The inclination to align publications with the values and needs of agribusiness and present new product information as reportage, it suggests, reduced trust and supported the maintenance of the status quo in agricultural practice. Morris et al. compared the framing of antibiotic use in animal agriculture within national and sectoral publications in the UK. This highlighted the emphasis placed on implications for human health across outlets. It also, however, identified a distinct framing of the issue within the farming press which itself highlights the perceived importance of the media within the sector. This framing centred on the strength of public scrutiny and the consequent need for ‘informed and responsible’ decisions that successfully maintain consumer confidence. In her analysis of environmental discourses within German farming media, McHenry showed that environmental problems were commonly played down when established farming practices were ‘blamed’ for, or implicated in, them. However, pro-environmental discourses were utilised when they ‘served the interest of farmers’ . She also described how internally diverse elements of the farming sector press can be. Media analysis is less common in relation to trees and the forestry sector, fodder grow system however, Takala et al used print media analysis across scales – regional newspapers and sectoral magazines – to identify four primary discourses within the representation of Finnish forestry.
A ‘wood production’ discourse has remained a dominant force in the sector despite the growth of alternative discourses emphasising a broader, multifunctional understanding of forestry: demonstrating how well-established framings can persist in sectoral media. Media coverage of urban forestry has also received some attention from researchers . Conway and Jalali describe how urban trees have been framed within local media by their provision of aesthetic benefits and role in ecological restoration, along with their connections to and values for specific communities. These positive frames were countered, however, following a storm event after which the damage they caused and the cost of clearing up debris dominated their framing. In this paper our analysis explores how tree planting, especially for climate change mitigation and adaptation, is covered by the farming print media, with reference to wider media interest in scientific research on the issue. Farmers Guardian and Farmers Weekly are not available as digitised versions in the Nexis News database; hence our samples are based on paper copies of the two publications across four sample periods. We took two initial samples of issues of both Farmers Guardian and Farmers Weekly, each spanning a three-month period encompassing high-level policy and academic activity surrounding tree planting and climate change. The first sample covered a period starting a month prior to the publication of the UK CCC ‘Net Zero’ report and ending in the month prior to the publication of the Bastin et al. paper . The second sample extended over a period beginning with the publication month of the Bastin et al. paper and running to the month following the IPCC report on ‘Climate Change and Land’. This second sample period also encompassed publication of the National Farmers Union ‘Achieving Net zero’ report , which also placed significant emphasis on farm carbon storage through tree planting.
We took these two initial samples to look in depth at media coverage of tree planting and to track short-term change during this period of intense and high impact international and national debate on climate change and tree planting. To track longer term changes in coverage we took two further samples, one year and two years after our first sample . Resource constraints meant that we could not access paper copies of Farmers Guardian for the 2020 and 2021 sample periods . For these two further samples we only included Farmers Weekly, the most widely distributed and read publication, but we are confident that the four sample periods covered by Farmers Weekly allowed us to consider how the narrative surrounding tree planting changed over time. In total, our analysis encompassed 74 issues of these two publications. Table 1 outlines the number of issues in each of the four samples and provides some descriptive statistics related to article counts in each. We included all non-advertising content within our analysis including feature articles, letters, opinion pieces, editorial, and news items – all of which herein we refer to as ‘articles’. Our exploration of the coverage of tree planting, or ‘woodland creation’, within the UK’s farming print media found that such topics occupy only an extremely small proportion of the pages of two key publications. Across our four samples less than 2% of articles focussed, or even commented, on tree planting.Where these subjects are covered, most articles only mention the topic in passing.While we might not expect tree planting to feature to an equal extent in the farming press as other core agricultural matters , it does receive an extremely low amount of coverage.
If we accept that media outlets and elements of society co-produce accepted group norms, values, and practices, this suggests that tree planting and woodland creation are simply not considered as a currently significant or legitimate element of farming culture and practice. Given that farmers are not only responsible for the management of extensive existing woodlands, but also their aforementioned position as managers of the vast majority of land that could potentially be afforested, this can be seen as a significant problem. Within our sample, coverage, including pieces that focused fully on tree planting, was greatest during the period which saw substantial relevant policy and research activity – that is S2. One alternative, less problematic, potential explanation for the virtual absence of coverage during S3 might be the prominence of the covid-19 pandemic at that time. April to June 2020 was a period of widespread restrictions and heightened concern about the disease which provided important content for media outlets across all professional sectors and at local and national scales. However, as coverage of all traditionally core dimensions of farming continued throughout the pandemic, it appears more likely that trees – let alone tree planting as a pathway to climate change mitigation – have not yet made their way onto the agenda of the farming sector. It seems unquestionable that greater coverage of trees, tree planting and ‘woodland creation’ is needed in the farming sector press if any substantive change in land use is to become evident. Much like the analysis of McHenry , we found quite internally diverse coverage. The farming sector press in the UK over 2019, 2020 and 2021 presented two sets of relatively polarised perspectives and associated messages on tree planting and woodland creation. A generally negative perspective is constructed around the view that climate change will not be solved by replacing agriculture with trees, that the real asset status of forestry is inflating already high agricultural land values out of reach of many farming businesses, and that government incentives for tree planting are not fit for purpose and do not address the poor economic potential that trees and woodlands offer.
