Beef & Lamb Farmers

I’m going to write this section from my (Matthew Shribman’s) own perspective...

A lot of my family are farmers, and my grandparents had a beef and dairy farm.

Growing up, I spent a lot of time on farms, and I really like farming people a lot.

There is no part of me that has ever wanted to undermine the livelihoods of good people, and so I hope that no one will read this website and think that’s what I’m trying to do.

I’m a scientist, and the science points to a really important reality, that we can’t ignore…

...that, if we’re going to leave behind a world that our future generations can inherit, we need to enormously cut down on beef and lamb.

History is full of big changes, and over and over, we must adapt.

When cars arrived, horses and carts disappeared from the streets. When cotton came in, most of the silk industry collapsed.

The last thing I want is to make people's lives worse - if anything, I made this website to try to do the opposite…

However, the simple fact is that the beef industry is enormously damaging for the planet and now that the science is so well understood on this, short-term economics can't be used as an argument for allowing it to go on as it is.

It’s important that we don’t demonise farmers. Instead, we have to help them.

The responsibility, in my opinion, is with governments, to subsidise farmers to transition to other food production.

If farmers are to suffer, it’s the fault of governments for not creating a structure within which farmers can easily and economically transition out of beef and re-wild their land.

We will soon be launching a petition to ask the UK government to provide special support for farmers transitioning away from beef and lamb farming to re-wild, and to provide more support for farmers employing more sustainable farming methods than farmers who are not.

It won’t be easy for a lot of farmers to change, but it’s very important for our future survival that change starts happening now.