European Tribune

Display:
I know that uplands farming in this area is almost entirely meat based, I don'tknow wether it's down to soil deficiency or difficulty in getting farming equipment onto hillside fields.

Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
by ceebs (bunchofwankers (at) gmail (dot) com) on Wed Nov 14th, 2007 at 10:56:50 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Upland agriculture in England, Scotland, and Wales is sheep based because there is too much rain for the slope of the land.  IIRC the rule-of-thumb was no mechanical cropping on land with >10 degree slope.  

This was before the Green Revolutionaries decided destroying topsoil through fence-to-fence planting was a Good Idea.  

Och nu den svenska kocken bakar en Alaskan älg jägare. Bonk! Bonk! Bonk!

by ATinNM on Wed Nov 14th, 2007 at 11:21:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Mechanisation is one aspect. Another is soil type: upland slopes rarely have soils as fertile or deep as those of plains, valley bottoms, etc, that benefit or have benefitted from alluvial deposits. Also a sizeable proportion of flatter (moor) land in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Pennine England, is peaty.

Add to this a positive incentive: a temperate, rainy climate that makes grass grow almost all year round.

Result: a built-in bias towards animal production (sheep and cattle, mostly extensive), even before mechanisation or subsidies came on the scene.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Nov 15th, 2007 at 04:42:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The MOD owns large areas of the UK which were once farmland and probably could be again, after a clean-up.

Turning Salisbury Plain into farmland might add a couple of percent to the UK's self-sufficiency quota.

A combination of reduced meat production, re-farming of MOD land, amateur vegetable growing and lower consumption would very possibly cover everyone's basic needs in the UK.

It might not be very exciting, but not eating crap and getting more exercise might not be a bad outcome.

Of course this only works for the UK. Rest of World is just a little more complicated.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu Nov 15th, 2007 at 07:02:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Agricultural land in the UK totals about 41,900,000 acres.  The MOD's landholding comes to a total of roughly 750,000 acres

Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
by ceebs (bunchofwankers (at) gmail (dot) com) on Thu Nov 15th, 2007 at 07:25:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
MOD?

Och nu den svenska kocken bakar en Alaskan älg jägare. Bonk! Bonk! Bonk!
by ATinNM on Thu Nov 15th, 2007 at 08:27:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Ministry of Defence.

Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
by ceebs (bunchofwankers (at) gmail (dot) com) on Thu Nov 15th, 2007 at 08:48:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Doesn't the 'meat-baseness' have to do in some measure with subsidies?, ie, through the creation of incentives?

Locals I met while traveling through N Wales assured me that the sheep and farm animal subsidies constituted a real economic and environmental dilemma ...

by Loefing on Wed Nov 14th, 2007 at 02:24:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
One of the outcomes of the US subsidizing corn (maize) farming was a mountain of corn.  Previously the corn was used-up as cheap animal feed and to make various cheap corn sweeteners.

The governments of the world have united in the belief the best agricultural policy is to provide lots and lots of barfitudinous foodstuffs as cheap as possible to the consumer¹ with the minimum amount of labor.  The UK, in particular, has no hope of feeding the numbers of bodies inhabiting the kingdom so the various governments tolerate farmers as kind of messy, but necessary, holders of land soon to a relief road, airport extension, or housing development².  In support of this policy the idea is to prevent, by any means to hand, farmers being able to make a decent living farming.  This is primarily done through a system of subsidies ensuring the maximum amount of ecological damage for the minimum amount of money.

¹  at least as long as the daily requirements of the three basic foodgroups (fat, starch, and sugar) are met.

²  Except for the Fen country, which will soon be under water.

Och nu den svenska kocken bakar en Alaskan älg jägare. Bonk! Bonk! Bonk!

by ATinNM on Wed Nov 14th, 2007 at 08:25:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:
Login
. Make a new account
. Reset password
Debates
Campaigns
Occasional Series