- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Climate change: An agricultural overview.
An informed summary of the problems facing the UK, and then the world, is impossible unless it is acknowledged that climate change impact dominates the thinking of noisy, sometimes self-promoting, sections of the wealthy western middle class much more than it does elsewhere.
In many cases this preoccupation appears to be fashionable. In others it is perhaps a reflection of society’s unease with itself, because the doomsday style angst it typifies has waxed and waned at regular intervals throughout history.
A recent example was the appearance of a hole in the ozone layer 20 years ago, said to be due in part to CFC release from domestic fridges, which was seen as cataclysmic too?
Nothing is currently being said about the ozone layer so presumably the hole no longer exists or if it still does it has been accepted it offers no threat.
Climate change attracts similar froth and so it is important to identify what is genuinely concerning and what is not.
There can be no doubt temperatures are rising and that with this comes the threat of rising sea levels, population displacement, and a range of global resource crises that may ultimately be supremely focussed on life security essentials like food and water supplies.
However this has to be seen in context. Geology, for example, makes clear that a vast range of forces, including huge temperature shifts, have dominated the evolution on our planet – and there is no reason to suppose they will not continue to do so.
Human beings, who built their first towns just 3,500 or so years ago, are so self-centred they tend to measure life on earth in millennia - sometimes just decades – instead of a succession of easily identifiable million year spans.
They forget that Scotland (for example) was under an ice sheet just 12,000 years ago and its disappearance not only gave agriculturalists more room to expand into, which made it easier for the UK to develop, the accompanying lift in sea level created important new geo-political landmarks like the English Channel as well.
So it is no surprise that the earth is currently continuing to move through one of its many periodic warm cycles.
The questions this has provoked are:
# Is there a human contribution?
# And if there is can this warming process be slowed down?
When considering these it must however be accepted that the current warming trend will not be reversed unless or until cyclical factors infinitely beyond human control begin to reassert themselves at an as yet unknown point of time – although it may be possible to slow it down if there is a human contribution and this can be limited.
Objective (that means not self-interested) informants suggest that a lift in carbon emissions, combined with simultaneous release of other greenhouse gases (GHGs), as a result of human industrial activity began less than 400 years ago and these are accelerating the current warming cycle.
This prognosis is accepted by the majority of politicians and opinion formers who dominate policy/decision making within the industrial/western world so not unnaturally they want to encourage remedial action that will, they hope, slow the process down.
Foremost among their suggestions are calls for a reduction in coal burning and animal production coupled with encouragement for greater adoption of alternative energy production using solar, wind, or wave resource.
It is obvious that this shift has been seized on by freebooters and speculators which includes vegan interests that have recognised an opportunity to either promote themselves, or become wealthy, and have added their self-interest to the noise.
Increased focus on renewable energy sources is admirable so my attention is focussed on the contradictions raised by attacks on ruminant agriculture and prevailing attitudes that pay too little attention to simple food security.
Just as it is essential to acknowledge that earth is moving through one of its regular, and unavoidable, warming cycles it must also be accepted that the human population is expanding, and will continue to expand until something cataclysmic (this could be a nuclear explosion or the earth being hit by a huge meteor) gets in its way.
If, in the meantime, sections of this growing population do not have access to predictable food, drink, and energy supplies they will continue to migrate to other countries which they hope will be able to fulfil their needs.
This will further challenge the stability of the world’s political systems and could ultimately put them under so much strain they collapse.
The result would be descent into innumerable internecine conflicts with occupation of productive land and access to water as the prize.
This means continuing expansion of global food production, and provision of the range of products that are essential to the maintenance of a healthy (balanced) diet, are fundamental to global stability too.
This truth is often ignored at national level which is why agricultural policy makers within the UK and elsewhere must concentrate on raising knowledge centred on two increasingly important areas of debate.
# World-wide, appreciation of the ability of grass pasture to absorb (sequester) carbon released into the atmosphere.
# Acceptance of objective evidence that undermines an inflamed, assertion that ruminants (the source of milk, beef, lamb, wool and leather) contribute to methane release that is dramatically harmful in climatic terms.
