The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: Me on May 11, 2019, 07:56:09 pm
-
Simple rewilding shifts the burden of food production and the associated environmental problems abroad, doing nothing to protect the global environment but tightening world food supplies and disproportionately affecting the worlds poor. We are a rich nation with relatively good soils, we have a responsibility to demonstrate how to feed our population from our own soils without destroying the planet. Rewilding focuses only on land abandonment as an ideal, the elephant in the room is the population still needs feeding the two issues cannot be divorced. Rewilding Britain without agricultural self sufficiency = Intensification of agriculture abroad = No nett gain
-
What, please [member=35918]Me[/member] , was the genesis of your post ?
-
Me, you're right of course, but it's not as digital as you make out. If the rewilded land was previously being used to grow food. The question is, how much food was it producing per acre, and is the loss of that food 'worth it' for whatever benefits rewilding gives us?
-
I think we have more than < a responsibility to demonstrate how to feed our population from our own soils without destroying the planet>....we need to actually do it. Perhaps that's what you mean. Certainly there seems to be a view that just because WW2 is in the past, the need to feed ourselves from home grown produce has also passed. History shows us that it repeats itself, and famine will come to us too - we are an island, with a sea to cross, or air to fly through, in order to bring in food from abroad. Not to be able to do that could come from war or climate change, or some other disaster.
The rewilding fashion is not to blame for our reliance on imports. Cast your mind back a few years to 'set aside' when land owners were paid to leave their fields uncultivated, a sort of disorganised rewilding. The politics of trade agreements are way beyond my ken, but we do seem to be trapped in long term agreements to buy from other countries, for example Tesco is locked into a deal to buy a large amount of lamb from NZ, while we then have to find a destination abroad to which we can sell our home produced lamb. This has never made any sense to me.
I don't think there is any intention to rewild a large proportion of the country but it would make sense if what is rewilded was not previously good agricultural land - we are already growing crops for biofuels there. How would you justify that, any more than rewilding? Biofuels are a mockery, using as much energy to produce as they give out, and destroying vast tracts of virgin forests throughout the world so the rich can drive their gas guzzling cars, and warm their homes with their wood pellet boilers, and governments can feel smug and self satisfied.
There is so much wrong with the way we run our world, and until Climate Change is sorted, rewilding Britain is the least of our worries. At least rewilding allows more trees to grow to swallow up pollution, gives a home to our flora and fauna to maintain some of our biodiversity, and still produces plenty of food from the land
There are two sides to the view that by importing food we are taking that food out of the mouths of 'the world's poor'. The only way some countries can pay off their vast overseas debts, or earn money to import what they cannot grow or produce in their own countries, is to sell overseas ie to 'rich countries', including Britain. As long as the proceeds of selling overseas go to the population, not into the pockets of a few, of course.
-
Maybe rewilding is more important than feeding people. Controversial I’m sure but the more people survive the more people we make and when does that stop?
-
This is going to sound harsh and brutal but reality is that there will never be a global consensus will to sort matters of population or even climate because too many countries and big business remain only concerned with themselves and indeed stamping down any upstarts or using them.
If one (sadly) accepts that premis then the main point is to look after oneself - albeit with as many environmental concerns to at least show the rest of the world what can be done. You can't fix everything.
There are many absurdities as I hinted in another thread and importing anything we can grow or make here is simply stupid - it adds to our huge national debt, causes unemployment or worse employment in underpaid work - (my usual soap box against takeaway coffee, takeaway food deliveries and a lot of the gig economy) and worse we lose the skills and plant to make the stuff should everything go tits-up.
One of the paradoxes of low wages is social welfare is needed to allow folk to live - effectively subsidising those wages through the back door instead of those businesses having to increase wages and costs and price themselves out of the market of selling rubbish and release workers or productive stuff - except we're now too lazy to want to do it.
When it comes to rewilding then I always argue as to at what point in history do you want to go; prewar, saxon, cretaceous? Nature has a way of balancing itself when it can and suddenly mucking about with it again doesn't help. It's more use stopping knocking stuff down than in building ye olde back up - give it a chance to establish it's current balance.
