Economist Dr Derrick Wilkinson highlights concerns that UK-based initiatives such as the Global Farm Metric and Soil Association Exchange, which both claim to provide a harmonised approach to measuring on-farm sustainability, are largely area-based and do not take sufficient account of food production. Measuring resource use and environmental impact per unit of production is the only meaningful and consistent way to express the environmental footprint of specific products, and to enable supply chain operators to comply with environmental reporting obligations, including Scope 3 emissions. He points to the food eco-labelling proposals developed by IGD as the most promising UK blueprint to date, in terms of objectivity, practicality and robustness. But when this approach has already attracted howls of protest from the organic lobby, he calls for strong leadership from Government to establish an objective, evidence-based approach to measuring sustainable and efficient food production, and to providing meaningful information to consumers about the sustainability impact of their food choices.

 

I was disappointed but not surprised to learn that planned new EU rules to clamp down on so-called ‘greenwashing’ claims specifically exclude organic food and farming from their scope. 

 

This seems contradictory since so many of the organic sector’s claims to be more ‘natural’ and more environmentally-friendly are themselves ‘greenwash’, and are simply not borne out by the scientific evidence. 

 

Not content with this free pass, however, the international organic body IFOAM was still critical of one aspect the Commission’s plans to tackle greenwashing, and vigorously lobbied members of the European Parliament to push through a change which could seriously undermine the legislation's aim to ensure green claims are properly scrutinised and validated.  

 

IFOAM's main gripe was that the Commission's original proposals use a system of environmental impact measurement known as Product Environmental Footprint, or PEF, as the basis for verifying comparative greenwashing claims. 

 

Indeed, IFOAM appears to have succeeded in persuading MEPs to propose changes to the Commission’s original draft which, if agreed by the Commission and Council of Ministers, would introduce the concept of a “consultation forum” enabling relevant stakeholders to debate whether or not certain rules and methods are suitable for substantiating environmental claims in the agri-food sector.

 

Of course, PEF is based on the internationally established Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, which measures the resource use and environmental impact associated with the production of a given unit of product, usually expressed per tonne.  

 

This is the only meaningful and consistent way to express the environmental footprint of specific products, and to enable supply chain operators to comply with environmental reporting obligations, including Scope 3 emissions.   

 

But organic proponents don’t really like the PEF approach. Focusing on unit of production exposes the weaknesses in their arguments about sustainability, because organic farming is lower-yielding and requires significantly more resources, particularly land, to produce the same amount of food.  

 

So, the organic sector is engaged in efforts to propose and develop alternative methodologies for assessing the sustainability of farming systems. 

 

In Europe, this has resulted in a stand-off between different eco-labelling schemes for food products. ‘Eco-score’ is broadly based on the established PEF methodology, whereas the organic alternative ‘Planet-score’ weaves in more subjective (and emotive) parameters such as rearing or cultivation method, animal welfare and biodiversity, and whether pesticides (presumably only synthetic pesticides) have been used.      

 

If the aim is to confuse and mislead consumers, and to distract from established, evidence-based methodologies for measuring environmental sustainability, they appear to be succeeding. 

 

Here in the UK, there is a serious risk that consumers will also be bamboozled by the development of similar alternative metrics, each purporting to provide a harmonised approach to measuring farm-level sustainability.

 

As commentators on SSA before me have observed, the Sustainable Food Trust’s ‘Global Farm Metric’ makes such a claim, but in adopting a whole-farm, area-based approach to measuring key parameters such as water use and greenhouse gas emissions, it is simply designed to favour lower input/lower output farming systems (such as organic), and by including a complex array of highly subjective criteria such as ‘level of inclusivity’, ‘state of buildings, infrastructure and equipment’, and ‘farm habitat health’, it is more akin to an assurance scheme than a robust and consistently reproducible system of sustainability metrics. 

