Committee on Climate Change Report The Future For Farming And Land Use

[Bill the Bass]

When you put the reductions in livestock they desire in context with how many have gone in the last 20 years then to be honest it’s just carrying no on as usual.

In all honesty, who can carry on keeping sucklers that need 6 + months of housing or keeping ewes that need tonnes of concentrate every winter to produce less than 1.5 limbs per ewe?

The market will do the job for them

 

[Hindsight]

Google, Amazon, Micosoft, etc are aiming to be "carbon neutral" whatever that means. The only way is by offsetting. So I will happily sell them a sapling at £30 and £5/year to maintain it. That will help offset the obscene profits they have made selling us over-priced goods and services.

Boris might get on better with an offsetting tax than his digital tax! Though I assume Mr Trump would still disagree. Hey ho.

 

[digger64]

I’m not a scientist, but regard myself as a logical person.

Could somebody please explain to me how the hell planting trees in this country, especially deciduous trees that lose all their leaves in winter can possible sequester more CO2 (even after they have been established for 10-20 years!) than a growing crop of grass or cereals that sequester it at any temperature above 4 degrees C.

Especially those crops and grasslands that receive Nitrate fertiliser, whose photosynthesis is so dramatically enhanced to sequester far more CO2 out of the atmosphere than unfertilised crops?

It just doesn’t seem to make any sense to me.

Surely maximising green leaf area / days per annum / ha - grass must come out best , planting more trees across vast areas in the uk just mean more rain forest etc cleared else where assuming crop yields and food demand/need remained constant , this in fact would accelerate the problems they are actually trying to address , what they need to do is work out what we are good at and capable of economically/climatically then create a trading environment that allows it to happen and stop moving things around globally purely for financial reasons

 

[farmerm]

Govt advice is to reduce meat and dairy consumption, yet a Govt Minister on R5 earlier today refused to say we should cut back on air travel? She said that future developments in technology would mean that air travel becomes more environmentally friendly. She was unable to provide a coherent answer when the interviewer asked "What about flying now?"

Obviously, the airlines are better at lobbying than farmers are.

And by the sounds of it so are the fertiliser companies who have expensive slow release fertilisers… It will put an end to imported Pulan, Lithan etc which currently act as a restraint on Yara and CF's pricing.

 

[DaveGrohl]

I still remain less than convinced of the role of Man in CO2 production, causing a catastrophe. But hey, if I am wrong and they are right, or vice versa, there is SFA that I (or the UK!!) can do in anyway whatsoever to make any difference or change. I do wholly support the reduction in the use of hydrocarbons however, for the simple reason that they are a diminishing resource that should be taken care of...

However, I will farm where the money takes me... But please God, not Wall to Wall trees!!

http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews14No11.pdf

You'd never think there was more to climate change than evil man (and especially livestock farmers) going on where the media debate is these days. I'm pretty much where you are on this. I very much doubt that even if they achieved gloabally that comical term carbon neutral in a year's time it would make much difference to what's happening. The Earth's climate changes, end of, deal with it. What we're currently doing is re-enacting Canute, believing we control everything.

I do believe that complete cessation of the use of fossil fuels will benefit the entire planet however for a multitude of reasons, way beyond effing climate change. Trees? What happens in a hundred years time? That is crucial. We never hear anything about this though from those spouting. I wouldn't be against burning them as long as they're replaced like for like, at least it's part of the above ground carbon cycle. But all of the rhetoric we hear counts for nothing if they're not buried deep underground, something which will take energy itself. The whole media and political debate seems to get more and more bizarre every day.....

 

[farmerm]

Surely maximising green leaf area / days per annum / ha - grass must come out best....

Best by what measure? CO2 sequestered by grass or crops is released again, often within months, a couple of years at best. Ultimately any plants, be it grass, wheat or trees can be carbon neutral at best, biomass can not be a true carbon sink it less it ends up back as Coal, Gas, Oil or Limestone,

 

[DaveGrohl]

What do you think happens to the CO2 your grassland sequesters? The vast bulk of the CO2 sequester in your crop of fertilised grass is returned back to the atmosphere as CO2 or CH4 within a year as your stock consume it, as we consume the small proportion that gets sequestered in their meat and as microbes break down their dung and ours.. A tiny fraction many end up increasing the organic matter content of your soils but such stored carbon is very fragile and easily lost again. Even if you are increasing soil OM it is probably still less carbon than fossil fuels released in producing our fertiliser and carrying out our farming activities. Timber does at least take longer for its sequestered carbon to be release again, but ultimately all woodland reaches a point of carbon neutrality. Trees are not a sink for CO2 from fossil burning, all woodland creation can ever do is replace an equivalent area of woodland that was deforested 100 years ago.

The problem is neither trees, grass or cereals are really all that helpful in soaking up Carbon released from the burning of ancient carbon sinks. Ultimately unless the carbon held in biomass is locked up in a condition where it is not consumed and can not decompose it eventually returns as the atmosphere. Carbon locked up in crops, soil organic matter or timber is all transient and on the whole most is recycled and released back to the atmosphere within relatively short time frames.

