One of the challenges facing researchers in the Brexit world was always going to be maintaining the confidence of collaborators around Europe. Despite the warm words that nothing had changed, confidence was clearly slipping, and some British researchers were getting frozen out of project proposals. Last week’s announcement that the Government will honour research commitments made within the EU after we leave will surely be a big help, and hopefully British engagement with European research will go something like back to normal.

I confess I haven’t spent too much time on planning European projects of late, I’m more interested in the opportunities opening up further afield. The UK Government is pushing hard for a much stronger engagement with countries beyond Europe, support development and innovation. The Newton Fund is worth £735 million, and is about developing partnerships that promote the economic development and welfare of collaborating countries. I’m now involved in a major Newton Fund project with China (check our my blog from last February), that is looking at the implications of moving away from reliance on chemical fertilisers to much greater use of organic wastes. The Global Challenges Research Fund is twice this size, and is about supporting cutting-edge research that addresses the challenges faced by developing countries.

The N8 AgriFood Programme is proving well placed for this new focus on international work. This is partly from the way we are being seen as a valuable 1 stop shop from people who want to engage with UK research. So last spring, we hosted two major fact finding visits from Brazil, and we were able to identify some of the potential common research interests and bring on board some of the most relevant people from the UK. I’ll be there next month to explore further potential collaborations about sustainable land management, and to check out one of the research farms there, so that we can better build collaborations across continents using data on crops, livestock, soil, water, weather and so on. These data don’t mean much by themselves, but they are vital to build models and understanding to needed to develop tools and approaches to allow farmers to cope with the increasingly variable weather patterns we are all facing. Also, research is a social activity; it's important for us to meet people, work together, learn from each other, come up with new ideas and feel part of things. For me, it''s a huge part of what makes my job so enjoyable. 

My first reaction to the Brexit vote was shock, which is now giving way to anxiety, about so many issues. But here I want to focus on two issues seen as largely rural and fringe.

It's notable that in the Brexit debate 'environment' was largely presented in terms of 'regulations' that we can finally be relieved from. The alarm among environmental organisations is justified. European Directives are the basis of much of our environmental practice, notably the Habitats Directive, the Birds Directive and the Water Framework Directive. It's also been pointed out that Brexit has the potential to derail the Paris climate agreement. We need to transfer the Directives into national law to stand a chance of protecting what we have. The environment is seen as a fringe issue in politics, but the numbers engaged in environmental activities from watching Countryfile upwards are huge. I have now joined the RSPB and the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust so that I can now count clearly as one of these people. 

The other issue is food security. We currently produce less than 2/3 of the food we consume; given the likely pressures on global food production from extreme weather, this is not the ideal time to leave a continental scale free market in food. We must surely increase levels of home grown food production of we are not to face sudden crises in the future. This means valuing food, and valuing the land it is grown on. The downward pressure on food prices is making UK farming less viable, and the pressure on peri-urban areas is to build, not to farm.

And, of course, these pressures have been here anyway - its just we can no longer expect the EU to give us the support we need. As the Brexiter campaigners have said, we need to gain control. I agree. We really do need to gain control - control from the current, short-term political games that are wreaking so much havoc while the longer term issues are ignored.

Ahh. I think I get Donald Trump. Earlier today I read an article in the Guardian, which said the Donald Trump had said, 'There is no drought." The article continues: 'Trump accused state officials of denying water to farmers so they can send it out to sea “to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish.”'

Instead of thinking, more lies and nonsense, I though, wow. What a masterstroke. There is no such thing as a real problem, a real issue, that can't be blamed on government / environmentalists / migrants, that can't be resolved by a little pressure in the right places, that hasn't been exaggerated or distorted by the experts. It's not as if the usual suspects have solved the drought / the economy / the migrants, maybe it's time for a different approach. So what if it's based on statements that are not true? Can he really do worse than the others? And what do these so-called experts know anyway?

