Tom Heap on new book Land Smart - how can we manage the land better while balancing food production?

Tom Heap is widely known for his appearances on BBC Countryfile, The Climate Show and Rare Earth, and he has a passion for the natural world. His latest book, Land Smart, explores how various people in the wider agricultural industry can manage the land differently to create balance between nature and food production. Whether that is regenerative practices or introducing more technology, it is not a one size fits all approach. 

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You're listening to the Farmers Guardian podcast. Me. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Farmers Guardian podcast with me. Emily Ashworth Farm is Guardian's online editor. This week I speak to Tom heap, who is widely known for his appearances on BBC Countryfile, The Climate Show and Rare Earth, and he has a passion for the natural world and the countryside. His latest book, Lamb Smart, explores how various people in the wider agricultural industry can manage the land differently to create balance between nature and food production. Whether that is region, practices or introducing more technology, it really isn't a one size fits all approach. I really hope you enjoyed the episode and actually it will be really good to hear your thoughts on our conversation. So let me know what you think and enjoy! So Tom, it's absolutely fantastic to have you on the podcast today. We are here to talk about your new book, Land Smart. But before we get into that, could you actually take a moment to look back? Maybe. And, you know, could you give us a brief overview of your media work and how that was kind of aligned with your passions that were not lovely? So to. yes, I can, of course. so, my media work really was the last 25 years has been in environment, rural affairs, farming, science, things like that. And a lot of my passions, I think as a, as a kid, I was always interested in the outdoors. My degree with John was geography. My father was a polar explorer of sorts and then a sort of polar diplomat. So he always had an interest in this relationship between humanity and the natural world. And I think that brushed off on on me. And so although my early start in journalism was pretty broad journalism, I find myself gravitating towards the areas that, that I mentioned as, science and environment correspondent, rural affairs correspondent, and at the same time beginning to do longform work on programs like Countryfile on BBC one and Costing the Earth on Radio four. so yeah, that's kind of how it's all all come together, really, and not I just love it because, you know, interesting places. often. Well, often beautiful places, interesting people I get to talk to. And I've always like the filming side of my work as well. And it's, you know, just fantastic to be out on the natural world trying to capture that, beauty some of the time and the peril and other times. And just before I move on to talk about, uni book, do you actually feel in a position, you know, for example, if we look at, our jobs in farming and for a farming publication, you know, we do a lot of kind of, consumer work as well. So actually being able to play a really small role in telling this sector story to those outside of it. Is that something that you enjoy? Yes, it is, because, you know, there is still is no doubt about it, a little bit of a, a gulf in knowledge, possibly a gulf in empathy between some of those who who live and work in towns and cities and actually even in the countryside, some people are fairly well, farmers actually do. and, and in a sense, I'm not blaming anybody for that, but I think it's really, really nice to be able to shed a bit of light. I mean, I've always said the journalism I like best is, you know, tell me something I didn't know and tell me, tell me in a, you know, an entertaining and engaging way. And I think there's a lot of scope for that in the farming and rural space. And I've always been very proud of the work that, we've been doing on Countryfile over the years, which, whilst the program is largely celebratory of what's happening in rural Britain, you know, the bits that I'm involved in certainly don't ignore the anguish and the perils and the challenges and, I think that's really important because like any part of our country, both of that, both, you know, both both beauty and, and hazard. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that leads me on quite nicely, actually, because, you know, there is, or two things. It's, you know, there's a lot of change going on. I mean, your new book, One Smart, came out last week on General Election Day, didn't it? So did in the in the past week, there's been immense change and there's going to be, you know, change coming again. But it's also quite so, you know, it's it's exciting because there's a lot of new opportunities coming. and in that whole sort of environment space and region space, it, it's going to provide a lot of people with new ways of thinking and new ways of doing things. And so I think that's quite an exciting prospect. once Mark your book, How to Give People Nature the Space to Thrive, you obviously talk to all sorts of people in this book. Farmers, scientists, conservationists. What was the inspiration? The inspiration for the book was a growing awareness that people are asking land not just in Britain, but globally, to do so many things, not just grow food and provide as a home, but now, capture and