Farmers see red over green plan

A NEW ‘environmental module’ proposed by the farm-assurance scheme Red Tractor has drawn heavy criticism from farmers after it was announced last week. The scheme, known as the Green Farm Commitment (GFC), will enable ‘farmers to make commitments and track their own progress across five key areas for environmentally focused farming: carbon footprinting; soil management; nutrient management; waste management; and biodiversity’, according to the organisation. Farmers reacted with fury to the proposal, accusing supermarkets of passing the cost of them reaching net zero onto farmers.

-  James Fisher

Speaking to Farming Today, farmer and author Joe Stanley acknowledged that farmers are ‘incredibly keen to move in a more sustainable direction as food producers and stewards of the environment’. However, he added that ‘the natural-capital services that the GFC is talking about... are all things that farmers are being expecting to trade in future, to create, in part, a new income stream to replace farm support payments’.