Politics, 2016 style, has embraced the idea that truth is relative, a point of view, to be used whenever convenient. Of course it's not just the US; both sides in the Brexit debate have been found telling porkies. But the one that struck me recently was not lie at all, it was the claim by the Brexit campaigners that a recent report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies was not valid because the Institute had worked for the European Commission. Yet more and more research can only be funded with stakeholder support and engagement. This means that the the 'bias' whistle is increasingly easy to blow, even by members of a Government which has consistently urged academics to work with, and by part-funded by, stakeholders. We are all biased now.

The idea that research generates truth which is to be respected by non-specialists seems increasingly quaint and so-last-century. I started work in what is now the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in 1991, and remit was quite clear, to produce high quality, public domain, evidence to support decision making by policy makers. Even when I led work on GM crops, the quality of evidence was rarely questioned per se; the key debates were about how the evidence should be interpreted and used. Now scientific evidence is merely a point of view, and the creation of that evidence is a political act. Indeed, are we reaching the point where being an academic is a political act? It wouldn't be the first time, after all. 

Last month, the global temperatures broke all records, 1.35 degrees warmer compared with the averages between 1951-80, with the rise particularly high in the Arctic (see map below, found here)

If this carries on, the global weather patterns this year may be outside what we are familiar with. major sudden changes in weather are bad news for world food production, as well as for storms. I confess to a brief feeling of satisfaction that we may hit a climate emergency just as Trump is having his presidential campaign, but even there I wonder if he might even benefit, as yet again the world conspires against the US. But I cannot pretend things are much better here, where the whole EU debate is based into a power play between two leading politicians and wild guesses about the risks to businesses; the social, legal and environmental protection that has been won in the EU is summarised as "red tape", to be dumped as soon as possible.

How did we get here? Of course, it's complicated. But I do look at the media, the choices they make, and how they affect our world view. We get daily reports of the FTSE100, and the BBC news flagship "Today" has business leaders asked politely about their views of the world. The idea of other viewpoints getting equivalent attention does not seem to compute these days. Also, the presentation of the natural world in the media is becoming more and more trivialised, with celebrities being ferried around the world to stare wide-eyed at the wonders of the world around them.  The environment, it seems, is there to serve and glorify us, and the main form of action needed is to see it for yourself while it is still there. 

The alarm bells are ringing, loud and clear. But they are drowned out by so many other noises competing for our attention, and we've heard them before and life seems to carry on. Naomi Klein points out that "this (climate change) changes everything", but the rise of an alternative politics will take time. But what we CAN do is talk about how to promote resilience against extreme weather in our homes, our communities, our work. 

I've just returned from the Yangtze delta of China, where I was checking out the research site for our new research project. This is not my first time in the area; I was at the nearby Hangzou when I first visited in 1988. What was once a beautiful area is now the fastest growing area in China, if not the world, in terms of population and economic activity. Nothing in the UK prepares you for it; the cities are now huge, with tower blocks rising among the lower rise buildings like daffodils on a spring lawn. Ningbo, our host city, has a population of around 6 million, while Nanjing, where I landed, has around 10 million, falling by half at the spring holiday when people head back to their villages. The cities are linked by motorways and a terrific high speed train network, criss crossing the landscape at different heights so as not to take up valuable land. The railway stations serving the high speed line are new, set out of the city centres, and designed like airports, complete with departure and arrivals areas at different levels, full security, and lots and lots of space. But one thing does not change; the hospitality of our hosts. I was collected at the airport, delivered to the taxi back to the airport, and ferried around, wined and dined with grace and good humour.

The study site is being developed into a international Critical Zone Observatory on urbanisation. It's a small catchment at the edge of the city, which is the founding town of the coastal Ningbo region. It's surrounded by mountains, with a few streams threading through the narrow valleys. My preconception was that the area would be agricultural, with a few houses. Far from it; most of the valley floor is already urbanised, and the farming is essentially allotments. Once dedicated to rice, these terraces now grow vegetables and herbal medical plants. The landscape is already highly instrumented for water and soil, while the field experiments looking at rice growing will be placed just outside the main catchment.