store carbon and generate energy, create materials, obviously provide a space for wildlife, maybe hold back flood water, provide recreation space for mental health and so on and so on. And you'll be aware of the line, you know, there's only we've only got one planet. and I was really intrigued to know if there were ways, if we use the land smartly, that we could find ways of enabling both nature and people to thrive. So that was the kind of springboard for it. And then I was thinking, well, this is a global subject. It's a bit hubristic, and I'll probably be a massive book if I try to include the whole world's land use in this, but it is predominantly about the UK, but very much in a global context. And the one thing I really want to get across, which I think distinguishes it from a lot of books about, well, broadly in the environmental space is I am very respect for and impressed by farmers who produce a lot of food. Now, the reason for that is the worst thing we can do for both our climate and nature around the world is take more virgin land, under the plow or under the cow. So in and of itself, producing a lot of food from a small area is a good thing. But I'm aware also that the current way that we do that largely involving a lot of chemicals, both, fertilizers and pesticides has a lot of collateral damage as well. And so, you know, one of the things I was sort of talked about in the book is although it's called intensive agriculture in some senses, given that its impact is global in terms of climate change, it would certainly be regional in terms of water pollution. A lot of the way we do, intensive agriculture is not that intensive because it spreads across a wide area. Its impact spreads across one area that I wanted to see, to go and meet people who would doing agriculture with less chemicals in a way, that was in the end, sustainable because it wasn't creating a lot of collateral damage to the planet, but still produced a lot of food. I wasn't really interested in going to sort of park Land Organics, because, you know, I just don't think in the end that that's a viable solution, really. I mean, you know, there are places for it and I can come on to life. You know, there are chapters about rewilding because there there is stuff about nature. But one of that, that's one of the things I really tried to put at the core of the book was how we can balance enough food with giving space for nature, and that's really tricky. But some really small people are doing it. And just to finish this rather long answer when it comes to balancing priorities, balancing different uses of our land, that's where the small bit comes in. That's where you have to be really smart when you're when you've got two slightly competing things, that's when the real brains, appear. So in terms of, you know, the farmers that you actually met, what specifically can, farmers in our sector perhaps take away from it? Because I know that this chapter specifically on, arable farmers and livestock farmers, what is it that they would do in that was, that was interesting to you? What they were doing was interesting to me. Well, I'll start with the arable. And I really focus on why some focus on. There's a quite a lot of that actually. Now I think about it because it's really important in terms of food. so, I went to see, a farmer called Goldsmith up in Northumberland, who is known in farming circles because at one time he held the record yield, for a week. And so, you know, I wanted to see him and see I'm brutally, you know, was he just a chemical junkie? were they, you know, drowning in nitrogen, on the thriving and nudging mushrooms like, and and what was really interesting was actually, you know, he is on a journey to deliver more from his soils. And so he is working really hard on his soil. He knows that. I mean, he hasn't he hasn't dropped the chemicals completely at all, but he still uses more than some others. But he's on the journey. He's respect for the soil, his love of worms, he's amazing compost and windrows and other things he has. He you know, he's really loving. It's really getting a kick out of these things. And I was just interested to hear from him. Someone who really believes in he so much that he was in the Guinness Book of Records to realize that folks like him are realizing they have to change as well, whilst doing their best to maintain the yield, because that again helps to feed the world. then I went to see, a chap called Tim Parson, who is, if you like, further down the, further along, I should say the road of being more regenerative. He's extremely into various sort of compost teas and foliar fertilizers and things like that. And he's got his nitrogen per hectare down to around, 50kg. When your your readers will be aware, it's often around, you know, 200. But he's reduced it hugely without reducing you and also without harming the potential of the fields to grow food in the future. And that's that. That's the really important thing. And while I'm on that, the one of the hardest questions in this space is what we do with peatland farming, because it is simultaneously one of our best food producers and one of our biggest causes in climate change. In terms of the, disappearing peat, it oxidizing peat. And it is quite frightening as well said that we can't really see the effects of climate change when you go to some of these farms and see how the land level has dropped, you know, and that stuff, you know, what used to be land to grow. Our food is now in the