"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer
That's one of the problems with science, what science do you use to see things?
If chemistry isn't ringing any bells, then the chemist has to say it contains nothing worthwhile - because that's what they see.

It's reasonably plain to see that something like a tree will use electricity to run the pump, otherwise it isn't going to lift its sap 100 feet when the spring rolls around.
Or, that there is electrical charge keeping that one big puffy cloud in the sky in one cloud or otherwise it would follow the other scientific rules and move from areas of high conc. to areas of lower conc.
Or, how do you explain surface tension of a water droplet if you only use chemistry?

"why do raindrops skid around on the sea surface before they fall in, Mr Science degree?"

When you can look outside of the reductionist "is it biology, chemistry, physics....or what?" then you notice that there is a lot of "or what" all around us all the time, and notice that few are actually looking to find out.

Water is really quite neat stuff and yet quite a few never really look too close at what we don't yet understand about it

Electricity is the same

Life is the same - what's different between living wood and dead wood?

There is immense pressure to disbelieve that soil is a living organism, and that's really what caused a lot of trouble for Ewan Campbell and his company.

It causes me a loss of inner peace everytime I start my truck to spread industrial waste products on the soil, so you can see why the fert outfits got uncomfy
Interesting point, thinking about science. I have just been reading that Roundup is safe to have trace amounts in our food, as it does not effect us, however, it does effect bacteria AND our microbiome consists in a large part of bacteria. Science is just starting to realise how we are effected by the make up of our microbiome, so joining the dots, I am not sure Roundup is as safe as has been claimed!
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Interesting point, thinking about science. I have just been reading that Roundup is safe to have trace amounts in our food, as it does not effect us, however, it does effect bacteria AND our microbiome consists in a large part of bacteria. Science is just starting to realise how we are effected by the make up of our microbiome, so joining the dots, I am not sure Roundup is as safe as has been claimed!
Maybe it is as a one off sometimes. But trace amounts of it all the time for years or decades at a time is a different story....
Common sense should tell you that pre harvest dessication is a bad idea if people are going to eat it 🤦‍♂️
 
Maybe it is as a one off sometimes. But trace amounts of it all the time for years or decades at a time is a different story....
Common sense should tell you that pre harvest dessication is a bad idea if people are going to eat it 🤦‍♂️
Exactly. I couldn't believe it when I found out about them spraying it on before cutting. Is there a withdrawal period, as with animal medicines?
 
Interesting point, thinking about science. I have just been reading that Roundup is safe to have trace amounts in our food, as it does not effect us, however, it does effect bacteria AND our microbiome consists in a large part of bacteria. Science is just starting to realise how we are effected by the make up of our microbiome, so joining the dots, I am not sure Roundup is as safe as has been claimed!

I was only listening to a podcast in the past two days that mentioned roundup, there's some part humans don't have in our bodies but a lot more creatures do which makes the (I would say dubious) difference.
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Maybe it is as a one off sometimes. But trace amounts of it all the time for years or decades at a time is a different story....
Common sense should tell you that pre harvest dessication is a bad idea if people are going to eat it 🤦‍♂️
Many ultra processed foods carry trace levels of glyphosate as a result of it's almost ubiquitous use.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
round-up is fantastic spray, it has revolutionised farming world wide, r/u resistant crops, are a change maker for a proportion of the worlds underfed nations.
That said, nobody knows the long term effects, probably because no one cares. It could be that the negatives are outweighed by the positives, l don't know. I have never sprayed grass, pre-cutting, it simply sounds wrong, nor do l like the thought of using it to control weeds, actually in the water. Having said that, 40/50yrs ago, we thought gramoxone pre corn harvest was fantastic, no more chickweed or bineweed, if harvest was late, then the facts of how poisonous it was, a young child near here, died, after drinking some from a coke bottle, out it went, then reglone was the safe one, that went, probably replaced by r/u.
Organo phosphorous was banned because of it's dangerous properties, replaced by synthetic ones, which don't degrade like the o/p ones do, but l would bet, both were pleasing to sheep !
This world evolved into a habitable place, nature balanced itself, but that wouldn't keep the increasing population, so farming began, which changed the natural balance, and for many 1,000's of years, man has sought to control nature, by farming, with various degrees of failure or success. Basically we are losing, an increasing world population, and lifestyles, have meant we look to increasingly using short term fixes, that either are rendered ineffective by resistance, or are found to be dangerous, to us, or the environment
Where it will end up, no idea, what nature would say, a massive decrease in population, somewhere near 50%, and it keeps trying to do that, covid, aids, war, spanish flu etc, hasn't killed enough off though. So l expect scientists will keep bringing out temp fixes, 1/2 the world will continue to be food deficient, the other 1/2 will run to fat, not a particularly nice thought, but pretty true.
And a few of us will start to try and work with nature, give ourselves satisfaction, and end up being the last in the queue for dying of starvation.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
Yeah, there is a diagram circulating and it was based on an experiment conducted by cutting grass with scissors (Cridder, 1955) to promote rotational grazing vs set-stocking

