24. What do farmers think about climate policy?

How can government and businesses help farms reduce their climate impact, while balancing priorities like profitability, resilience, food production and nature? This question was at the heart of a series of conversations held with farmers across England over the summer by the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission – 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 to look beyond emissions and take a whole systems approach to farm sustainability. In this week’s episode, the FFCC’s Charlie Taverner joins Nick to share key insights from conversations with the farmers tasked with decarbonising agriculture, whose opinions are often marginalised in policy discourse around food and climate.