As for so many pubs, our customers love sitting next to water to enjoy a drink in the sun. However, it doesn’t simply enhance a beer garden. Water is a vital factor for all of us brewers for one simple reason: it’s 95% of every pint we produce yet it’s the one ingredient we rarely talk about.
The UK is facing a grim reality: our beloved waterways are in crisis. A landmark legal case has begun in the High Court alleging industrial-scale chicken farming linked to agricultural run-off has devastated river health. Plus, the Big River Watch launched its latest round of citizen science monitoring, reflecting a public increasingly alarmed about the state of our rivers.
Conventional farming relies on synthetic fertilisers to force high yields from tired soil. But this efficiency is an illusion. Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium – the building blocks of industrial fertilisers – are leaking from our fields and suffocating our rivers.
The cost of stripping these agricultural pollutants from our drinking water and dredging soil runoff from our rivers now runs to more than £500m annually – a bill we all pay through our water rates.
The yield-gap myth
As an ethical business, we at Stroud Brewery believe it’s time to connect the dots. The way we choose to eat isn’t just a matter of personal health; it’s the single most important factor in whether our rivers live or die.
We use 100% organic barley and hops. That’s not a marketing gimmick; it’s a decision with direct consequences for our water as organic farming avoids using synthetic fertilisers.
Critics of organic farming often point to the ‘yield gap’: suggesting without synthetic fertilisers, we cannot grow enough. This argument only works if we insist on maintaining a broken system. By transitioning to an organic, local and pasture-based diet, the gap closes.
Organic soils, rich in natural matter, act as a ‘sponge’. By using understorey green manures and herbal leys, organic farms keep the soil ‘armoured’, stopping the topsoil runoff currently accounting for 75% of river sediment.
Feeding intensive livestock uses forage maize, which is catastrophic for river health. By choosing pasture-fed organic meat, we trade maize for permanent, carbon-sequestering grasslands.
Food security measures
Currently, the UK is a net importer of grain, much of which feeds factory-farmed animals. By eating less meat but higher-quality and focusing on hardy, native breeds that thrive on grass, we free up land to grow bread-grain for people.
True food security is about whether our soil and water will still be productive in 50 years. Those are the same 50 years in which our industry needs reliable, clean water to brew.
Brewers and publicans are closer to this issue than most. We are, quite literally, in the water business. The choices we make about grain sourcing, the suppliers we favour, the stories we tell at the bar: these aren’t separate from the river health debate. They’re part of it.
By choosing organic and local, you are doing more than buying a product. You are investing in ‘Sponge UK’, a nation with the soil health to withstand floods, the water quality to support life and the self-reliance to feed its people without costing the earth.
The river starts at your plate. Let’s make it run clear.