Our study looks at the potential benefits and problems of moving from farming based on chemical fertilisers to one based on using organic wastes from the cities or from pig farms. At first I couldn't understand how this was relevant here, but the city mayor explained that the development plan for the region was to turn it into a centre for ecotourism serving the nearby cities, coming for the scenery, the heritage (there is a 9th century dam across the river, holding back the incoming tide coming up the 20 km or so from the coast), but mostly enjoying locally grown organic food. We had a sample at a large restaurant, and I would certainly go back. ​

I find it amazing that this area works at all, that all these millions of people can take security of food, water and energy for granted. Food especially, as so much is grown by small farmers. The Chinese government understands the need to develop closed loop systems where possible, using urban wastes back on the land; the key risks are problems from recycling pollutants including heavy metals and antibiotics, issues that our project will focus on. The project (and others just starting now) demonstrate the coming of age of Chinese science, and it's a privilege to be involved. Sometimes I worry that the speed of change can overwhelm what science can contribute to making our societies more sustainable. But that's just defeatist ... 

All of a sudden, soil is in fashion. Soil science has been in decline for many years, but interest is rising rapidly. The Environmental Audit Committee of the House of Commons has launched an inquiry into soil health. Not surprisingly, the White Rose Sustainable Agriculture Consortium has submitted evidence, that it turn builds on the experience we are gathering from our research at the Leeds University Farm. But there are so many things going on in the soil world, following from last year's International Year of the Soil (shown by these giant posters at the FAO headquarters in Rome last year), and the appearance of targeted research funds, through programmes like the Soil Security programme that supports much of my work.

I reckon several things have come together to make this happen. Soil science is developing rapidly thanks to new technologies. Advances in identifying genome sequences are allowing us to see what's living in the soil, and in identifying complex biological chemicals (metagenomics) shows us what they are doing. Stable and radioactive tracers allow us to track the progress of carbon and other materials through the soil, while new sensors, the mighty Nanosims (see below, images of a soil micro-aggregate, showing the locations of different labelled isotopes, from this paper) and even 2nd hand medical scanners show soil structure and processes in ways that were never possible before. The black box (well, brown sludgy mess) is opening up, and scientists are suddenly keen to get involved.

Such new technology is allowing serious money to be made by advising farmers on their soil using big data. Even IT companies like IBM are developing systems that support farmer decision making by monitoring soil, weather and crops. And the need for soil science has never been higher; the current extremes of rainfall and drought, the rising cost of fertilisers and the withdrawal of some agrochemicals means that soil has to be actively managed for sustained crop production.

If you want a career challenge in a rapidly developing area of science of fundamental importance to the whole of humankind, well, you could do far worse.....

Our sheep think it’s spring. Helen Miller and I own a few sheep, and when I went to feed them yesterday, the mood had changed. After huddling down against the rain and snow, two f them even came on a walk with me, with the youngest jumping and skipping, bounding along. It’s not just the sheep. Hawthorn buds are opening up, some cheery trees have shed their petals. And it’s not even the end of January.
 
2016 has started very badly. The floods in northern England and southern Scotland may have subsided from the front pages of the newspapers, but everywhere remains waterlogged, preventing a lot of normal farming; the homes and shops will take months to clear, and the Tadcaster bridge remains down. Cuts in support for renewable energy in the UK are resulting in cutbacks just when other countries are piling in. And by the end of the year we could see UK out of the European Union, and the US led by Trump.
 
