UK is falling behind on food production research

Successive Conservative governments have shut down parts of the UK agricultural research insitutions.  There will be a consequence in food security. Note the following;

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) hosted a groundbreaking ceremony today for a new state-of-the-art USDA grape research facility on the Cornell AgriTech campus.

The over 70,000 square foot facility will be named the National Grape Improvement Center and will house the ARS Grape Genetics Research Unit and ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit. In addition, four Cornell grapevine research projects will move into the research facility.

Now, as climate change develops, we are alrady growing grapes and producing award-winning wines.  We could do better if we put morre money into research.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Food and Farming Bill Butterworth, Land Research Ltd. 26 June ’24

Hottest summer for 2000 years

 

 

 

Researchers at Cambridge University have reasonable evidence that 2023 was the hottest summer in the UK for 2000 years and, says Professor Ulf Büntgen, from Cambridge’s Department of Geography. “2023 was an exceptionally hot year, and this trend will continue unless we reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically.”

So, what does this mean for farming? Soil moisture conservation becomes a key issue. After after a wet winter! This, too is a characteristic of climate change – the swing to rapid changes from one extreme to the other. Difficult. Tile drains are expensive.

Provided compaction with heavy machinery can be avoided (again difficult) one of the things that direct drilling can do is help reduce oxidation of soil organic matter and, in turn, what that does is help build a block structure in the soil and that helps gas and water exchange and helps drainage.

And, yes, lots other adjustments.

And government please note: food security is now a key issue.

SEFF – Soil, Environment , Food and Farming Bill Butterworth, Land Research Ltd. 17 May ’23

 

A greater danger

I have taken global warming very seriously for longer than I remember. Certainly, the last few books I have written on this subject took time and research, and took me away from family for many hours.  You can download the last one, sometimes for free (if any charge, profits go to charity) : search  , https://www.amazon.co.uk/Survival-Sustainable-Energy-Wastes-Shale-ebook/dp/B01H63EQX0

The point here is one Figure from that book and it what I felt of the evidence in front of me.

Do I really think this will happen?  Well, we do have the technology or can get it quickly enough. However, we are not getting on with what needs to be done, largely because of lack of political understanding and world-wide obsession with wealth and political power.  However, there is another matter which is even more worrying and very urgent.

Pollution is a very urgent threat.  The only bits I have really studied are of pharmaceutical pollution and the growth of micro and nanoplastics. There are others. These reinforce the likelihood of the above prediction.

I have never found prediction difficult – do the homework and exercise common sense – and there is usually only one conclusion ( or “one best way” as Franklin D Roosevelt said).  So, what is the problem?

Not “if” but “when”?

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Food and Farming – Bill Butterworth, Land Research Ltd 29 April ’24

 

 

 

Food security is a real threat

So many fields across the UK are water-logged.

The last two winter periods in the UK have seen long periods of rain, maybe a month or more, and long periods of drought, similarly a month or so.  This changes the way farmers put in their crops and the way the crops grow. From what we know of climate change (we are in uncharted territory), this is likely to persist and maybe become more extreme. That really does make food security an issue.  Yes, we can fill gaps in the short run.  However, do that and we will not have a UK farming industry – just like we have done with other industries.  There is a good rule – Have 80 % of what you need produced in-house.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Food and Farming  Bill Butterworth, Land Research Ltd 26 March ’24

Civil service objectives & productivity

I am indebted to a civil servant who, in a recent discussion over the phone, led me to an understanding of how the civil service works and it has relevance to the Prime Minister’s worry about static productivity nationally.

The conversation revolved round a document which was required in a claim for work on a research project.  The document was a list in some detail of dates, time and resources involved and reasons for the involvement.  That list was of “no interest” and my suitability as a project manager was “seriously questioned”.

I sat and thought about this and discussed with a colleague what he had done, which was a spread sheet with three short sentences and the claim figure. That was passed immediately.  I took that spread sheet, marginally changed the sentences and added a new figure, presented it and got it cleared immediately.  The point is that it was a spreadsheet! The “system” wanted a spreadsheet, not actual information which would give reasonable grounds to thinking the submission was not fraudulent.

I would never argue that we do not need a Civil Service and, indeed, much of it is brilliant.  However, there are bits of it which develop systems which are continually developed in order to combat people who are undisciplined and possibly fraudulent and, eventually, these systems become an over-burden, and worse still, become an end in themselves, i.e. the system is the objective. When this happens, the objective which the grant was originally targeting is delayed or even lost.

When the Prime Minister looks for improvements in national productivity – here is a major cause.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Food and Farming Bill Butterworth, Land Researach Ltd, 8 March ’24

Aviation fuel and CO2

How to tackle aviation fuel use and emissions.

