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Parliamentary debate on farming on Dartmoor (18th April), Natural England’s rewilding aspirations beyond Dartmoor, and what you need to do.
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<blockquote data-quote="egbert" data-source="post: 8677796" data-attributes="member: 9965"><p>(Unedited version of) Western Morning News column 6th April</p><p></p><p>The birdsong around me suggests spring is in the air, as does the ravens assertion of their buzzard ‘no-fly zone’, protecting airspace under which they’re surely cooking up a clutch of young ravens. I’m about to start lambing, and know a handful of the first lambs will be disembowelled to feed these corvid chicks, until the volume of afterbirth and leftovers satiates everyone. I’m already calving the South Devon cows, and the gallons of placental material from them soon helps keep the wildlife occupied, as we all work around the turning of the seasons. Last Friday’s rainstorm tried me mightily, with new claves on the ground. We worked hard in brutal conditions, and somehow the only casualty was one poor ‘week old’ which got itself into the porridge beside a feeder. We got it in and warmed up again, but the jury is still out on whether it’ll survive.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>There’s no change in Natural England’s position on Dartmoor. They are publicly talking about ‘having dialogue’ and ‘working with the farmers’. In private, the story is the same…getting rid of the livestock is the clear demand. The regional head met some of us this week, and isn’t giving an inch.</p><p></p><p>Interestingly, he’s also lately been caught going into a local college, indoctrinating 6th form environmental studies students. He assures them his organisation is going to heal the environment, citing how badly Dartmoor is overgrazed. He brags about one common where he’s been getting good results, not mentioning his minions are now trying to force a 90% livestock reduction on it. Curiously, he also doesn’t tell the students that the commons so badly damaged have been under NE agreements and stocking rules for 20 years. Apparently it is just the farmer’s fault. I’m not sure this kind of propaganda belongs in the classroom.</p><p></p><p>What is also emerging is evidence that NE are also intending to venture into richer farming country, and hit much more productive systems as well. Along with the dairy farms on West Penwith, this fellow delighted in telling these students how he was also aiming at dairy farms on the Somerset Levels. There, he boasted to students, he’d have them ‘closed down inside 10 years’…and then delights that ‘it’ll all be water again’. He thinks this will be fantastic. Since you will have to pay more for your groceries, you may not wholeheartedly agree.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Speaking of the childish rewilding doctrine….on every rewilder’s bookshelf sits a copy of ‘Collapse’, by Jared Diamond. It’s a fairly dry analysis by an American academic of a number of defunct historic societies, whose collapse might be attributed to their failure to foresee or adapt to environmental challenges. The ‘Anasazi’ Pueblo cultures of the dusty SW corner of the USA feature, along with the Polynesian culture on Easter Island, and critically the Norse settlement on Greenland, which failed after 400 years. And as far as it goes, it’s an interesting enough book. You can pick gaping holes in it, but it certainly has warning signs for modern humanity about ignoring the overtaxing of the environment that supports you.</p><p></p><p>I’m not sure Diamond brings you quite to the point he aims at- it didn’t in my case as I was already there. He certainly doesn’t in the case of the ‘rewilders’, because there is a fabulous irony in their current direction of travel. The ‘rewilding’ concept has infiltrated so many peoples thinking that whole tracts of westernised developed countries are now being rededicated to nature. This makes people feel warm and cosy, and imagine they’re stopping the rot. Attempting to drive Dartmoor’s pastoralists off their historic grazing is part of their triumphant march. Sadly, they take Diamonds observations at a localised level, when I believe he meant it as a global view. By beating the UK’s farmers down, re-afforesting whole estates of National Trust land, and blocking drains on previously improved and ploughed arable land, we are simply exporting our food requirements to faraway countries who are less ‘enlightened’. Simultaneously our population and their expectations grow. Since we already have 30 million people we cannot feed, and an imbalance grows daily, it isn’t difficult to see there is a problem ahead. Because if you think riots over loo roll shortages are a sight to behold, consider the vista when tens of millions of people discover supper is going to be very late indeed.</p><p></p><p>I don’t know whether to laugh or cry that acolytes of Diamond’s ‘Collapse’ are determinedly pushing us at exactly the short-sighted disaster he illustrates. Their ignorance of reality is breath-taking to any time-served farmer. I’m sorry for their hopeless myopathy, but can only shrug my shoulders.