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Bebo
Joined: 21 May 2007
Posts: 12590
Location: East Sussex
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 Posted: Wed Nov 03, 10 5:39 pm Post subject: |
 
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| Milo wrote: |
| SheepShed wrote: |
[I] don't rely (or receive) subsidies (I have a 'real' job as well as sheep).
The pasture land and boundaries of the few farms embedded in the forestry vastly increase the diversity of the overall environment.
Britain is never going to be returned to pre-Neolithic times, but we can make the best of what we've got. |
How many (hobby?), sheep do you have, I wonder. And your farming neighbours, full-timers in particular, do any of them receive no subsidies for farming?
Free speech 'n' all that, but I'd've been happier if you hadn't pointed out the glaringly obvious fact that *Britain is never going to be returned to pre-Neolithic times*, as if perhaps I'd thought we could, or should. The thing is, I'm not attacking you, I'm simply not at all in favour of the very little I know about your farming lifestyle.
Yes, making the best of what we've got is vital. Literally, I think. Allowing any sheep anywhere to eat my taxes, and every seedling tree and shrub they can reach, includes no new thinking and does nothing (I can think of), to improve the environment, still a big old place for sure. |
My neighbours have around 180 ewes. They get no subsidy for their sheep. They do get govt grants for land stewardship though (i.e planting new hedgerows etc) but they'd get that without the sheep. |
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Rob R
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York
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| Posted: Wed Nov 03, 10 5:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Milo wrote: |
| Rob R wrote: |
But why assume you need to remove livestock entirely from the equation to achieve that? It is merely limiting the types of diversity, hence your diversity isn't as diverse as it could be.
Pasture is one of the most diverse and interesting food producing habitats and animals give us a whole variety of foods, materials and land management techniques that maybe, on the whole, aren't used to their full potential in the modern food system, but they could be. They are also a great way of storing and extending our diets into the winter months without oil. |
Reluctant to trawl over old fishing grounds, but it'd be silly for me to pretend my opinions and leanings are not uninfluenced by my thoughts and values as a vegan. To put it simply, I don't want to cause any harm to any animals or to any thing, but I'm not prepared to sit under trees until food falls at my feet. Having such an attitude indicates a degree of bias(!), but no more bias, rather, much less I'd suggest, than people who farm animals, or people who eat animals and dairy products because they (have come to think that), they like the taste of those foods and that liking the taste is reason enough to cause, or be directly involved in causing, environmental degradation on a massive scale. (And cruelty, of course. Some things I will discuss quite happily, but I will never agree that it could ever possibly be kind to unnecessarily and avoidably kill any animal. And if it's not kind - it isn't - and it's not neutral - it couldn't be - then it's unkind, so very unkind as to be cruel).
So, pasture. Not very diverse, is it. I've not looked up any definitions, but make a distinction between pasture and grazing land, and consider pasture to be fields of grass, a mono-crop situation if ever there was one. |
Yes, well managed pasture is extremely diverse. I live in the middle of a SSSI that is internationally important for the habitats it maintains and wildlife that it supports. This landscape relies entirely upon grazing animals to maintain it and those animals are an essential tool in maintaining the vast biodiversity in every square metre. If you are starting out from the premise that grassland is a monoculture you are sadly mistaken. It can be a monoculture, but then so can any crop you care to mention. As well as the multitude of grasses there are an array of vetches, trefoils, sorrels, plantains, buttercups, daisies, herbs & many other wildflowers. There are also thousands of species of small mammals, insects, birds, molluscs & amphibians. And the soil life that we can't see with the naked eye is no less important.
You are quite welcome to be a vegan, I have nothing against your choice of diet- it's a step further than I was prepared to go, but you can't honestly justify it upon the notion that either a) you are supporting any more diversity than the next man or b) that you are contributing anything statistically significant to any reduction in avoidable killing. By it's very definition the food chain means that if you do encourage life, at the same time you are encouraging death. Watching the barn owls fly over my pastures is a wonderful moment that can make an evening but I know that he is not flying for the good of his health - he is out there looking for food, small animals that are also looking for food.
Even your man on the film mentioned parasitic wasps that eat the caterpillars that would otherwise decimate his crops. A vegan diet just means you aren't killing any animals to eat directly, but you are still having to kill animals to protect your crops as well as taking up land that would be otherwise used to grow food for those animals. The chap also mentioned how the hedgerows are maintained in his farming system - completely glossing over the fact that without animals there would be few hedges. |
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Rob R
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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gil
Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 08 Jun 2005
Posts: 18415
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Bebo
Joined: 21 May 2007
Posts: 12590
Location: East Sussex
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SheepShed
Joined: 08 Nov 2006
Posts: 332
Location: In the middle of a Welsh forest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 03, 10 5:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Milo wrote: |
How many (hobby?), sheep do you have, I wonder. And your farming neighbours, full-timers in particular, do any of them receive no subsidies for farming?
Free speech 'n' all that, but I'd've been happier if you hadn't pointed out the glaringly obvious fact that *Britain is never going to be returned to pre-Neolithic times*, as if perhaps I'd thought we could, or should. The thing is, I'm not attacking you, I'm simply not at all in favour of the very little I know about your farming lifestyle.
Yes, making the best of what we've got is vital. Literally, I think. Allowing any sheep anywhere to eat my taxes, and every seedling tree and shrub they can reach, includes no new thinking and does nothing (I can think of), to improve the environment, still a big old place for sure. |
I run 120 ewes and choose to avoid getting involved with any subsidies, grants or schemes, mainly because I'm independent and stubborn (to put it poliely). I don't know what my friends and neighbours receive in terms of subsidies etc. and wouldn't dream of asking them any more than I would ask you about details of your income or funding.
