His comments, in an interview with the Guardian, come after a week of intense weather extremes. Last Monday, west London experienced the hottest day for seven years, while on Tuesday the drought in many parts of the country came to an end with intense thunderstorms that brought almost a month of rain in a day to parts of Worcestershire. Torrential downpours also put a dampener on the first weekend of the school summer holidays, with flash-flooding in parts of the south-east and the Midlands.
"The biggest uncertainty for UK agriculture is extreme weather events," said Kendall, who grows wheat and barley on the 250-hectare (620 acre) farm in Bedfordshire he runs with his brother. "I sometimes have a pop at those who say climate change is going to help farming in northern Europe.
"A gentle increase in temperature is fine but extreme weather events completely stuffs farming: just look at last year. Farming is risky enough as it is."
Erratic swings from floods to heatwaves and drought in recent years have seen many harvests devastated. The UK went from being an exporter of wheat to becoming an importer in 2013. Scientists are clear that climate change is increasing extreme weather both in the UK and around the world.
But Kendall said that further risks lay in Europe cutting itself off from the technologies needed to deal with extreme heatwaves, floods and storms by banning pesticides and genetically modified crops, and he argued that land should not be taken out of production to help wildlife.
"Another enormous uncertainty is, because we are a part of the rich northern European block, that we actually cut ourselves off from the technology that we need to manage those extreme weather events," Kendall said.
"Last summer was just a deluge and plant protection products [pesticides] were incredibly important to us even maintaining a pretty poor harvest: without them, there would have been nothing. When you have rain after rain after rain, the level of disease that grew up within the crop was absolutely out of this world."
He said Europe's decision in April to suspend the use of neonicotinoid pesticides linked to serious harm to bees, for example, was political and based on a very strict interpretation of the precautionary principle.
Reconciling the need to produce more food while also protecting and restoring wildlife and the natural environment is one of the big challenges of the 21st century, according to Kendall, who noted the growing populations of both the UK and the world.
"This is provocative, but if our wildlife is where it is today in 20 years' time, I think that will be a pretty good achievement," he said. "If we are producing the same amount of food as we are now in 20 years' time, I think that we'll have a crisis."
Kendall said farmers were working hard to plant wild flowers in field margins and put trees in field corners where their sprayers cannot reach. He said he had planted 7.5 miles (12km) of hedgerows on his farm in the past 15 years.
Although an unprecedented stocktake of UK wildlife in May revealed that most species are struggling, Kendall said: "As I travel around, I see a fantastic British countryside and I do not accept that the countryside and environment is going to hell in a handcart."
The idea of rewilding farmland to improve wildlife does not stack up, according to Kendall. "We need to be very careful in taking land out of production. Who is going to make up the shortfall? Where are we going to get the food from? We have just had three global food price spikes in the last five years."
A recent high-profile study concluded that farmers were shortchanging the taxpayers who fund their subsidies by billions of pounds because the money did little to support the wildlife, access the countryside and other environmental benefits that people value. But Kendall said: "I think helping farmers manage volatility, extreme weather, climate change and the global distortion of agricultural markets is equally a public good. The danger of saying that the environment is the only public good, is that we pay people not to farm and that really does fly in the face of feeding 63 million people here in the UK."
He added: "No one has the perfect solution to this. But farmers have a massively vested interest in making sure we don't damage our natural resources for the long term. Farmers just aren't in the smash and grab business: farming is a long-term game."
Kendall said he could not defend the £3bn in annual subsidies that UK farmers receive from taxpayers. The four farms that make up his family business receive about £140,000 a year in subsidies, but he said all farmers would prefer a system where the market provided a fair return and subsidies were not paid.
"The question of public value for money for the £3bn in subsidies is an incredibly difficult question, because I am only too aware, and I say this to my farmers all the time, that there is a lot of Britain having a really tough time, with pay freezes and job losses. So I don't even try and justify the £3bn," he said. "We want to get to a place where farmers depend less and less on taxpayers' money."
Kendall said that, despite the huge challenges for UK agriculture, he was optimistic about the future and is seeing more young people come into farming. "It will be an incredibly difficult challenge on this very crowded island, but we are always going to need food."
Despite the challenges, Kendall says he is a happy farmer. "I woke up this morning and right outside my door the hay is being made and the smell of the crops was in the air. I am very aware that I live an incredibly privileged existence as a farmer," he said. "And we want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem."
Read a case study here about the effects of extreme weather on a 1,200-hectare (3,000-acre) arable farm in Surrey, England
Reader Comments
People need to start growing some of their own food and learn to shift their diets to eat what the land will produce...potatoes and sunchokes and turnips instead of wheat. More greens and carrots. If you can't grow wheat perhaps you should not be eating it. We are experimenting with growing quinoa and amaranth as they are both grains that will grow here.
If everyone grew a bit of their own food, things would not look quite as desperate. I mean, if we can do it on a ne facing slope that used to be a clearcut/compacted clay soil (on the north oregon coast, no less) anyone can.
Alas, most people will be relying on guns for the purposes of gathering food, in the near future.
It won't be deer or grouse they shoot at either.
It will be the farmers and gardeners. Some farmers and gardeners will of course, shoot back, but there will be just too many hungry mouths and itchy trigger fingers. Kinda like when the Indians and the blessed/cursed colonists opposed each other.
Government will assist the most violent and greedy gangs and marauders, just as they did back in the 1700''s and 1800's (and still do now, in the 3rd world), only on a larger scale.
Whatever's left (when the food and ammo run out), they will put into concentration camps with razor wire, because the government is not planning on running out of ammo or sadistic guards and soldiers.
Everyone left, will starve.
Or be used for target practice.
Can you say: hollow point?
History doesn't rhyme but it does repeat.
ned
One of the most cosmopolitan and aware cadres on the face of the planet. Usually up to date but in this case I fear the author is either politically opportune or misguided as regards Climate Change. The climate is getting colder and is going to get much colder over the next decade with wetter summers (in a year or two). British farmers engaged in grain production must grow quick ripening varieties, planting later and harvesting earlier. Where this is not possible keep the land well drained and grow potatoes or set up glass houses heated by fracking gas. They have in general done a good job with set-aside and this can always be integrated into future plans.
Don't care for wildlife. Need the GMO crops and pesticides - just when Europe has stood up against Monsanto!
I kind of wonder at how open minded he is, or how forward thinking he is.
is the way. check out this guy: [Link]
Classical farming needs to die out because deforestation is causing the very problems they're fighting : droughts and floods
In the United States, I rate the Farmers' Union as better than either National Farmers' Organization or Farm Bureau. FU bureaucrats are slightly more willing to take on the bureaucrats above them, in support of family farmers, than the total asswipes of the other two organizations. This guy in the UK however, appears to be an asswipe of the first rate. Optimistic indeed!
Walking through our hayfields yesterday, which are in bloom, I would say there is maybe 10% the bee population there was 20 years ago. We live in Minnesota.
We have never used chemical sprays or fertilizers and I have never wiped nor licked, a bureaucrat's ass. I would rather shove a fork in it and twist it.....hard....
nedlud
Why not uses the resources wasted on the Monarchy, Queen and royalty and use it to help your nation feed itself. The whole world will be in a similar distress soon if not informed of the truth as what is really happening to the earth.