Talk notes : The future of the British landscape

In our last meeting in February, about 50 people listened to Peter Thompson, formerly from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, elaborate on the future of British farming.
 
Peter started by giving us a warning about his intention to be provocative! Peter remarked on the fact that there have been 11 Defra ministers in the last 15 years, each trying to make changes in policy. He contrasted it with his own long experience in farming  -Peter trained as an agronomist and during his time at the GWCT, he was instrumental in the invention of the farmer clusters that now are spread about the country, aiming to do positive things for nature conservation. Peter proposed we should have a long term plan for the countryside beyond party politics.
 
Peter then went to speak on a range of broad topics such as agriculture, climate change and people involvement. He touched on issues within agriculture, such as food security, overseas trade and food costs, and intensive agriculture. He remarked that water is going to be massive problem in association with climate change, either we have too much or too little, and then went on to speak about soil erosion and worms. An interesting anecdote he mentioned was that Darwin recognised the earthworm as the most important being on earth. He remarked on the importance of stock for land management and the paradox of vegan diets, which are not necessarily better for the environment in comparison to non-intensive stock husbandry..
 
Rewilding was necessarily part of the reflection and Peter explained that rewilding shouldn’t be applied everywhere but targeted to specific areas - giving the example of heather moorland, an important habitat maintained thanks to human intervention and which would be lost if it stopped. He remarked on the importance of rewilding river margins and creating wildlife corridors. Another topic he touched upon was tree planting and afforestation - but not the only solution to carbon capture! Peter also touched on housing, which of course adds pressure but it can bring opportunities, for example for solar farms on their roofs rather than on farmland.
 
Peter ended by speaking about the importance of community involvement, educating future generations and even adults - 85% of the people in the UK live in an urban environment. Finally, he reminded us to stay positive and the importance of submitting our wildlife observations as records to the Biological Record Centre, which compiles all of them to provide baseline data for nature conservation, planning, etc.

Peter Shallcross