Tuesday 26 January 2010

Lambs, Sustainable Food Production


The Farmer must have got his dates wrong...we now have two lambs and both doing well.
They will stay in the poly-tunnel for a few days although the weather is reasonable, but its best to be on the safe side and put then out when they are a little stronger. The Farmer always says that if he can't catch the lamb easily then a fox can't either and a healthy lamb can move like greased lightning!

We have heard from the travellers. They are in glorious sunshine heading for Rotarua having had a fairly grim time flying (27 hours or so!), It is such an adventure for them.

With thoughts of long haul flights very much in our minds lately we were very interested to read in one of the dairy industry papers that come to us, the following information; that  one jumbo jet taking off has the same carbon footprint as the annual output of a 1,000 cow dairy unit.
I think this puts into persepctive the critiscms that are the levelled at farmers over their contribution to global warming! Whilst the vegetarian/vegan lobby & some politicians, tell us we should not produce meat & milk because it is damaging the planet, no-one ever suggests that all aircraft should be grounded.
This is a debate that we and our fellow producers have all the time, along with the pros & cons of vegetarian/veganism. With the encouragement to eat locally produced food, the need for non-meat,dairy& egg-eaters to have their rice, soya, nuts & lentils flown in from all corners of the world becomes an indulgence that is completely unsustainable.
Whilst Britain can produce high quality food of great variety, there are parts of the country where due to geography & climate, only grass can be grown and surely it better to be able to convert that grass into meat & milk than fly foodstuffs halfway round the world.
This is a very simplified argument, but it would be interesting to hear your point of view, dear readers.

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