Panorama

Ted M

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Shropshire
There is water user and there is water use, water use stats need considering in their context. In the UK water is generally in excess... cattle consumption of water here is infinitely more sustainable than water used to irrigate other protein sources like pulses and nuts grown in and imported from more arid climates.
We have around 50 head of beef cattle here varying from cows down to calves, all the water to housing, grazing and our domestic properties is metered.
Bit back of fag packet maths here but we sell around 10'000kg of actual beef each year never mind anything else which is used from the carcass.
On average we use about one cube of water a day total.
That's 36.5 litres per kg. A far cry from some of the thousands of litres/kg figures you see banded about. Yes I know that doesn't include the rainfall which grows the grass but if we removed the cows the rain wouldn't stop falling.
 

Speckle

Member
Apologies, it appears your posts have ended up on Pre-moderation.
I have a lot of integrity and I haven't trolled anyone ever.
That seriously made me think that maybe the panorama program was indicative of the sort of people that farmers are. I didn't come into this forum thinking that. But seriously guys. You want to change people's minds about farming then you need to be engaging fairly. I tried to do that, despite provocation. The issues aren't going to go away. We are going to have to address them and you can't do that without some collaboration. I wish the best of luck to those that are taking the issues on board and doing the best they can to tackle them.
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
Nothing to see here folks.

Speckle, you really should subscribe to EOM Alliance on Facebook as I've pointed out. ALL of your concerns are meat and drink for those people, which is ironic given how many of them used to be vegans. And because of that are happy to respectfully engage with someone such as yourself who think they know it all. Repeatedly posting stuff with Poore & Nemecek as its source is just wasting everyone's time frankly. That is a dead dodo of a report because it fundamentally gets the basics of methane wrong.
 

Mark Hatton

Staff Member
Media
Location
Yorkshire
I have a lot of integrity and I haven't trolled anyone ever.
That seriously made me think that maybe the panorama program was indicative of the sort of people that farmers are. I didn't come into this forum thinking that. But seriously guys. You want to change people's minds about farming then you need to be engaging fairly. I tried to do that, despite provocation. The issues aren't going to go away. We are going to have to address them and you can't do that without some collaboration. I wish the best of luck to those that are taking the issues on board and doing the best they can to tackle them.
Open question, you come onto the UKs biggest agricultural forum, the morning after an ‘expose’ of dairy farming, announce yourself as a vegan, pro animal rights, and condone the end of animal agriculture, change the narrative of the discussion to other food production methods, take offence at what other users are telling you, from their experience as farmers, and your response is ‘if it’s not in a report or there’s a set stats to back it up’ then it’s not true. What did you expect?
 

slackjawedyokel

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Northumberland
Mr or Mrs (or Miss etc) @Speckle … Apologies; I don’t have actual research data to put in front of you.
I farm ~450 acres in the far North East of England. I did a higher degree related to agriculture ~20 years ago (I doubt the science has changed too much since) and the take-home message time and time again from that course was that on agricultural land grass is by far the best thing to have on your soil. This is because grass is great at increasing SOil Organic Matter (carbon), reduces compaction, improves water infiltration through the soil, reduces runoff while pasture can also be a diverse habitat, playing host to numerous species (on the surface and below).
Apart from grass for my animals (cattle and sheep), I also grow some crops (approx 100ac/yr of barley and oats). I use a longish (7yr) rotation of 5yrs grass then oats then barley. On my land I judge that the proportion of grass is sufficient in the rotation to provide ‘fertility’ (for want of a better word) for the crops I grow. In my rotation the grass is the ‘regenerative’ phase and the cropping is the ‘exploitative’ phase.
Personally I would never want to grow commercial root crops in this land. I understand it requires fairly deep tilling of the land which can be very detrimental to soil structure and as there is a lot of land bare for a long time there is a high chance of heavy rain falling on the soil surface destroying the surface structure and causing runoff pollution of waterways.
My crops I attempt to sow at times where bare soil is kept to a minimum. Also I leave all of the crop stubbles over winter as that can be beneficial for wildlife. (Other folks will sow crops with reduced soil disturbance than I do; I’m not an expert on that style of farming).
The vast, vast majority of what my animals eat is grass from my farm. They also eat a small amount of the cereal crops that I grow. The main feed that I import onto the farm is a few tonnes of locally grown field-beans- these are to provide my sheep with a bit of extra protein before and around lambing time. The only other feeds I bring in are minerals to prevent imbalances occurring at particular times of year (calcium for sheep at lambing, magnesium for grazing cows).
I haven’t fed any soya for over 20 years, but I’m not having a pop at farmers who do as I understand that virtually all of the soya that goes into feed here is s by- product of human uses (principally food and cosmetics uses).

