I mentioned that MP Robert Flello had done well in the Private Members' Ballot and would be trying to introduce a Bill into Parliament on the subject of sustainable livestock management. This is a really tricky subject, and because of its difficulty it does not get as much government attention as it should. What would a sustainable livestock industry look like?
It probably wouldn't involve the import of soya-based animal feed from areas of destroyed rainforest. It probably wouldn't involve using so much of our productive farmland to grow grain to feed to cattle - we could grow food we could eat directly on that land instead. Might it involve keeping animals indoors for longer and scrubbing their greenhouse gas emissions out of the air in their sheds before it escapes into the atmosphere to worsen cliamte change? Might it involve eating less meat? Or more poultry and less red meat?
Tricky stuff indeed. But Mr Flello also has an Early Day Motion which is attracting many MPs' signatures. It is one of the most successful EDMs of this parliamentary session and gives a flavour of the thinking behind the Bill..
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Mark
Thanks for your comments . I have enjoyed reading your blogs and I appreciate that you recognise that I have quite a lot of countryside experience. I would like to see the countryside return to the way it was in my childhood in the 1950s. We used to look for harvest mice nests in the cereal crops. On 11 acres in 3 small fields we had at least 3 pairs of grey partridge nesting every year the young used to thrive among the potato crop. We grew cabbage and sprouts with minimal herbicide use and the weeds among these crops brought in vast flocks of many different finches in the wintertime. This carried on as long as we had these fields and there were butterflies in the hedgrerows,tree sparrows nesting in natural sites in the oak trees. When we gave up 2 of these 3 fields they were immediately put down to rye grass by the farmer who took up the lease and all of the wildlife dissappeared. I think it would be great for someone like the RSPB to replicate these methods of cultivation even on a small scale.
Sooty why I waste my time I do not know, but please look at this newspaper article about cheese exports to China
www.cumberlandnews.co.uk/farming/milk-link-wins-chinese-contract-1.542151?referrerPath=home/2.3080
maybe now you will retract some of your derogatory comments. Sooty please answer my comment about 97% of wildflower meadows dissappearing largely at the hands of farmers.
Sooty This is what Derek Ratcliffe has to say in his New Naturalist book Lakeland page 161. Derek Ratcliffe was chief scientist with the Nature Conservancy and one of the foremost nature conservationists of the 20th Century.He helped introduce the system of SSSIs. He is talking about some of the fantastic herb rich floral meadows and heaths of northern cumbria. he says that sadly they have almost all disappeared because of changes to farming methods. He says that it seemed that similar broad roadside (each 3 or 4 metres) wide verges might survive but and this is a quote "Then around 1990, local farmers evidently decided that this was wasted land that could 'earn' them more money and set to work to improve these verges. A layer of topsoil was dumped to bury the existing vegetation and then seeded with commercial ryegrass. Anyone who thought that roadside verges would remain as last refuge fragments of wildlife in the rural wildlife deserts should revise their ideas " (end quote) Many miles of the finest limestone verges with the richest of haymeadow flora were destroyed in this manner. Ironically this is still occurring. In the past year I have seen part of a conservation verge sprayed with weedkiller. Now I am not saying that all farmers can be tarred with the same brushand some have got an excellent environmental record, but some have got a terrible attitude to our environment. Sooty you seem to think that all farmers are perfect environmentalists and you are so disillusioned. Talk to me about wildflower meadows not about milk!!