{"id":2982,"date":"2022-09-05T01:15:05","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T01:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=2982"},"modified":"2022-09-05T09:27:20","modified_gmt":"2022-09-05T09:27:20","slug":"revolution-in-taliban-alley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=2982","title":{"rendered":"Revolution In Taliban Alley"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog introduces four chapters of an essay on nature and farming inspired by Jake Fiennes’ 2022 book Land Healer<\/em>.<\/h3>\n

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Left: Taliban Alley, right, Great Farm a few miles away after Restorative Farming<\/em><\/p>\n

Chris Rose, September 2022<\/p>\n

\u2018Taliban Alley\u2019 is the not very PC name given to a country-road not far from where I live, in Norfolk, England.\u00a0It was coined by Jake Fiennes, in Land Healer: How Farming Can Save Britain\u2019s Countryside<\/em>. The farmland in Taliban Alley is a scene of agri-desolation caused by intensive farming. \u00a0It contrasts with what Fiennes has achieved on similar land, a few miles far away.<\/h3>\n

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A former game-keeper, Australian sheep ranch hand and London night club PR, Fiennes is a scion of an old landed-gentry family now best known for movie roles played by his actor brothers Ralph and Joseph.\u00a0 But don\u2019t judge him by that.\u00a0 In my view Jake Fiennes has done something rather more important.<\/p>\n

Fiennes has shown by deeds not words how the ecological sterilisation caused by agricultural intensification can be put into reverse, not by taking whole farms out of production but by changing agricultural practice within farms, by farmers. \u00a0His work on East Anglian estates has brought birds and plants back to working farms long hammered by chemical agriculture, while maintaining economic viability.\u00a0 The UK\u2019s mainstream nature and countryside groups need to join the revolution in Taliban Alley.<\/p>\n

\u2018Revolutionizing\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, his book is making waves in UK farming and conservation circles.\u00a0 It\u2019s been described as \u2018radical\u2019 as it can actually be delivered (in relatively short order), and \u2018revolutionizing\u2019, because of the implications.\u00a0 For anyone who cares about nature and biodiversity, and indeed food-security, water-quality or climate change, the implications are huge.<\/p>\n

\u2018Taliban Alley\u2019 gets its name from Fiennes\u2019 moniker for bad-farming: \u2018Taliban Farming\u2019, which he defines as farming that kills everything which it does not want. Mostly that means with \u2018pesticides\u2019, such as insecticides, fungicides and herbicides, and where they don\u2019t do the trick, pollution by artificial fertiliser.\u00a0 This is not just an English or even a British problem, it\u2019s the unsustainable model exported around the world by agri-business and the agrochemicals industry after World War Two.\u00a0 In other words, \u2018conventional farming\u2019 based on max-input max-output.<\/p>\n

The 3Rs<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the UK Fiennes has become something of a poster-boy for a loosely defined new agricultural revolution, not that the adherents see themselves that way.\u00a0 It brings together the \u20183Rs\u2019 of Regenerative Farming, Rewilding and Restorative Farming, the latter being on-farm restoration of nature (Fiennes\u2019 particular focus).<\/p>\n

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Groundswell – see Chapter 1<\/em><\/p>\n

Events such as Britain\u2019s Groundswell agricultural conference and festival are bringing together these often overlapping communities. Land Healer<\/em> sold out within hours at this year\u2019s Groundswell. \u00a0\u00a0Yes there are risks of greenwash and free-riders but the opportunity is considerable, and in my opinion, historic.\u00a0 Fiennes\u2019 work has revolutionary potential because it comes from within, not outside farming.<\/p>\n

Britain\u2019s Long Good-Bye To Nature<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Outside (top) and inside Winks Meadow, Suffolk, a diminutive Wildlife Trust nature reserve and remnant of what was and\u00a0what could be (see Chapters 2 and 4)<\/i><\/p>\n

In a parochial UK perspective, we now live in one of the most nature depleted countries in the world.\u00a0Intensive farming is the main reason. \u00a0Between them the nature and countryside NGOs have eight million members, over a tenth of the population: \u00a0most of their supporters are voters, all are consumers, the majority are investors. \u00a0Dozens of concerned UK NGOs have charted the decline of countryside nature over generations but have not stopped it. \u00a0There has never been a national campaign to do so, indeed there have been few individual campaigns.<\/p>\n