atmosphere, a warming planet that is quite stark. And yet you know that there are some really interesting balancing acts being done there. And there's ideas that maybe we could rewet a lot of the peat and and from the top, you know, the big company G's fry should are doing a lot in this space to kind of see if we can, reduce our, reduce the emissions from those fields without stopping farming altogether. and then I want to talk to, the chap called, James Brown, who has a farm in Lincolnshire. And, he's basically going even further. He's the idea is he's going to rewet these things grow Willow, put them into pyrolysis, capture the carbon and use the heat from a pyrolysis plant in a, in a polytunnel. So there are some people doing some really. Here's what I mean by small, you know, some people that really kind of thing. What they hope you got from this is the book is very, very thoughtful and fundamentalist. The idea is that it, you know, it's outcomes driven. It's what works, and, and admiring the people who are finding ways of making it work. Yeah. Oh. What is the livestock? Sorry. Like like, but livestock. I, I went to, to Wales and talked to, a couple there, Rachel and, maybe Davis who, who are in the, Snowdonia National Park. They're not sort of idle upland farmers. They're sort of mixed between the rolling land and a bit of the upland. And really, they're. And the only is, you know, a lot of these things won't be entirely new to many of your readership. You know, it's it's about thinking about the past year, about long planting Clover and Sam and things like this which store carbon, in the soil and create a more varied diet for the animals. So it grows a bit quicker. So a lot of it isn't about the number of sheep. It's about like the kilograms of lamb. It's also about, you know, being rigorously measuring the yield of different parts of that farm and the bits that aren't yielding very well. put the putting them to back to nature. and because they're apparently not, not delivering sufficiently and they were absolutely confident that they hadn't reduced the, yield of food from that, whilst at the same time they have increased, nature dramatically. And I think, I think we do have a big question in the output, because I do look at some quality ones, and I know this is going to make me unpopular with some of your, some of your listeners, some of the uplands. It seems to me I'm not doing a lot with the land. What I mean is, and not producing a lot of food, they're not producing a lot of wildlife. They're not producing a lot of energy. They're not producing a lot of water storage. They're not, to my mind, a very effective land use at the moment. So I do think we need to expand the areas, nature in a lot of our uplands. I do think we need to start thinking possibly. Yeah, well, and that would be rewilding some of them. I do think we need to look at more, energy generation, be that turbines or possibly solar panels and things in parts of our uplands and really thinking, you know, is this land working well? Is it doing much, you know, what is it doing? Is it doing it well? Because I think if you ask that question to a lot of, upland areas, the answers sadly, none at the moment. Just let's flip that for a second then, because just going off what I mentioned before about kind of, what we talked about, that circular kind of approach where it's, you know, was in farming and perhaps other parts of society tweaking as well. Do you think, this start out, should I call it a style this way of farming? well, the nature focus and environment focus or region focus. Do you think that's a way to kind of rally consumer? support? Because interestingly as well, I've got some research through this morning. and to be fair, it wasn't just kind of UK based, it was, European data, but it said that consumers believe that region produce up their food produced in lambs. Nature is much more healthier. Okay. So do you think, I've, I've asked for some deep dive into those to those stats. I haven't got a reply yet, but I just wonder whether you think that, you know, if we told more of these stories about what we are actually doing on farm to mitigate climate change, etc., is that lying to consumers? I think I think it is. The reason for the note of policy in my voice is that we've seen that, well, because humans are not a homogenous unit, there is definitely a proportion of them for whom this stuff really matters. But as, you know, as often been proven in the, in surveys, you know, they consumers say they care about the welfare of pork, and then they go in and buy the cheapest bacon supermarket, you know, that and that, whilst that is a bit of a cliche that there's some truth in it and, I think especially at a time, when people certainly in the last couple of years will be very worried about the cost of food. I think that could, be to still be the main thing that dictates their behavior. Having said that, I mean, I think it is plausible that, regenerated food, reused in a more region agricultural system is more healthy. I know, the license indicator while farmed and things would definitely claim that's the case. I haven't seen the sort of hard and fast research on that. So it would be, I would say. But I think it tells a better story about farming altogether. That's that's what I really think does matter, that people are broadly worried that farming might be on the wrong side of this argument. You know, every year we have, you know, the Farmland Bird Index or the State of Nature