One of the longest running (if not the longest running) culture war subjects must be agriculture. From the organised, but ultimately failed, backlash against Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring to the modern day protests against nitrogen run off regulations in Wales and the Netherlands, farming has long been the front line between the environmentalism and libertarianism/change nothing-ism.

The big frustration from ‘our’ point of view is that we are often faced with simplistic lines like “people have got to eat”, as if it is possible to destroy the natural environment and produce food. Take Carson’s apocalyptic vision of a silent spring where there is no bird song as a lack of insect life has lead to a collapse in avian populations. From a purely anthropocentric point of view, that silence is but an alarm klaxon – a full 84% of the EU’s agricultural production relies on insect pollination – and much of it also relies on a reasonably stable climate and healthy soil. Sustainability means human survival as well as that of the natural world, the two being deeply intertwined.

Communicating this is always a challenge – explaining complexity against simplistic slogans. The Brexit debate showed how a simplistic slogan such as ‘take back control’ can resonate in the public’s minds while a myriad of complex socio-economic remain arguments failed to do so. As the arch-political communicator Ronald Reagan pointed out “if you’re explaining, you’re losing”.

Carson showed one solution – the evocative vision. If you’ve never read Silent Spring, it’s actually a complex science book, but one with a preface (a mere two pages) which changed the world. Vision first, then the technical stuff. Likewise, the reason why the state of UK rivers or ocean plastics resonate with the public if because we can easily imagine a polluted stream full of dead fish, and the National Geographic image of a seahorse with a cotton bud started a revolution of its own.

So don’t be afraid to start simple – “go green or starve” – but make sure you’ve got the complex arguments in your back pocket just in case.