In campaign-design terms, UK conservationists have failed to divide farming into good and bad, and thus failed to triangulate the issue into one where \u2018good farmers\u2019 and \u2018bad farmers\u2019 argue in a three-cornered fight while others represent the public interest.\u00a0 As a result, the mainstream agri-business lobby has maintained a monopoly in representing farming in politics and the media, and NGOs have lacked the most basic campaign ingredients, the problem and the solution .<\/p>\n

At the same time, dwindling cultural connection to nature has rendered even the environmentally-concerned public blind to the difference between nature-rich countryside and green but sterile cropland.\u00a0 So there is no on-the-ground constituency to engage, organise and mobilise in a political ground war.\u00a0 Which could and should be changed.<\/p>\n

Taliban Alchemy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fiennes\u2019 cheerful identification of nature-annihilating farmers as \u2018the Taliban\u2019 provides a binary frame distinguishing bad and good farming, problem and solution: communications alchemy which opens a Pandora\u2019s Box of potential.<\/p>\n

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The road to Taliban Alley near my home in North Norfolk\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Taliban Alley\u2019 is just one locational example of \u2018bad\u2019, and Great Farm up the road is an example of the \u2018good\u2019 but there are more Taliban Alleys and examples of the opposite, all over the country. \u00a0This communications gift opens the way to construction of campaigns which British NGOs have long tried but failed to create, or deliberately avoided because they were self-inhibited.<\/p>\n

For decades the main UK nature and countryside NGOs worked on the assumption that the best route to influencing what happened the 70-80% of UK land which is farmed, was to promote examples of \u2018good farming\u2019 by \u2018good farmers\u2019. \u00a0Their example would gradually inspire others to do likewise. It made some progress but was ultimately a failed strategy.\u00a0 It recruited perhaps 2-5% of farmers.<\/p>\n

By the same logic, and because the largest were themselves land-managing organisations, the NGOs set on maintaining \u2018credibility\u2019 and good relations with \u2018farming\u2019 as a whole rather than \u2018good farming\u2019.\u00a0 They effectively handed over the test of their legitimacy to the farming lobby.<\/p>\n

No Line In The Sand<\/strong><\/p>\n

To stay within the tent of conventional farming the major NGOs eschewed endorsement of alternative approaches such as organic farming.\u00a0 The price was an inability to draw a line in the sand, and say this or that farming practice is unacceptable.<\/p>\n

The only exceptions were illegality and outright destruction of significant areas of wildlife habitats. \u00a0By the end of the 1980s there weren\u2019t many such places left to convert to intensive farming.\u00a0 The NGOs focused on doing what they could do protect the remnants, amounting to 5 \u2013 8% of the land, well below the 16% or so estimated to be necessary to sustain nature. \u00a0It\u2019s expanding but oh, so slowly.<\/p>\n

A focus on places (sites), and the creation of nature reserve networks which were good in themselves and which pleased their members, meant that most NGOs did not engage with what was happening on farmland, which was a wipe-out of birds, insects, plants and wildlife across the landscape, largely driven by pesticides (see Chapter 3).<\/p>\n

Data from the \u2018Common Bird Census\u2019, later refined as the Farmland Birds Index, showed that most of the birds present in 1970 had simply vanished by the second decade of the C21st. \u00a0This happened not so much through big-chunk \u2018habitat destruction\u2019 as a fine-grained thinning of the natural fabric within farms, including through every intensifying use of chemicals, a subject all the larger NGOs avoided until very recently.<\/p>\n

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England’s countryside looks green but …<\/em><\/p>\n

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Most birds disappeared (see Chapter 2)<\/em><\/p>\n

From the 1990s onwards the NGOs invested hope in AES or Agri-Environment Schemes funded by the EU and government. Eventually they covered the majority of farmland yet the majority of birds still disappeared. \u00a0This comfort-blanket of hope further stifled ignition of campaigns.<\/p>\n

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UK AES schemes (as of 2012) – a complex layer of sticking plasters which overall, \u00a0failed<\/em>\u00a0(see Chapter 2).<\/p>\n