All of this makes it even more important to improve the resilience of our food supplies. Looking after soil is an important part of this process. I was in Dundee on Friday at the James Hutton Institute, where my long-time colleagues and friends Cathy Hawes and Geoff Squire have been working on a new long-term agricultural experiment. The photo of waterlogging on one half of a potato field, managed conventionally, compared with the much more normal-looking organic field, tells you all you need to how about how big an impact this kind of work could make to coping with very wet weather. But the real trick would be to somehow extend this improvement in soils to “conventional’ intensive cropping.
 
Progress is being made. The MycoRhizaSoil project is now in its second year, with larger plots now sown with combinations of wheat varieties, cultivation treatments and inoculation with soil fungi, to explore how farm practices can be tweaked to improve soil quality. SoilBioHedge is also well established, that explores the potential for using the increased biodiversity in field edges to improve the soil further into the field. And I’ll be in China soon as part of a new project that seeks to use urban wastes as agricultural inputs. It may not be much in the grand scheme of things, but it all helps. 

​At the end of October, I completed my time on the ACRE, the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment. This is the committee that gives the scientific advice to the UK government on the environmental risks of releasing genetically modified organisms into the field. This is the first time I’m not deeply involved in the world since 1999, when my director at the time, Mike Roberts, asked me to put together a bid to run the UK Farm Scale Evaluations of GM Crops, which became the largest ecological experiment ever undertaken in this country. Nearly 16 years --- how much has changed?
 

​To start with, we still don’t grow GM crops commercially in this country. But that doesn’t mean we are in a GM-free zone, far from it. Many of our livestock are fed on GM soya, and increasingly micro-organisms are being modified to create vaccines and other products. I said over a decade ago that the key challenge for GM cultivation in the UK is that there wasn’t a GM crop that made a case for consumers in terms of price or quality that was strong enough to overcome consumer (and hence political) doubts; I think this is still true.
 
We are clearly better at understanding environmental risks than we were back then, but the main problem remains. We still don’t really know how to assess the level of harm of a  particular change in the environment. It’s very difficult to have objective standards for environmental change when our environment is constantly being changed anyway, by farming, climate change, urban sprawl etc. To what extent should we accept ecological harm in one place, if it means greater benefits somewhere else? But what has changed is that policy is increasingly focussed on hazard identification, and not risk management. This means that something that MAY be harmful should be avoided, even if the actual risk of management is very low or can easily be managed. It’s hard to see how coffee or potatoes or cars would have got through our current risk-averse regulatory atmosphere. The idea of balancing risk and benefit is increasingly hard to get across.
 
I really can’t see that we would be able to undertake the Farm Scale Evaluations now, for many reasons. We required 200 trained people, out there collecting data. The UK research institutions don’t have that sort of capacity any more, and while there are high hopes of using sensors, drones and private citizens to collect our data, they can’t do everything. We were funded by Government, with industry at arms length, so that the research would be seen as objective and independent. Halcyon days indeed, harking back to a culture of public service by experts funded by taxes. Government money for research is currently very thin on the ground, while the emphasis is on research that is led by and supports industry. A major GM trial now would be unthinkable without the direct involvement, if not leadership, of the companies behind the crops. The researchers would think a few times before taking part, because the timescale of the project was too long to hit the scientific outputs demanded by Universities to fit the timescales and demands of the Research Excellence Framework, and the reporting timescale of the press and social media.
 
So if we wanted to look at the environmental risks of a new GM introduction, how would it be done? Who would do it, who would pay, and how would the results be legitimised? Or should we just assume that any innovation in managing our environment is bad on principle?

Different people can have radically different views about what constitutes sustainable agriculture, ranging from a vision of a high-tech world populated by robots tending GM crops in fields, to farming systems with very low levels of technology but a lot of traditional knowledge. These views are reflected in their understanding of what sustainability actually implies, which in turn reflect their values and hopes. But to go from opinions to evidence requires some form of metrics. Is it possible to generate a common suite of metrics that apply to all farming systems, that have the buy in of all major stakeholders? Is there a wider set of figures that will keep everyone happy, even if different people may interpret the figures differently? This is a pressing question, as metrics of agricultural sustainability are being developed around the world, by governments, industry and civic society.