-
Rewilding does good for one person. for example the foreign investor who is rewilding thousands of acres in Caithness. he can feel really good about himself when he flys into Scotland for a holiday and knows that the carbon emmisions from his flight is being offset by the loss of jobs (keepers and shepherds)loss of production.
I wonder if anyone has done the calculations for oxygen production and carbon capture? 1 blackface ewe per 5 acre of well managed heather vs 5 acre of scrub heather and rashes. I've seen first hand which option is better for wildlife
-
SotB there is an area near here that the RSPB dictated the management of when they brought in SSSI's. It went from being decent pasture land with clumps of rushes and other wild goodies to three quarters rushes within 8 years. The farmer was grudgingly let back onto the fields with severe restrictions which stopped the rushes getting worse but did not solve the lack of habitat problem. Then he was told to weed wipe the lot, He told them to stuff it as there was no way he was going to turn the area back round, at his expense only for some city do gooders telling him how to farm it. The fence line between what he kept farming his way and the "managed" land really tells a story. All the wildlife moved over into his farmed fields from the managed ones as they had the open areas for them.
On various areas of land all around the country management cannot be done by set dates on the calendar. Please tell nature that it has to conform to what some university trained boffin says must happen when, no budding up or dropping leaves 4 days early as that is not the done thing.
-
I'm not sure that re-wilding is necessarily in conflict with food production and jobs.
There are 1000s of km2 in the Highlands that don't currently produce any food (unless you count a few kg if grouse per km2). Cattle were largely taken off the hills a century ago and (in many areas) sheep were taken off 20 years ago, you would be amazed how far you can go without seeing any livestock.
This land only supports a few gamekeepers jobs and there have been plenty studies showing that other land uses are much more economically viable. Re-wilding (in Scotland anyway) is likely to be driven by billionaire landowners who subsidise it in much the same way that they might subsidise shooting estates.
Removing some of the 1000s of km of roads that have been built in the hills recently and planting native trees would be a massive start to re-wilding which wouldn't affect food production and is likely to be neutral in its impact on jobs.
-
Removing some of the 1000s of km of roads that have been built in the hills recently and planting native trees would be a massive start to re-wilding which wouldn't affect food production and is likely to be neutral in its impact on jobs.
And might stop good agricultural land being covered in trees.
-
I think there are degrees of rewilding - and the word can be used to mean different things. If it's farming more supportively of nature, some treeplanting, protecting soils etc, then I'm all for it.
Reintroducing lynx, wolves, elephants - not so much.
-
Aww, come on Rosemary. Huge herds of elephants would be fun.
:innocent: :innocent: :innocent: :innocent: :innocent: :innocent:
Main point agreed though, when we have 1000s of km2 of unused (or only used for shooting) uplands then that's where re-wilding and tree planting should be done to leave productive farmland for producing food.
-
Aww, come on Rosemary. Huge herds of elephants would be fun....
.. a mammoth task..
-
Aww, come on Rosemary. Huge herds of elephants would be fun....
.. a mammoth task..
It won't be long til the Koreans clone a mammoth or two, and the Americans genetically engineer some. We would need some Tundra though......
-
We are heading towards the next ice age.
-
Thanks for your input :thumbsup:
-
I'm still wondering what prompted this thread Me - what are you (and posters) all reading, watching on TV, listening to on the radio or following on the web that I am not? Concept of rewilding seems to have passed me by !
-
I'm still wondering what prompted this thread Me - what are you (and posters) all reading, watching on TV, listening to on the radio or following on the web that I am not? Concept of rewilding seems to have passed me by !
Wilding, by Isabella Tree, The Return of Nature to a British Farm
I have found this a convincing and enjoyable read. There are plenty of other books on the subject and I think people's different reactions to the OP depend on which books they have read and their individual experiences of what is a fairly new concept.
I agree that it would be good if [member=35918]Me[/member] could tell us the point of the question, after getting the discussion going.
-
I am brought into contact with people who promote this agenda regularly and the blind anti farming ethos that accompanies it
-
My favourite Time team programme is an excavation of a farming community in Barra,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkf0iAwByjA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkf0iAwByjA)
it shows the marks from ploughing in what is virtually sand.