The whole concept of carbon offsetting and storing carbon on UK farms is an utter and fairly pointless nonsense. It currently looks impossible to re-sequester all the carbon that has been released by global deforestation and soil OM depletion over the past 30 years! Until we can re-sequester the carbon that has been released by farming and deforestation then we are in no position to be considered as a carbon sink for carbon released from ancient, stable, carbon reservoirs.

There are very few real carbon sinks, Coal, Oil, Gas and Limestone take 10,000's of years to truly remove CO2 from the carbon cycle. Carbon fiber and graphene are perhaps more modern and practical carbon sinks. To truly offset the CO2 we release from fossil fuels we need to suck back the 36bn tonnes of CO2 released each year to the atmosphere and turn and churn out about 12bn tonnes of graphene.


View attachment 854733




Regardless of my utter contempt for carbon offsetting and carbon trading, like you I will farm where the money take me! Ultimately getting paid for sequestering carbon, however futile and pointless it is, as a means to pay a farm subsidy it is politically an easier sell in 2020 than payments based on land ownership.

Excellent post. Can't like it enough.

 

[puppet]

When keeping ewes that need tonnes of concentrate every winter to produce less than 1.5 limbs per ewe?

No wonder you are not making money, I can sell you some with 4 legs

 

[Surgery]

No just handed them a leaflet to call NHS if unwell!

Looks like theres another city in lock down over there , it won’t be long until other countries ban Chinese flights , as you Said we won’t be one !!

 

[digger64]

Best by what measure? CO2 sequestered by grass or crops is released again, often within months, a couple of years at best. Ultimately any plants, be it grass, wheat or trees can be carbon neutral at best, biomass can not be a true carbon sink it less it ends up back as Coal, Gas, Oil or Limestone,

Yes but it is continuous , stop it and Plant it with trees then - then the guy in Brazil just burns some more ancient forest (1 000's of years of carbon on the surface ) in a place with a 365 day growing season to send you some brahma beef and soya to replace what you were producing in a logical opportunist reaction to the market demand slot that you gave him , how tall are your saplings in relation to the great teak s and mahogany s that he felled ?

 

[ISCO]

Govt advice is to reduce meat and dairy consumption, yet a Govt Minister on R5 earlier today refused to say we should cut back on air travel? She said that future developments in technology would mean that air travel becomes more environmentally friendly. She was unable to provide a coherent answer when the interviewer asked "What about flying now?"

Obviously, the airlines are better at lobbying than farmers are.

I heard Matt Hancock on 5 live last week say there was no need to reduce flying as technology is the answer. Presenter questioned him but he was adamant.
Must be government policy.

 

[farmerm]

Looks like theres another city in lock down over there , it won’t be long until other countries ban Chinese flights , as you Said we won’t be one !!

For China to start locking down cities there is surely more to this outbreak than they have so far let on? That's a massage impact on people and these city's economies and its already escaped beyond these cities. Globally regular flu quietly results in the death of 100,000's people each year yet we haven't locked down all world movements because of it presence.

Being this seems similar to the SARS virus, one question I don't understand is how did the SARS outbreak ended? From a single source it was infectious enough to spread to 8000 know cases, so what made it self limiting? What prevented each of those 8000 cases from trigging further infections at an exponential rate?

 

[farmerm]

I heard Matt Hancock on 5 live last week say there was no need to reduce flying as technology is the answer. Presenter questioned him but he was adamant.
Must be government policy.

Air travel generate many billions for the economy, billions for the treasury and many many jobs... Gov believe there will be a technical solution because not finding one isn't an option!

 

[Goweresque]

I heard Matt Hancock on 5 live last week say there was no need to reduce flying as technology is the answer. Presenter questioned him but he was adamant.
Must be government policy.

There's a simple answer - aviation creates the best part of a million jobs in the economy, has a contribution to GDP of £52bn and pays over £8bn in taxes to the Treasury.

https://www.aoa.org.uk/wp-content/u...Benefits-from-Air-Transport-in-the-UK.pdf.pdf

Farming on the other hand contributes about £8bn to GDP, employs half as many people, and costs the Treasury about £3bn in subsidies.

Not a hard decision as to which one to keep and which one to discard is it?

 

[ISCO]

There's a simple answer - aviation creates the best part of a million jobs in the economy, has a contribution to GDP of £52bn and pays over £8bn in taxes to the Treasury.

https://www.aoa.org.uk/wp-content/u...Benefits-from-Air-Transport-in-the-UK.pdf.pdf

Farming on the other hand contributes about £8bn to GDP, employs half as many people, and costs the Treasury about £3bn in subsidies.

Not a hard decision as to which one to keep and which one to discard is it?

That is the problem we face. Food which is a necessity is not valued as highly as aviation.
People I know would never cut back on flights as they live for their holidays. Reducing flights would cause uproar.

