When is the time to confront the elephant in the room ?

thesilentone

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Cumbria
Our action to negate or slow global warming is clearly not going fast enough. I don't point the finger at the UK exclusively, we are far from the worst offenders, however in general, are we doing enough ?

Looking at Agriculture alone, currently social media is full of pictures of tractors, mowers, tedders, choppers, trailers, balers etc, etc as we take advantage of this glorious weather, and literally make hay/silage while the sun shines, in general great to see, as we all know what a struggle it is sometimes when mother nature plays games.

Then you see a wonderful new 150+hp tractor tedding, which of course begs the question about the viability and economics of such a misfit between power and power consumption.

Then look at the total hp/ton of hay or silage made, and looking deeper into the fuel/energy required per ton and ask the question, what is the average ?

A SP forage harvester weighs in at about 12.5 tons, so the engine has to lug that, as well as power the whole unit, similar to a combine. We then have multiple tractors and trailers, a loader / buckrake & tractor, this is after mowing, tedding, rowing etc.

So, once the sheet is on, or the grain store closed and the job completed, does anyone have a benchmark for how many galls of diesel/fuel per ton has been consumed, and what the CO2 emissions for silaging, hay making, or harvesting is ?

It is only a matter of time until fingers start to point, and these questions are asked, and without a benchmark, how do we improve our performance ?
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I can see why folk use bigger machinery. They have a lot to do with fewer staff but we still use an MF135 for most haymaking operations. The lightness and small scale are a joy to be honest. If you are in it for the personal experience and to tread lightly then small scale is the way to go. Just don’t expect a skiing holiday or a new Range Rover. I do like lightweight small scale farming. I really want to change my combine for a lighter smaller one. As a Jd1085 it’s a weighty beast. As steel doesn’t get stronger with size, you need more of it to make a bigger machine so weight problems increase disproportionately to horsepower and draft. I’d go back to 12m tramlines as well. Go lighter, go faster 👍
 

ewald

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Mid-Lincs
I have a certain fondness for turning hay on a 135, although you do tend to forget the wet years, but where are the people going to come from? Social media is full of increasingly desperate adverts for harvest staff and we have just been told that our local co-op grain store is struggling to find weekend lorry drivers - tip of the staff shortage iceberg
 

delilah

Member
Our action to negate or slow global warming is clearly not going fast enough. I don't point the finger at the UK exclusively, we are far from the worst offenders, however in general, are we doing enough ?

Looking at Agriculture alone, currently social media is full of pictures of tractors, mowers, tedders, choppers, trailers, balers etc, etc as we take advantage of this glorious weather, and literally make hay/silage while the sun shines, in general great to see, as we all know what a struggle it is sometimes when mother nature plays games.

Then you see a wonderful new 150+hp tractor tedding, which of course begs the question about the viability and economics of such a misfit between power and power consumption.

Then look at the total hp/ton of hay or silage made, and looking deeper into the fuel/energy required per ton and ask the question, what is the average ?

A SP forage harvester weighs in at about 12.5 tons, so the engine has to lug that, as well as power the whole unit, similar to a combine. We then have multiple tractors and trailers, a loader / buckrake & tractor, this is after mowing, tedding, rowing etc.

So, once the sheet is on, or the grain store closed and the job completed, does anyone have a benchmark for how many galls of diesel/fuel per ton has been consumed, and what the CO2 emissions for silaging, hay making, or harvesting is ?

It is only a matter of time until fingers start to point, and these questions are asked, and without a benchmark, how do we improve our performance ?

What a complete and utter load of bollox. There is nothing wrong our side of the farm gate.
1863. The year that manmade co2 emissions first overtook background natural emissions.
What has changed since 1863 ?
Farming ? Not really, its just cows chomping on grass and farmers growing crops.
The food chain ? Damn right. Hauling identical loaves of bread in opposite directions on motorways, refrigerators and lights running 24/7 in supermarkets, planning policies that force people to climb into a car to get so much as a pint of milk, landfill sites overflowing with packaging waste.
What is it with all this hand-wringing over farmings impact on the environment ? Grow some and start to tell the truth of it, it's the rest of the food chain needs to get its act together.
 

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer
Our action to negate or slow global warming is clearly not going fast enough. I don't point the finger at the UK exclusively, we are far from the worst offenders, however in general, are we doing enough ?

Looking at Agriculture alone, currently social media is full of pictures of tractors, mowers, tedders, choppers, trailers, balers etc, etc as we take advantage of this glorious weather, and literally make hay/silage while the sun shines, in general great to see, as we all know what a struggle it is sometimes when mother nature plays games.

Then you see a wonderful new 150+hp tractor tedding, which of course begs the question about the viability and economics of such a misfit between power and power consumption.

Then look at the total hp/ton of hay or silage made, and looking deeper into the fuel/energy required per ton and ask the question, what is the average ?

A SP forage harvester weighs in at about 12.5 tons, so the engine has to lug that, as well as power the whole unit, similar to a combine. We then have multiple tractors and trailers, a loader / buckrake & tractor, this is after mowing, tedding, rowing etc.

So, once the sheet is on, or the grain store closed and the job completed, does anyone have a benchmark for how many galls of diesel/fuel per ton has been consumed, and what the CO2 emissions for silaging, hay making, or harvesting is ?

