Sowing the Seeds for Green Growth - Real Green Jobs

 Unpublished article for Landworker magazine. 

Sowing the Seeds for Green Growth

Real Green Jobs

 

Unite’s very own soil scientist Charlie Clutterbuck is not only co-producing a Grow to Eat documentary film (now done - Feb 2026) and completing (publisher sorted for Winter 2026) a book he’s dreamed about all his life on soil but he is also asking why talk of green jobs never includes agriculture.

He says “we hear about green jobs in the energy sector when they are building massive windfarms in the middle of the countryside, while ignoring the potential to grow more food there.

“ Meanwhile, we import about half our food whilst ignoring the disproportionate environmental impacts on the rest of the planet. “

It means 70% of the land needed to grow our food is abroad, mainly in South America where 40% of the population has experienced moderate or severe food insecurity.

“There is a similar proportion regarding Greenhouse Gases  and as for water to grow the stuff this is hard to measure,” says Charlie. “The late Professor Tony Allen coined the term ‘virtual water’ to describe the water used to grow our food. One estimate put that at 22 River Niles worth in Africa to supply Europe with the fruit and vegetables we are actually good at growing ourselves.”

Charlie, who half a century ago combined with colleagues to kick start the Hazards magazine that revolutionised the trade union health and safety approach away largely from compensation towards prevention, wants to sow the seed for a whole green economy.

Charlie’s new short film, Grow to Eat, due out in the Autumn, shows it’s possible to grow food in the most difficult of places. Adopting such a programme nationally could bring substantial rewards in terms of countryside jobs and a revival of communities left behind.

“We could be sowing the seed for a whole green economy if we invested in real green jobs, mainly in the countryside. Also by encouraging the growth of healthy crops and animals we could save money on dealing with obesity, whilst eating into the £40bn more on imports we spend on food over export costs,” states Charlie.

Following Brexit, Britain’s exports sector has struggled. “Much of the push for Brexit came from the Eastern fields where plantation style farming encouraged the use of migrant workers. They soon departed. But instead of  British workers taking their place they soon realised the awful condition and poor wages, especially following the 2010-2015 Coalition government crashing of the Agricultural Wages Board, which even Thatcher had left alone, ” explains Charlie.

Now instead of the original migrant workers from Rumania and Poland, they are recruited from much further afield such as Asia or, even Bolivia. They are badly exploited.

 

There are also the environmental impacts of many thousands of acres in the east of the country being ploughed up - thus compacting the soil – by massive foreign made tractors at over £500,000 each that sow continual monocrops of grain and vegetables.

“We are annually losing 2 million tons of valuable soil that needs much more tender care by people working on the land with more suitable equipment if we are to continue producing food in the future,” explains Charlie. “Then there is the amount of nitrogen fertilisers poured on soil. In terms of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) they contribute according to my calculations, as no organisation appears to want to work this out, between 1 to 2 % of all UK GHGs.”

Charlie laments the absence of talks about soil loss and there is no research along these lines. He wants to see re-opened the 3/4s of our land-based research centres that at one time worked closely with food growers. It would mean restoring highly skilled jobs.

“Also by protecting the soil it will help fend off flooding and drought, There should also be smaller plots with a much wider variety of plants, interspersed with trees to help hold water which helps cooling. Smaller tractor machines would be needed - hence a unique new UK industry - with real green jobs that help the  environment in lots of ways - rather than just counting carbon.”

On the western side of the country, Charlie wants to see more animals outdoors instead of them being locked up indoors and fed on soy from South America and maize from USA. Again, green jobs.

In turn moors could be transformed because as shown by the Pennines Hills Todmorden based hand-built Incredible Farm, established in 2012 and which annually produces over a ton of food whilst also teaching small scale market gardening and farming, even the roughest of terrain can be used to grow food.

Grouse shooting, which even the Moorland Association estimates only create 1,500 full-time jobs, isn’t, it would appear at this moment, subsidised but landowners with over 500 hectares can still obtain subsidies for rewilding and planting carbon offset trees.

Charlie argues instead that the £3bn that was once used largely by the EU to finance large landowners, who in many cases did not produce food, could instead be spent subsidising hundreds of thousands of green jobs rurally.

As growing cannot be replaced by AI then “we need real workers on decent green wages to grow in ways that regenerate the soil, establish links between town and country, help resist climate change and encourage a bigger rural economy with all the corresponding new houses and facilities,” explains Charlie. “And my union is the best situated to create and promote this collection of real green jobs.”