Rather than writing another post about farming I decided to set myself a challenge. Could I write a strategy for faming that would fit onto a beer mat?

Farming is a complex activity which can range from the daily routine of feeding animals to making long term decisions about investing in new buildings and equipment. It is the first stage in an even more complex food chain that eventually delivers food, mainly via supermarkets, to our plates. Therefore trying to develop a strategy that can be scribbled on something the size of a beer mat would seem foolhardy. But if farming is ever going to have its fare share in the ongoing discussion about its future it needs to have a clear view on what it needs to achieve. The ‘strategy on a beer mat’ exercise forces this discussion to concentrate on what is really important rather than being pulled in different directions by the swirl of self-opinionated noise that fills the media.

Over many years farming has successfully developed and used a wide range of technology to increase food production. The technology is as diverse as the range of foods grown which includes mechanisation, fertilisers, herbicides, insecticides, animal medication and more recently the increasing use of robotics. But the cost has been a significant loss of biodiversity. Biodiversity is essential for a healthy ecosystem that we all rely on to provide us with the air we breathe and the food we eat. Also, due to farming systems and practices the health of the soil has suffered dramatically with some claiming that it only has enough fertility for about 40 harvests. Therefore the first line in the beer mat strategy is: recover the levels of biodiversity and soil health to pre-mechanisation levels.

The overriding issue that is facing us and the planet is the climate crisis. It is creating erratic weather conditions which are being experienced around the world. In the UK the seasons are changing with heavier rain during winter and longer dry periods during summer which are impacting on food production. The UK’s greenhouse gas emissions is around 1% of the total global output with countries such as China contributing to around 28%. The UK must do its bit to reduce its contribution to greenhouse gases but managing the climate crisis will depend on other countries and the signs of them getting to grips with the problem is not hopeful. Therefore UK farming has to be resilient to the changing seasons. It is against this background that the next line on the beer mat should be: farming systems and practices must adapt to the changing climate and weather patterns.

Switch on any news outlet and it is clear that geopolitics is having a fundamental effect on how countries work together. For example, the ongoing war in Ukraine has affected the export of grain resulting in major food security concerns for millions of people. The UK is about 60% self sufficient in food production and therefore what is happening in other parts of the world can disrupt the amount of imported and exported food. So the next line on the beer mat would be: farming to improve self sufficiency of food production to minimise disruption to imported food.

Some of you eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that the beer mat strategy is not explicit about the reduction in greenhouse gases. But the points in the strategy will reduce its production. For example, a reduction in the amount of fertilisers will have a reduction in the amount of greenhouse gases created in its production, transportation, and its application to the fields.

Farming does not sit in an isolated part of the food system. There are many forces that are outside of its control and this is where the UK government needs to take a more proactive role. The UK government has direct influence over farming through subsidies, which is about 10% of farmer’s income, and indirectly through policy and legislation. The beer mat strategy could be used to check the effectiveness of government policies such as Environmental Land Management (ELMs) or the government could pick up ideas that are being developed locally that meet the beer mat strategy to see how they could be used across the UK. Could the The Green Farm Collective, who are developing novel ways to invest in regenerative farming, be scaled across the UK through changes in government policy?

The targets that are described in the beer mat strategy are very challenging. Farming is at the root of how we live and if it should start to stumble, or even fall, then how we live will fundamentally change. Maybe those officials in the government who are responsible for farming should take a few farmers out for a beer and discuss how they can best work together to secure our futures.

Art is the poor relation of education. When budgets need to be cut it is always the first to suffer, in particular when it is up against (STEM). This is short sighted. Without skills and experience in art then society suffers on a multitude of levels.

My early experience of art was using crayons and teachers who had little interest in the subject. They set us small challenges along the lines of ‘today I want you to draw …’ rather than teaching us about different art techniques ad really looking at an object. My flowers were clearly a species never seen before and my pictures of animals looked like I was having a nightmare. My artistic career peaked when I was about twelve years old when I came top of the class with my drawing of a municipal gas holder on fire. Apparently I caught the colour and shape of flames. My low point came many years later when as part of an exam for a degree I was asked to draw a carrot. Basically I couldn’t be bothered and threw a few scribbles on the paper. The examiner wasn’t impressed even after hearing my excuse that I was trying to catch the ‘carrotness’ of a carrot. My career headed away from art but my interest continued to grow through TV with programmes such as Robert Hughes The Shock of The New, Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting and Matthew Collings This is Modern Art. Today I visit galleries when we are passing through new towns and cities and my Pinterest boards continue to grow. But I have always felt that if I had a better introduction to art then not only would it have enriched my life but my career may have taken a different direction.

Art provides students with a rounded education. It teaches them the value of being creative, the application of innovation, and improve communication skills in particular self expression. Career development can be improved with stronger skills and experience in art. For example, innovative solutions in the digital world whether it is designing a new smart phone, connecting power generated by wave power to households, or harnessing the increasing power of AI. Art can play also play an important role in science where it can be used to visualise, understand and communicate research results. Outside of STEM, there are many social applications such as the rehabilitation of offenders, managing dementia, and improving mental health.