</p><p></p><p>What can I do?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="egbert, post: 8677796, member: 9965"] (Unedited version of) Western Morning News column 6th April The birdsong around me suggests spring is in the air, as does the ravens assertion of their buzzard ‘no-fly zone’, protecting airspace under which they’re surely cooking up a clutch of young ravens. I’m about to start lambing, and know a handful of the first lambs will be disembowelled to feed these corvid chicks, until the volume of afterbirth and leftovers satiates everyone. I’m already calving the South Devon cows, and the gallons of placental material from them soon helps keep the wildlife occupied, as we all work around the turning of the seasons. Last Friday’s rainstorm tried me mightily, with new claves on the ground. We worked hard in brutal conditions, and somehow the only casualty was one poor ‘week old’ which got itself into the porridge beside a feeder. We got it in and warmed up again, but the jury is still out on whether it’ll survive. There’s no change in Natural England’s position on Dartmoor. They are publicly talking about ‘having dialogue’ and ‘working with the farmers’. In private, the story is the same…getting rid of the livestock is the clear demand. The regional head met some of us this week, and isn’t giving an inch. Interestingly, he’s also lately been caught going into a local college, indoctrinating 6th form environmental studies students. He assures them his organisation is going to heal the environment, citing how badly Dartmoor is overgrazed. He brags about one common where he’s been getting good results, not mentioning his minions are now trying to force a 90% livestock reduction on it. Curiously, he also doesn’t tell the students that the commons so badly damaged have been under NE agreements and stocking rules for 20 years. Apparently it is just the farmer’s fault. I’m not sure this kind of propaganda belongs in the classroom. What is also emerging is evidence that NE are also intending to venture into richer farming country, and hit much more productive systems as well. Along with the dairy farms on West Penwith, this fellow delighted in telling these students how he was also aiming at dairy farms on the Somerset Levels. There, he boasted to students, he’d have them ‘closed down inside 10 years’…and then delights that ‘it’ll all be water again’. He thinks this will be fantastic. Since you will have to pay more for your groceries, you may not wholeheartedly agree. Speaking of the childish rewilding doctrine….on every rewilder’s bookshelf sits a copy of ‘Collapse’, by Jared Diamond. It’s a fairly dry analysis by an American academic of a number of defunct historic societies, whose collapse might be attributed to their failure to foresee or adapt to environmental challenges. The ‘Anasazi’ Pueblo cultures of the dusty SW corner of the USA feature, along with the Polynesian culture on Easter Island, and critically the Norse settlement on Greenland, which failed after 400 years. And as far as it goes, it’s an interesting enough book. You can pick gaping holes in it, but it certainly has warning signs for modern humanity about ignoring the overtaxing of the environment that supports you. I’m not sure Diamond brings you quite to the point he aims at- it didn’t in my case as I was already there. He certainly doesn’t in the case of the ‘rewilders’, because there is a fabulous irony in their current direction of travel. The ‘rewilding’ concept has infiltrated so many peoples thinking that whole tracts of westernised developed countries are now being rededicated to nature. This makes people feel warm and cosy, and imagine they’re stopping the rot. Attempting to drive Dartmoor’s pastoralists off their historic grazing is part of their triumphant march. Sadly, they take Diamonds observations at a localised level, when I believe he meant it as a global view. By beating the UK’s farmers down, re-afforesting whole estates of National Trust land, and blocking drains on previously improved and ploughed arable land, we are simply exporting our food requirements to faraway countries who are less ‘enlightened’. Simultaneously our population and their expectations grow. Since we already have 30 million people we cannot feed, and an imbalance grows daily, it isn’t difficult to see there is a problem ahead. Because if you think riots over loo roll shortages are a sight to behold, consider the vista when tens of millions of people discover supper is going to be very late indeed. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry that acolytes of Diamond’s ‘Collapse’ are determinedly pushing us at exactly the short-sighted disaster he illustrates. Their ignorance of reality is breath-taking to any time-served farmer. I’m sorry for their hopeless myopathy, but can only shrug my shoulders. What can I do? [/QUOTE]
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Parliamentary debate on farming on Dartmoor (18th April), Natural England’s rewilding aspirations beyond Dartmoor, and what you need to do.
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