report, I'm usually on the naughty step. These farming, particularly intensive farming. So there is an impression that this, profession is not helping. That is making it worse. And I think in, in too often that's been true in the last few decades. I think there is a real opportunity to get on the right side of that argument. And I think there are ways of doing it, which I think is the most important thing. I think result in it's in us reducing massively our food production here and demanding that the rest of the world produces our food because there is no planet free game. You know, having beautiful parkland here and pushing our food imports to the rest of the world. And, who knows what environmental production credentials. I'm quite interested to see what the next step after. And I don't know if you saw the story about the Danish government putting the carbon tax on agriculture. Did you see that? Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, I think these are really interesting things to, to discuss. and that was one of the things that I think comes up at the end of the peat chapter in my book, you know, if you had a carbon tax on agriculture, like we have carbon taxes and other parts of industry, particularly those that are high emitters, you know, that then begins to drive behaviors. And that could be that could be something really interesting to explore. I think there is something slightly underlying which is, if you put these extra costs on the production of food when you put up the price of food. Now, I'm someone who doesn't necessarily think, well, I'm someone who thinks we need to have a debate about the price of food and the, cheap food is not an altar on which I worship now, I'm lucky enough to not be on the breadline. but I think this idea that we can have ever cheaper thing is damaging for farming is damaging to the environment, and the is damaging to people's health as well. Yeah, absolutely. As a whole, the podcast data is the right. So just to finish up, what was the, the the biggest thing or the most kind of takeaway point that throughout this whole process of collating these stories and this research for land landmark that you came away with. Okay. I always struggle with a single thing. So I leave you a short handful. yeah. I've mentioned one of the already multifunction your land when you can stack different land uses one upon another. one which is going to be controversial, which I should have mentioned earlier. If you want to make energy from your land, put on the panels, solar panels or a wind turbine on it. I'm going to talk briefly about the solar panels because sorry, but solar panels or wind turbine on it don't plant biofuels in my in my view, biofuels plants that grow or grown to be burnt usually. And diesel petrol, bioethanol I should say are my view a pretty dumb use of land. And this is because their energy output per unit area is a tiny fraction of what you get from solar. Now, it's difficult to measure the energy per unit area of a wind turbine slightly depends how you measure it. But broadly the same is true which is focusing on solar. So it depends how you measure. It depends where you are in the world. but it is 50 to 300 times more productive of energy per unit area than any biofuel. And I think that really significant and people think small. And just to give you an idea, is the area of solar panels on my house, which is the standard for kilowatt, arrived in sort of what people were allowed to get. That's enough to power an electric car. That's sorry, that's enough to power two electric cars, their annual mileage in Britain. So then what I'm saying is any mileage in average Britain is about 7500 miles, and it produces enough energy to do 15,000 miles now. And, you know, it takes an area of fraction of a tennis ball, you know, probably about a quarter probably for work now. But it's a about two commercial parking spaces. Now, the idea that you could power a car from two commercial parking spaces, a wheat or rapeseed oil, is absurd. so if you go in rather long. But if you want people going back to where I started, if you want to produce energy from your land, put panels there for a turbine. And if you ever want to build a, distribution warehouse, put panels on the top. It is almost a crime that less fewer than 5% of all massive warehouses have solar panels on the top. That is an outrage. In my view. and in the view of the woman who runs the UK Warehousing Association, by the way, so that was, so it's that way you can, energy where you can, and yeah, I think and I'll respect the yield that, you know, and try and do your best to get a lot of food off the small space. because that that matters. I use that, that you remember the Dimbleby report, the fruit flies when they came out, a while ago. They are the only illustration in the book is that, you know, he produced that map of Britain that showed, you know, what proportion of land we use for different things. And then it had an offshore island. That was the amount of land we demand for the rest of the world in order to satisfy our, demands, leave our dogs, and we must not increase the size of that offshore island that, that's just irresponsibly. I mentioned behavioral change, and but this is I don't think, you know, we have to see this in the context of DOS as well. And, yeah. So I think we need to look at wasting less, eating less overall putting putting less crop into biofuels. Mentioned that already. And yes, eating less meat has to come in there as well