IT started off so nicely. Farmers were good, growing food was the most noble pursuit, home grown food tasted better, everyone loved a farmer. Yatta, yatta, yatta.
The kindest way possible to be celebrating National Ag Day in the plush surrounds of the Tattersall's Club in Brisbane.
Then 30 minutes into his Rural Press Club of Queensland address Matthew Evans laid in. Wham, bam, cop this, as he belted the proverbial niceties about farmers out the window.
As good and noble a group of miracle workers as farmers were, they are making a f***ing stuff of agriculture, the Tasmanian-based celebrity chef cum food critic cum farmer cum author said.
Partly because most farmers didn't acknowledge, or more importantly, act on the compelling science that man-made climate change was real, but principally because the European-based farming systems employed over the past 10,000 to 12,000 years have consistently turned arable soils in to desert.
99 percent of climate scientists say climate change is caused by human action and farmers are f***ing silent on this.
- Matthew Evans
In a nutshell, soils were buggered because they had been depleted of carbon.
"The farming that you and I understand has degraded land," Mr Evans said. "We have consistently turned arable land into desert.
"The magic bit of the earth, the thin crust, the onion skin 2cm, 1cm or the magic bit that does all the growing has been squandered."
The message was 50 per cent of the carbon in agricultural land has been lost into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution some 300 years ago. And a third to a quarter of the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was lost from soil.
"If you plough soil, you lose top soil a hundred times faster than it can be made. If you do no-till, you are losing top soil 25 times faster than it can be made," Mr Evans said.
"Every time that blows away, washes away, every time we lose that, it's not just your asset, its the national asset we are losing.
"It's not dust. It's only f***ing dust if it's come from a road. If dust is blowing off a paddock or your grazing land or tilled field, that is not dust, that is topsoil - the magic bit."
While strongly identifying as a farmer, Mr Evans said he saddened by farming.
"More so I am disappointed," he said. "99 percent of climate scientists say climate change is caused by human action and farmers are f***ing silent on this.
"People trust farmers. I have spoken to farmers everywhere, all around the country and they will tell me 'oh my god, it's not like it used to be. But humans have nothing to do with it'.
"Fine. You can believe that. You can ignore the advice of the 99pc of scientists who think that humans have had an impact.
"But don't ignore this. More carbon in your soil will make you soil better."
Mr Evans said he was proud to be among the one per cent of the population who grew the food for the rest.
"Plants have this amazing ability to do something we can't," he said.
"A plant, through photosynthesis, traps the energy of the sun, creates its own food by turning carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates.
"A plant makes sugars out of f***ng thin air. That's pure alchemy. That's insane.
"The only way animals can live is if they eat something that has already lived. Whereas a plant doesn't need to do that."
Mr Evans said it was a privilege to be called a farmer.
"I love it and I am proud of it because growing food is this miracle thing, the ultimate transformation," he said.
"Farmers are miracle workers. They are so, so, so good at producing food from thin air and making something that not only fuels us but is something nutritious and delicious at the same time.
"(I'm) proud, saddened, disappointed but hopeful farmers won't continue to bugger up the soil we are entrusted with, we won't bugger up the land we are gifted."
- Matthew Evans was the guest speaker at the Rural Press Club of Queensland and was promoting his new book The Commons, A Year of Growing, Cooking and Eating on Fat Pig Farm.
