What's the beef? Another reason to cut down on meat - and change farming systems

A report this week by the European Nitrogen Assessment made me choke on my weetabix. It revealed that nitrogen pollution costs every person in Europe up to £650 a year in greenhouse gas emissions and damage to water, soils and wildlife.

The biggest source of this pollution is agriculture, with meat and dairy production as the main culprit because of its heavy reliance on nitrogen fertilizers for animal feed production.

The report concludes that one of the best ways to tackle this is to reduce consumption of meat and dairy products. Some of the authors have even pledged to halve their meat consumption. The summary for policy makers is clear: "Messages should emphasize the potential health co-benefits of reducing the consumption of animal products to avoid excess above recommended dietary guidelines."

But are policy makers listening?

The Government has so far shied away from advocating reductions in meat and dairy consumption, even though the evidence on the environmental and health imperative has been stacking up for years. Lord Stern called for changes in diet ahead of the Copenhagen climate change conference in 2009, and in February NHS healthy eating guidelines were updated, reducing recommended levels of meat consumption. Our own Healthy Planet Eating report from last year, researched by Oxford University's department  of public health, found that eating meat no more than three times a week would save 45,000 lives and the NHS £1.2bn every year.

To be fair to the Government, there is a tendency for any discussion about reducing levels of consumption to quickly descend to polarised debates about giving up meat altogether and for headlines to shriek out about the nanny state trying to stop us eating sausages. We urgently need to have a discussion about how to promote less and better, whilst supporting a thriving farming industry.

But what does better look like?

A complementary way of tackling the nitrogen issue is to look at the way we farm. Alternatives like mixed farming systems that aren't so dependent on nitrate fertilizers need more support. And grazing animals on clover-rich grasslands provides a natural source of nitrogen, reducing or replacing the need for fertilizers as well as providing food for bees and other wildlife.

Farmers need to be better supported to deliver this kind of agriculture - right now they have little room for manoeuvre because of the power of the big supermarkets and their constant drive for lower prices.

For the longer term resilience of farming it makes economic as well as environmental sense to shift away from nitrogen fertilizers because being derived from oil they're subject to constant price fluctuations. 

So how do we do it? The European Common Agriculture Policy is going through a huge overhaul, there's a clear opportunity to shift the way subsidies are spent to support alternative farming systems - currently around £700 million is spent a year supporting factory farming in England alone - exactly the type of production that is heavily dependent on nitrogen fertilizers for feed production.

And these methods can work in developing countries too - a recent report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food found that small scale farming based on agro-ecological techniques can boost crop yields dramatically. These methods increase diversity and resilience of farming systems, mitigate climate change, boost knowledge and skills and break the dependence on inputs - oil and imported animal feeds as well as fertilizer.

So there's huge scope for spending money on a different type of agriculture, supporting sustainable farming systems that don't rely so heavily on inputs, and promoting healthier, more sustainable diets whilst benefiting the environment and supporting a thriving farming industry here and abroad.