By 2013-19 the NGOs got together to produce detailed reports itemising this ecological catastrophe in State of Nature<\/em> reports (see Annexe).\u00a0 But whereas they promoted exemplar good farmers, the ecological wipe-out was represented only in statistics, with very limited emotional resonance.\u00a0 As Stalin famously pointed out, when one man dies it is a tragedy, when a million die, that\u2019s just statistics. The UK conservation formula has been to show the good through human examples, and the bad through anonymous statistics, and that fails.<\/p>\n

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Stalin<\/em><\/p>\n

I explore these and other themes in four parts of an essay on Land Healer<\/em>, nature and farming in the UK:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Significance of Land Healer<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n
  2. An Historic Failure To Protect Nature<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. How Pesticides Ran Amok<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Where To Go Now<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    & Annexe – State of Nature<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

    Proposals<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Part Four makes proposals which in summary are:<\/p>\n

    Local Resourcing and Organisation<\/strong>.\u00a0 NGOs need to run a ground war campaign and that requires local logistics and assets including people familiar with farming and agrochemicals and resourcing as serious as that given to land management or fundraising.<\/p>\n

    Nature Ability<\/strong>.\u00a0 The UK needs national campaigns of public education in Natural History (aka ecological literacy), \u00a0so enough people have the ability to discern the detail of nature to form an effective political constituency. Show people polar opposite examples.<\/p>\n

    Set up Taliban Farming Demonstrations<\/strong>.\u00a0 As the (good farming) 3Rs begin to take effect we need to demonstrate bad farming, and having their own \u2018Taliban Alley\u2019 examples could enable NGOs fearful of farmer conflict to to show that without annoying individual farmers.<\/p>\n

    Taliban Geography<\/strong>.\u00a0 To create public conversations from which specific campaigns could emerge, go out and map good and bad farming at a Parish level: Taliban through to Restorative.<\/p>\n

    Develop the Practitioner Lexicon<\/strong>.\u00a0 Systematize and give names to the steps involved in Restorative Farming as described in Land Healer<\/em>, such as \u00a0\u2018hedge fattening\u2019, to enable the public to recognize and appreciate good farming, and enable farmers to be recognized and rewarded.\u00a0 Create a Farm Nature Code equivalent to the Highway Code.<\/p>\n

    A New Social Enterprise<\/strong>.\u00a0 Work with 3R farmers and landowners, private investors, food retailers, the catering and hospitality industry, and NGO supporters, to develop business of certified, branded retail outlets supplying nature friendly food. Be a business voice not just an external commentator.<\/p>\n

    Enable Stake holding in 3R Farming<\/strong>. Trial and introduce a system of private Countryside Contracts<\/a> in which individuals finance good farming in return for access and agreed influence.<\/p>\n

    Agrochemical Free Buffer Zones<\/strong>. Campaign for a legal requirement for Regenerative\/ Restorative\/ Organic farming of up to 2km around all Nature Reserves and Protected Areas and make it mandatory across farmed areas of National Parks and AONBs.<\/p>\n

    Rewild BTB Hotspots<\/strong>. Campaign for the withdrawal of the most persistent problematic BTB (bovine TB) areas from livestock farming. (BTB is a long running UK policy failure<\/a>).<\/p>\n

    Open Up The Policy Community<\/strong>.\u00a0 Democratize representation of farming to government by requiring Ministers not just to consult the NFU (National Farmers Union) on policy but consult the full range of farming, environmental and civil society organisations.<\/p>\n

    Reward Everyone Who Helps Nature<\/strong>.\u00a0 Campaign to democratize the use of public money for nature (public goods) so it is not restricted by \u2018eligibility rules\u2019 based on agricultural holdings but on outcomes.\u00a0There in no natural justice in paying a farmer if s\/he produces two Song Thrushes where there was one before, and not a householder with a garden.<\/p>\n

    Treat Farming Like Other Industries<\/strong>. Licence chemical farming by activity and location.\u00a0 Set environmental quality targets based on a return to 1947 levels of ecological health.\u00a0 Impose planning or other controls on any activities producing or likely to produce significant harm.<\/p>\n

    **<\/p>\n

    Part Four also covers recent developments which could be built on to build campaigns that join the 3Rs revolution.<\/p>\n

    ***<\/p>\n