Blowing out the wind
Ruminant animals (such as cows, sheep and wildebeest) make a great job of converting grass into milk or meat, and so using land which is unsuitable for other crops. Unfortunately, a by-product of all this rumination is large quantities of methane - as much as 500 litres a day from a cow. Methane is a real 13.5 tog earth blanket gas - tonne for tonne, it produces about 23 times as much global warming as carbon dioxide.

A recent report for DEFRA estimated that, taking methane into account, producing a kilogram of beef generates the equivalent of 16kg of CO2. Farming organically cuts both ways. Not using nitrogen fertiliser means we generate less nitrous oxide (which is 300 times as powerful as CO2 as a greenhouse gas), but because our cattle eat less grain and mature slowly they spend more months burping methane than conventional beef cattle.

Scientists around the world - including the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen - have been working for years to produce a feed additive to reduce methane emissions, but as yet there is no magic fix.

This creates a challenge for our efforts to farm sustainably. Even our small herd of 13 cows is having the same impact on the environment as a dozen small cars. All this wind is what economists call an externality - we produce it, but the effects are felt elsewhere. So to offset the global impact of our very local herd, we are introducing our own greenhouse gas tax on meat - linked to the social cost of carbon.

We’ve settled on a carbon price of £20/tonne - based on the Stern report and Global Cool - and this means a tax of 10p/kg on beef and lamb and 4p/kg on pork. (Pigs don’t produce much methane, but much more fossil fuel energy goes into producing the grain they eat). We will introduce the tax once the butchery is up and running at the end of May.

The money raised will be used to support tree planting and energy efficiency projects on the farm and in the local community. We will produce an annual report on how much has been raised and how it has been spent.

May 2007

Climate change
The Soil Association has just launched its ‘One Planet Agriculture’ campaign. Global warming and the prospect of rising oil prices challenge us to imagine a more sustainable and equitable system for producing the world’s food. Agriculture is responsible for 12% of Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions, while contributing less than 2% to our economy - so we have plenty of room for improvement.

Last year, the Scottish Executive published a guide for farmers ‘Changing our ways - climate change and Scottish agriculture’. While it makes some useful suggestions, such as using biodiesel from waste oil to run the tractor (we’re still looking for a supplier), it’s a long way from a strategy for sustainable agriculture.

Such a strategy would need to include a major shift towards local and regional food economies; shortening supply chains and reducing food miles (which cost the UK more than the total value of all our farm produce); a significant move to organic production which both reduces nitrous oxide emissions and increases the ‘carbon sink’ held in the soil; serious support for developing and using wood for fuel and construction; on-farm wind energy generation and a greenhouse gas trading scheme together with advice on a farm by farm basis.

For more see www.soilassociation.org/oneplanetagriculture

Degrees of freedom
The RSPCA ‘freedom foods’ standards set out five freedoms as the foundation of animal welfare:
Freedom from hunger and thirst.
Freedom from discomfort.
Freedom from pain, injury or disease.
Freedom from fear and distress.
Freedom to express normal behaviour by providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal’s own kind.

We work hard to ensure that our laying hens experience the first four freedoms: but these are essentially ‘negative’ freedoms. A dead hen is free from all these things.

We struggle a bit with the last one, though. Our hens have plenty of space inside their houses and when they are let out to pasture every day. They choose their company: the second batch of hens keep themselves to themselves even though they would have much more room if they went into the other house with the older hens. (Apparently, hens can recognize up to 90 other individual hens and know whether each one is higher or lower in the pecking order).

But here’s what they consider normal behaviour. Getting up onto the outside of the nest boxes so they can launch themselves like Dumbo over the poultry netting. Getting into the cowshed so they can rake over the cows’ silage in case there’s anything interesting in it. Paddling in the stream. Finding a space between the hay bales where they can squeeze in to lay their eggs – and then moving to a new one if we rumble them. Holding on to the egg until they are let out and rushing for the barn, only to drop it halfway when their muscles finally give up.

So we’ve been busy limiting their behaviour, making the netting higher and further from the houses, and giving them a boring bath to compensate for the lack of a stream. They all still insist on staying out from the moment the pop hole goes up to well beyond dusk – even in filthy wet weather - and the last ones in still do a final tour of the house to show who’s in charge. (Which makes us wonder why in larger ‘free range’ systems nearly all the hens spend nearly all their time inside. Perhaps they have Sky Sports).

But we’re not the only ones challenged by balancing the hens desire to express themselves and the commercial realities of producing eggs. The RSPCA standards still don’t require laying hens to have access to the outside at all, and still permit beak trimming (to prevent stressed birds from hurting each other).