There is a popular view that trees but not grass sequester carbon – hence repeated calls to reduce grassland areas and substitute it with trees.
This contradicts accepted scientific opinion that grassland is an effective carbon retainer.
The advantages of pursuing policies that encourage this retention, by preserving as much grassland as possible to produce meat and other animal products, have still to bed in.
Among the advantages of maintaining grass cover is recognition among objective scientists that ploughing land to produce more arable crops for human consumption results in the temporary exposure of soil to air – and during this period carbon, the principal GHG, is, along with nitrous oxide, inevitably and avoidably released.
There is therefore a strong case for humanity to continue, for the preservation of its long term health and wellbeing, with the pursuit of mixed diets in which the best possible balance between these demands and an equilibrium between animal production and crop production is identified, developed and then maintained.
It should be emphasised that the surge in crop production, encouraged by the vegan lobby among others, would be counterproductive in carbon release terms because more soil would be exposed and less food would be produced from carbon retaining grass.
It must however also be accepted that carbon emissions from exposed soil could be reduced, perhaps substantially, if more crops were grown in fields that have not been ploughed but direct drilled instead.
A common, and incoherent, response to this truth, often by the same lobbyists who make clear their vegan interests, is that direct drilling should be avoided because the glyphosate weed killer that must be applied before a field is direct drilled is carcinogenic and/or harms the environment in a number of vaguely expressed ways.
Objective science contradicts these views maintaining glyphosate is not only effective but safe too.
Even so anti-science sentiment, which counterintuitively also includes GMO crops which could include varieties that are beneficial in GHG reduction terms, can dominate the response of many the middle class climate change lobbyists dominant within developed, western culture.
Cattle especially are pilloried by this group for producing methane – and this has also been specifically seized on by the noisy vegan lobby as well as sympathetic climate change activists who see an advantage in reinforcing this contention.
The species is without doubt methane positive but policy makers should publicly reinforce information already available which demonstrates that the disadvantages of methane production are more than countered by the bovine contribution to international food reserves and the carbon sequestration properties of the grass they consume.
It might also help if the contradictory nature of many of the arguments advanced by a section of climate change activists was made public by government neutrals too.
Summary.
Current climate change considerations within the UK are not sufficiently comprehensive.
Critically they seek a detailed, but isolated, UK response and take too little account of climate change pressures being overwhelmingly global.
For example, and specifically, beef produced in the UK already has a carbon footprint 2.5 times lower than the world average and this is expected to reduce further.
This means that if beef production within the UK was curbed by planting more trees, and beef was instead imported to satisfy domestic consumer demand, that this beef would have a heavier carbon footprint than the beef it replaced – which means curbing domestic production is, in carbon footprint mitigation terms, pure nonsense.
It should also be acknowledged that if less beef and other meat is produced in the UK and more is imported this would put unnecessary additional pressure on global supplies which, as has already been argued, is counterproductive in world stability terms because human populations have always drifted away from countries where food is scarce towards countries where it is more plentiful so generating avoidable political instability.
This being the case the overwhelming ambition of policy makers in the UK should be to encourage a unified global response to climate change and to model its domestic considerations so that negative impact on other countries through UK action is minimised if not avoided altogether.
It would also be constructive if the UK adopted a long term view and paid more attention to countering the negative impact of climate change in a range of other arenas including lifts in sea level.
Responses to the latter could be as simple as legislating against constructing new roads and buildings on land that can be flooded.
Others, and it is accepted that there are an infinity of these, could include encouragement for more food production within the UK even though some low lying, and disproportionately high producing land, could be swamped in the meantime.
The latter contradicts long established government inclinations, except in times of crisis, to rely heavily on imports – so would require primary reconsideration.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Forster was a livestock journalist with Farmers Guardian before going freelance in the 1990s when he broadcast on livestock issues for BBC Farming Today. He joined the National Beef Association in 1998 and retired three years ago aged 73.”
