Spring 2025 Banquet

Holistic approach

  • Gavin Smith
  • January 13 2025

Regenerative_ CREDIT cat-oneil

Heritage barleys and regenerative farming practices all help increase yield and improve the flavour of whisky. Gavin D Smith looks at some of the initiatives being embraced by the Scotch Whisky industry.

When a television commercial for frozen chips pledges a commitment to embracing “fully-regenerative farming practices” by 2030, you know the ‘regenerative’ issue is having significant traction with consumers at large.

Due to its reliance on cereal crops, the Scotch Whisky industry is already embracing aspects of regenerative agriculture, or ‘regen ag,’ and is certain to become more deeply involved in future.

To give some basic context to the issue of whisky and grain, according to the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Ltd, Scottish farmers produce some 924,000 tonnes of malting barley per annum. This is 90 per cent of the whisky sector’s barley requirements and is worth £140m to the farming economy.

There has long been pressure on British farmers to maximise production, which has resulted in an increasing use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers to sustain crops. These can be costly not only for farmers, but also for the environment, killing off native species and leaching into waterways.

With regard to malting barley, development of more disease-resistant and higher-yielding strains has been the order of the day, and continues to be so. Higher yields of barley per acre of land and higher yields of alcohol per tonne of barley have become central to the way the industry at large works.

According to the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA): “Working in harmony with the natural environment, regenerative agriculture is a holistic approach to farming that uses best agricultural practices to produce crops while also delivering beneficial outcomes for soil health, climate, water and nature.”

On the land that may involve minimising soil disturbance, keeping the soil covered, maintaining living roots in the soil, maximising plant diversity and reintroducing livestock, allowing manure to integrate through the fields as a natural fertiliser, adding to the nutrient content and reducing reliance on high-carbon nitrogen fertiliser.

Major malting companies are embracing regenerative practices, with Ellie Wood, sustainability coordinator for Crisp Malt, which has Scottish sites at Alloa and Buckie, declaring: “Our growers are already experiencing the impacts of climate change on their growing seasons and crop yields, caused by an increase in extreme weather events including both droughts and heavy rainfall.”

It is estimated that around 75 per cent of on-farm greenhouse gas emissions are associated with the manufacture and use of nitrogen-based fertilisers, and Wood notes: “We are working with our growers to measure carbon footprint and nitrogen use efficiency, an essential part of our strategy to reach our goal of becoming a net zero business by 2045.

“We are seeing more distilleries support malting barley farmers in the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices to improve crop resilience.”

Wood adds: “The majority of our growers are already implementing some form of regenerative practice. Measures include cover cropping; increasing organic matter in soil; integrated pest management; plans for biodiversity improvement; minimising tillage; and use of abated nitrogen fertiliser.

“We work closely on agricultural sustainability with Chivas and Aberlour Distillery, supplying them with malt produced from malting barley which is grown by the Aberlour Grower Group within a 15-mile radius of the distillery.”

In June of this year, Chivas Brothers announced a sustainable agricultural initiative with eight farms producing barley near its Dalmunach distillery on Speyside in association with agricultural merchant Scotgrain and Bairds Malt.

The pilot programme, named the Dalmunach Growers Pilot Group, is set to run over a three to five-year period.

In addition to tackling carbon emissions reduction, trials will cover various approaches both to improvements in soil health – to create a more resilient growing process – and biodiversity, from fertiliser use and cover-cropping to wildflower strips.

According to Ronald Daalmans, Environmental Sustainability Manager at Chivas Brothers: “Establishing partnerships with our growers represents a critical moment in Chivas Brothers’ sustainability journey.

“The ongoing impact of climate change means our growers are having to adapt their practices – and many are faced with tough decisions regarding sustainable practices because it is cost prohibitive to implement new techniques without certainty of how they’ll affect crops through the growing cycle.”

Chivas Brothers has also linked up with its strategic wheat supplier Simpsons Malt Limited and fertiliser manufacturer OCI Global to trial Calcium Ammonium Nitrate (CAN) fertiliser, Nutramon® Low Carbon – produced using certified bio-gas – with a number of farmers from the Chivas Brothers Wheat Growers Group.

The trial aims to assess the effectiveness of this sustainable fertiliser in reducing carbon emissions in the cultivation of wheat for the distillation of blended whisky.

Meanwhile, Diageo has initiated a pilot programme involving 20 farmers, as the company’s Regenerative Agriculture Manager Adam Carson explains: “There are two components to Diageo’s Scotch ‘regen ag’ pilot: Firstly, farm clusters – we have recruited 20 farms into three regional farm clusters, where we’re baselining current production systems on real farms. Farmers in the programme receive tailored information from our agronomic partners to support them adopting more sustainable practices.

“Secondly, a programme looking at cover crops. Cover crops are seen as a key intervention in ‘regen ag’ systems, but there are challenges to growing them in Scotland. The research will inform how effective they are in Scotland and try to overcome some of the challenges, for example, the wetter and colder weather and later barley harvest.”

Carson explains: “We integrate regenerative practices into our current farming structures, while providing guidance, support and access to leading industry experts for our farmers.”

Other initiatives being embraced by the Scotch Whisky industry include the BARIToNE programme, a £3.6bn Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications (BBRC) and industry-funded seven-year programme of PhDs led by the Scotch Whisky Research Institute (SWRI) and the International Barley Hub (The Hutton Institute).

As part of the programme, SWA members are funding nine PhDs researching the medium-long-term challenge of maintaining a sustainable supply of high-quality barley, produced using fewer inputs and having less environmental impact.

However, some influential voices question whether the wholesale adoption of regenerative agricultural fundaments is necessarily the best way forward.

Increased costs due to potentially lower crop yields is one subject of contention, and in June, the Scotsman newspaper hosted a roundtable event in partnership with the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland (RHASS) at the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh, intended to explore views on regenerative farming.

In response to a question about how regenerative agriculture should be encouraged in Scotland, Greg Dawson, from the farmer-owned consultancy Scottish Agronomy, responded: “That implies that farmers are not already doing it. Those who do not wear the regenerative agriculture t-shirt, but have still been using regenerative farming practices for years, feel targeted.

“There are people who roll their eyes because they are already utilising integrated farm management, then there are left-field thinkers who are really pushing the boundaries and perhaps losing the scientific underpinning. Some have gone way beyond data-driven research. There are risks to following that path.”

Agricultural Ecologist Dr Lorna Cole declared: “It’s basically agroecology, but it does present farmers with a toolkit of management practices that they can pick and choose from.

“There’s a scale though, unlike with organic where you are or you aren’t, and everyone is on that scale, which means it should be inclusive, and that any farmer can move towards being more regenerative.”

Husband and wife partnership Alison and Dan Milne farm 750 acres in Fife, and also operate Crafty Maltsters from their Demperston Farm, providing malted barley for brewing and distilling, principally from Laureate barley grown on their own land.

Asked about regenerative agriculture, Alison says: “I think there’s not enough definition of what it means. It’s open to interpretation.

“Our view is that we do what is right for our farm. Every farm is different. We care very much about biodiversity and we think that you should learn from the past and advance old practices.”

What few people contest is that changes to some perceived negative agricultural practices are desirable for the future wellbeing of our environment, whether the ultimate outcome of those practices is frozen chips or Scotch Whisky

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