So we have farmed for a long time, what seems to have changed is the amount of people, and the thought that we can have everything we want, any time, anywhere and is it doesn't matter we consume, because there is more of it somewhere.
In the UK we waste land covering it with block paving and concrete, we think of rewilding as big projects but in pursuit of the tidy , the wild is being tidied out of every day life, so you pay to visit the wild. All a bit Joni Mitchell.
We export our plastic waste abroad, we import food, so perhaps before we think about taking large areas of productive land out of production we should work out what land can be farmed most easily, with low inputs, even commercial farmers are looking at no till and muck. The big argument in the Fens is the using of maize to use in the biogas production. Wind farms are controversial but we have renewable wind, huge areas are being used for fuel crops.
I love mangetout, but every time I eat them I have a dilemma , they have air miles, but someone makes a living from picking them? The plastic water bottle which is so convenient, if it is recycled is less energy used than glass, and its heavier to transport.
I watched a film last night which seems to have a message that we need balance and eating bugs is the way forward.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706620/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706620/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt)
-
I can well and truly recommend Isabella Tree's book - it did blow my mind. Where I am not massively in favour of re-introducing wolves into Britain - they will eventually come by themselves or someone will bring them in. Now well spread over most of Europe, my dad has met one on the road near to where they live in Northeastern Germany, the wolves are swimming across the Oder river from Poland. And farming practices are changing, as in free-range grazing for sheep (never widely practiced on the continent anyway) is now a thing of the past.
-
Thanks [member=4333]Fleecewife[/member] for post #18. I'll try and catch up !!
-
I am brought into contact with people who promote this agenda regularly and the blind anti farming ethos that accompanies it
I haven't come across anti farming propaganda, but then I don't get out much ;D Apart of course from the anti cattle and sheep brigade, who accept some pretty shaky statistics about methane output, without knowing that ruminant methane production can only be accurately measured by keeping individual animals in an input/output chamber, eating grain which is not their natural diet, and without grass and trees to absorb the gasses. Extrapolating results obtained in that way, however accurately measured, is dangerous when applied to sheep and cattle worldwide, under every management system, and is bound to give inaccurate results.
I'm wondering if there is a difference between 'wilding' and 'rewilding', with the former meaning to allow nature to reclaim sections of less useful agricultural land, and the latter meaning the introduction of animals currently extinct in Britain. It appears to be the reintroductions which inspire polarised views.
I'm glad beavers, boar, ospreys and white tailed eagles have been brought back, and I have a hankering for wolves (probably because they are a bit like my one-time German Shepherd Dog ::) ), but realistically I can't see wolves, lynx, bears and so on being either happy or tolerated in our modern world. I don't think the population of Scotland has changed all that much recently, but that of Britain as a whole certainly has. I think for the big predators to thrive, they need large areas of land, not isolated patches, with fencing around them, and an absence of humanity with guns and road vehicles.
-
...... I'm wondering if there is a difference between 'wilding' and 'rewilding', with the former meaning to allow nature to reclaim sections of less useful agricultural land, and the latter meaning the introduction of animals currently extinct in Britain. ....
There I was grappling with rewilding and trying to catch up ... and then you introduce wilding versus rewilding !! My head is spinning :)
-
...... I'm wondering if there is a difference between 'wilding' and 'rewilding', with the former meaning to allow nature to reclaim sections of less useful agricultural land, and the latter meaning the introduction of animals currently extinct in Britain. ....
There I was grappling with rewilding and trying to catch up ... and then you introduce wilding versus rewilding !! My head is spinning :)
Always glad to help :D . Read Isabella Tree's Wilding book first, then delve into some of the reintroductions stuff, and you'll see the difference, I hope.
-
I am brought into contact with people who promote this agenda regularly and the blind anti farming ethos that accompanies it
I have a hankering for wolves (probably because they are a bit like my one-time German Shepherd Dog ::) )
Check out this go pro video of an old hunting dog who encounters two wolves when lost in a wood, young ones I think but I'm not sure, she is wearing a chainmail vest and is a tough old cookie, its hard to watch. I think our ancestors did us a solid getting rid of them personally! (ps. I love german shepherds, I have one by my side right now)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1zCNH_oN2Q&t=134s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1zCNH_oN2Q&t=134s)
-
.... Read Isabella Tree's Wilding book first, then delve into some of the reintroductions stuff, and you'll see the difference, I hope.