Political pressure needs to be put on the government to change its attitude towards art education. The various groups ranging from parents to employers need to demand that the money is found for more art education. Other groups such as artists and other creative types need to develop and give voice to the benefits for art education. How about some of the money saved from the recent cancellation of the northern part of HS2 being invested in art education?

Based on my lack of art education then the earlier it starts the better. It must become the fourth R along side the three Rs. This will put the groundwork in place for a future education that will put Art into STEM, which will be recognised as STEAM. Then when future generations of children pick up a crayon for the first time they will be inspired to develop and grow their skills and experience in subject that will be an integral part of their future.

Farming’s voice is struggling to find a clear message about the problems it is facing. Their voice is lost in a noisy media and is not attracting any serious public attention. The greatest challenge for farming over the next few decades will be to get their voice heard.

Farming’s voice tries to squeeze through the different types of media. At the local level it takes the form of articles in magazines and newspapers. But they come across as either a series of grumblings about farming life, promoting local farm shops, which for many people facing the current living crisis is impossible, or lecturing along the lines of ‘without farmers producing food where would you be?’ On social media, TikTokers are posting cute images of animals and misty mornings across the fields, or reminiscing about the ‘good old days’ which based on my experience were rarely good! Then there are those with a large media presence such as Jeremy Clarkson who with his Didley Squat farm has shown the battle that farmers have with bureaucracy but I doubt whether his efforts will sweep any of it away. Amongst the major broadcasters, there is a muddle of voices. BBC’s Radio 4 Farming Today has very little good news which confirms the view that there is never a happy farmer, and Countryfile, which gives a chocolate box presentation of farming. All of these voices fail to show that farming is struggling to overthrow images of its past whilst being slowly crushed between the supermarkets and the heavy handed bureaucracy of the government.

Farming sits at the heart of a very complex food system. How all of the parts of the system interact has been described by the work of Henry Dimbleby in his book Ravenous: How to get ourselves and our planet into shape. He shows in clear detail how the food system impacts on both our health and the climate crisis and how it must change. On top of the complexity of the food system, farming comes under added pressures from lots of different groups who keep banging on about the problems they create but don’t have any solutions other than ‘further discussions with government and farmers’ Then there are groups such as the NFU who seem to be in fire fighting mode and making only glancing blows on government policy and public perception. On top of all of this the government throws in a few reports reviewing topics such as fairness and transparency across sector supply chains or their latest ‘greenwashing’ initiative such as Nature Markets which is trying to turn nature into a market so that private investment will reverse tens of years of decline. If that was not enough then there is the fluctuations of world food prices that can wreck farming’s finances by a few twitches in the wrong direction. It is a wonder that farmers ever get out of bed!

It is against this background that farming has to find a stronger voice so that it can influence the major discussions that are being held about our future. Following on from the end of the second world war, farming started to go down the route of mechanisation, for justifiable reasons at the time, which started to separate us from the land. Farming’s voice needs to reconnect us with the food that arrives on our plates. There are signs that help is at hand with initiatives such as Just Farmers which tries to enable farmers to use their voice for positive change. Then there are local initiatives such as Regather that are challenging the current food system. But a lot more needs to be done.

What we eat and how it is produced is increasingly becoming very important. Farming needs to find a strong voice that reconnects the with the public, whether as consumers or voters, to manage the change that it will go through so that we can stop the nose dive into oblivion.

Imagine the situation where your neighbour keeps parking in front of your drive or the fence between your properties is falling down. You take some photos of the situation and within a few clicks, you get an answer that gives you your legal rights and what to do next. Daydreaming? Maybe not.

In a previous post I had to read up on the law relating to renting. It was like wading through treacle and even if I had spent a solid month reading the documents I would have still been drowning. But with the hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI) I was struck by a thought - why can’t it answer some of my questions. So I gave it a go. Starting with a simple question: my landlord is trying to evict me what should I do? Although it politely reminded me it wasn’t a lawyer, the best it came back with was the process that I should follow. I tried another, maybe a more contentious question: if I travel to the UK as an unaccompanied child from Syria will I be allowed into the UK? I had reached its limit and it reminded me that it didn’t have access to real time information or current immigration policy. The answers were of no help but as the technology develops will the day come when it is as slick Perry Mason?

AI has been lurking in the corridors of academia for some time but in recent years, with the reduction in computing and data storage costs, it is everywhere. There is a lot of complex technology behind AI but the basic idea is straight forward. The system is learns from looking through as much data as possible on a subject. When a question is asked then it searches through what it has learned and gives an answer that is close enough to plausable. The big step forward came with systems such as ChatGPT when a user can ‘chat’ to the system as if it were their best mate.

So how could an AI Lawyer be built? First we need data and in the UK there are mega tonnes of legal documents. Basically the UK is composed of two types of law: Statue Law which is what the politicians discuss and eventually vote for in Parliament, and Case Law is where a Judge interprets the application of the statute law. The earliest bill that is still enforced is from 1267 from the reign of King Henry III and is a collection of laws that addressed various issues relating to property rights. Today, Parliament can pass up to 50 new laws in a year. For Case Law there is even more produced each year. So there is enough data to build an AI Legal system.