An informed summary of the problems facing the UK, and then the world, is impossible unless it is acknowledged that climate change impact dominates the thinking of noisy, sometimes self-promoting, sections of the wealthy western middle class much more than it does elsewhere.
In many cases this preoccupation appears to be fashionable. In others it is perhaps a reflection of society’s unease with itself, because the doomsday style angst it typifies has waxed and waned at regular intervals throughout history.
A recent example was the appearance of a hole in the ozone layer 20 years ago, said to be due in part to CFC release from domestic fridges, which was seen as cataclysmic too?
Nothing is currently being said about the ozone layer so presumably the hole no longer exists or if it still does it has been accepted it offers no threat.
Climate change attracts similar froth and so it is important to identify what is genuinely concerning and what is not.
There can be no doubt temperatures are rising and that with this comes the threat of rising sea levels, population displacement, and a range of global resource crises that may ultimately be supremely focussed on life security essentials like food and water supplies.
However this has to be seen in context. Geology, for example, makes clear that a vast range of forces, including huge temperature shifts, have dominated the evolution on our planet – and there is no reason to suppose they will not continue to do so.
Human beings, who built their first towns just 3,500 or so years ago, are so self-centred they tend to measure life on earth in millennia - sometimes just decades – instead of a succession of easily identifiable million year spans.
They forget that Scotland (for example) was under an ice sheet just 12,000 years ago and its disappearance not only gave agriculturalists more room to expand into, which made it easier for the UK to develop, the accompanying lift in sea level created important new geo-political landmarks like the English Channel as well.
So it is no surprise that the earth is currently continuing to move through one of its many periodic warm cycles.
The questions this has provoked are:
# Is there a human contribution?
# And if there is can this warming process be slowed down?
When considering these it must however be accepted that the current warming trend will not be reversed unless or until cyclical factors infinitely beyond human control begin to reassert themselves at an as yet unknown point of time – although it may be possible to slow it down if there is a human contribution and this can be limited.
Objective (that means not self-interested) informants suggest that a lift in carbon emissions, combined with simultaneous release of other greenhouse gases (GHGs), as a result of human industrial activity began less than 400 years ago and these are accelerating the current warming cycle.
This prognosis is accepted by the majority of politicians and opinion formers who dominate policy/decision making within the industrial/western world so not unnaturally they want to encourage remedial action that will, they hope, slow the process down.
Foremost among their suggestions are calls for a reduction in coal burning and animal production coupled with encouragement for greater adoption of alternative energy production using solar, wind, or wave resource.
It is obvious that this shift has been seized on by freebooters and speculators which includes vegan interests that have recognised an opportunity to either promote themselves, or become wealthy, and have added their self-interest to the noise.
Increased focus on renewable energy sources is admirable so my attention is focussed on the contradictions raised by attacks on ruminant agriculture and prevailing attitudes that pay too little attention to simple food security.
Just as it is essential to acknowledge that earth is moving through one of its regular, and unavoidable, warming cycles it must also be accepted that the human population is expanding, and will continue to expand until something cataclysmic (this could be a nuclear explosion or the earth being hit by a huge meteor) gets in its way.
If, in the meantime, sections of this growing population do not have access to predictable food, drink, and energy supplies they will continue to migrate to other countries which they hope will be able to fulfil their needs.
This will further challenge the stability of the world’s political systems and could ultimately put them under so much strain they collapse.
The result would be descent into innumerable internecine conflicts with occupation of productive land and access to water as the prize.
This means continuing expansion of global food production, and provision of the range of products that are essential to the maintenance of a healthy (balanced) diet, are fundamental to global stability too.
This truth is often ignored at national level which is why agricultural policy makers within the UK and elsewhere must concentrate on raising knowledge centred on two increasingly important areas of debate.
# World-wide, appreciation of the ability of grass pasture to absorb (sequester) carbon released into the atmosphere.
# Acceptance of objective evidence that undermines an inflamed, assertion that ruminants (the source of milk, beef, lamb, wool and leather) contribute to methane release that is dramatically harmful in climatic terms.
