What do farmers think about climate policy?

How can government and businesses help farms reduce their climate impact, while balancing other priorities like profitability, resilience, food production and nature? 

Our Farming Policy Lead Dr Charlie Taverner joins Nick Hughes on The Small Print podcast to delve into these questions, which were at the heart of a series of conversations that we held with farmers across England over the summer – a piece of work commissioned by Defra to help inform the government’s forthcoming Food and Farming Decarbonisation Plan. The discussions highlighted a loss of trust in government around climate policy and the emissions data that informs it, and a demand from farmers for policy makers and businesses to look beyond emissions and take a whole systems approach to farm sustainability. 

In this week’s episode, Charlie and Nick discuss key insights from conversations with the farmers tasked with decarbonising agriculture, whose opinions are often marginalised in policy discourse around food and climate.