Fossil Free Farming Can we remove fossil fuels in all of their forms from global agriculture while still feeding a growing population and protecting nature?

My Nuffield study asked a simple but radical question: can we remove all fossil fuels from farming while still feeding a growing population and protecting nature? I wanted to know whether ‘real zero’, rather than offset-dependent net zero, was achievable.

Over almost two years, I travelled through Brazil, New Zealand, Australia and Europe, meeting farmers, scientists, manufacturers, government leaders and entrepreneurs. I began with what I thought was just a pipe dream, with large-scale agriculture standing in the way of any transition. But I returned convinced that the move away from fossil fuels is not only possible but is already underway, driven not by ideology or regulation, but by economics.

In Brazil, soya is fixing all of its own nitrogen, saving farmers billions of pounds a year, biological pest controls operate across millions of hectares, and waste biomass generates significant amounts of electricity and gas. In Australia, remote farms are irrigating with energy from solar and batteries. In New Zealand, seaweed biostimulants are halving nitrogen use. Across Europe, farmers are driving electric tractors, generating biomethane from slurry, growing sustainable fibres for a fossil-free fashion industry, and using AI-guided lasers to replace herbicides. In almost every case, the people leading these changes were doing so because the numbers worked, and 'and any environmental convictions were only secondary.

The single most important finding is that fossil-free farming is full of opportunities, not burdens. The greatest of these is energy: maybe the biggest opportunity in a generation. Farms own the land where the renewable transition must happen, yet too often sell that prospect cheaply to outside developers. We need to own our energy generation and storage landscapes and share the benefits locally.

The principal barriers are not technological; they are structural. Grid capacity, planning policy, weak pollution regulations, tax anomalies, regulatory frameworks designed for a fossil-fuelled past, and the cultural and emotional weight of change. My recommendations therefore focus on removing the structural barriers so that the economically rational choice becomes the easy one, while being honest about the human realities of change.

Beyond this scholarship I am now leading several trials and ventures: upscaling the value of farm-produced and stored power, trialling home-brewed seaweed biostimulant, testing alternatives to single-use plastics on bale coverings, and setting up a rural electric-vehicle charging network.

My conclusion is that we can and will move beyond fossil fuels across most of the world's agricultural systems within the next few decades.