Attacks on eco-friendly farming misplaced
The Western Morning News begins a week-long series, Livestock in the Landscape. In the run-up to the climate conference in Copenhagen, the series examines how farming is essential to our environment amid claims that rearing farm animals contributes to global warming. Here, Martin Hesp looks at what grazing means in the Westcountry – and livestock farming expert Graham Harvey explains why pasture-based farming is so vital
A YOUNG Exmoor farmer looks out at his cattle and sheep grazing peacefully amid a scene of stunning natural beauty, and feels bewildered. Richard Dart is wondering how he, and others like him, are helping to wreck the planet.
After all, the landscape around his farm at Molland on Exmoor's high southern ridge, seems to reflect Mother Nature in all her finest glory.
So, how can the livestock, which have been making the Dart family a living for generations, be causing untold environmental damage?
Some 20 miles west, a dairy farmer is pondering the same question. Tom Morris, who keeps 180 Friesians on his 400-acre organic spread near Bishops Lydeard, has spent 15 years developing a low-input form of farming – that means he uses no artificial fertilisers and only a tiny amount of diesel.
Both these farmers – and many others like them – are wondering why livestock is suddenly being swept into the firing line in the great climate change debate.
"Eat less meat and save the planet" barks one headline. "We must rid our farms of livestock and grow veggies instead" snaps another.
Even serious publications like the Lancet have been echoing such thoughts – in the latest edition, a report by two eminent scientists calls for a reduction in the number of farm animals as a way of fighting global warming.
But, like a burger made from cheap imported meat, it is a call that's a bit hard to swallow if you happen to be a Westcountry farmer who relies on one perfectly innocent, eco-friendly, crop.
It's called grass.
We can't eat it but livestock can. A fact which makes grazing animals the perfect environment-friendly machine when it comes to producing nutritious non-polluting food. If nature hadn't evolved the cow, we'd have to invent it.
"You'd go to an agricultural machinery research place and ask them to produce a machine which was a self-propelled mower," says Tom Morris. "It would have to not only mow the grass, but pick it up – then you'd have to develop a thing on the back that would ingest it as a fertiliser while it was mowing.
"It's what they call a cow. All we're doing is using a cow as a machine to harvest grass – then we walk it back to the farm and it produces milk."
Put like that, it sounds a bit like a miracle – which is how some more industrially-minded farmers might describe Tom's low-input dairy system.
"We grow grass and clover organically without any inputs and this farm is utterly sustainable," says Mr Morris. "We haven't re-seeded in 15 years – and the grass lays are better now than they were 15 years ago.
"We only graze cattle – we make very little silage. A cow grazing is not having food brought in to her – she goes out to get it," says Mr Morris, who tells me his machinery diesel bill is lower than the one he pays for his Aga cooker oil.
"We hardly buy anything in – no fertilisers. Okay, so I'm not producing huge yields, but I haven't got any inputs – and once the oil runs dry, I will still be here," he concludes.
Back on Exmoor, Richard Dart and his father William keep prize-winning Red Devon cattle as well as Devon Closewool and Exmoor Horn sheep.
These are local native breeds that can deal with the harsh elements up in the hills, they produce some of the best red meat you will ever eat, and they are reared in the old-fashioned traditional way.
What this means is the animals are not reliant on tonnes of proteins brought in from goodness knows where – they live off that same magical stuff called grass.
"We farm in a very traditional way and I think it is environmentally friendly," Mr Dart tells me. "The sheep graze the natural herbs on the slopes – and that's good for insects, birds and wildlife.
"Fertilisers are far too expensive, so we don't use much at all. What we do hasn't changed very much in years – we use a little mechanisation but not much. The grass is giving us a living," says Mr Dart.
Asked what he thought of the "eat less meat and save the planet" lobby, Mr Dart replies: "It's obviously a veggie campaign – I'd have thought driving cars and things like that would be far more harmful than these cattle and sheep. This is a renewable source of protein – we are not depleting any natural reserves."
Now, let's meet a man who's made a name for himself selling meat. You'd expect Launceston's Philip Warren to go red as a beef steak with fury at the mere mention of cutting down on our carnivorous habits.
"In a roundabout way, I am all for it," he grins. "What we've been saying for years is – eat less meat, but make sure it's better meat when you do.
"If you read all these environmental reports, everything points towards the fact that grassland will save the planet – and those who use grass to feed cattle are going to be here for a long time to come.
"What all this is hitting is the East Anglia farmer with his feed-lot bringing in all sorts of food from elsewhere," says Mr Warren. "The problem is that we've taken a wonderful product and made it an eat-all-you- like-anytime-you-like thing.
"Grass is so important," he goes on. "And by grass, I mean all the herbage – all the other things that an animal can get in the grass – it produces the very best, most healthy meat around.