I’ve been raising this question at last week’s International Permaculture Conference, in Quaker House in London. Around 650 people have come here from around the world to share experiences about how permaculture offers an alternative to the industrial agri-food paradigm. Permaculture involves system design, trying to produce food in ways that contribute primarily to natural and social capital. I led one of the workshops to ask around 50 people, academics and practitioners, to think of the three best measures of success of their systems that might persuade other people that permaculture is a successful, sustainable system. Most of the answers were the same as I have seen in other discussions, with policy makers and supporters of a more industrial agriculture. These include, levels of food production; nutritional quality of the food; levels of waste and pollution from field to fork, biodiversity, soil structure, resilience of food production, animal welfare, etc. This quick, unrepresentative survey suggested that there was indeed a common set of fundamental indicators, even if different people might interpret and weight them very differently.

At this point, some of the group expressed their nervousness about the exercise. Perhaps we should be looking at indicators that are somehow more integrative. More seriously, we should not be looking for lowest common denominator indicators that reflect the commercial agri-food paradigm, we should start again and look for something else. But what this ‘something else’ might be was left undefined.

I can understand the frustration. Professional scientists like myself find it hard to indicate the sustainability of a farm anyway; we struggle to assess its ability to carry on producing food in the future and its fit within its share of the planet’s capacity to contribute to our needs for food and other ecosystem services. I can understand the temptation of groups such as permaculture farmers to decide that it’s self-evident that permaculture is good, and to opt out of wider discussions with non-believers. But if the ideas behind permaculture are to gain penetration through policy and academic support, I think this approach misses a couple of important tricks. Policy makers (and I include major companies as well as governments) will only support less mainstream production systems if there is good evidence that they work better than the others. Secondly, such evidence may lead to the adoption of some permaculture ideas, such as improved water and soil management, into mainstream agriculture. So I would still urge the adoption of a common set of sustainable agriculture indicators, as part of an engagement between the proponents and practitioners of different land management systems.

Yet that leads to another problem. Current indicators are best suited to large scale farms and agri-businesses, that routinely measure yields, levels of inputs, power use etc. Smallholders and communal farmers often do not bother to collect such data. So it’s not just about deciding what to measure, it’s about how to measure in ways that are proportionate to the resources of the farm.

There’s still plenty of thinking to do ….

Guy Ziv, an expert on ecosystem services from Leeds Uni, and I visited Hope Farm yesterday. This is a commercial arable farm not too far from Cambridge, owned by the RSPB, and run to show how farmland bird numbers can be increased without compromising profitability. You can get a good idea of what's going on here.

It certainly works; effective use of agri-environmental scheme funding has increased numbers of many birds. This increase seems to have halted, perhaps the land has reached its carrying capacity. Guy asked, is this the same carrying capacity that it would have had in the past? I thought not. At my dad's farm, there was straw scattered all over the place, farms were untidy then at levels that would be intolerable now. Ian Newton once told me that untidy farms were probably important food resources for seed eating birds, and so the new standards of hygiene are a set back for some kinds of wildlife. Yet the strips of bird food crops used by RSPB are designed to help redress this balance, so who knows?

Work at Hope Farm to support wildlife is funded through the Common Agricultural Policy. In my recent study of sustainable intensification with ADAS, we found that farmers were happy to support wildlife on their farms, but only if someone paid for it. Support from the CAP cannot be guaranteed for ever, so should we be looking at support from the supply  chain? Should we people who buy food help pay? 

This approach is being developed by the Fair to Nature Farming / Conservation Grade programme, that gives accreditation for biodiversity conservation on working farms, which involves committing at least 10 % of the farmed area to managed habitats. Allison's flour is perhaps the largest brand that carries this accreditation. 

This is only one approach to the wider issue of accreditation for the wider sustainability of a farm - but that's a story for another day.