Farmers see red over green plan
ANEW ‘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.
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’.
The supply chain will have to pay a premium for the increase in costs
He added: ‘We are looking at being set up to give those things away for free to the rest of the food supply chain and to the retailers, in order to help them fulfil their environmental commitments. Instead of us being able to sell those services on and to monetise that, we’re going to have to give them away for free as part of the GFC. Of course, it’s being
