Moonboot on R2 no more livestock or farming!

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
Thanks I'll have a look for that, He could have easily found other farms to visit that have successfully moved over to direct drilling and cover crops for example, lack of imagination on his part.
Should place more emphasis on the word visit. Visiting somewhere is a long way from understanding and having genuine experience and knowledge of. He’s basically a reporter with a strong opinion of his own beliefs then rather than an open mind. Surprise.
 

Mark Hatton

Staff Member
Media
Location
Yorkshire
I started this off with the intention of trying to summarise some of what was in the book, I downloaded the audio book, with the intention of listening to it while I worked, how naive!!

There’s a lot of detail, lots of references, lots of numbers, my biggest criticism is that he’s referenced most of the worlds problems and could have spent more time looking at the UK…I digress, this man can talk, and god is he boring to listen too!

So I bought the book, mainly so I could read some of the reference material, good to see TFF get a mention!!! Also to save my eardrums!
I’ve forced myself to read the remainder of it, I’ll admit I missed out much of his ramblings on poetry, in summery we’ve all been brainwashed from an early age on the romanticism of what a farm should look like, from children’s books!

It covers soil health, in quite a bit of detail to be fair, further in it covers Zero till, although disappointingly Direct Driller magazine wasn’t mentioned, there was a bit more reference on some of the farming practices we’ve become accustomed too over the last 15-20 years around arable cropping.
Theres a lot of social economic discussion as you can imagine from its author, food banks to pollution and synthetic foods are discussed.

His agenda, and he has one, is to rid the world of livestock farming.

We’re lucky, we have some of the best livestock producers in the world, highest standards and best conditions to produce livestock, we can always be better though.

His list or worryingly ‘manifesto’ contains 13 points, eight of them I actually agree with, some we’re already doing.

As an industry we need to be better, we need to take pollution from Ag much more seriously, we need to cut down on chemicals and fertilisers, technology has improved this and will continue to do so, if nothing else, current input costs are making businesses reassess how accurately they really operate and their environmental impact.
I know there is some fantastic work being done in the main and the industry is working really hard to improve its impacts and image.

The reality is that environmentalists will continue to bang the drum, while the oil producers continue to sell oil for the rest of the world to burn, we’ll continue to produce food for the masses, maybe slightly differently, the world will continue to turn, all we can do is try and limit our impact and improve what we’ve got before we leave.

It is worth a read, there are some interesting parts to it, as the saying goes, ‘opinions are like arseholes, everyone’s got one’!!
 
Last edited:

robs1

Member
I've written it before on TFF more times than I can count- pay no attention to the bloke. He has no idea about farming, nor the environment. He and Whine need to take a step into my trans-dimensional teleporter on a one way ticket never to return.
But if you tell a lie enough it becomes fact. It needs shouting loud, clear and often that livestock are a huge part of the eco system that supports soil life, insects, birds and mammals lose the stock and lose all those, the general public have absolutely no idea about such issues.
 

Mark Hatton

Staff Member
Media
Location
Yorkshire
But if you tell a lie enough it becomes fact. It needs shouting loud, clear and often that livestock are a huge part of the eco system that supports soil life, insects, birds and mammals lose the stock and lose all those, the general public have absolutely no idea about such issues.
Absolutely, which is why we need to collectively push the positive aspects and narrative and the ecological benefits that livestock bring to the mix, the sector needs to be shouting about this kind of stuff, Environmental campaigners like Monbiot and Packham have huge following on social media and know how to work mainstream media to publicise their own agendas. We have some brilliant farming advocates and influencers on social media, we need more to educate more of the public on what actually goes on in the countryside on farms.
 
The problem we have is that agriculture has no voice and the agricultural giants of our time, like Dr Borlaug and Edward Wilson are now silent. Instead, we have folk shouting on twitter about complex subjects they have no real grasp of. Biodiversity, climate change and agriculture are all inextricably interlinked. They are just different sides of the same dice. Moonbat and co do not recognise this. Moonbat, for a bloke who has supposedly studied and travelled extensively, does not grasp that people need to eat and that security of food supply and also energy are paramount. Despite his best intentions, he can't see that no, the latest freakbiofood pumping out of a pipe in some phood factory isn't going to work in poor countries where a lot of them have no USD to pay for such a product and they are in fact basically subsistence farmers.
 

Mark Hatton

Staff Member
Media
Location
Yorkshire
I have just been watching this on YouTube, the science is out there, what a shame something like this is only on an obscure distant corner of the Web, only 86 views! If you haven't got too much time just watch from 6 min up to about 24 minutes and especially abound 18 min

Thanks for that, I need to watch it again. To fully take it all in, I think im suffering from information overload a little bit at the moment, that seems to be part of the issue, there’s almost too much information now available, that it can be manipulated to suit a particular agenda.
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
The problem we have is that agriculture has no voice and the agricultural giants of our time, like Dr Borlaug and Edward Wilson are now silent. Instead, we have folk shouting on twitter about complex subjects they have no real grasp of. Biodiversity, climate change and agriculture are all inextricably interlinked. They are just different sides of the same dice. Moonbat and co do not recognise this. Moonbat, for a bloke who has supposedly studied and travelled extensively, does not grasp that people need to eat and that security of food supply and also energy are paramount. Despite his best intentions, he can't see that no, the latest freakbiofood pumping out of a pipe in some phood factory isn't going to work in poor countries where a lot of them have no USD to pay for such a product and they are in fact basically subsistence farmers.
"…we have folk shouting… about… subjects they have no real grasp of…"

Just about sums up where we are as a race now.
 