It's sort-of become one of those lies that, if repeated often enough, becomes "the truth"

it is probably the case on golf-course greens etc where the grass is always cut and removed, and the sprinklers turned on after - the really short roots are entirely adequate and the soil is compacted by traffic

Cover is really a seasonal thing of course, most of our plants only really grow "tall" in October and then grow short and thick, because it aint the tropics there isn't enough sun to penetrate dense and tall pasture, plant density is the driver of how well it works.
it doesn't take very long for shrub bushes, ie blackthorn or bramble, to start creeping out from a hedge, if the land isn't properly farmed -and l cant define properly, but you know what l mean. Going back to savory's video, l can see what he means by 'reverting' back to scrub, seen it happen. How to avoid it, is rather an enigma, if you give ground a long recovery, you encourage shrubs, if you keep it it short, you drain your fertility, simply put. Perhaps we should aim to have 1 good cut, and the rest grazed, giving you a cut to 'reset', and a longish recovery to build up bulk, then your grazing does the rest, just as our fathers, or grandfathers did !
I don't know the answer, not sure anyone really does, we think we do, which is different. Each farm is unique, they have been farmed in different ways/methods over time, and evolved in slightly different ways. l have posted our changing scenario, on here, and tried to be honest about results, to be honest now, we are drowning in grass, we took 12 acres out of grazing this week, and cut Tuesday, today, we have to take another 10 acres out, to cut, it's gone to far ahead for the cows, pulling them out of their present field, the grass is waste high, next field, its just over knee high, and growing longer by the day. Most of that bulk, is through grass density, l cannot walk through it, and son struggles, the density, presumably encourages up ward growth, to the sun. A very different year to last, but l do think, that really focussing on getting our leys to match the ground, has been the biggest factor, and l think kilo's of seed per acre, needs reducing ! But our grazing rotation plans, have been knocked on the head !
 
Interesting point, thinking about science. I have just been reading that Roundup is safe to have trace amounts in our food, as it does not effect us, however, it does effect bacteria AND our microbiome consists in a large part of bacteria. Science is just starting to realise how we are effected by the make up of our microbiome, so joining the dots, I am not sure Roundup is as safe as has been claimed!

But you are not "joining the dots", you are making a speculative leap.

Does Rdp effect bacteria? Maybe/ maybe not. Is it persistent? Maybe/ maybe not.
Is the amount of bacteria in the microbiome declining in people? Highly unlikely
 
round-up is fantastic spray, it has revolutionised farming world wide, r/u resistant crops, are a change maker for a proportion of the worlds underfed nations.
That said, nobody knows the long term effects, probably because no one cares. It could be that the negatives are outweighed by the positives, l don't know. I have never sprayed grass, pre-cutting, it simply sounds wrong, nor do l like the thought of using it to control weeds, actually in the water. Having said that, 40/50yrs ago, we thought gramoxone pre corn harvest was fantastic, no more chickweed or bineweed, if harvest was late, then the facts of how poisonous it was, a young child near here, died, after drinking some from a coke bottle, out it went, then reglone was the safe one, that went, probably replaced by r/u.
Organo phosphorous was banned because of it's dangerous properties, replaced by synthetic ones, which don't degrade like the o/p ones do, but l would bet, both were pleasing to sheep !
This world evolved into a habitable place, nature balanced itself, but that wouldn't keep the increasing population, so farming began, which changed the natural balance, and for many 1,000's of years, man has sought to control nature, by farming, with various degrees of failure or success. Basically we are losing, an increasing world population, and lifestyles, have meant we look to increasingly using short term fixes, that either are rendered ineffective by resistance, or are found to be dangerous, to us, or the environment
Where it will end up, no idea, what nature would say, a massive decrease in population, somewhere near 50%, and it keeps trying to do that, covid, aids, war, spanish flu etc, hasn't killed enough off though. So l expect scientists will keep bringing out temp fixes, 1/2 the world will continue to be food deficient, the other 1/2 will run to fat, not a particularly nice thought, but pretty true.
And a few of us will start to try and work with nature, give ourselves satisfaction, and end up being the last in the queue for dying of starvation.

Farming is not working with nature, its a very unnatural process but it suits humans well.

Sheep are not natural to the UK. Dairy Milk isn't really natural for humans - we have just adapted to use it.
 



Possibly. But then to any significant level?

Anti bacterials aren't all bad all of the time!

 
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holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Possibly. But then to any significant level?

A good find but....

If they were "investigating" the effects of roundup why did they not have any plots where it was used without hoeing? Were they intentionally hiding the effects of roundup behind the hoeing? Who paid for the study?

ALL science research has biases, in the case of roundup some is pro- roundup and some is anti- roundup. Very few are truly neutral.

Also remember that the USA regulates on proven risk (ie: its considered sage until there's robust evidence it's not) whereas the EU regulates on the precautionary principle. Finland (where that study was done) is in neither.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.0%
  • Up to 25%

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  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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