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

Cost of Civil Servoce

I have just been reading an Institute of Government report and discover that the preparation for Brexit expanded the head count in the Civil Service by 95,000 (surprise!) nand the total salary cost of the UK Civil Servive in 2022 was £16.6 billion.  The report did not easily show the total cost (maybe that was just my lack of preseverance) but my own trainig says that the cost to a business of one person without extras, just sitting at a desk in a building, is around double that salary, Start adding extras like meeting rooms, expenses and it can trebble. Say a total cost of aroind £40 billiom.

Now, in the run up to the election, we get promises of cutting taxes and extra spending on things that the contestants think we all want.  Sorry, guys, you can’t offer both.

It appears that even the Institute of Government is gradually comming round to a common sense apprach to all of this . We do not need more government.  We do need more efficient government.  My own view, for what it is worth (and who am I?) is that we, as a nation, need to take each bit of government and develop a from-square-one plan and start again.  Don’t try and oveerhaul what we have, develop a plan to change from old to new.  A painful scrappage but much more likley to allow the development of an active productivity environment in all sectors of government and the nation as a whole.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Food and Farming Bill Butterworth, Land Reseaarch Ltd,98 June ’24

 

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

 

 

 

Latest on Bovine TB from Cambridge

Cambridge Univestiy researchers spells hope for ddairy and beef farmers – and humans who can catch Bovine TB.

Tuberculosis (TB) remains endemic in many countries around the world. New research shows that vaccination not only reduces the severity of bovine TB in infected cattle but also reduces its spread in dairy herds by 89%. This remarkable indirect effect of the vaccine raises the prospect of putting herds on the pathway towards becoming TB-free.

You can get more deatils from TB vaccine may enable elimination of the disease in cattle by reducing its spread | University of Cambridge

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Farming and Forestry Bill Butterworth Land Research Ltd 29 Maarch ’24

Gaza, Israel and food

Wheat is used to make bread. The people of the Gaza strip need bread.

As a child, and as an agricultural scientist, my whole life has been to feed the people of this Earth.  Now, the Muslem world faces Ramadan. It seems reasonable to ask the Christians of Israel, to respect the needs of the Palestinian people of Gaza – in order to fast during this month, they need to have breakfast before dawn. They are also asked to give to charity, to show kindness and patience. Christians, including those in Israel, must do the same or lose sympathy from the rest of the world. Civilised people across the world have much sympathy with the Jews and the Holocaust but might well advise the Israelites not to repeat the sins committed by the Nazis.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Food and Farming Bill Butterworth, Land Research Ltd 11 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

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

 

 

Regulation Overhaul

A new review, commissioned by the government, recommends someone from the private sector to head up the civil service.

Many readers will be very much aware of my views of our regulators.  No one would sensibly argue that we do not need regulation but we do need regulation designed and policed by people trained in risk manamgent and enablement in th earea to be regulated. I see the UK as leading the western world in over-regulation, using “We are spending public money” as an excuse to cover every angle, from a position not skilled in the process or situation that is being regulated.

The Prime Minister has, more than once, been reported as being worried about productivity in the UK. I have no doubt, from presonal experience with a decision to be made in over 4000 businesses and organisations in the last 50 years, that the biggest single factor causing this is prescriptive regulation that has lost sight of the original objective.  The proplem for elected government is that the mechanism they use for implimenting change is, itself, the problem. My only worry about the review by Lord Maude is that it does not go far enough.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Food and Farming Bill Butterworth, Laned Research Ltd 16 November ’23

Enabling “waste” as a Product

II have just had published a chapter in “Urban Metabolism and Climate Change”, available from Springer  Nature at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-29422-8_10     Some of my research is available on the website as below, and by clicking on the picture top right “Survival”. My experience-based calculations is that maybe we might be provocative and say that we have not got enough waste.

SEFF Soil, Environment and the Future of Farming Bill Butterworth, Land Research Ltd  12 August ’23