, which fortuitously are the same species which are palatable to sheep, thus our agenda is the same. The quick win for farmers is to burn, spray or cut – because sheep will eat the new young vegetation growth, but in the long term this is further worsening the problem, and allowing the dominant species to dominate.
The ecosystem is so fundamentally changed and these species are so dominant that if we took all the sheep off and left them, they would only become more dominant – because there is nothing to control them and disturb their ascending power. The answer is to replicate the ancient grazers as best we can and work with what we already have available at our fingertips.
Collaboration, not conflict
The best outcome is to work with and support our farmers to adjust their grazing regimes and to eventually convince our governments to properly reward farmers for actions with ecological benefit. With over 70% of land use in the hands of farmers in the UK, now is THE moment to bring farmers and conservationists together to solve the problems of our future. As an aside, there is a movement towards sustainable farming or ‘regenerative farming’ which recognises working with nature, improving soil health and biodiversity as a direct benefit on output, making our food healthier and richer in nutrients. Whilst also, revolutionising efficiency and economical productivity.
By letting nature do its thing and soils heal, as well as boosting biodiversity, it increases yield and provides a more enriched final product. Some brave, bold and perhaps privileged farmers are making this move. It’s an exciting movement but we need to see the shift towards making this attainable for our run of the mill farmers. The farmers I work with. I recently went to a talk on regenerative farming. The audience was full of engaged and forward-thinking organic farmers. I got a fair few dodgy looks, probably because of my loud turquoise Adidas fleece. But these are the rich farmers. The farmers I work with would not be seen dead in such a place.
In the short term, for our ‘sheepwrecked’ uplands there is an animal we are already farming which could totally change the ecology of our uplands for the better, but which is not commonly grazed on our commons, yet; the cattle.
Our community is made up of young nature enthusiasts with a plethora of skills. Whatever your talents, we’d love to welcome you to our team. If you’re interested in getting involved, get in touch!
The Nature Friendly Farming Network has loads of information about farming alongside nature so, if you’d like to learn more about it, visit their website.