 

I am equally concerned that the Soil Association Exchange (SAE) programme, which recently produced a benchmarking report based on data collected from 685 UK farms, is not sufficiently focused on the farms’ main purpose – to produce food. According to the SAE’s revised measurement protocol document, published in April 2024, food production has been introduced this year as a new metric which was ‘requested by farmers and the industry. We were not measuring this in Version 1.’   

 

Even then, food production appears to stand alone, measured as energy output per hectare, and one of a mind-boggling 39 separate parameters assessed as part of the programme.   

 

The Soil Association Exchange report claims to provide a baseline of environmental farm performance and yet, like the Global Farm Metric, it is based on the selection and measurement of highly subjective, largely area-based criteria which are not related to the physical amount of food produced, and as such appears to favour lower input/lower output farming systems (such as organic). 

 

Again, as others before me have argued on SSA, the scientific evidence tells us that the worst thing we can do for nature, biodiversity and the climate is to use land for farming, irrespective of the farming system. Nor can we with a clear conscience simply export the environmental impact of our food system by promoting lower-yielding practices at home and increasing our dependence on food imports. A sustainable future lies in optimising the balance between food production, resource use and environmental impact, and on the development of metrics which consistently and reliably measure that balance.     

 

As such, it is surprising (and worrying) that the Soil Association Exchange programme is supported by Lloyds Banking Group, and that in a report entitled ‘Grounded in evidence: A way forward for British farms’, Lloyds Banking Group’s chief sustainability officer, Andrew Walton, describes the SAE programme as a blueprint for delivering a transition to a more sustainable sector.    

 

Surely a major lender in the agricultural sector would instinctively want farmers to be more efficient and innovative, embracing new technology, and above all producing stuff they can sell, rather than backing an agroecology-led agenda, and banking on the bitcoin-style promise of future carbon markets, or on successive future UK governments’ willingness to use public money to support farmers (and landowners), potentially at the expense of health, education, social care etc? 

 

As if to emphasise this point, the Lloyds report draws extensively on a June 2023 research brief produced by Savills UK, entitled ‘Is regenerative agriculture financially viable?’, which makes a number of bold projections about the relative future profitability of regenerative agriculture compared to conventional. 

 

Net margins for regenerative agriculture are assumed to be 41% lower in year one of the transition, primarily due to 31% lower yields, However, after six years of soil fertility and soil organic content building - despite still yielding 24% lower than conventional – the profitability of regenerative agriculture is forecast to be higher based on three key assumptions:

 

1. regeneratively farmed products will attract a 16% price premium;

2. SFI payments will remain unchanged and at the same level; 

3. carbon payments equivalent to £38/ha will also be available in six years’ time.    

 

When each of these three assumptions takes us into the realms of unknown and unchartered territory, to me it seems rather reckless for Lloyds Banking Group, which also includes the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation and Bank of Scotland, to be encouraging its farming customers down that path. 

 

Returning to the question of food eco-labelling, the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) has published the results of a two-year review as part of the Government’s Food Data Transparency Partnership programme. This recommends a PEF-style approach based on measuring environmental outcomes per 100g of product, and focused on four key impact criteria: land use, GHG emissions, water use and water quality.            

 

Based on my experience of sustainability metrics, it is the most promising UK blueprint to date, in terms of objectivity, practicality and robustness. 

 

Not surprisingly, however, a labelling campaign group known as CLEAR, which describes itself as the voice of agroecology, and whose membership includes the Sustainable Food Trust and the Soil Association, has raised objections on the grounds that the IGD approach is too simplistic and narrow, is too dominated by the food industry, and does not include ‘food socioecological’ impacts or other criteria such as animal welfare.   

 

Plus ça change. 

 

Strong leadership from Government is urgently needed to establish an objective, evidence-based approach to measuring sustainable and efficient food production, and to providing meaningful information to consumers about the sustainability impact of their food choices.

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Dr Derrick Wilkinson is a retired UK economist with nearly 40 years’ international experience with the development, analysis, integration and coordination of global trade, environment and agriculture policies. A former chief economist at both the NFU and CLA, he is the author of numerous pioneering papers and research projects published, including in major peer reviewed journals.