Since going on Twitter I’ve come across quite a range of farmer opinions. There are some great people out there, without a doubt, but the farming community is a bit of a bubble which is only made worse by the social media algorithms that show us what they algothink we want to know. I want to know what those farmers think too, and what opinions circulate in the farming bubble, because it has quite forcibly struck me that the state of the biosphere is in the hands of a quite remarkably small number of people. If there are 68 million people in this country and there are 138,000 farmers, and if my maths is any good, that’s 0.2% of the population. I know that they are not quite free agents. For years they have been encouraged to farm in particular ways by governments and the EU and the agrochemical industry moulding farming in their own interests. But they are still as responsible for their choices as the rest of us, and they have a hugely disproportionate power to improve or wreck the biosphere, and it is important to get a handle on how their minds work. Conservationists don’t need to blame farmers, but we do need to hold them accountable for past damage and for future restoration.
Lately on Twitter there has been much farmer head-scratching over the price of nitrogen fertilisers. I have tried to point out to whoever reads my tweets that basing farming on bag nitrogen is unsustainable. It produces stupid amounts of greenhouse gases throughout the production, transport and application processes, and it is damaging to soils and the biosphere in several other ways. But if you suggest that what ‘unsustainable’ actually means is that we have to stop doing it if we are to be able to continue to have soils and weather that make farming possible, farmers come up with every type of argument in the book to try to justify continuing to do what they want to keep on doing. Call it 3-yr-old reasoning, or ad hoc argument, or whatever suits you, it just won’t do. No one has yet replied to me to admit that they have been encouraged by public policies and chemical companies to get us all into a mess, and that it is time to change, however difficult that may be, because it won’t be as bad as ecological and climate collapse. They are all looking for the cheapest nitrogen and hoping, as tactfully as possible, that this war will send the price of wheat so high that the price of nitrogen won’t matter quite as much and they may even make a killing on their wheat crop.
The farming press similarly feeds farmers what they think farmers want to hear, as in a recent article by a Welsh farmer writing in ‘Farmer Focus’ about beaver reintroduction. This is a good example of the nonsense you can get away with when writing within that same bubble. His words are in italics, my comments not:
“Over the past few years, beavers have been reintroduced into our local river, the Dyfi, and its tributaries, without any correspondence with the communities involved.”
The Dyfi was probably the last river on which the Welsh beavers were exterminated, more recently than was previously believed. A small group of three beavers have been introduced by Montgomery Nature Trust to an enclosure on Cors Dyfi Nature Reserve from which they cannot escape. Negotiations about allowing free-living beavers in Wales have dragged on for 20 years. It is possible that some beavers have escaped or been released into the Dyfi, and the only figure I have found in the media was a possible 11.The five Welsh Nature Trusts have been and still are holding consultations about possible free-living beavers and taking into account the views of everyone in the area. The benefits of beavers in the landscape are overwhelming, and the issue is largely one of overcoming prejudice and ignorance.
“This has caused a great deal of concern to us as local farmers, and we’ve recently been involved in meetings and workshops to voice our concerns.
We’ve also taken part in virtual meetings with members of NFU Scotland, hearing their story of the illegal release of beavers in Tayside only 15 years ago.
This sounds more like a farmer lobbying group than consultation. There have been reports that farmers and anglers have been working together to campaign against beavers on the Dyfi. This shows the remarkable ignorance of some anglers. In the USA beaver reintroductions have been used as part of programmes to increase salmon populations. They find young salmon do well in the conditions created by beaver dams. Salmon and beavers have coexisted in the USA and on the Dyfi for thousands of years, and the dams do not cause any problems. The Native Americans say that the beavers taught salmon how to jump. Fish in general thrive on rivers where there are beaver dams.
“We were alarmed to hear how the beaver population has increased dramatically over this period. Recent surveys have estimated more than a thousand now inhabit the area and are increasing annually by a staggering 20%.”
The most recent population estimate for UK beavers, including the beavers on the River Tay, was just over 400, so the idea of a thousand beavers on the River Dyfi is at best ridiculous.
“We were also alarmed by the devastation they cause. They create burrows in river embankments, and easily weaken flood defences”
This is ill-informed nonsense. 3500 Beavers are now living wild in the Netherlands where they were introduced 30 years ago. We all know how vital flood defences are in the Netherlands. The Dutch beavers are legally protected, though individuals can be culled or relocated if they cause problems, and their future in the Netherlands is secure. In the Dyfi catchment their effect would be to reduce flooding, because their dam systems hold water back and slow down flood peaks. Beavers have been introduced (in an enclosure) in the Forest of Dean as a flood-prevention measure. Any burrows would be very close to river banks where it is best practice not to cultivate anyway, and burrows would not be visible on the surface of the land because beavers enter them from under water..