I found this very comprehensive newspaper article/summary instead https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5640191/How-letting-Mother-Nature-reclaim-prime-farmland-produced-breathtaking-results.htm (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5640191/How-letting-Mother-Nature-reclaim-prime-farmland-produced-breathtaking-results.htm)
-
The way things are now there is little room for rewilding or reintroducing species. The only Scottish beavers I’ve seen around Kirriemuir have had a pretty big influence on the immediate area. When I was a wildlife biology student I was told they wouldn’t build dams! Turns out they do build dams (which need regular clearing with a jcb and now managers have installed metal cages in the waterways to prevent beavers entering streams and blocking them). They fell quite a lot of trees and ring bark still more; land managers have wrapped trees in chicken wire in an effort to protect them. About every waterway in lowlands is mapped and managed, I consider it will become another burden to deal with which we could do without. Perhaps allowing all these to become half blocked and flood for the winter months will be great or, perhaps it’ll erode tons and tons of soil as well as take more ground out of production? As for the trees along the waterways forming wildlife corridors, not sure it’ll look the same once beavers have moved in, unless we cover them all in chicken wire!
I LOVE the idea of leaving our land to heal and regenerate for decades but it cannot be done. And yes, it’s irresponsible because using other countries resources and then excess energy shipping food here cannot be ethical.
-
The way things are now there is little room for rewilding or reintroducing species.
But there is, just not everywhere.
Trying to rewild Holyrood Park in Edinburgh is clearly not going to work. On the other hand, just south of where I live, you could draw a line on a map enclosing about 1500km2 (1/3 million acres). That single area could be drawn without enclosing any roads or habited houses and that land currently supports next to no cattle or sheep (or any other agriculture). There are several similar areas in Scotland.
You would need to spend 50 years allowing woodland to recover as the first stage of re-wilding but why not?
PS don't that the Highlands are a wild and natural landscape as they are now, they are managed and modified by people as much as any other landscape.
-
I don't think that is quite right, I reckon if you want the landscape back to a certain way 50 years is not nearly long enough, it would be a doable timescale with active planting etc but not abandonment
-
Ok, I’m catching up now and thinking that wilding and/or rewilding is never going to catch-on in any significant way here or elsewhere!
The pragmatic wilding of the Knepp Estate is a thought-provoking instance and talking point, but their economic decision/reality-check is really not about to happen routinely in the UK, or across the World. It might help inspire other folk who have similarly been battling against the odds to make their land profitable from managed agriculture, but it’s not going to do anything for folk across the world where wilding would simply mean desert with the odd extra succulent or baobab tree !!
While there may come a time when wide-scale wilding happens because of world socio-economic disorder or natural or man-made catastrophes (e.g. Chernobyl), I personally don’t see need for much wilding debate right now. Knepp is, never the less, a great opportunity for some UK ecological monitoring/learning and a book.
However, I’d rather folk don’t go about re-introducing things with big teeth into the UK (& that includes beavers) without careful/thorough control measures; control will almost certainly need annual culls with a new British menu (wolf/bear/beaver burnt-ends in a spicy Brexit BBQ sauce anyone?). Of course, beavers might end up being voted positive for flood control (subject, of course, to an annual cull idc - unless foxes take up snorkling!).
London fashion week 2022 advert - “Forget imitation fur – we will be show-casing the real thing in our special ‘rewilding waste not want not’ cat-walk event.
-
The way things are now there is little room for rewilding or reintroducing species.
But there is, just not everywhere.
Trying to rewild Holyrood Park in Edinburgh is clearly not going to work. On the other hand, just south of where I live, you could draw a line on a map enclosing about 1500km2 (1/3 million acres). That single area could be drawn without enclosing any roads or habited houses and that land currently supports next to no cattle or sheep (or any other agriculture). There are several similar areas in Scotland.
You would need to spend 50 years allowing woodland to recover as the first stage of re-wilding but why not?
PS don't that the Highlands are a wild and natural landscape as they are now, they are managed and modified by people as much as any other landscape.
