Farming 'must get back to small-scale family production'

Published on Thursday 5 November 2009 18:37

THE SAOS conference, which brings together representatives from all the Scottish farm co-operatives, usually focuses on the latest technology and progress.

However, yesterday a professor from the USA set the delegates back on their heels by suggesting their style of farming was finished and what was needed was a return to "pre- industrial production".

By this, John Ikerd, from the University of Missouri, wanted a fundamental change going back to small-scale organic farming where the main driver was solar power, which he described as "the original power source" for agriculture. He wanted to see a return to small-scale family farming which he said had been squeezed out of existence by big businesses in recent times.

He described the present position in the United States where food was produced on the backs of cheap labour living in poor accommodation as being unsustainable in the long term. "We are not meeting the full costs of food production. We are exploiting and extracting food and using up valuable resources," he told one hundred delegates at the meeting in Peebles.

He based his views on the pure economic theory where inputs were greater than outputs, thus by the burning of non-renewable sources of power we were on a road to nowhere. He wanted future systems of farming to look beyond the immediate profitability of their farm and consider the wider social and economic implications.

Among those listening to this radical point of view was James Withers, chief executive of NFU Scotland, who said that he believed that Scotland was moving towards sustainability but this would not happen from extreme statements but rather in a series of small steps. This was how he saw this country working towards, climate change targets; gradual progression rather than massive revolution.

Ikerd was also pinned back by another speaker, Steve Ellwood, the head of agriculture at Smith & Wiliamson, who queried where the widespread production of genetically modified food lay in this rural utopia.

The response was not that genetically modified crops were bad, although their introduction had led to uncertainties, but that their control by multi-national companies who held the patent rights was wrong.

In his own address, Ellwood predicted the price of food would continue to remain at a high level for the next five years. The affordability of food has been a reducing percentage in consumers' expenditure for the past 50 years but rising food costs in the past two years has seen an upward swing.

Ellwood believed the steady increase in demand for wheat on the world market meant only two things – that there would be greater volatility in the market and that the price of food would remain strong.