Alarming aspirations from latest climate report...

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I'm not saying I agree with it but I think the argument is that beef and other meat is inefficient in a calorie per acre system.
Take these ultra efficient contract farming systems. They make money over huge acres but don't produce much food, a lot of what they produce is feed wheat which is used to produce livestock. They argue (i think) that, that land should be used to grow other food that can be fed directly to us humans, so reducing the amount of land used for food production allowing more of it to be used to "fix" climate change.

My guess is the numbers work on paper in a study, just not in the real world.
It wont stop them trying though.
A lot of land is grass because it won’t grow anything else. Grazing the grass is a very good way of turning it into a nutritious high energy food otherwise known as meat and dairy products. I think that’s fairly clever and efficient really and if we weren’t doing it now then somebody would probably invent it and be hailed a hero. Quite incredible that all that lovely protein and fat can come from grass. If mangos and bananas would grow in Lanarkshire I am sure they’d be doing it now. They do grow oats, potatoes and neeps but that’s a far as they can push it without needing supplementary heat and light.
I find it incredible really that people suggest these vertical horticultural systems that rely on electricity for the light and pumped hydroponics for the nutrients. My mate who is a left wing lecturer is well into it. He has a basic system in his house, all LEDs and purring pumps growing chillies and stuff. It’s all completely dependent on generated electricity, and requires lots of expensive manufactured components. When you mention the electricity usage it’s just dismissed as irrelevent. Scale it up and you’d need 10 nuclear power stations running balls out to grow enough veg indoors that could be grown outside using freely available daylight. Worlds gone mad. You just don’t know what to say really, it’s so bonkers.
 

Ted M

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Shropshire
From memory my small herd (25 spring calving cows) produces 250 something tonnes of co2e per year according to a carbon calculator we did around 12 months ago.
We sell about 25 finished cattle per year at around 400kg dw so approx 10 tonnes of beef. That's 25kg co2e per kg.
Bulls are finished and away by 14 months, heifers at 18 unless they go for breeding.
Cows wintered on hay and loose housed on straw with all inputs apart from fert coming from within a mile radius.
I think they use the same calculator for water use when they claim several thousand litres for a burger.
Ours are on metered mains water and it works out about 0.25 litres per burger. What falls on the fields I have no control over.
Definitely some creative accountancy going on.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
If rewilding really takes hold then won’t we end up with vast herds of bison anyway? So what happens, they get killed and eaten by bears or something or die and get eaten my maggots in the woods. There will still surely be a carbon footprint associated with a herd of wild bison? All we are doing as farmers is eating them before they die of old age or predation so we aren’t adding anything to green house gases by farming them over and above the amount of gas they’d produce living wid, other than maybe a bit of diesel for the loader tractor.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Carbon audits really grind my gears. They did one at the steelworks and lo and behold a ton of steel results in 2 tons of CO2, 8 % of global CO2 production. But so what? We need steel. It is as it is. We can’t just close them all down or maybe can in the UK and import it!
How much CO2 does a patio heater or hot tub produce? Well nobody really wants to know because that’s part of the sacred hospitality industry which can do no wrong. Don’t upset the holiday making public. No, pick on what are now minority activities like farming and primary industry.
 

johnspeehs

Member
Location
Co Antrim
Well as far as I'm concerned I still don't think that they will be able to grow enough plant protein by 2030 in an edible form to feed people to a healthy standard. The other thing for me is it's not just about eating to live, people enjoy a diverse diet, they derive a great deal of pleasure from eating a balanced diet of meat, veg, fruit ,grain and dairy, it's one of the few pleasures we have left.
 

kiwi pom

Member
Location
canterbury NZ
They ignore (or know nothing of) the inconvenient fact that the specifications for milling wheat are way harder to grow than for feed wheat, that's why feed wheat is the fallback option. The yields of milling grade wheat on moderate cereal land would not be anywhere near what they expect, utterly ruining their "efficiency" calculations.

