We need to stop using artificial fertiliser
Back in 2010 I was studying Rural Business Management at Duchy College Stoke Climsland and there is one particular lesson that has always stuck in my mind and now I know why.
It was a lesson on the Farm Carbon Tool kit led by Becky Wilson, and it had us looking at farming inputs that create the most carbon output into the atmosphere. Things like fuel, plastics, fence posts, barbed wire and artificial fertiliser which at the time our farming system relied heavily on.
This one lesson led to 2 areas of thought
1 ) How can we reduce these inputs and essentially the costs that go with them?
2) Why are we so reliant on artificial fertiliser and what does that mean?
I distinctly remember coming home to my dad and saying "we need to stop using fertiliser" and the response was volcanic to say the least. "we can't stop using fertiliser, how would we grow anything?" plus a few explicits as can happen when you start to delve into a system, that had long before my time been relied on to do that very important job of growing food!
But this situation sat differently in my heart, I knew that we had to change it not because I wanted us to go organic, I just knew that if we continued relying on it at some point in the future we were going to regret it. I ever mentioned at different times the potential for World War 3 is always possible, and we are only a small island that currently has a high population.
This started the process of slowly does it, little suggestions to stop using artificial fertiliser (nitrogen, phosphors potassium and sulphur) on certain fields. The next year we stopped on a few more and so on and so forth until we were only using it to grow our silage crops for winter feed, but had shifted to liquid nitrogen.
And then in 2021/22 the price shot up from £200-£300 per ton to £1000 per ton and all of a sudden my idea of slowly stopping using artificial fertiliser made sense. We stopped completely and thats been a very interesting process, because it meant we had to cut back how many animals we were carrying because we couldn’t feed them. This was so we could give the ground a period of time to recover and restore its self, through fungi networks such as mycorrhizal fungi, which we had subsequently killed off and is what plants need to maintain their health. (We have done other soil restoring things as well which are for a post of their own one day.)
You see what I also learnt at college (its nice to be a person using her degree) is about soil health and our agronomy teacher Alison Samuel was so good at teaching us about soil health because she was an organic carrot former. It was of course then in her repertoire to encourage us more along the soil health route then using man artificial fertiliser and of course pesticide and herbicides, which are also part of the picture.
Then today I read a post in a farming forum. which pointed out that if his situation in the middle east persists which it may very well do, then we here in the UK, will be effected because most of our artificial fertiliser, and oil comes up the Strait of Hormuz in the middle east and the countries that make it, rely on gas supplies which in wars could be reduced. The UK no longer make our own, thanks to net zero!
WWI was largely in the Middle East and was again going up against Islamic extremeisum, so why would now be any different. The years of comfort that the UK has had now when it comes to food, since the 60's is potentially about to get a lot more uncomfortable, and I think this is what farmers have been trying to warn the government, who seem to just like sticking their head in the sand more and focus on net zero more then what the people of the Uk are going to eat.
I for one know that we cant munch though a dismantled solar panel.
Time will tell if my 2010 prophesy was right but 5 years on I know we have made the best decision for our farming family and the people we supply food to, because we are allowing the soil to do what its designed to do, grow good nutrient dense meat and vegetables which is helping to restore our health.
I for one know that many other farmers may not have had the same divine incite, or they didnt have an annoying daughter banging on about it to make the changes. Instead they have trusted that the British government knew best for to long.
But lets face it, it wasn't the best idea to enforce UK farmers to use a German created sythetic fertiliser to grow more food after World War 2 food shortages, therefore relying on it and depleting the soil to dust, or sludge in the case of clay soils, increasing our need and use for pesticides and herbicides in plants, womers, antibiotics and pour ons on our cows and sheep and
There is a pattern here, doesn’t the average British citizen now take some sort of medication for something which is more than likely lack of essential minerals due to poor quality food?
Just the thoughts of an extremist farmers daughter who has her eyes and ears well and truly open (to much sometimes)
