James Rebanks on Radio 4 this morning

[delilah]

Feeding cereals to ruminants is a good way of keeping the machinery, fertiliser, chemical and feed merchants in business, as well as people like the plant breeders. All of whom require fossil fuels for their business model and most of them help create the conditions for loss of soil organic matter and soil erosion. Compare that to your zero input pp situation which takes carbon and nitrogen out of the air and you start to see that different systems have different environmental impacts.

I think he goes out of his way to avoid criticism of farmers, apart from himself. I'm fairly clear on how "his" transition would be achieved and what benefits it would bring. It does require a certain level of flexible thinking and adaptability.

Criticising farmers, criticising systems, it's the same thing. Which is where my fundamental problem with James et al lies. We have a shed full of cattle, eating a home grown diet and lying on home grown straw, to end up in the butchery counters 100 yards away. Any member of the public, or any decision making politician, reading all these bucolic books and articles about grass fed beef, would look at our cattle and decide they are destroying the planet. News flash: They aren't.

If James is going to show his hard earned and well deserved followers the way forward, then he needs to start talking about - and suggesting solutions for - where the real environmental damage is being caused.

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

I’m probably being a bit hard .... you’re right. But it’s highly frustrating when folk raise themselves up by pushing others down. It’s great that a man who’s made a bunch of money writing books, owns a farm and when he’s not away from it enjoys some sheep and a couple of cows. But it’s a totally different world than actually food production to address feeding large numbers of folk with sustainable protein that comes from and animal and from grass.
ps I actually like James he’s a nice guy

The reality, as touched on above (it's ok for a big landowner to rewild because he can afford it) is actually that nearly all farming is uneconomic. We constantly hear that we must diversify, which means "get income from non farming activities" (like writing books, glamping, farm shop, pick your own or a job off the farm). Then there is the subsidy and environmental payment system most of us rely on.

What it all points to is that we are wasting our time trying to get rich farming. We can make a living and make the best of our lifestyle opportunities. Nearly all farmers are subsidised in one way or another and in turn we subsidise our lovely suppliers we think we can't manage without, plus the idea of cheap food (while all the supermarkets report annual profits in the hundreds of millions).

One of the things about renenerative ag is the immediate reduction in cost and another is the falling away of the belief that we can't farm without all the expensive inputs that so many nice salesmen tell us we must have.

 

[DrWazzock]

it’s all very well producing lamb and beef regeneratively but would the required quantity and affordability be there?
I think there is some danger in thinking we can all afford to buy organic box scheme food. But so often you see some incredibly wealthy landowner turning their estate over to semi wilderness and selling half a dozen boxed lambs a year then claiming they have cracked sustainable farming. We could do the same here. Feed ourselves and a few friends and neighbours while building huge amounts of OM using no fossil fuels. We’d be alright Jack but …..that kind of thing got our predecessors turfed out by the War Ag. They found it more profitable to fatten wild rabbits on swedes and net them for sale. As subsequent tenants discovered, to their cost, before the advent of sprays and fertilisers, they weren’t actually that far off the economic optimum fattening wild rabbits at that time. Problem was the folk in town were still on ration books.

 

[ollie989898]

Stop it. All this is just encouraging me to buy more smokey old Fords, plough up more wild flower meadows, and spend more time kicking barn owls up the arse.

You should apply for a job with Natural England, I reckon you would fit right in mate. Ploughing up old wildflower meadows is their main purview these days. You could ask Pete for a consultation and maybe get a kick back on the lime used as well.

 

[ollie989898]

Criticising farmers, criticising systems, it's the same thing. Which is where my fundamental problem with James et al lies. We have a shed full of cattle, eating a home grown diet and lying on home grown straw, to end up in the butchery counters 100 yards away. Any member of the public, or any decision making politician, reading all these bucolic books and articles about grass fed beef, would look at our cattle and decide they are destroying the planet. News flash: They aren't.

If James is going to show his hard earned and well deserved followers the way forward, then he needs to start talking about - and suggesting solutions for - where the real environmental damage is being caused.

You hit upon the very reason Henson and Jimmy's farm et al are the sort of folk I can't abide nor watch. The portrayal of what they do is aimed at good-lifers (and Clarkson is just another of these) who all dream of living in the country, earning £100,000 a year in their home office and the pishing around keeping 4 cows and a pony as fat as a pig at the weekends. People so posh they have wellies outside the front door that will only ever be worn to the pub and never acquire a genuine scent on the inside.