Loch Arkaig (just north of Fort William) and the surrounding forest is a case in point. The Woodland Trust www.woodlandtrust.org.uk (http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk) bought it a few years ago, with donations from the public (including me :thumbsup: ) and a lottery. The forest had lain unmanaged since it was used for secret troop training in WW2, when it had been severely damaged by artillery fire and other manouvers. I forget who used it more recently, maybe it was for forestry. The Woodland Trust now manages the whole area for wildlife, but in a way that people can visit and walk, explore, camp and see the wildlife. Ospreys and White Tailed Eagles have moved in from places such as Mull, there are many other rare wild animals, some of which are only suspected such as the Scottish Wildcat, but there are red squirrels and pine martens, boar and various rare birds. These were either already there, or have moved in since the management began. Trees are being replanted and many are growing from natural reseeding. Although there is no word of repopulating the area, it already has many long term human residents who coexist with the wild area.
This shows that wilding an area does not take it out of the hands of people, but can encourage use of the land for recreation hand in hand with for wildlife. This area will produce timber as before, but as trees are felled I think the plan is to allow, or replant, trees appropriate to the old Caledonian Forest, Scots Pine. I don't know if there is any agriculture in the area previously established.
-
I don't think that is quite right, I reckon if you want the landscape back to a certain way 50 years is not nearly long enough, it would be a doable timescale with active planting etc but not abandonment
That's correct in that you can't just abandon land and hope for a particular outcome. In this case because the population of deer is so high (deer population in Scotland have at least doubled since the 60s) to the point where they wipe out any vegetation that tries to grow - many estates feed wild deer silage through the winter as there is not enough natural vegetation to stop them starving!
Control the deer and 50 years would be plenty time for a big forest to grow (possibly with a bit of planting in areas that are really remote from surviving seed sources). Creag meagaidh is a good example of what can be done in 30 years and is well worth a visit.
-
To be honest I was thinking farmland into woods/wilds like Knapp farm rather thank uplands and moors. I understand they're managed for deer and grouse for the good of the few and well imagine swathes of these could be wooded and improved. As an incomer I like the Scottish shooting heritage and the money it brings in. The big lodges, matching cottages, landrovers, well kept roads and fences, etc are a stark contrast to the welsh valleys where I grew up walking: everything rusted and held together with bailer twine! I'd hope there might be room for the estates to continue while reducing stocking densityand improving land for wildlife.
-
The way things are now there is little room for rewilding or reintroducing species. The only Scottish beavers I’ve seen around Kirriemuir have had a pretty big influence on the immediate area. When I was a wildlife biology student I was told they wouldn’t build dams! Turns out they do build dams (which need regular clearing with a jcb and now managers have installed metal cages in the waterways to prevent beavers entering streams and blocking them). They fell quite a lot of trees and ring bark still more; land managers have wrapped trees in chicken wire in an effort to protect them. About every waterway in lowlands is mapped and managed, I consider it will become another burden to deal with which we could do without. Perhaps allowing all these to become half blocked and flood for the winter months will be great or, perhaps it’ll erode tons and tons of soil as well as take more ground out of production? As for the trees along the waterways forming wildlife corridors, not sure it’ll look the same once beavers have moved in, unless we cover them all in chicken wire!
I LOVE the idea of leaving our land to heal and regenerate for decades but it cannot be done. And yes, it’s irresponsible because using other countries resources and then excess energy shipping food here cannot be ethical.
They are using beavers to build dams and slow water courses, even employing humans to build dams to slow run off in floods with natural flood barriers.
https://nerc.ukri.org/planetearth/stories/1850/
As a child I spent hours on a beach damming water, making inlets and generally messing about with water. We had some ground works done, by professionals and I was surprised how little they knew about how water works, what effects its flow and how a slight a graduation can change its course.
-
I know. Which sounds nice and holistic, till it is your fields and gateways and tracks which are flooded and impassable in winter without continually digging out all the brash with a JCB. Luckily they’re not here yet, but it’s a matter of time and seeing how they’ve worked in other areas and the amount of flooding and work gone into blocking them out and removing their dams I’m not looking forward to it. Maybe I’m wrong and it’ll be great without ill effect.