There needs to be a four-way conversation between food producers, conservationists, politicians, and consumers.

I’m a farmer who joined Somerset Wildlife Trust as a trustee board member last year to help bridge the gap in this four-way conversation. The choice we all face together is not between either producing food or protecting nature, but how to produce food in harmony with nature.

Conservationists need to find a way to encourage consumers to make good choices, politicians to make good legislation, and farmers to produce food more harmoniously with nature.

Farmers in turn need to be open to this dialogue and change to more regenerative farming practices to meet today’s societal demands and help solve the challenges we face from climate change.

We all have a responsibility. Every consumer choice has a consequence. Buying cheap food is a vote for large-scale mass production of monocultures that encourages increased food miles. The relative scale of UK food production units is tiny compared to places like North and South America and Australasia.

If our society really does want the natural world to be in harmony with food production, as consumers, we need to vote for this by buying more local food and drink that is managed on a smaller scale, with more-mixed production methods, more diversity of plant species that give constant ground cover, and more perennial plants being used where possible.

Waiting for our political leaders to legislate progressive change isn’t going to provide the necessary change we all need. As consumers, our actions and lifestyle choices have immediate and effective power to encourage change.

Make your choices count. You are what you eat, so start today to help make Somerset a harmonious landscape with both food production and nature flourishing.