In the UK, particularly in crowded England, there are competing demands for land use: food production, house-building and being the support system of the natural world we depend on.
It is well known that England is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and that our environment is under threat. Many British birds and animals are at risk of extinction. Tree cover is 13% in the UK compared to the EU average of 39%.
A rethink on land use?
Across the UK 70% of our land is used for farming – a huge proportion. It’s even higher in East Anglia: approximately 79%. Clearly we need to be smart about how we use it.
What if farming could be even more efficient in producing the protein we need, and use less space?
Inefficient and wasteful of resources
UK farmland is shared between growing food for people to eat and growing crops to feed livestock, which people then eat. Growing so many crops to feed animals is inefficient in a time of vying demands on land.
Industrially farmed poultry and pigs are primarily fed soybean meal and cereal grains. There are 176 million chickens and approximately 5 million pigs in the UK.
About ten million cattle and 31 million sheep are grazing on land which, in some cases, could be used to instead grow food for humans.
That’s a lot of animals bred specifically to be eaten by humans. Producing the crops needed to feed them uses 40% of UK arable land (2 million hectares) and half our wheat harvest. An additional 850,000 hectares abroad, mainly in South America, are used for soy production, causing biodiversity loss and deforestation there.
Growing feed crops also drives up pesticide and fertiliser use, aggravates soil degradation and causes greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogen pollution.
The truth about eating meat
Despite this substantial ecological footprint, animal source foods provide only 32% of our calories and 48% of our protein.
Meat production is not only an intensive user of land, but also of water. Cranfield University, for example, has assessed that to produce one kilogram of beef for human consumption needs a phenomenal 15,000 litres of water.
Oxford University researchers have found that changing to diets that use less meat and more plants could save up to 8 million lives by 2050, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two thirds, and also avoid huge climate-related damages.
Move to feeding humans rather than animals
The WWF says that “diet shift is needed to deliver our climate and nature targets and unlock a transition to nature-friendly farming.”
It is unrealistic to think that everyone will give up meat completely. However, by eating more plants (wholegrains, fruits, vegetables, pulses, seeds and nuts) and less meat, dairy and eggs, we reduce our climate impact and improve our health.
And if our diet drew a higher proportion of its protein intake direct from plant sources, then much agricultural land could be freed up. Some could be used for nature restoration.
The government has committed to protect 30% of land for nature by 2030. It is hard to see how that can be done when 70% of land is used intensively for farming and nearly 8% is ‘developed’ (buildings, roads etc).
According to the WWF, if the world adopted a more plant-focused diet, we would reduce global agricultural land use from four to one billion hectares.
It could be a game-changer in our drive to protect nature and and wildlife.
What do you think?
The government wants to know our views on land use; their consultation is open till Friday 25 April. It says the resulting Land Use Framework will interact with strategies like the Environmental Improvement Plan, a 25-year roadmap for farming, and a food strategy.