Yes that's why I said, it looks good on paper.
The danger of pointing out your wheat problem to them is they conclude that it would be better for the planet and the UK's "footprint" to import bread wheat from a country more suited to producing it and stop UK farmers growing feed wheat - although the researchers don't seem to mind pork and chicken production as much - and either grow roots and veg or plant trees to make their carbon sums look good.
 

kiwi pom

Member
Location
canterbury NZ
A lot of land is grass because it won’t grow anything else. Grazing the grass is a very good way of turning it into a nutritious high energy food otherwise known as meat and dairy products. I think that’s fairly clever and efficient really and if we weren’t doing it now then somebody would probably invent it and be hailed a hero. Quite incredible that all that lovely protein and fat can come from grass. If mangos and bananas would grow in Lanarkshire I am sure they’d be doing it now. They do grow oats, potatoes and neeps but that’s a far as they can push it without needing supplementary heat and light.
I find it incredible really that people suggest these vertical horticultural systems that rely on electricity for the light and pumped hydroponics for the nutrients. My mate who is a left wing lecturer is well into it. He has a basic system in his house, all LEDs and purring pumps growing chillies and stuff. It’s all completely dependent on generated electricity, and requires lots of expensive manufactured components. When you mention the electricity usage it’s just dismissed as irrelevent. Scale it up and you’d need 10 nuclear power stations running balls out to grow enough veg indoors that could be grown outside using freely available daylight. Worlds gone mad. You just don’t know what to say really, it’s so bonkers.

Agreed, some land is only suitable for grass and it makes sense to graze that grass with stock and produce Beef and Lamb. I don't think there's that big of an issue there.
The problem that these "experts" are worried about is all the other cropping land that is used for Beef and lamb. You have to add in the land that grows the Wheat, Barley, Maize etc, into the Beef or Lamb production, plus all the concrete, sheds and diesel that are used.
Lets face it if the Beef price went up massively people would plough up arable land and plant grass too.

Its why countries like NZ are trying to distance themselves from these intensive Beef, Lamb and Dairy systems by trying to show that their Grazing only approach is better for the planet. The UK Beef industry might help itself by learning more about grazing? It's fairly obvious reading some of the Beef threads on here, that some people completely dismiss grass and grazing.

I'm not saying I agree with any of it but that's the kind of thing that's being pushed these days
 

Cowmangav

Member
Location
Ayrshire
I was interested in the reports of a synthetic palm oil replacer. Using organic waste to grow a yeast that synthesised oil within its cells , would produce a palm oil substitute that was three times the cost of actual palm oil. This is why I cannot believe that lab grown meat is going to work well - surely the cells for that need to grow in a bath of highly specified , high quality raw nutrients , certainly not waste like in an AD.
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
On our fag packet maths then, the Governments official advisers are making two easy to remember statements:
One bullock produces 40t of GHG.
40% of UK GHG emissions are due to eating beef.
No, that's JUST from eating burgers. I'm starting to wonder about these calculations.....
 

PSQ

Member
Arable Farmer
They haven’t got a clue.
Wheat yields increased 220 to 300 times the global average of 3.2t/ha by moving to vertical production ? 😂😂😂😂😂🤦‍♂️

If we’re allowed to follow their ‘man maths’ bulls**t ideas, that would be a yield of 700 to 960 t/ha (average 830t/ha).
Even at the world record yield of 17t/ha, if you divide one by the other you reach the conclusion that for an annual wheat crop the vertical farm would need to be 49 stories high.
For a biannual crop still at WR yield, 25 stories high.
How much concrete, glass, copper and steel and AND CO2 would be required to manufacture Chris Starks ‘Towers of Babylon’, never mind the CO2 released to generate the light and heat energy to keep them going? LED’s are efficient, but they don’t power themselves.

Ive skipped through this thread because the arrogance of the CCC pisses me off. But if this is what the CCC *IS* correct, then Chris Stark should resign over his continued demands for the impossible, and slander against an entire industry.
 
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egbert

Member
Livestock Farmer
No, that's JUST from eating burgers. I'm starting to wonder about these calculations.....
hang on a minute....get back to the start line.
Aren't these figures working on the assumption that methane is a worse GHG than carbon?

I'd focus on challenging that, because without it as a bedrock sin of the beef industry, they start to look a bit silly.

As an aside....
There's 2 properties at the end of our lane, and between them, the couriers delivering parcels seem to be using more fossil fuel than our entire operation. Think on that.

The CCC is misguided anyway. And if it's still steered by Gummer - Lord Deben- go look at his interests.
He has a company which will help you adapt to meet the changes he is demanding.
He personally stands to gain financially from the CCC direction of travel.
It's nepotism of the highest order.