Vader

Member
Mixed Farmer
Funny, the one bloke who came on with a sensible, well reasoned argument against Moonbat, was unceremoniously cut short by Jeremy Whine and a raging vegan was put on. Then to argue against the raging vegan was an idiot who couldn’t string a sentence together other than “YOU’LL NEVER STOP ME EATING MEAT!”

Ever get the feeling we’re being set up?!?!
Usual bbc...
 

Mark Hatton

Staff Member
Media
Location
Yorkshire
What's his solution then @Mark Hatton?
In a nutshell… get rid of all livestock farming, because they pollute too much, take up too much ground not only in stocking density but in how much other cropping goes to Animal feed, substitute proteins will be synthetic produced from bacteria in factories.
Reduce all other inputs sprays, fert etc, less ploughing more cover cropping for growing what’s left. Then rewild all the ground that isn’t used for agriculture. There you go, saved you reading it, I’ve generalised, just as parts of the book did!
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
In a nutshell… get rid of all livestock farming, because they pollute too much, take up too much ground not only in stocking density but in how much other cropping goes to Animal feed, substitute proteins will be synthetic produced from bacteria in factories.
Reduce all other inputs sprays, fert etc, less ploughing more cover cropping for growing what’s left. Then rewild all the ground that isn’t used for agriculture. There you go, saved you reading it, I’ve generalised, just as parts of the book did!
Bazzinga!

I wonder what his feedstock for all those busy little bacteria will be...? We all know what Soylent Green was made from!!

Listening to these people, and I suspect what they really want is 3/4 of the World population to disappear, and those left will reside in some form of Utopia ruled by the benign and caring Leadership, led by the spiritual descendents of Moonbot and the like.
 
South Americans developed herding cultures....with different species!

Lots of different societies/populations adopted the same ideas just at different times and wildly different locations. Following the herds was the very essence of a nomadic existence. I would like to have been there to listen to the conversation where they decided to domesticate some goats or cattle and pen in some calves or something until animals became tame enough to 'farm' them. It wasn't until much much later someone (probably women who were fed up of trekking miles daily and hauling tents whilst being heavily pregnant) said fudge this we're staying put and decided to plant some seeds for a change.
 

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer
Lots of different societies/populations adopted the same ideas just at different times and wildly different locations. Following the herds was the very essence of a nomadic existence. I would like to have been there to listen to the conversation where they decided to domesticate some goats or cattle and pen in some calves or something until animals became tame enough to 'farm' them. It wasn't until much much later someone (probably women who were fed up of trekking miles daily and hauling tents whilst being heavily pregnant) said fudge this we're staying put and decided to plant some seeds for a change.
I think the first people to stay put, were in Wetland habitats, where, rather than moving to follow the herds in the changing seasons, in wetlands/deltas the herds move in and out of the wetland, so staying in one spot was almost like moving following herds.
 
Just listened to a podcast whilst doing a bit of spraying of his new book promotion.

I feel its all a little lightweight not so much in its research but in his thinking and conclusions. Some of his case studies are peppered with international references which are just not on the agenda in the UK.

He's trashed all of the good things that a reliable meat industry (and its associated industries and benefits) can provide for people both from a nutritional and food security point of view, and gone full bore into saying his mate Tolly (who happens to be in Oxfordshire like George - what a nice coincidence he didn't have to travel too far to find his "solution" ;)) has the worldwide template from which we should extrapolate. Which is going to be woodchip on top of soil and peasant style vegetable production and heritage fruit from his community orchard. Its just a very big leap to accept

What if Tolley didn't actually have the solution George suggests he does? And that is not me being negative about Tolhurst Organic as there is definitely a place for them and all other small organic market gardens, but I'm not sure its a mature example to say "this is the way to do things".
 
I think the first people to stay put, were in Wetland habitats, where, rather than moving to follow the herds in the changing seasons, in wetlands/deltas the herds move in and out of the wetland, so staying in one spot was almost like moving following herds.

I suspect you would have been right. Of course growing crops would have meant access to water or reliable rainfall so the banks of the Euphrates would have been ideal for their purposes.

Of course, wetland or riparian zones would have been richly populated by all kinds of plant and animal life as well.
 
Just listened to a podcast whilst doing a bit of spraying of his new book promotion.

I feel its all a little lightweight not so much in its research but in his thinking and conclusions. Some of his case studies are peppered with international references which are just not on the agenda in the UK.

He's trashed all of the good things that a reliable meat industry (and its associated industries and benefits) can provide for people both from a nutritional and food security point of view, and gone full bore into saying his mate Tolly (who happens to be in Oxfordshire like George - what a nice coincidence he didn't have to travel too far to find his "solution" ;)) has the worldwide template from which we should extrapolate. Which is going to be woodchip on top of soil and peasant style vegetable production and heritage fruit from his community orchard. Its just a very big leap to accept

What if Tolley didn't actually have the solution George suggests he does? And that is not me being negative about Tolhurst Organic as there is definitely a place for them and all other small organic market gardens, but I'm not sure its a mature example to say "this is the way to do things".

You see this is the issue: overzealous onlookers who think entire towns and cities can be fed from about 3 black bins worth of woodchip in some niche little dream of Olde Englande. Just some British veg and fruit for the masses. I see. So all the food waste stocks, all the green pasture land across the world, all the scrub and mountains, all that should just be left alone whilst everyone forks out £15 for an apple to feed the kids once a day. I guess the legions of brewers grains, sugar beet pulp, rapemeal, citrus pulp and the like should just be tipped in the sea for all the good it does.

He is a fudging dreamer and a waste of my time.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.2%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 65 34.8%
  • 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

  • 1,287
  • 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/
Top