This is just my experience working with the soil on my farm in my particular climate. It may be very different for other farmers and as I say I wouldn’t seek to put other farmers down: with farming there is rarely one-size-fits-all.

If you come from a non-farming background, I hope that gives you a little more perspective.
 
Veg production in the South East makes any ethical argument about animal lives a purely personal and subjective choice. An old friend was the agronomist for one of the largest growers and I used to spend time on his inspections with him. I think he mentioned that the baby-leaf lettuce was being sprayed 17 times in its 21 day lifecycle to give the supermarkets the blemish free produce they required. The Spanish end of the operation resulted in mile after mile of plastic covered fields that made my pastoral corner look like animal heaven. No one sees that though, they just see cartoons of soft eyed cows and as stated above , don't see that grazing livestock are part of the solution. And the thing is, if we are going to feed 60million people with fresh veg, then we have to accept that it is going to cost us.
My mate and his wife didn't eat the free veg they grew at work, he grew his own in the garden and now has a small flock of Lincoln Longwools on his smallholding, which I believe gives him no crises of conscience whatsoever.
 

Hampton

Member
BASIS
Location
Shropshire
I have a lot of integrity and I haven't trolled anyone ever.
That seriously made me think that maybe the panorama program was indicative of the sort of people that farmers are. I didn't come into this forum thinking that. But seriously guys. You want to change people's minds about farming then you need to be engaging fairly. I tried to do that, despite provocation. The issues aren't going to go away. We are going to have to address them and you can't do that without some collaboration. I wish the best of luck to those that are taking the issues on board and doing the best they can to tackle them.
Which specific issues are you referring to?
If it’s the panorama thing then although I haven’t seen it, my wife has and said it was awful and many decent folk on here have said it was scandalous so that’s enough for me to state that anyone who mistreats animals in that way should be expunged from the industry and prosecuted. Poor prices are never an excuse for cruelty.
If it’s the soya issue, then I agree with you.
If it’s an ethical grievance you have to do with farming livestock then that is your opinion.
If it is a vegan issue then their are about 500000 vegans in the uk and 69 million meat eaters
If it’s the climate change issue then have a look at research by dr miles Allen, professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford and director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Resource Stewardship.
Here is a guardian link
He has also written journal based research on how cattle aren’t to blame, but the above is easier reading
 

Mark Hatton

Staff Member
Media
Location
Yorkshire
Speckle is never going to come out of this chat room and order a beef burger.
And most contributors to this are not going to go and order oat milk and live on pulses.
So this back and forth is such a waste of time.. just agree to disagree
To be fair I’ve tried a vegan burger, it wasn’t beef, I’ve had oat milk in a coffee recently, by accident…I can report it was feckin dreadful.. fair play to anyone that drinks it on a regular basis, I for one won’t be swapping!
 

thesilentone

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Cumbria
Phew !

Anyone interested in discussing the topic posted by the OP ?





Don't tar ALL farmers with the same brush': Fury as BBC Panorama uses vegan activist's secret video of cows being abused on ONE farm in Wales to paint the whole dairy industry as cruel​

 

Highland Mule

Member
Livestock Farmer
@Speckle , if you’re still around.
How many animals do you think died for you to have tonight’s meal? I’d wager way more than me, with my steak and chips. Probably quite a few killed for the carrot and broccoli on the side, now I think about it (rabbits and flies mostly, if you’re interested). As for the death toll for oats, doesn’t bear thinking about - I’m almost embarrassed feeding them to my cattle.

178DDF6A-D675-4433-8047-3E28BDEF0A59.png
 

JeepJeep

Member
Trade
You'll get wronguns and bad practices in every industry it's only natural, not necessarily right..... Doesn't make them all bad but doesn't do the gooduns any good with a kind of monkey see monkey do attitude by the ones hoping they are all wronguns.


Our Milk comes from here now...