Also on the board -or was last I looked- a bigwig at Drax, which is burning woodchip dragged thousands of miles through the ocean burning eff knows how much low grade oil all the way.
 
hang on a minute....get back to the start line.
Aren't these figures working on the assumption that methane is a worse GHG than carbon?

I'd focus on challenging that, because without it as a bedrock sin of the beef industry, they start to look a bit silly.

As an aside....
There's 2 properties at the end of our lane, and between them, the couriers delivering parcels seem to be using more fossil fuel than our entire operation. Think on that.

The CCC is misguided anyway. And if it's still steered by Gummer - Lord Deben- go look at his interests.
He has a company which will help you adapt to meet the changes he is demanding.
He personally stands to gain financially from the CCC direction of travel.
It's nepotism of the highest order.

Also on the board -or was last I looked- a bigwig at Drax, which is burning woodchip dragged thousands of miles through the ocean burning eff knows how much low grade oil all the way.

Croneyism at its finest.
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
They don't need more land, they're going to move it indoors...

Extract from the report:

Moving horticulture indoors
Horticultural products such as fruit, vegetables and salad crops are grown on 163,000 hectares, or 3% of cropland in the UK. There is considerable scope to improve grassland utilisation, improve productivity and enable land to be used for other uses. Indoor horticulture can raise productivity while reducing nutrient, land and water footprints. 19 Indoor systems such as vertical farming, where crops are grown in stacks in a controlled environment, can raise productivity while reducing the nutrient, land and water footprint. Indoor horticulture in the UK is mainly for high value salad crops and is currently small scale. Some systems are based on hydroponic and vertical production systems using LEDs. Our analysis assumes that this system could be applied to 10– 50% of current horticultural production. Given the small area of land currently used for horticulture, moving production indoors has a limited impact on land area and carbon impacts. More significant emissions savings would come from moving horticultural production from lowland peat, although we have not included this in our analysis.
Greater benefits could accrue from shifting arable crop production indoors. The controlled environment could allow for quicker and multiple harvests each year. Estimates suggest that combined with a ten-tier stacking system, yields could be 220 to 600 times higher than the current global average annual wheat yield of 3.2 tonnes/hectare.11 However, this production method is still at the experimental stage, with trials on-going at Rothamsted Research, while the costs of energy (e.g. LED lighting) would also have to reduce to make this a cost-effective option. Indoor wheat production is not included in our scenarios.
I haven't bothered to read the report, I've got better things to do with my time, but from the snippets you've quoted it's immediately clear that the whole thing is based around one assumption stacked on top of another on top of another on top of another......

It's one match stacked on top of another reaching high into the sky. Never mind the laughable nature of organising policy on this assumption stacking, it's clear also that absolutely no one has been looking at their working out. What a sorry way to formulate policy. The fact that govt listens to people like these is scandalous.
 

egbert

Member
Livestock Farmer
They haven’t got a clue.
Wheat yields increased 220 to 300 times the global average of 3.2t/ha by moving to vertical production ? 😂😂😂😂😂🤦‍♂️

If we’re allowed to follow their ‘man maths’ bullpoo ideas, that would be a yield of 700 to 960 t/ha (average 830t/ha).
Even at the world record yield of 17t/ha, if you divide one by the other you reach the conclusion that for an annual wheat crop the vertical farm would need to be 49 stories high.
For a biannual crop still at WR yield, 25 stories high.
How much concrete, glass, copper and steel and AND CO2 would be required to manufacture Chris Starks ‘Towers of Babylon’, never mind the CO2 released to generate the light and heat energy to keep them going? LED’s are efficient, but they don’t power themselves.

Ive skipped through this thread because the arrogance of the CCC pisses me off. But if this is what the CCC *IS* correct, then Chris Stark should resign over his continued demands for the impossible, and slander against an entire industry.

the whole 'indoor cropping/vertical production' fantasy blithely ignores cost.
Nothing -currently- gets near as cheap as mechanically scratching up some dirt, planting some seeds, and coming back after the sun and rain has done its stuff to harvest the crop.
The minute you stray from commercial scale cropping operations that have evolved through simple commercial constraints..........the price goes through the roof.
 