Much of this negative coverage takes the form of opinion pieces or letters. A more positive perspective is predicated around two themes. First, that there are opportunities for trees to enhance the farming unit and the agri-environment, and second,chicken fodder system rare acknowledgements that woodland creation on farmland can intrinsically be a positive step towards combatting climate change. Our initial two samples of articles in Farmers Weekly and Farmers Guardian were taken during a period coinciding with the publication of a number of high-level policy and science outputs and thus intense and widespread debate of the role of tree planting in fighting climate change. These received significant attention in the UK’s national media but generated relatively little attention within the farming press itself. The UK CCC Net Zero report published in May 2019 discussed the role of woodland creation on UK agricultural land in decarbonising the economy, among several other climate change mitigation and adaption measures. This tree planting message was widely picked up in the national media . However, reflecting once again perceptions within the sector regarding the core elements of farming, coverage of this report in the farming press focussed mainly on the messages surrounding reducing livestock numbers and meat consumption rather than the role of tree planting on agricultural land. The Bastin et al. paper published in July 2019 took a global view of tree planting for climate change mitigation, arguing that large swathes of agricultural land across the world was suitable for tree planting. The UK national media again widely picked up on this message but few made links to implications for UK agriculture. In particular, how this woodland expansion may be achieved was more or less ignored by the national media coverage. Given the potential implications of the finding of the Bastin et al. paper for UK agriculture, it is perhaps surprising that there was no direct coverage of it in the farming press at the time. The national media also published a range of critical responses to the Bastin et al. paper immediately after the initial public attention; much of that echoed some of the themes identified in our analysis. Trees can only work as a “most effective solution” for climate change if they are not misused as an offset for continued emissions elsewhere ; an argument that is very similar to the worries of farmers getting disproportionately saddled with outsourced emission reductions from other sectors of the economy. There was, however, a secondary wave of criticism which went without coverage by either national media or farming press.
A range of scientific comments were published months after the original paper, primarily arguing that the calculation methods used by Bastin et al. were incorrect and significantly overstated the potential of carbon sequestration via tree planting . As a result, the authors issued an erratum in 2020, clarifying and changing some of the original statements . Neither popular nor sectoral media reported this. The IPCC Climate Change and Land report published in August 2019 placed great emphasis on reducing emissions from food production e.g., through reductions in livestock numbers and moves to plant-based diets.As with the UK CCC report a few months earlier, this was reflected in several articles in the farming press where the anti-meat agenda formed the main topic of the article, and planting trees was only mentioned in passing. The NFU, a central institution within the farming sector with considerable media presence, published their Achieving Net Zero report at the start of September 2019, outlining how the UK farming sector intends to reach net zero by 2040. Increasing farm tree cover is, together with enhancing soil carbon storage, seen as the main pillar to boost carbon sequestration on farms. The national media, focused primarily on the claim in the report that this does not need to come at a cost to beef production . The coverage of the NFU report by the farming press speaks positively about the “unique position” of the UK’s farming sector to become a role model in producing “the most climate friendly meat in the world”. The principal messages from these high-level policy documents that were interpreted and reported in the farming press were perceived, or framed, as ‘attacks’ on agriculture. The coverage of these reports related principally to theme one , with much of the coverage reactionary in nature, critically overlooking some of the other recommendations of these reports, such as the potential for agroforestry to assist with decarbonising farming and the wider economy. Much of the coverage of these reports doesn’t examine how the agricultural sector in the UK might address some of their findings. Only the NFU Net Zero report was presented positively by the farming press, highlighting the complementarities between tree planting and implementation of other efficiency measures on farms. This perhaps demonstrates the strength of established interests within the farming media. Much like the findings of McHenry , our analysis suggests the farming press play down or exclude the messages of these major reports when the farming sector is criticised and promote positive messages that maintain the existing position, structure and values of the sector. Overall, the UK’s farming press successfully continued to steer a steady course for the sector through the ‘storm’ created around it by major policy works and scientific analyses.