because because of the sort of efficiency conversion factor, meat is, which is land hungry, I think we all everyone knows that, and so I'm not I'm not a vegetarian. And I do know, if people want to me, that's fine, but I, I'm not expecting, people to eat. But I do think we need to look at not eating, and we need to investigate eating less, just out of interest before you head off to, do you think. Are you are you interested in how we sort of like, one of my biggest things and something that we are planning to do quite big here at EFG is, get some sort of education. I don't know how that looks, but into school environment, I'm very. Yeah. Very interested. sorry. I've just. You've actually reminded me one of the other. I think that played cool things in the book, so forgive me. Well, I just quickly delve into that, one of the things like, you know, it is called land smart. And one of the things that I, it's in the conclusion of the book is that we need to give more respect. The land based skills and land based knowledge and all that. I mean, I'm of an ancient era when people were a bit sniffy about the not to the land economy and, you know, you know, it's that sort of, academic arrogance, that is that is prevalent, you know, and we need to, you know, really, admire, encourage, fund skills in this area because this is really tough stuff. It's really challenging. People are doing amazing things. And, you know, I am with. Yeah, with, with a sort of plea that this stuff needs to be given. It's prominence and respect in agricultural and research circles because, yeah, in my view it's as well saving. Absolutely. And also the other side is how many opportunities there are in terms of, you know, when you look at what, skills are required and the interest that we can peak in people in terms of, you know, soil health or climate change or, you know, that that science, that science core base today, you know, that's that's huge for attracting new people into the industry. So yeah, I be more with that. I'm sorry I interrupted you, just like you were talking. The thing about school was just on if you wanted to ask me that. No, no, I just wondered because, you know, this sort of conversation, I guess, has been going on for a while, isn't it? In terms of how we actually get this sort of we'll get this topic into schools and in what format should it be? So, sort of subjects, should it be taught across all the subjects? I just wondered what your thoughts were basically on how we can actively kind of go forwards and make something like that happen, because it's like you were just saying about giving this sort this, you know, respect. I don't quite understand where that comes from, when you can go and do so many of the vocational courses and that sort of thing. And this, I don't know, it's just never it's never part of the conversation in schools ever now. Well, I think you're right. I, I'm prepared to be hubristic and comment on a few things I don't get, but I probably would be careful about education because I'm it's just not my area of expertise. I mean, I think I think role models are good. And, you know, the likes of Adam Henson and Jeremy Clarkson in this space, I'll probably go. And we have seen a bit of a rise with social media in roles of, of greater diversity in that space as well. And I think that that that's really important. I think some of it does have to come from the top. I think some of it has to come from government. You know, I've talked to farmers before who say, you know, politicians absolutely love to, you know, don't a hard hat and I'll have this jacket and go round something or the, you know, heavy metal that makes them look rough. Be tough. They'll something, you know, computery that, you know, so they can get off on, on. I would you know, in our world, I mean artificial insemination or possibly avian influenza does not mean. No. and, but, you know, I'd like to see more, more politicians and by embracing that side of AI, but as someone saying they don't do it because, you know, I don't I don't quite know why, but it you know, it has who needs to we give them this kind of central of this kind of prominence, in order. And, you know, politicians do have a role to play in this because and I think partly it's to say it's not coming along and saying, we've got all the answers. It's coming along saying that this, I hope, is what the book does as well. Saying this is really important. There are some articles out there. Here's some best practices. Let's see what we can learn from those, because we need to get this stuff right. And you know, I think that the sort of approach that the politics could have and also it sort of gets you out of the silos, you know, some farmers saying, oh, you're all just about Tweety Bird and you don't give a damn about food or vice versa, which is, you know, which is just a kind of sterile, sterile arguments. That was my conversation with Tom Heath all about his new book, Lamb Smart. As I mentioned in the introduction, I really would love to hear your thoughts because obviously this is quite a big conversation right now about how we can produce food alongside balancing environmental practices and nature. You can also check out Tom's special Farming Matters column in the Farmers Guardian magazine next week, so don't forget to pick up a copy. But that's it for me this week. We'll be back again with another Farmers Guardian podcast episode next week. So in the meantime, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform.