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.
What a fantastic idea British farmers suddenly would get rich,only trouble is that almost everyone has so much money for example when out of work people can live in house costing upto £2,000 a week and compared to say the 1950s that they are not going to a lower level of eating,in fact history would show us it will get much worse until eventually the wheels come off and then it will have to alter but why does not this M P put down another early day motion about the earths resources we are using up at alarming rate such as oil and minerals etc.My guess is he sees farming as the fall guy but strangely it would benefit british farmers,for sure if farming contributes I think he says 18% of emissions then he does not seem to care about cars and planes and all boats of all descriptions plus all the unnecessary wars.Out of all that lot the one we cannot do without is farming that makes me cynical again about his motives but I am all for it.
By the way, I doubt whether scrubbing of the air from cattle sheds would be practical. Methane is not very soluble in water at all (hence the methane bubbles emerging from anaerobic bogs), so some other scrubbing chemical would need to be used in which methane is very soluble. This would obviously be more expensive and therefore may need to be regenerated for reuse or treated after use prior to disposal. In addition a fair amount of energy would be involved in operating the electic motor drives and, in respect of the economics, the equipment would only be operating for a limited part of the year. Also most cow sheds in my experience are open sided or at least pretty draughty so large amounts of air would be processed at pretty low concentrations of methane. Not withstanding, I think the issue of feeds is another matter.
redkite
As you say Mark, a tricky one. I hope we don't get too hung up on emmissions from the animals themselves (eg carbon capture) when there are more immediate and 'easier' (as much as anything in this is easy) issues to address - for me, by far the biggest is exported environmental degradation - loss of rainforest to soya. The same applies to rainforest lost to palm oil abd other energy crops- as Mrs Spelman announces welcome funding to protect rainforest, we really as a country need to examine what we are doing here - as so often one policy in direct collission with the opposite.
As you say Mark a tricky subject, but sounds like it might have some real potential. "Watch that space" as they say.