 

[Two Tone]

What do you think happens to the CO2 your grassland sequesters? The vast bulk of the CO2 sequester in your crop of fertilised grass is returned back to the atmosphere as CO2 or CH4 within a year as your stock consume it, as we consume the small proportion that gets sequestered in their meat and as microbes break down their dung and ours.. A tiny fraction many end up increasing the organic matter content of your soils but such stored carbon is very fragile and easily lost again. Even if you are increasing soil OM it is probably still less carbon than fossil fuels released in producing our fertiliser and carrying out our farming activities. Timber does at least take longer for its sequestered carbon to be release again, but ultimately all woodland reaches a point of carbon neutrality. Trees are not a sink for CO2 from fossil burning, all woodland creation can ever do is replace an equivalent area of woodland that was deforested 100 years ago.

The problem is neither trees, grass or cereals are really all that helpful in soaking up Carbon released from the burning of ancient carbon sinks. Ultimately unless the carbon held in biomass is locked up in a condition where it is not consumed and can not decompose it eventually returns as the atmosphere. Carbon locked up in crops, soil organic matter or timber is all transient and on the whole most is recycled and released back to the atmosphere within relatively short time frames.

The whole concept of carbon offsetting and storing carbon on UK farms is an utter and fairly pointless nonsense. It currently looks impossible to re-sequester all the carbon that has been released by global deforestation and soil OM depletion over the past 30 years! Until we can re-sequester the carbon that has been released by farming and deforestation then we are in no position to be considered as a carbon sink for carbon released from ancient, stable, carbon reservoirs.

There are very few real carbon sinks, Coal, Oil, Gas and Limestone take 10,000's of years to truly remove CO2 from the carbon cycle. Carbon fiber and graphene are perhaps more modern and practical carbon sinks. To truly offset the CO2 we release from fossil fuels we need to suck back the 36bn tonnes of CO2 released each year to the atmosphere and turn and churn out about 12bn tonnes of graphene.


View attachment 854733




Regardless of my utter contempt for carbon offsetting and carbon trading, like you I will farm where the money take me! Ultimately getting paid for sequestering carbon, however futile and pointless it is, as a means to pay a farm subsidy it is politically an easier sell in 2020 than payments based on land ownership.

Thank you for that. Very interesting and probably hits the nail on the head.

I did some research about a year ago into the Nitrate/ enhanced photosynthesis situation from research done in Denmark and Norway. The results of which were something like this:
Each kilo of Nitrate takes about 2.5 kgs to make (I’ll come onto the fossil fuels side later).
On a optimally nitrate fertilised crop of wheat using 175 KgsN to produce an 8.75tonnes/ha crop, each kg of N used caused the wheat to capture 80kgs MORE N from the atmosphere than an unfertilised crop.
That equates to 14,000 kgs MORE CO2 captured/ha than an unfertilised crop of wheat.
Even if this CO2 capture is temporary and/or recycled, that is still one hell of a lot of CO2 taken out of the atmosphere and how else are we going to feed the world?

The problem is that most N is made from fossil fuels, in particular Natural gas which is cheap. However, there are now methods of making N fertiliser much more efficiently from extracting some of the 78% Nitrogen within the air.

Even though the Earth is warming because we are closer to when the last ice age ended than we are to the next one beginning, there can be little doubt that our releasing stored carbon by the exploitation of fossil fuels has accelerated the problem.

HOWEVER, There is absolutely no point whatsoever in us planting trees here and relying on further imports of food where other ancient, mature Amazon, supposedly highly efficient CO2 capturing forest is cut down and worse still, burned to make way for farmland to replace the land to make food that we have taken out of production to grow tree on, is there?

 

[Two Tone]

There's a simple answer - aviation creates the best part of a million jobs in the economy, has a contribution to GDP of £52bn and pays over £8bn in taxes to the Treasury.

https://www.aoa.org.uk/wp-content/u...Benefits-from-Air-Transport-in-the-UK.pdf.pdf

Farming on the other hand contributes about £8bn to GDP, employs half as many people, and costs the Treasury about £3bn in subsidies.

Not a hard decision as to which one to keep and which one to discard is it?

It isn’t just farming that we need to count against the aviation industry. According to Meurig Raymond:
Farming combined with the whole of the rest of the food processing and retail industry in the UK account for around double the staff used in all the transport industries, being car, rail and I aircraft manufacturing and sales put together.

How much subsidy does that lot cost us all?

 

[steveR]

Regardless of my utter contempt for carbon offsetting and carbon trading, like you I will farm where the money take me! Ultimately getting paid for sequestering carbon, however futile and pointless it is, as a means to pay a farm subsidy it is politically an easier sell in 2020 than payments based on land ownership.

Bang on the Money!! A nice little fallow/fallow/zero till cereal rotation coming up....

 

[steveR]

I heard Matt Hancock on 5 live last week say there was no need to reduce flying as technology is the answer. Presenter questioned him but he was adamant.
Must be government policy.

What....? Stupidity??

That, or we will be wafting across to Spain in a hot air blimp, kept aloft by our Leader and his minions, powered by cow methane.

 

[steveR]

Air travel generate many billions for the economy, billions for the treasury and many many jobs... Gov believe there will be a technical solution because not finding one isn't an option!

It's called a boat...