I do know only a little about making alternative, “renewable” fuels from plant oils, but here is some common sense. Some years back, I set up a group of farmers who recycled urban wastes, via composting, to farm land. After a few years of doing this, some of them were able to stop buying manufactured fertilisers and yet still had better crops and a little less use of chemical sprays. Two of them grew oil seed rape this way and used the oil to drive their tractors. So, we know it can be done. Is it likely that we could do aviation fuel this way? Well, technically it is possible and, indeed, it has been done. However, most people who have done more research on this than I think that scaling it up is extremely unlikely and for a number of reasons. Firstly, it does appear that the efforts so far are just an attempt to say “we are trying” but there is no real commitment to scaling it up. In other words, it is a publicity stunt to put off the day of actually doing it at scale.

So, how to move forward?

Well, the United Nations (UN) could start a program where countries agree to collect a tax on aviation fuel (made from fossilised hydrocarbon reserves) and pay the revenues to the UN. Do this against a time scale and then shorten the build up of tax.

 

Difficult? Yes it would be – very.

 

Any alternative? Catastrophic, yes, catastrophic for our kids.

 

There is over 300 pages on this in https://www.amazon.co.uk/2030-Year-Civilisation-Will-Die/dp/1789821134

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Farming and Forestry Bill Butterworth  Land Researach Ltd 30 January ’24

Gaza war CO2

Militaries may be responsible for 5.5% of the annual greenhouse gas emissions fuelling climate change – more than all the civil aviation flights and shipping voyages combined.

Earth-Stress is catching us up. All living things can stand stress, it is part of the definition of being alive. All living things can stand one stess. Now add another. OK. Now add another and another. At some point, the organism will crack and declinne. That is happening on this Earth right now. It is not just about climate change, nor pollution, nor a host of other stresses. It is about climate change, AND pollution, AND over-population, AND a host of other stresses.
By the way, researchers at Lancaster University have doen some homework on the one-sided war in Gaza. The energy taken to manufacture, deliver and use the munitions put his as the fith largest emitter of GHG’s on this Earth right now. If we ever get round to rebuilding what the Israelis are destroying, that will just about double the emissions.
It is not just bad for the Palestinians, it is killing the rest of us.

Part of the solution is at https://lnkd.in/eUjH7VeK

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Farming and Forestry Bill Butterworth, Land Researcj Ltd 28 Januaary ’23

How to free public transport

We have to reduce fuel use globally, starting with every individual.  It cannot be volutary. It has to start now for everyone together.

Here is a sugestion as to how to manage the political issue:

1.  Issue a statement of intent to develop a 10 year plan to make public transport free.
2. Within 6 months of that statement, pass a law binding local authorites and the rail network to making their transport sector free withing 10 years.
3. Within the first 12 months of the initial anouncement, issue a statement that road tax for individuals will double within 2 years, and do that.
4. Progressively bring forward free public transport dates and increases in road tax and fuel duty.
5. Progressively bring forward to target to deliver within 7 years of original anouncement.

Are there serious problems for individuals and businesses with this sort of plan? Yes, very serious.  There will be serious casualties. There will be serious difficulties politically and economically.

Think about the alternative.

(Look out for the next post on how to reduce emissions form aircraaft – and it isn’t to use “renewable” fuels. )

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Farming and Forestry.  Bill Butterworth 24 January ’24

Free public transport

There is just beginning to be a discussion at government level, in the UK and Europe, maybe globally eventually, about the logic of free public transport, probably funded by increased tax on running aiprovate car.  If you take the threat of climate chage seriously, and ALL the top scientists in th eworld do, then the emissions from transport is unavoidable. The question is when. The likelyhood is that the politicians will be frightened that they might upset their voters and not do it soon enough. If you vlaue your children’s future, this is worth thinking about and telling your MP what you think.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Farming and Forestry Bill Butterworth, Lane Research 9 January ’24

 

 

Happy Christmas for 2024?

One of my news feeds said:

“COP28 ended with a historic agreement to “transition away” from using fossil fuels in energy systems, the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions altering Earth’s climate. So why did the companies plying coal, oil and gas have a good summit?  As we reported last week, the failure to include stronger language in the final text (including the promise of a definitive “phase-out” of fossil fuels) was condemned by climate and energy researchers.”

I choose to conclude, on evidence, that we have the technology to head off the worst results of climate change, pollution, over-population and insincer politicians who promise much but, with the aid of global businesses, deliver little.

The conclusions I come to, and have published in the books that I write, are that the success in combating these multiple and combined threats, will come from small companies, individual innovators, ordinary people, who scale up making money out of doing things that solve these problems, or finding ways to spend less money on the things that cause these problems.  At the end of the day, combatting climate change and all the other problems that threaten the human race, it is all about cash.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Farming and Forestry                                             Bill Butterworth, Laned Research 22 December ‘23