It is only a matter of time until fingers start to point, and these questions are asked, and without a benchmark, how do we improve our performance ?
I read once that a forage wagon is far more fuel efficient at making silage, far better than a self propelled. So maybe if diesel goes up in price, we will have more forage wagons. I wonder about the oil used to make wrap, bales are great for the odd field, but using bales as the way to conserve feed for the whole farm?
 
What a complete and utter load of bollox. There is nothing wrong our side of the farm gate.
1863. The year that manmade co2 emissions first overtook background natural emissions.
What has changed since 1863 ?
Farming ? Not really, its just cows chomping on grass and farmers growing crops.
The food chain ? Damn right. Hauling identical loaves of bread in opposite directions on motorways, refrigerators and lights running 24/7 in supermarkets, planning policies that force people to climb into a car to get so much as a pint of milk, landfill sites overflowing with packaging waste.
What is it with all this hand-wringing over farmings impact on the environment ? Grow some and start to tell the truth of it, it's the rest of the food chain needs to get its act together.

Very good post.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I have a certain fondness for turning hay on a 135, although you do tend to forget the wet years, but where are the people going to come from? Social media is full of increasingly desperate adverts for harvest staff and we have just been told that our local co-op grain store is struggling to find weekend lorry drivers - tip of the staff shortage iceberg
They won’t reappear overnight that’s for sure. It would need a change of national strategy to redistribute food production over more but smaller holdings. I admit it’s a pipe dream. Small is beautiful. I read the book.
 

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer
I can see why folk use bigger machinery. They have a lot to do with fewer staff but we still use an MF135 for most haymaking operations. The lightness and small scale are a joy to be honest. If you are in it for the personal experience and to tread lightly then small scale is the way to go. Just don’t expect a skiing holiday or a new Range Rover. I do like lightweight small scale farming. I really want to change my combine for a lighter smaller one. As a Jd1085 it’s a weighty beast. As steel doesn’t get stronger with size, you need more of it to make a bigger machine so weight problems increase disproportionately to horsepower and draft. I’d go back to 12m tramlines as well. Go lighter, go faster 👍
my soil science lecturer (Mike Hann) used to rant about compaction from combines, he said if you really want to compact soil, do it when the soil is dry and use something heavy that vibrates and tyre pressure is altered by side wall strength, so no good saying only 10psi pressure
 

delilah

Member
They won’t reappear overnight that’s for sure. It would need a change of national strategy to redistribute food production over more but smaller holdings. I admit it’s a pipe dream. Small is beautiful. I read the book.

Yeah and I've got an award in memory of the man who wrote the book, and if he was still here he would have told you all this: All meaningful change is demand driven, if you want to change how food is produced then you have to change the marketplace. Market share is the root of all evil.
 

Vader

Member
Mixed Farmer
Our action to negate or slow global warming is clearly not going fast enough. I don't point the finger at the UK exclusively, we are far from the worst offenders, however in general, are we doing enough ?

Looking at Agriculture alone, currently social media is full of pictures of tractors, mowers, tedders, choppers, trailers, balers etc, etc as we take advantage of this glorious weather, and literally make hay/silage while the sun shines, in general great to see, as we all know what a struggle it is sometimes when mother nature plays games.

Then you see a wonderful new 150+hp tractor tedding, which of course begs the question about the viability and economics of such a misfit between power and power consumption.

Then look at the total hp/ton of hay or silage made, and looking deeper into the fuel/energy required per ton and ask the question, what is the average ?

A SP forage harvester weighs in at about 12.5 tons, so the engine has to lug that, as well as power the whole unit, similar to a combine. We then have multiple tractors and trailers, a loader / buckrake & tractor, this is after mowing, tedding, rowing etc.

So, once the sheet is on, or the grain store closed and the job completed, does anyone have a benchmark for how many galls of diesel/fuel per ton has been consumed, and what the CO2 emissions for silaging, hay making, or harvesting is ?

It is only a matter of time until fingers start to point, and these questions are asked, and without a benchmark, how do we improve our performance ?
The elephant in the room is human population.

Funny how so many tree huggers and woke stars seem to have a big litter...
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
What a complete and utter load of bollox. There is nothing wrong our side of the farm gate.
1863. The year that manmade co2 emissions first overtook background natural emissions.
What has changed since 1863 ?
Farming ? Not really, its just cows chomping on grass and farmers growing crops.
The food chain ? Damn right. Hauling identical loaves of bread in opposite directions on motorways, refrigerators and lights running 24/7 in supermarkets, planning policies that force people to climb into a car to get so much as a pint of milk, landfill sites overflowing with packaging waste.
What is it with all this hand-wringing over farmings impact on the environment ? Grow some and start to tell the truth of it, it's the rest of the food chain needs to get its act together.
There is a point in my view. Hauling 10 tonnes of iron up and down a hill uses more diesel and squashes more air out of the ground than hauling 2 tonne of iron up and down a hill. Bigger isn’t always beautiful. And everybody is sat in council estates getting obese because they have nowt to do while Mr Big is wondering how he can get rid of another employee on £12 an hour by buying an even bigger machine for eleventy thousand pounds. Madness in my view.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.0%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 35.1%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 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

  • 1,291
  • 1
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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