"You don't need all those sprays and mass ploughing – they want to stop all that – you don't need it if you can grow good grass. Which we can. Down here in the Westcountry we are in a very good position."
This has been the merest snippet of a tour into the grasslands of the Westcountry but it begs the question why opinion appears to be turning on an industry that seems to be pretty innocent when it comes to wrecking the planet.
But livestock gets blamed for other things too – and tomorrow, we'll be looking at how the products gleaned from grazing are actually good for our health rather than bad.
20 Comments
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by Theo H, Lifton
Tuesday, December 01 2009, 10:35AM
“@ Will.
Covered with oak or not?
I read somewhere that when the Romans arrived there was much open land - enough for them to remark on this.
But was this natural or man made?”
by Will, Mid Devon
Tuesday, December 01 2009, 10:06AM
“Sorry, Theo, me again - I gather that current thinking is that the country was not as covered in oak woodland as people tend to believe. It is now thought that even before man started removing forests during the bronze age and before, woodlands were probably interspersed with large clearings and meadows that supported the variety of wild ruminants and ungulates that roamed the landscape.
Charles - there are in fact remnants of oak woodland buried in the peat of the Somerset Moors, left as a result of large changes in sea level over millennia - but before Alfred the Great's time I think!”
by Will, Mid Devon
Tuesday, December 01 2009, 9:53AM
“What several of the posts here seem to be ignoring is that the carbon footprint of meat production is not simply related to the methane that ruminants burp but to the way in which the stock are reared, and the fact that much of the meat and meat products we eat in this country come from cattle reared on deforested land in South America or from animals reared on cereals and soya grown on similar land. And 40% of the cereals we grow in this country are fed to livestock. Cereal growing is energy intensive (i.e. produces lots of carbon emissions), low input grassland can be carbon-neutral.
Like most things to do with carbon emissions, we don't have to give things up altogether and go around wearing hair shirts and living in caves, but the systems we operate under in developed countries in particular, whether it be food consumption or other aspects, is very extravagant.
Theo - you say, quite rightly, that our landscape is man-made. This is true, but it has evolved over a long period of time and almost all of our wildlife is adapted to the man-made landscape - which is not to say that it is ideal for it, due to the relatively rapid changes that have occurred over the last half century or so. If we were to suddenly stop rearing livestock many species would be lost, and the already alarming decline in pollinating insects, for example - upon which we depend for the growth of most of our fruit and vegetable crops, could well accelerate. Pollinating (nectar-feeding) insects cannot relay on the relatively short flowering season that only crop plant species provide. This is only one example, of course, though an important one, of the "ecosystem services" that we get from our landscape, the importance of which we are becoming increasingly aware of.
Of course, de-intensifying grassland along the lines of organic farming would be an improvement. Mixed organic farms generally support most wildlife.
The more "artificial" we make our landscape - and the more rapidly we do it in relation to an evolutionary/adaptive timescale - the more difficult things became and the more effort is needed. We could of course ensure that important landscape features were retained and maintained sensitively, but this is already not happening to a large extent.
OK so we could probably grow more woodland - which is a good wildlife habitat - but this would probably not compensate for the wide scale losses and disadvantage we would incur by wide scale loss of agricultural grasslands.
The patchwork nature of the landscape makes very important contribution to biodiversity. Arable deserts, even if dotted with woodland, don't.
Having said all this, it would be interesting to do a detailed study into how gradual transitional changes could be made, given potential reductions in meat consumption, that might not impinge too much overall on the aesthetic and wildlife value of our landscapes.”
by Charles Henry 1945-(diuturnity), Somersetshire
Monday, November 30 2009, 10:15PM
“:| The Leprechaun thinks that Wessex and Dumnonia was once like Nottingham forest. . I think he's been on the magic mushrooms again. . :) I feel sure Alfred the Great would have had him flogged as an interloper and dumped in the marshes of the Somerset levels. . The remains they dug up in the peat were probably from a relative of his.”
by Theo Hopkins, Lifton
Monday, November 30 2009, 9:22PM
“What are the traditions of the Westcountry?
What is the traditional landscape of the Westcountry?
The traditional - if one means by that, the original - landscape of the Westcountry, is not a chequerboard of small fields with happy cows and long vistas. It is a landscape of dense oak/holly mixed-age forests with the odd bear and wolf.
The "traditional" as seen in picture postcards is a man made landscape.
It has changed before, and can - and will - change again.”
by Chris, Beaworthy
Monday, November 30 2009, 9:01PM
“Well done to Martin Hesp and the Western Morning News. Good to read some common sense in response to yet another extreme attack on the traditional West Country.