What are the advantages of such a system? Obviously the type of question raised at the beginning of this post could be answered by pulling together the appropriate pieces of statute law and case law and suggest a process to resolving the problem. Imagine a screen popping up at court and winning a case. Now that would make the news! Another advantage of such a system would be that new laws going through Parliament could be checked against possible situations. For example the situation with the unaccompanied child described above could be checked against the proposed law to make sure that the outcome would meet the values that we hold as a country are being met. Finally, the system could be used to rationalise the current laws by removing duplication and checking against inconsistencies, which I’m sure must exist, and therefore simplifying our legal system.

Of course there will be criticism of an AI Lawyer, in particular how accurate it would be - will it make mistakes? But the answer to this challenge would be to compare it to a human lawyer who I’m sure make mistakes. Anyway, the AI Lawyer could be asked to produce the laws that it used to arrive at the actions it recommended so that it could be checked.

AI is fast becoming a reality. It will will start to replace many of the activities that are carried out by specialists or experts and make it accessible to the majority of people. The legal profession have got wind of the impact of AI and are quickly trying to use it to help them. However, this could be a rearguard action because AI has the potential to replace many of them. But more important is for people to have access to the laws that are being made on their behalf by politicians. The rule of law is fundamental in an advancing democracy. An AI Lawyer would place the law within a few key strokes of everybody which must be a good thing for how we live.

Recently an email dropped into my inbox from The Big Issue. It was asking for my support for their Big Futures Campaign which required me to send a preprepared email to my local MP. No problem - click and off it went. What happened next gave some important lessons about campaigning by email.

The Big Issue is running a campaign to improve the Renters (Reform) Bill that is currently going through Parliament. The Bill is targeted at stopping no-fault evictions which is one of the leading drivers of homelessness. Although the bill removes Section 21 of the old Housing act, the mechanism used for no-fault evictions, the campaign points out that it is still riddled with loopholes that will allow landlords to evict tenants without a good reason.

We have been renters in the past and our experience has been mixed. During the recent renting of a house we had a sharp reminder of how little, if any, rights a renter has. The landlord installed a heat pump that caused over two months of disruption which included two weeks without any heating. When I complained about the situation through the letting agent and sought advice from Citezans Advice it turned out that there was nothing we could do about the disruption. When I was asked to get involved with The Big Issue’s campaign about limiting the powers of landlords I didn’t think twice about pressing the send button. The message I received from my MP said that he would reply within a week. One week went past. Two weeks went past and still nothing. I started to wonder why an MP promised to do something and then do nothing. But more importantly I asked myself: what does an MP do?

Rather than ranting about MPs in this post I decided to investigate how they represent their constituents. From Parliament’s web site it states: “When Parliament is sitting (meeting), MPs generally spend their time working in the House of Commons. This can include raising issues affecting their constituents, attending debates and voting on new laws. This can either be by asking a question of a government minister on your behalf or supporting and highlighting particular campaigns which local people feel strongly about.” In their constituency, MPs often hold a ‘surgery’ in their office, where local people can come along to discuss any matters that concern them. Most MPs are also members of committees, which look at issues in detail, from government policy and new laws, to wider topics like human rights. In all fairness my MP probably gets hundreds of emails each day touching on issues such as the cost of living crisis or the state of the NHS. However, this issue formed part of his parties manifesto and therefore I felt a reply along the lines of “we are delivering a manifesto commitment” would have been the minimal response. Then cynicism set in. I wondered how many people in his constituency were renters. But trying to find any real data was difficult. The best that I could find was an old Housing Report that suggested that there was about 17% people who were in private rented accommodation and they were probably not voters for his party. Therefore this issue more than likely fell into his ‘not important box’. After another week went past I resent the email, received the same reply, and to date he has not been in contact.

Just in case he got back I thought that I had better be clearer on the issues that the campaign was raising. I read through the Renters (Reform) Bill and went back to the Housing Act 1988 to check section 21. Both documents are a heavy read but I couldn’t find any obvious loop holes. I contacted the people behind The Big Issue’s campaign who are the Renters’ Reform Coalition, which includes big names like Shelter and Crisis, to find out more about the loop holes in the new Bill. But guess what? - they didn’t reply either!

What have I learned about armchair campaigning? First, investigate the issue properly: why is it important? who are affected by it? and gather all of the information from all sides of the argument to get a better perspective of the issue. Second, ask myself about my personal commitment to the campaign? There are many worthy causes but it is better to focus on the one where I have significant personal experience and where I can add my skills and knowledge. Thirdly, how effective is the campaign? Will I be a voice among many i.e. sending an email or can I get more involved to make a difference.

In my early career, which was many years ago, email was a new technology. I thought it was a great invention and would fire off lots of them across the company where I worked. One day my boss pulled me into his office and in no short terms told me to stop using emails. If the issue was important then I should either visit the person directly or pick up the phone. My recent experience has reminded me of his advice. Most MPs hold surgeries therefore the next time a campaign comes though my email that I feel sufficiently passionate about, there will be a knock on their door.