PSQ

Member
Arable Farmer
the whole 'indoor cropping/vertical production' fantasy blithely ignores cost.
Nothing -currently- gets near as cheap as mechanically scratching up some dirt, planting some seeds, and coming back after the sun and rain has done its stuff to harvest the crop.
The minute you stray from commercial scale cropping operations that have evolved through simple commercial constraints..........the price goes through the roof.
What medium are they growing these 830t crops in? Is it going to be synthetic and artificial, or are the CCC proposing that they strip the topsoil from arable land and grow crops in a ‘natural’ medium?
So many unanswered questions to these deluded ‘wannabe’ environmentalists wet dreams...
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
hang on a minute....get back to the start line.
Aren't these figures working on the assumption that methane is a worse GHG than carbon?

I'd focus on challenging that, because without it as a bedrock sin of the beef industry, they start to look a bit silly.

As an aside....
There's 2 properties at the end of our lane, and between them, the couriers delivering parcels seem to be using more fossil fuel than our entire operation. Think on that.

The CCC is misguided anyway. And if it's still steered by Gummer - Lord Deben- go look at his interests.
He has a company which will help you adapt to meet the changes he is demanding.
He personally stands to gain financially from the CCC direction of travel.
It's nepotism of the highest order.

Also on the board -or was last I looked- a bigwig at Drax, which is burning woodchip dragged thousands of miles through the ocean burning eff knows how much low grade oil all the way.
Yup, the makeup of the top table is questionable to say the least. They maybe need to think about adding someone who can do maths for a start.

Oh and yes, methane. That's a whole different subject, one that needs a lot more work to get the message across. The point here though is that their figures are so utterly comical that it therefore renders the whole thing absurd without having to explain methane. NO2 emissions on the other hand are a bit trickier to explain away. But then the vegans are in the same boat as us on that one so surprisingly nowt's said about that one.......
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
What medium are they growing these 830t crops in? Is it going to be synthetic and artificial, or are the CCC proposing that they strip the topsoil from arable land and grow crops in a ‘natural’ medium?
So many unanswered questions to these deluded ‘wannabe’ environmentalists wet dreams...
And how will these crops be nutritionally? Sure, they could provide lots of starch (and we're finding out how wonderful that is for the human body at last), but what about the vitamins and minerals we get from naturally grown food which comes up from the soil? There'll be none of that from these vertical shrines. We already know how vegetables grown in these greenhouses across the world are mainly water these days, severely lacking in nutrition and flavour compared with decades ago. Multiply this by 10 or 100.
 

Humble Village Farmer

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Essex
A lot of land is grass because it won’t grow anything else. Grazing the grass is a very good way of turning it into a nutritious high energy food otherwise known as meat and dairy products. I think that’s fairly clever and efficient really and if we weren’t doing it now then somebody would probably invent it and be hailed a hero. Quite incredible that all that lovely protein and fat can come from grass. If mangos and bananas would grow in Lanarkshire I am sure they’d be doing it now. They do grow oats, potatoes and neeps but that’s a far as they can push it without needing supplementary heat and light.
I find it incredible really that people suggest these vertical horticultural systems that rely on electricity for the light and pumped hydroponics for the nutrients. My mate who is a left wing lecturer is well into it. He has a basic system in his house, all LEDs and purring pumps growing chillies and stuff. It’s all completely dependent on generated electricity, and requires lots of expensive manufactured components. When you mention the electricity usage it’s just dismissed as irrelevent. Scale it up and you’d need 10 nuclear power stations running balls out to grow enough veg indoors that could be grown outside using freely available daylight. Worlds gone mad. You just don’t know what to say really, it’s so bonkers.
You have absolutely hit the nail on the head. What's also not mentioned is the cost and land required to get this stuff started as well as the manufacturing of all the infrastructure.

Each bit of land has its own nuclear power station up in the sky which provides light and heat. With other free sky products like oxygen, carbon, water (mostly but not always) and nitrogen.

Also, if you site your "horizontal" farm on a bit of soil, you get minerals and trace elements as well.

Ok, so you get a controlled environment but as you say, it's all manufactured and purchased.

Get real. And don't get me started on this stupid manufactured meat idea.
 
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SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 78 42.9%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 63 34.6%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.5%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

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

    Votes: 5 2.7%

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

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  • 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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