There is a popular view that trees but not grass sequester carbon – hence repeated calls to reduce grassland areas and substitute it with trees.
This contradicts accepted scientific opinion that grassland is an effective carbon retainer.
The advantages of pursuing policies that encourage this retention, by preserving as much grassland as possible to produce meat and other animal products, have still to bed in.
Among the advantages of maintaining grass cover is recognition among objective scientists that ploughing land to produce more arable crops for human consumption results in the temporary exposure of soil to air – and during this period carbon, the principal GHG, is, along with nitrous oxide, inevitably and avoidably released.
There is therefore a strong case for humanity to continue, for the preservation of its long term health and wellbeing, with the pursuit of mixed diets in which the best possible balance between these demands and an equilibrium between animal production and crop production is identified, developed and then maintained.
It should be emphasised that the surge in crop production, encouraged by the vegan lobby among others, would be counterproductive in carbon release terms because more soil would be exposed and less food would be produced from carbon retaining grass.
It must however also be accepted that carbon emissions from exposed soil could be reduced, perhaps substantially, if more crops were grown in fields that have not been ploughed but direct drilled instead.
A common, and incoherent, response to this truth, often by the same lobbyists who make clear their vegan interests, is that direct drilling should be avoided because the glyphosate weed killer that must be applied before a field is direct drilled is carcinogenic and/or harms the environment in a number of vaguely expressed ways.
Objective science contradicts these views maintaining glyphosate is not only effective but safe too.
Even so anti-science sentiment, which counterintuitively also includes GMO crops which could include varieties that are beneficial in GHG reduction terms, can dominate the response of many the middle class climate change lobbyists dominant within developed, western culture.
Cattle especially are pilloried by this group for producing methane – and this has also been specifically seized on by the noisy vegan lobby as well as sympathetic climate change activists who see an advantage in reinforcing this contention.
The species is without doubt methane positive but policy makers should publicly reinforce information already available which demonstrates that the disadvantages of methane production are more than countered by the bovine contribution to international food reserves and the carbon sequestration properties of the grass they consume.
It might also help if the contradictory nature of many of the arguments advanced by a section of climate change activists was made public by government neutrals too.
Summary.
Current climate change considerations within the UK are not sufficiently comprehensive.
Critically they seek a detailed, but isolated, UK response and take too little account of climate change pressures being overwhelmingly global.
For example, and specifically, beef produced in the UK already has a carbon footprint 2.5 times lower than the world average and this is expected to reduce further.
This means that if beef production within the UK was curbed by planting more trees, and beef was instead imported to satisfy domestic consumer demand, that this beef would have a heavier carbon footprint than the beef it replaced – which means curbing domestic production is, in carbon footprint mitigation terms, pure nonsense.
It should also be acknowledged that if less beef and other meat is produced in the UK and more is imported this would put unnecessary additional pressure on global supplies which, as has already been argued, is counterproductive in world stability terms because human populations have always drifted away from countries where food is scarce towards countries where it is more plentiful so generating avoidable political instability.
This being the case the overwhelming ambition of policy makers in the UK should be to encourage a unified global response to climate change and to model its domestic considerations so that negative impact on other countries through UK action is minimised if not avoided altogether.
It would also be constructive if the UK adopted a long term view and paid more attention to countering the negative impact of climate change in a range of other arenas including lifts in sea level.
Responses to the latter could be as simple as legislating against constructing new roads and buildings on land that can be flooded.
Others, and it is accepted that there are an infinity of these, could include encouragement for more food production within the UK even though some low lying, and disproportionately high producing land, could be swamped in the meantime.
The latter contradicts long established government inclinations, except in times of crisis, to rely heavily on imports – so would require primary reconsideration.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Forster was a livestock journalist with Farmers Guardian before going freelance in the 1990s when he broadcast on livestock issues for BBC Farming Today. He joined the National Beef Association in 1998 and retired three years ago aged 73.”
