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

 

 

 

Einstein and Human Survival

“We Shall Require a Substantially New Manner of Thinking if Mankind is to Survive” (Einstein 1949)

I observe that, whatever people say about global population falling, the truth. is that it is still expanding.  So is pollution, especially from pharmaceutical residues and microplastics (not to mention GHG’s). The GHG’s from armed conflicts round the world is larger than any other single cause. Global warming is limiting food security. The landmass available for agricultural production is shrinking. Einstein was right BUT we still do not change fast enough.

However, there is good work going on.  We do have, or are already developing the technology to survive.  BUT, we do need to stop wars, stop population growth, start limiting pollution and start thinking survival.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Food and Farming  Bill Butterworth, Land Research Ltd, 22 April ’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

Farming and Global Warming

This might be a picture of teh global warming to come! however, it was rtaken rececntly in Wiltshire UK. Teh crisis is here and now.

For two days last week, the Earth was more than 2°C hotter than it was before the industrial revolution.  Instead of halting global warming at 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the relatively safe limit scientists have advised, humanity is on track for 3°C by 2100 according to a UN report.

There are many things we need to do and one of them is to promote the skills of farmers to reclaim the deserts and grow green leaves which take CO2 out of the atmosphere.  How to do it?  Click on th epicture on your right.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Food and Forestry Bill Butterworth  Land Research Ltd  22 November @23

 

 

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

Chalk Downland and Nitrogen

Maybe 600 feet above sea level, close to Devizes. Almost pure chalk which, for thousands of years would have been one of the few places in the British Isles, that was not covered by trees.  Now, we crop it by pouring nitrogen in.  In this casew, by the look of it, bag N which is soluble.  Maybe 30 to 40 % leaches out to the ground water.

Immigration – how to stop it

It is true that the birth rate in developed economies does tend to drop – and that includes China. So everything will be alright, won’t it?  Well, no.  The truth is that the global population is still growing and needs feeding.  Even in the poorest country, energy is used from even before birth, and energy used per day per individual is rising internationally. Further, climate change is happening, especially in North Africa and the Arab countries.  Population there has already begun to migrate, and that migration will increase.

For those interested in developing agriculture in areas where we might hope the local people will develop their own agriculture, thrive and have reason to stay and grow, see the link below.  Theycan  grow trees, they can help slow down climate change, too.

https://www.fao.org/fsnforum/member/bill-butterworth?check_logged_in=1

By th eway – it won’t be quick but the sooner we start, the sooner the progress.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Food and Farming Bill Butterworth 1 October ’23

Composting plastics

I had reasonn to look up something in the book to your right – “Survival”.  The current version is recently revised but, in the orginal version, written some 15 years ago, I reported on some work we did with composting large quatities of MDF – Mediam Density Fibreboard. That very common material in homes and offices, is shredded wood, glued back together with a glue called ureaformaldehyde which is most cerainly a plastic.  What a paragraph in the book observed was that “we can and do compost plastic provided the format allows the micro-organisms to attack it”.

There is enough plastic in the world to up-cycle to fertilise crops, replace all the manufactured feriliser and rebuild the global Carbon sink.  So, why are we not doing it?

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Food and Farming Bill Butterworth, Land Researach Ltd 29 September ’23