There are far too many 'sheep' out there. Not eating grass, but swallowing all the predictions of doom from every quarter. Global warming, climate change or however we label it may or may not be real. The only certainty, I can see, is that there are huge numbers of people in competition with each other to grab the next headline. There is a risk of over loading the population with scarey 'facts'.
If we keep things reasonable then, maybe, the whole business of reducing human impact on the planet may get a better following.
The other solution is of course to leave it all to Theo of Lifton. He clearly has all the answers. Heaven help us.
Again, well done WMN. Looking forward to the rest of the series.”
by Freethinker, Cornwall
Monday, November 30 2009, 7:20PM
“Mr. Green from Ireland is brainwashed. I have no problems with those who want to live a green lifestyle, but like the U.N. and the green movement as a hole, we are being lectured by individuals and organizations who should butt out of other peoples lives, namely, the rest of the population. Fantastic Theo, you go a preach to your green zombie friends about how Global Warming and f***ing cows are bringing a methane armaggedon to the world. Go and join eugenics policy makers and Gobal Elites who have hijacked the enviromental movement to push through their agenda, under the pre-text of AGW/CO2. One of the greatest worries of this U.N. agenda is that many of the worlds greenies or should I say enviromental activists stand behind the U.N. without examing the clear agenda behind "green facade". This is because enviromentalists have no better understanding of nature and it's functions than the apologists of the industrial agriculture. These oposing sides, from the way I see it , share a common vision for the future of Earth-a world devoid of farmers and domesticated, natural livestock, with fields and monocultures that stretch to the horizon, and wildlife presevation zones that remain locked up for enternity. These U.N. zones that they often talk about will begin to deteriorate. The reason being, because their is a lack of good genuine land management and true animal husbandry, which you often talk about Charles. Farming can work, if left to it's own devices without interference from Governments and U.N. bodies. In my view Theo, what we are lacking from an enviromental persective is percisely that which the U.N. would like to anhilate in the western world. This deliberate war on methane is nothing more than a way of gaining monies off of us. Carbon taxes, methane taxes on livestock in America has already been proposed. It's time to wake up Theo, and understand that you and your green movement have been sold a lie. Freethinker”
by Theo Hopkins, Lifton
Monday, November 30 2009, 6:31PM
“"The world has to be fed", one poster posted.
Yes, and meat is not the best way of doing this.
The Westcountry produces good meat. However, meat is very land demanding, needing much more land per unit of protein or calorie than plant based foods. Meat is a luxury in land use terms.
What determines meat and dairy here in the Westcountry is not just the excellence of our grass, but to a great extent, it is determined by the hilliness of the WC, which means it is not so suitable for mechanised arable production, as in Norfolk and other flat areas.
IIRC, the central plain of Ireland, the area around Dublin, is both good for meat, as it has rain-fed grass like the WC, but also as it is flat, is good for arable crops too.
There are plenty of ways that grain, potatoes and other staples can be grown in the WC. It is however, given the problem of mechanisation, it is not presently _economic_ to do this in competition with Norfolk - or Canada. However, there are niche crops like Cornish Early potatoes, which can overcome the present cost disadvantages of a hilly landscape.
Just because the WC produces good beef, this doesn't ,mean that the WC can _only_ produce beef. I am sure in the past - before WWII - there would have been a much more varied farm production here. Also, look to the amount of fodder maize grown here - this shows grain can be grown successfully in the WC.”
by Charles Henry 1945-(diuturnity), Somersetshire
Monday, November 30 2009, 6:23PM
“:| Theo; what we all know is that ALL animals 'pass wind', but what we are not prepared to accept is that somehow the earth has a 'glass ceiling' and that will cause the 'End of the World' as we all know it. . This is all beginning to sound as foolish as Liberal Democrat tax policy.”
by Theo Hopkins, Lifton
Monday, November 30 2009, 5:47PM
“I would like to post here ¿ Martin Hesp, are you reading this? ¿ a clip from an article written by Simon Fairlie, a smallholder and environmental activist, in the Guardian on 30 Jan 2008. This is a critique of ¿Livestock¿s Long Shadow¿.
Quote starts:
¿In November 2007, a Food Climate Research Network report concluded that UK meat and dairy consumption was responsible for 8% of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions. This is still a worrying amount, but considerably less than the 18% claimed by the green and vegan movement. It is also far less than the UK's transport emissions, which, according to the Department for Transport, represent around 33% of all our greenhouse emissions, if aviation is included.¿
End of quote.
This is not the clean bill of health the NFU claim, but is probably nearer the truth than the 18% some people claim.
I suggest people read the whole article. (¿A lot of hot air¿).
Best input just ¿Simon Fairlie¿ into the Guardian, as the article heading does not bring up the needed result.”