Don't ignore dietary shifts

Talking about farming and conservation without discussing dietary shifts is to ignore the elephant (or your megaherbivore of choice) in the room. The BES’s new report Regenerative Agriculture in the UK: An Ecological Perspective is a valuable assessment of regenerative agriculture’s environmental and production consequences. Yet, we feel that to explicitly avoid discussion of dietary change is to present an incomplete perspective. While the report highlights ecological gains when regenerative practices are compared with conventional approaches, the biodiversity crisis requires more radical action concerning agriculture and the food system. Broader changes, including shifts in human diets, are central to achieving meaningful nature recovery.