I think that there are a lot of good points made in the Tolhurst Farm video, mostly well known good practice. I was slightly miffed by the holier than thou attitude, that suggested that anyone who didn't do things their way was bad, but that's not really important.
I'll carry on with my farm, my way - surely that's the essence of diversity, people doing different things in different ways ? |
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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| Posted: Wed Nov 03, 10 7:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Rob R wrote: |
| Noones sheep eat anyone's taxes in this country any longer - subsidy is now paid per hectare, not per animal, so you could grow anything you like on it, it makes no difference. |
So it might well include sheep. But the subsidy is still considered necessary regardless of the relative inefficiency with which a subsidised upland farmer produces food(s) for us while his livestock prevent natural regeneration of species which would (eventually) flourish in the absence of farmed livestock? And year after year the nutrients leach from the soil and the (petroleum-based) fertilisers wash down the rivers because we've got it so badly wrong.
Oddly enough, I don't think (livestock) farmers are 100% to blame for what I perceive to be a monumental mess. Traditionalists though they tend to be, farmers are very capable of change, but very unlikely to make any changes unless the government, or the supermarkets - little difference between the two - head them in a new direction.
When the rainforests can be valued at $5 trillion https://ind.pn/9uOoeW, what price the reinstatement and continuous conservation of oak / mixed woodland on every slope (steep enough to be prone to run-off when ploughed) up to 2,000ft od throughout Wales, for example? Or is it appropriate to use our uplands to farm destructive herbivores for meat we don't need and wool we don't use? |
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T.G
Joined: 13 Sep 2009
Posts: 7280
Location: Somewhere you're not
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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Bebo
Joined: 21 May 2007
Posts: 12590
Location: East Sussex
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Ty Gwyn
Joined: 22 Sep 2010
Posts: 4613
Location: Lampeter
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Milo
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 342
Location: Oop North-ish.
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| Posted: Thu Nov 04, 10 12:37 am Post subject: |
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| Ty Gwyn wrote: |
| If eating a Vegan diet,makes around your eyes dark and a pale complection,thats gaunt,give me a Pork chop anyday. |
This is most peculiar. I understand things haven't been going too well lately in Barack Obama's Ty Gwyn either.
| Quote: |
| For someone that harps on about Subsidies to hill farmers,which as Rob mentioned are now Acreage based not Animal number based, Does he Not know about Set aside,where Arable farmers on some of the best land in the UK are paid Not to plant food. |
I'm not unfamiliar with the concept of set aside - as applied by the EU it's a very good example of costly mismanagement. How might you link that to anything in the video?
| Quote: |
| Its clear you have No idea about Care of the land,can you imagine what a Hill farm bordering a Mountain would look like with out Livestock,it would revert to Mountain,then you can go and pick your Wimberries. |
I've no need to imagine, I do know what a mountain(side) looks like when the livestock are removed / reduced / fenced out. This summer and over previous years I've observed planted trees returning vigorously to the Applecross peninsula. Last summer I was around the top of Cwm Cywarch where zero-grazing has caught on and farmed livestock are now to be found only in some, but not all, of the big ugly barns. There's almost no sign at all of any stock on the hill.
Probably wimberries, certainly saplings of native trees (and some at present up towards 15ft high), some bushy growth, and more bracken are all rapidly returning to the hillside. Defying logic a large section of the steepest ploughable hillside (about 1:3, I guess), had recently been ploughed - how much of it ended up in the river I don't know. And altogether how much bale-wrapping plastic (that's more petro-chemicals), was in the river, I don't know, but any is too much.
And the extraordinarily biodiverse meadow I remembered playing in as a child had been ploughed up and turned to a mass of much too vividly green seedlings( which I couldn't identify), and the once fast-flowing stream in that former meadow had become a sluggish, muddy mess.
I could see sense in the land use if the hillside were planted with trees or simply allowed to revert to (scrub, but improving), woodland, and the flat valley bottom were used to grow crops for humans', not livestock's, consumption.....
Lyfli, lyfli, lyfli people, but guardians of the countryside? It'd be funny, if it wasn't tragic. |
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Shane
Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 3467
Location: Doha. Is hot.
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Shane
Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 3467
Location: Doha. Is hot.
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| Posted: Thu Nov 04, 10 4:20 am Post subject: |
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| Milo wrote: |
| ...is it appropriate to use our uplands to farm destructive herbivores for meat we don't need and wool we don't use? |
If you did know anything about the South Downs, you'd know that it has been grassland for many, many centuries. Among the species that rely upon this grassland are the small blue butterfly, which was on the verge of extinction from the UK (if I recall correctly) a few years back but is now slowly making a recovery. The best way to maintain its habitat is through grazing.
It's all very well to hanker for a landscape free of farmed animals, but they have been there for millenia, and have shaped the land we have today. If we eradicate the farmed animals, there's also a danger that we'll eradicate the complicated biosystems that have become entwined with their presence. What you're basically saying is that it's okay to make certain wild species (such as the small blue) extinct in order to transition the landscape to a condition that it hasn't seen for many centuries, if at all. Strange argument.
Oh - found a quote here:
| Quote: |
| The Small Blue relies on chalk grassland habitats |
...and the best way to maintain those habitats is through sheep grazing. Similary, organisations such as the RSPB have found the optimum way to maintain some types of marsh is through cattle grazing. Lose the cattle, and you either have to use (hydrocarbon-fuelled) machinery or you accept that you lose some species from the UK. |
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