Does this matter?
“The avian beak is a complex sensory organ which not only serves to grasp and manipulate food particles prior to ingestion, but is also used to manipulate non-food articles in nesting behaviour and exploration, drinking, preening, as a weapon in defensive and aggressive encounters. The beak of the chicken has an extensive nerve supply with numerous mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors and nociceptors. Beak amputation results in extensive neuromas being formed in the healed stump of the beak...which give rise to abnormal spontaneous neural activity in the trigeminal nerve.”

Gentle, Michael J.; Waddington, David; Hunter, Louise N. and Jones, R. Bryan: Behavioural evidence for persistent pain following partial beak amputation in chickens. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 27: 149-157, 1990.

The good news for the UKs 28 million hens is that the RSPCA ‘intend to move away from this practice in the next five years’. The Soil Association’s organic standards forbid beak trimming (full stop).

January 2007

Whose lifestyle is it anyway?
David Miliband, Minister of the Environment for England, cheerfully displayed his lack of joined-up thinking in early January when describing organic food as a ‘lifestyle choice’. Peter Singer uses a bigger canvas in his recent book Eating:

“No other human activity has had as great an impact on our planet as agriculture. When we buy food we are taking part in a vast global industry. Americans spend more than a trillion dollars on food every year. That’s more than double what they spend on motor vehicles, and also more than double what the government spends on defense.

In addition to its impact on over six billion humans, the food industry also directly affects more than fifty billion non-human land animals a year. For many of them, it controls almost every aspect of their lives, causing them to be brought into existence, reared in totally artificial, factory-style units and then slaughtered. Additional billions of fish and other sea creatures are swept up out of the sea and killed so we can eat them.”

All this happens because of our choices about what we eat. We can make better choices.

January 2007

Is it just me, or are the winters shorter?
Recently published research by SNIFFER (Scotland and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research) confirms that the average spring, summer and winter temperatures in Scotland have risen by more than 1?c since 1961. On average, the growing season in East Scotland is over 30 days longer, with spring starting three weeks earlier (around March 20th) and winter arriving 10 days later (around 20th November). In parts of West Scotland, the change has been even greater.

The combination of higher temperatures with a longer growing season means that ‘growing degree days’ have also increased by over 20% on average across Scotland (and by over 80% in some northern and northwestern areas). Different crops have different growing degree day requirements, so more growing degree days means a wider range of crops can be grown. Don’t expect bananas any time soon in Lamancha, though maybe blackberries and apples will become a regular feature.

But there’s a downside:
“Further global warming of 1?c defines a critical threshold. Beyond that we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet from the one we know…another decade of business-as-usual carbon emissions will probably make it too late to prevent the ecosystems of the north from triggering runaway climate change.” Jim Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

October 2006

Paradigm lost
It's common knowledge that the way to succeed in farming is to specialise, scale up and cut labour costs. That way, we can sell our work through a centralised distribution system to people we don't know. Now organic farming has come of age, it is often driven to follow the same logic of focus and scale.  

So it must be a recipe for disaster to rear cows, sheep, pigs, turkeys and chickens while growing soft fruit and vegetables on a small north-facing upland farm. Except we get to sell our work to people we know - our co-conspirators who sign up to a regular standing order in return for local organic food and an open invitation to learn alongside us.  

Perhaps this is just the sepia-tinged version of organic farming which has proper farmers rolling their eyes. It certainly takes time to sow 500 module trays by hand, or use a hoe to weed the strawberries, or walk up to the woods to feed a few sows, or take people round the farm when they only want a dozen eggs. But perhaps it's part of a different way of connecting people and food, and cities to their hinterland.

Urban and peri-urban agriculture makes a significant contribution to the food needs of cities across the world. For example in Shanghai in 2000, the urban and peri-urban area produced 60% of the city's vegetables, 100% of the milk, 90% of the eggs, and 50% of the pork and poultry meat.

But it's a thing of the past in Scotland, where the recently published Forward Strategy for Scottish Agriculture - Next Steps does not mention it; and, symmetrically, Edinburgh's current community plan does not mention food.

The growth in farmers' markets and the long waiting list for allotments in many parts of Scotland suggest a new paradigm. Our four main cities could each support a co-operative network of small farms inside and around the city boundary, supplying directly to a network of consumer groups. These partnerships could use information technology to link demand and supply, renewable energy to extend the growing season, and green waste compost to maintain fertility.

These urban farms would build social capital, improve health, create wealth and reduce food miles. Of course, they could never do the job of proper farming, just like a Mac could never do the job of a mainframe and rooftop wind turbines could never replace power stations. But they would create some new common knowledge.

July 2006