Jyoti Fernandes: Farmers don’t have to contribute to the environmental crisis – we can solve it

Agroecological farming means we nurture the soil, insects, grassland, plants, animals and trees on our land to provide healthy affordable food for our local community. For us, farming isn’t just a business, and it isn’t just about feeding human beings – it’s about feeding all living things on the planet.

Over the past 40 years, many food-producing farms have become more industrialised and integrated into the globalised food system. To produce the higher yields and uniform crops demanded by supermarkets, many farms converted and got bigger, buying fuel-hungry tractors and carbon-intensive nitrate fertilisers. Farmers started using pesticides that kill bees and earthworms. Instead of raising animals on homegrown feeds and pasture, they started using soya grown on land reclaimed from forests.

We are now in a situation where industrial farming is a significant contributor to the climate crisis, responsible for 30% of the total of greenhouse gas emissions. The industry must convert to an agroecological farming system where we feed ourselves without destroying the land for future generations, while, at the same time, protecting and improving the livelihoods of millions of food producers worldwide.

I work for a union called the Landworkers’ Alliance representing small and family farmers across the UK. We are a part of La Via Campesina, a union representing 200 million farmers across the world. I lobby for policy to help our industry make the huge transition to nature-friendly farming that will restore biodiversity while mitigating the effects of climate change.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/21/farmers-dont-have-to-contribute-to-the-environmental-crisis-we-can-solve-it