“There is also concern that they spread disease, and their ability to dam streams and rivers and severely damage bankside trees.”
A recent study (Reintroducing beavers Castor fiber to Britain: a disease risk analysis) concluded that “The risk of introducing significant disease to humans, domestic animals or wildlife by releasing into the wild in Britain a beaver that was captive-bred in Britain or a wild beaver from Scotland…can be viewed as low.”
Their ability to dam streams helps to restore biodiversity to a landscape where the farmers have often damaged biodiversity – we have the worst biodiversity loss in Europe. Dams help to slow run-off of flood waters, protecting communities downstream. Important bankside trees can be protected from beavers very simply and cheaply, and felled trees will regrow just as trees do when coppiced.
“These issues endanger the ability of lowlands to produce forage for winter, undermining the viability of keeping livestock.”
He is really scraping around to find another disadvantage here. I don’t see how the presence of a few beavers can undermine the viability of the whole livestock industry. If dams flood parts of fields you can lowered the water level by inserting a pipe into the dam, for example, though we should recognise also that we have lost millions of ecologically important ponds as a result of farmers filling them in, and beavers, I would argue, would be helping to undo that damage. Farmers working with conservationists can co-operate and co-exist with beavers as farmers are doing throughout Europe.
“The reintroduction of beavers creates long-term issues, as there is no known method of control to reduce numbers”.
Sadly and simply and very obviously not true. Our ancestors exterminated them all too successfully.
“Among all the controversy happening in Eastern Europe, food security is back on the agenda. Beaver dams create severe drainage problems to fertile land, affecting this security”
Farmers are really having fun with the war in Ukraine as a way to leverage whatever they want to change, or, more likely, not to change. Twitter is full of this stuff. Beavers certainly can recreate wetlands, an important part of our lost ecosystems, so one person’s minor drainage problem is another person’s restoration of valuable lost ecosystems. Both the government and the wildlife trusts have set targets of 30% of the country dedicated to nature conservation by 2030. Since farmers think all land however marginal is farmland, on which they claim subsidies, they had better accept that they may have to give back some of the wetlands they have destroyed. It isn’t as if we won’t be paying them to do it, under the new Environmental Land Management scheme. As for food security, food comes from a thriving biosphere, ultimately, not from a fertiliser bag, as the war in Ukraine may yet make farmers aware.
“The reintroduction of this species certainly needs to be regulated. A small population needs to be carefully monitored before a licence is granted to introduce more.
The minority in favour of a reintroduction of beavers have a five-year plan.”
Conservationists and farmers undoubtedly need to work together. This is more likely to happen if farming papers don’t publish this sort of uninformed rubbish. As for minority, the idea of beavers living widely in the UK has huge support.
“We as farmers have a dream, to see generations follow us on the land, and we have a duty to our descendants to question the reintroduction of any species to a productive farming area.”
You know what? We human beings, sharing the land with the 0.2% who farm it, have a dream too. We dream of a planet fit to live on, with trashed ecosystems restored, where our full wildlife thrives and there is a future for our descendants. We have children too, and farmers have the power to make changes that will improve the planet for all of us, not just for their descendants. We have much less power, and we need farmers to wake up.
“Our communities would be very happy to reintroduce species that we could comfortably work alongside, such as the red squirrel.”
I’m so sorry, farmers do not have the moral right to decide what kinds of wildlife they are happy to tolerate. They have been doing that for far too long. We and the planet need thriving ecosystems. The biosphere is ultimately what produces the food surplus, and it is a complex system in which every living things has a role. It is ignorance of ecology that has got us in this mess.
“The reintroduction of beavers is a romantic proposition to many, but very often it will be the farmers who will have to live with the consequences.”
There is nothing romantic about it. It is a cool calculation that beavers can recreate and maintain lost and precious ecosystems in our landscape more cheaply and effectively than conservation volunteers or landowners ever could. As for ‘living with the consequences’, do farmers want their children to inherit farms packed with wildlife, or an ecological desert? Much UK farmland is little more than hydroponics – wire fences, soil doused with all sorts of biocides and ‘fertilizers’, and pretty well no birds, insects, wild flowers, reptiles or animals. The consequences of beaver reintroduction will be overwhelmingly positive and farmers should feel privileged to end up with a beaver pond somewhere on the farm.
Beavers in the Bubble
Just done a rookery survey in Maesmynis. Talked to two farmers up there. NICE people. USED to be a big rookery, but no rooks now. Pesticides. But we don't use them! Do you use chemicals to kill insects on your livestock? Yes... Which comes out and is spread on the land as manure. Oh.