Resilience – keeping the farm working for people and planet

Resilience is just one element of our farm that we are continually working towards, it is becoming a common buzzword amongst agriculturalists, a word that you would probably not have heard within the context of agriculture a few years ago. What does this word actually refer to?

A number of meanings come to mind. The resilience of a farm to continue to produce food within a changing climate is a big one and one, which the human race really has no modern-day experience of. The resilience of a farm against pest and disease attack, is an element of which mankind has experience going back to the time we started to farm. For us, this means working as close to nature as we practically can and developing natural biological systems of control. The resilience of a farm to survive on minimal inputs from beyond the farm gate, for to import to the farm has a heavy carbon cost that one day has to be paid for. The resilience of a farm to be able to manage its carbon footprint in a positive manner, not to squander this precious and hard to replace element. Carbon sequestration is  becoming an ever-popular concept within agriculture, so much so in fact that it is beginning to shape the future agricultural policy of many countries. Next month I am participating in the EU Carbon Farming Summit at Dublin Castle at the invitation of the EU. The resilience of a farm to produce food and feed people, something that until very recently had become completely forgotten about, many farmers were simply just growing crops with little thought as to where they would end up or what they would become. The resilience of farming to create a beautiful and welcoming landscape, without the loss of food production. The list is extensive, and I could go on.

However, there is one element of resilience which gets almost no attention – the resilience of its practitioners, the farmers and the people that toil to produce the most important of all our needs, the food we eat. Without this vital component of the food production system none of the aforementioned resilience would ever come about. Unless you have worked on a farm and experienced the actual job that it entails, it is hard to appreciate what it takes to produce primary food. On our farm and many others, we are blessed to have a reliable workforce of highly dedicated and skilled staff who in the face of some adversity will always be shining and happy to be doing what they do. To listen to the banter, the jokes, the wisdom of comments, the in-depth discussions whilst digging carrots out of a muddy field in the pouring rain is comparable to listening to the dawn chorus on a spring morning. So often the effort that humans put into food production is completely ignored by the end user. When you buy one of our carrots what you are paying for primarily is the physical labour to produce that carrot. Over half of the cost is labour, and farm staff are poorly paid compared with any other industry. Along with the all-important staff goes the farmer and almost always their partner another often forgotten link in the food chain, supporting the resilience of everybody who is involved with the farm. The mother (or father) of the farm is invariably the glue that keeps the resilience going day in day out. We need to honour the unsung heroes of food growing and never forget the part that they play in feeding the Nation.