No Farmers, No Food: A Dangerous Oversimplification

One of the arguments we often hear (and see on billboards and road bridges) against land-use change is the wonderfully simple statement: "No farmers, no food."

Its effectiveness lies in its absolute clarity and simplicity. It’s a bumper sticker slogan—easy to understand, catchy, and seemingly impossible to refute. But the truth is, simplicity often misses the point, and this slogan is no exception.

Here’s the real challenge: I don't know a single person who believes we should have no farmers. Who are these imaginary enemies of farming? Who is making this absurd argument? "No farmers, no food" is a straw man (again something we need farmers for), designed to polarise debate and cause conflict. It’s a slogan created to provoke, divide, and scare, rather than to inform or inspire meaningful conversation. It appeals to those who want things to be black and white, who reject the complexity, nuance, and the difficult questions that we should be asking – I’m sorry but the world is far too complex for anything but shades of grey now.?

Let me be crystal clear: farmers are inextricable and of course absolutely essential to our food security. A vast proportion of land in the UK should be—and is—used for farming. Estimates suggest around 70% of the UK’s land is under agriculture, depending on which figures you choose to believe, but let’s not argue about acres. We need food, and farmers grow food – and while I’m here, I strongly believe we should all be paying more for our food. No argument there.

But here’s where it gets uncomfortable. The slogan "No farmers, no food" fails to recognise that farmers are just one part of a much larger, more intricate web of dependencies. We need nature. We need birds, butterflies, and bees. No pollinators, no food. But guess what? Intensive farming practices are systematically destroying the habitats these creatures need to survive. In our rush to produce more and more, we’re killing the very things that make food production possible – we need to be wasting less, using less and producing less, not more.

And then there's soil—the six inches of earth that sits between us and total ecological collapse. No soil, no food. Yet, each year, millions of tons of topsoil are washed into our rivers and seas, destroying habitats, polluting watercourses, and disappearing from our fields– and whilst I’m here, no water, no food either. Much of this erosion is a direct result of intensive farming, driven by a pursuit of short-term yields at the cost of long-term sustainability – we’ve literally visited farms growing maize on a salt marsh! We’re losing the ground beneath our feet, and no amount of rhetoric will replace it.

?Energy—no energy, no food. Farming requires it, in abundance. The tractors, the combines, the processing plants, the transportation networks—all of it relies on energy, mostly from fossil fuels. And these fossil fuels are wreaking havoc on our climate, threatening the very seasons we rely on for successful harvests. Instead, we need more clean energy, and this will mean land use change, but of course, we all know that you can’t pursue renewable energy on high-quality farmland so let’s stop pretending you can. Without a stable climate, we can’t grow food. It’s that simple. Yet we act as though the only thing threatening our food security is a supposed lack of farmers. The truth is, that the entire system is under attack—from climate change, habitat destruction, soil degradation—and ignoring that reality won’t make it go away. No climate, no food.

?The harsh and blatantly obvious truth is this: our food system is broken. Many farmers are responsible stewards of the land. We see examples of this every day—farmers who are integrating wildlife conservation, soil health, and carbon sequestration into their operations – we work with some of the very best across our Estates and beyond. We should be celebrating and supporting these farmers, paying more for their food, shopping locally, buying organic, and acknowledging the true cost of production. We need to make it economically viable for farmers to farm in a way that doesn’t destroy the future they’re trying to secure and not through subsidies – by their very nature they are intended to help stabilise a broken system.

But let’s be honest about another uncomfortable truth. Not all land should be farmed. Not all farming is good farming and no, not all land should be grazed. We do not target high-quality farmland for conservation; we recognise that Grade 1 and 2 arable land should and of course, is used for food production – the one exception here is our wonderful regenerative farming partnership at Wood Advent which you can read more about here. Instead, we acquire land that should never have been farmed - land that was put into production only because of poorly thought-out subsidies that incentivised destruction rather than stewardship. This is land that, without extensive physical and chemical abuse, has little agricultural value, and even with those interventions, has failed to justify itself economically or ecologically else it wouldn’t be for sale.

So, while I agree that "no farmers" would mean "no food," I think we need to ask ourselves a tougher question: what kind of farming do we actually need and what are we all willing to pay for? Do we want a food system that continues to obliterate habitats, degrades our soil, poisons our water, and destroys wildlife? Or do we want a system that supports farmers, feeds people, and restores the natural world??

"No farmers, no food" is a convenient slogan, but it’s dangerously misleading. It suggests that we should carry on with business as usual, that farming as it exists today is sacrosanct and untouchable. The market is telling us something very different - perhaps we might like to listen. Business as usual is what got us here in the first place, a destination that no one is happy with – especially the farmers that we meet.

It’s time we moved past the simplistic slogans and acknowledged the complex reality we face. We need farmers. We need soil. We need pollinators. We need clean energy. And we need a stable climate. None of these exist in isolation and focusing on one while ignoring the others is a recipe for disaster.

So yes, "no farmers, no food." But also, no nature, no food. No soil, no food. No clean energy, no food. No climate, no food. Let’s stop pretending it’s simple and start having the real conversation—one that recognises that our food system, like every other system we depend on, is interconnected, complex, and in desperate need of reform. It’s time to stop shouting slogans and start working together to build something better.