It's a fudging pipe dream. You can't make money keeping 5 pigs and a half acre of strawberries or 14 different rare breed nags that even a Polish lasagne factory wouldn't take. It's the real deal farmers out there that rarely get a showing on TV because in reality their lives don't appeal to the masses living it up in Surrey.

It takes a sizeable industry to be able to meet the demands of the food chain as it stands. Many failings it may well have but people are not starving to death in the UK.

 

[Hindsight]

Criticising farmers, criticising systems, it's the same thing. Which is where my fundamental problem with James et al lies. We have a shed full of cattle, eating a home grown diet and lying on home grown straw, to end up in the butchery counters 100 yards away. Any member of the public, or any decision making politician, reading all these bucolic books and articles about grass fed beef, would look at our cattle and decide they are destroying the planet. News flash: They aren't.

If James is going to show his hard earned and well deserved followers the way forward, then he needs to start talking about - and suggesting solutions for - where the real environmental damage is being caused.

Well written. I did listen to the broadcast yesterday evening - after you were challenged if you had listened to it. My wife and her friend also listened. They commented to me it was nice listening - well spoken man. And were pleased to hear that farmers are doing something positive to correct their effect on global warming as it appeared to them from the programme farming was a major problem. Then they booked a mini break in Vienna next spring and our friend debated if they should go skiing or for a warm winter break. They didn't see the irony.

 

[SilliamWhale]

Criticising farmers, criticising systems, it's the same thing. Which is where my fundamental problem with James et al lies. We have a shed full of cattle, eating a home grown diet and lying on home grown straw, to end up in the butchery counters 100 yards away. Any member of the public, or any decision making politician, reading all these bucolic books and articles about grass fed beef, would look at our cattle and decide they are destroying the planet. News flash: They aren't.

If James is going to show his hard earned and well deserved followers the way forward, then he needs to start talking about - and suggesting solutions for - where the real environmental damage is being caused.

I didn't feel his books were that bucolic really.

They were written with love but not without reality

 

[delilah]

Well written. I did listen to the broadcast yesterday evening - after you were challenged if you had listened to it. My wife and her friend also listened. They commented to me it was nice listening - well spoken man. And were pleased to hear that farmers are doing something positive to correct their effect on global warming as it appeared to them from the programme farming was a major problem. Then they booked a mini break in Vienna next spring and our friend debated if they should go skiing or for a warm winter break. They didn't see the irony.

I had the exact same experience. I have to come clean and admit that I didn't actually buy either of James' books, rather they were passed down to me by a friend. She was gushing in her praise for the first one, saying that I would love it. Having read it I politely returned it and asked the question "OK, what's the upshot ?" Bemused look. "Well, what will you do differently having read the book ?". Nope, nothing. Second book passed to me. Hand it back after reading. "come on then, what's the message ?". Still utterly bemused. Just like your wife and friend.

 

[SilliamWhale]

I had the exact same experience. I have to come clean and admit that I didn't actually buy either of James' books, rather they were passed down to me by a friend. She was gushing in her praise for the first one, saying that I would love it. Having read it I politely returned it and asked the question "OK, what's the upshot ?" Bemused look. "Well, what will you do differently having read the book ?". Nope, nothing. Second book passed to me. Hand it back after reading. "come on then, what's the message ?". Still utterly bemused. Just like your wife and friend.

I actually think he started off as a writer in his first book with no "message" as such to promulgate, I think the next book became more of a message as he started to widen his perspective. Now maybe because he is in the public eye people look to him as possibly someone for guidance when I wonder did he set out like that?

He has a brand to promote (as do we all).
On balance I'm a fan and he is a positive force not a negative one

 

[delilah]

I actually think he started off as a writer in his first book with no "message" as such to promulgate, I think the next book became more of a message as he started to widen his perspective. Now maybe because he is in the public eye people look to him as possibly someone for guidance when I wonder did he set out like that?

He has a brand to promote (as do we all).
On balance I'm a fan and he is a positive force not a negative one

I think my gripe is probably with the sub-editors, all the stuff about 'James shows us a way forward for UK ag'. He really doesn't, he just writes very well about his life and farm.

 

[SilliamWhale]

I think my gripe is probably with the sub-editors, all the stuff about 'James shows us a way forward for UK ag'. He really doesn't, he just writes very well about his life and farm.

I doubt he sees himself as any more special than the next bloke. But I'm always interested in the opinions of others (except @Highland Mule )