Local Milk from up Road
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
Which specific issues are you referring to?
If it’s the panorama thing then although I haven’t seen it, my wife has and said it was awful and many decent folk on here have said it was scandalous so that’s enough for me to state that anyone who mistreats animals in that way should be expunged from the industry and prosecuted. Poor prices are never an excuse for cruelty.
If it’s the soya issue, then I agree with you.
If it’s an ethical grievance you have to do with farming livestock then that is your opinion.
If it is a vegan issue then their are about 500000 vegans in the uk and 69 million meat eaters
If it’s the climate change issue then have a look at research by dr miles Allen, professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford and director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Resource Stewardship.
Here is a guardian link
He has also written journal based research on how cattle aren’t to blame, but the above is easier reading
I think your link is wasted. They wouldn't even answer the question I posed earlier about if they knew what GWP100 was. GWP* is another country entirely.
 
Location
East Mids
I've already said 1) that there are a small number of places that certain types of agriculture are not suitable for
2) do we need to use every single piece of land in the UK for food production?

Why do you insist on not reading what I've said and intentionally misinterpreting it.

As I've now said on more than one occasion, this is one of the ONLY valid arguments for any sort of animal agriculture, and I still don't think that trumps the ethical considerations.
There is much more than a small proportion!!!! Agricultural land is graded by its capability, which is assessed by rating its soils, rockiness, slope, climate, how often it floods.

Anything poorer than Grade 3b is generally not suitable for cropping. It might be fantastic soil, but agriculture is about much more than just soil. There is some lovely soil across the river from us and 25 years ago was used to grow potatoes and onions - but it floods several times a year so all the topsoil washes into the river - which is completely unsustainable. It was grassed down into a no-input diverse sward and is now used for extensive beef cattle grazing which is much more sustainable and the river is much better for it.

Nearly ALL of our land in lowland Midlands is Grade 3b or Grade 4. We are not half way up a rocky mountain, in our case the main disadvantages are soils and flooding. Grass is much more resilient to flooding than most other crops. Some farmers locally do crop some 3b land with cereals, beans etc (for animal feed) but the soils SUFFER and there is run-off in winter (off heavy clay) which is BAD. Spring cropping is very difficult on heavy soils and an awful lot of 'human food' crops are spring cropping.

Life is so simple for those who don't really understand farming. Yes it is POSSIBLE to grow something other than grass on some of these fields but it is not economic and in many cases, BAD FARMING. By using them for animal agriculture we are able to convert non-edible plant material (often in a diverse sward which is great for biodiversity - you should see the bees and other insects in our clover and our hay meadows) into EDIBLE animal protein.
 
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Derrick Hughes

Member
Location
Ceredigion
I don't get my nutritional information from google. I get it from university studies, new scientist, BDA etc. And I'm pretty clued up on it in general. It's actually an area of interest in terms of change of profession.

As for the 16% coconut oil in meat subs, that must be one specific product, it most certainly isn't the majority.
Behond Meat

Water, pea protein, canola oil, coconut oil, rice protein, flavouring, stabilizer (methylcellulose), potato starch, apple extract, colour (beetroot red), maltodextrin, pomegranate extract, salt, potassium salt, concentrated lemon juice, maize vinegar, carrot powder, emulsifier (sunflower lecithin)
Impossible Burger
Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% Or Less Of: Potato Protein, Methylcellulose, Yeast Extract, Cultured Dextrose, Food Starch Modified, Soy Leghemoglobin, Salt, Mixed Tocopherols (Antioxidant), Soy Protein Isolate

Oatly
Oat base (water, oats 10%), rapeseed oil, calcium carbonate, calcium phosphates, salt, vitamins (D2, riboflavin, B12), potassium iodide
 
Anything poorer than Grade 3b is generally not suitable for cropping. It might be fantastic soil, but agriculture is about much more than just soil. There is some lovely soil across the river from us and 25 years ago was used to grow potatoes and onions - but it floods several times a year so all the topsoil washes into the river - which is completely unsustainable. It was grassed down into a no-input diverse sward and is now used for extensive beef cattle grazing which is much more sustainable and the river is much better for it.
As a slight diversion, this reminded me of a talk we had the other day about a Roman villa they have been excavating alongside the River Frome in Dorset. The first villa was built alongside the river just after the invasion c45ad. The replacement villa on the same site 300 years later was a metre and a half higher and the ground had had to be built up with rubble to prevent it from flooding.
It turns out that over those 300 years, the Romans ploughed up the chalk downland further upstream for arable crops and it had led to catastrophic soil erosion, which made the site unliveable without being raised 4ft in just 300 years.
In more modern times, the area was grazed by sheep, which gave us the present landscape we all love so much.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 77 43.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 62 35.0%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 28 15.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 4 2.3%

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

  • 1,285
  • 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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