[Womble]

The thing is, to quote John Muir:

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

So it's quite wrong to look at *anything* in isolation. "Zero emission" electric cars are a good example. Sure, nothing comes out of an exhaust pipe, but that doesn't make them zero emission or zero impact by any means.

Maybe we all have a moral obligation to produce meat using our own land as efficiently as possible for the overall good of the nation...?
Dig for victory of the modern age?

ABSOLUTELY!!  I think it's incumbent on us all to make our wee bits of land as productive as possible, provided that's also done sustainably. I think it might have been John Seymour who said that whilst smallholdings could never be as productive per unit of manpower as large farms are, they could and should be more productive per unit of land occupied. Also, I have thirty wooly compost heaps running about outside and continually burping and farting greenhouse gases. I reckon I have a duty to keep that flock productive, in order to earn their right to fart!
 (I think).

[SallyintNorth]

One of those ways is to improve carbohydrate to protein conversion rates in our food production processes. (The simple truth is that grain => beef muscle => human muscle is really not an efficient way of doing things!).

There is much land in the UK - including our own - which is either unsuited to growing anything except grass, or would take considerable intervention and manipulation on an ongoing basis to grow anything other than grass.  It has always seemed to me therefore that growing livestock on these areas is in fact enabling us to make proteinaceous food out of areas which would otherwise be completely unproductive.

[pgkevet]

Emotion and self-interest always overule logic. Logic simply shows that if you keep pulling stuff out of the ground without putting the same stuff back then there's going to be a deficiency. And while you might not notice the losses of micronutrients for a long time then eventually those trace elements will be depleted.... back to my 'mince up your granny' argument.

Also just because something seems hard to do isn't a reason not to do it. Logic also shows that it'd make more sense to build houses and factories on poor ground than wonderful alluvial soils. The fact that early man started such settlements for all their logical reasons doesn't mean we carry on.
Logic also tells us that the simplest solution is population control but then the 'powers that be' wouldn't feel so powerful.
Land that will only grow grass would almost certainly and naturally (albeit over a long period of time) become land covered in forest if it wasn't kept as grazing. Or again it's the place one puts the greenhouses and polytunnels for the harder to grow stuff and hydroponics and so forth. Or you start the forest by digging spaced pits for trees and help the process along.

Government has no real interest in these matters because by the time they make an impact their term in office is up. It's why you always get the 'by 2030' type of promise. It's a promise they don't need to meet.
When I went shopping for this land I looked at a lot of places. I do appreciate the issues of chalk downland and moors etc. I looked at several welsh holdings where there was a genuine inch or less of topsoil over shale, where early settlers had built drystone walls around little fields as much to get the rocks off their land as for the boundary purpose. But I also noted that a lot of those holdings were surrounded by patches of woodland where folk had given up on the back-breaking task of digging out the trees all those years ago. And I also appreciate that those woods are still self sustaining by clinging on to cracks and surviving on their own recycled leaf mould. A bit of help and you have an orchard.
Or for those with the stomach for logic.. there's 600,000 deaths per year UK and we use energy to burn them..

[Maysie]

Government has no real interest in these matters because by the time they make an impact their term in office is up.

BULLSEYE! 

[Womble]

Oh it gets worse than that PG. 200 years ago we made horses walk round in circles and harnessed the energy. Now we use energy to walk horses around in circles! 

Some really interesting points have been made on all sides of this debate. Well done folks - TAS really is the internet at its finest  .

[Maysie]

^^^ I agree.
It makes a very nice, refreshing change to see a healthy debate on an internet forum which does not rapidly descend into pointless point scoring and one-upmanship (like another forum I frequent). 

I doubt us smallholders will make that much of a diffidence in the global scale of things, but from small acorns and all that! 
Maybe one day we will save the world. 

[Buttermilk]

Maybe one day we will save the world. 

Or maybe the world will save itself by kicking our species out.

[Rosemary]

I doubt us smallholders will make that much of a diffidence in the global scale of things, but from small acorns and all that! 
Maybe one day we will save the world. 

I actually believe, that on a global scale, smallholders have the capacity to make a difference and do.

[pgkevet]

I doubt us smallholders will make that much of a diffidence in the global scale of things, but from small acorns and all that! 
Maybe one day we will save the world. 

I actually believe, that on a global scale, smallholders have the capacity to make a difference and do.

Indubitably since much of the third world is such. I doubt many here would fancy the effort of a small scale rice paddy for it's financial rewards.. let alone scratching a dodgy living growing poppies in afghanistan or hand harvesting coffee berries in Nicaragua for subsistence. Which is full circle to  my rant about 'who is going to pick our fruit'.The sadder aspects are the deforestation for new palm oil plantations with the burning involved.. but hard to blame folk just trying to survive so we get cheap soap.

[Foobar]

What I don't get is the current trend to curtail the consumption of red meat.  What the general public really need to understand is that red meat can be raised on grass-only, on land that is not suitable for growing crops, but chickens and pigs(*) can only be raised (in the quantity that they are currently demanded) by feeding them grain that is grown on land that could be used for growing food for people.  Which is the most sustainable?  And I would say that red meat animals have a better life - a longer life and they are more able to express their natural behaviour, in general.


[* excluding breeds like kune kune that will graze]

[SallyintNorth]

Very true.  We've switched our pigs onto Allen and Page's Sow Cakes, which do not contain soya, for this very reason.  There is still some wheat, barley and oats in it, along with beans, grass, linseed, molasses, but no soya - and all GM-free.  And all our herbivores now get Dengie All Stock Grass Pellets - containing just grass (and not all rye grass, either.). Also GM-free.

And the chickens get the A&P Layers Pellets - also soya-free and GM-free.

I often ask local vegans to tell me how to put together a locally-sustainable vegan diet.  I haven't had any offers to date.

[pgkevet]

I'm slightly confuse Sally, since Foobar was making  apoint about raising animals just by grazing poor land (I'll ignore my previous land improvement argument). As a point of order there are soya varieties growable UK - Ustie being specially bred for that. I've also successfuly grown peanuts. Granted yields may be better in other parts of the world for those crops but if someone bothered to sit down and work out suitable vegan or vegetarian diets totally grown within the UK I'm sure it could be done.
What one needs to do it calculate relative yeilds when crops are grown in their 'natural habitat' compared to domestically and calculate the trade swaps on them allowing for equal wages and transport and environmental costs.There's a whole slew of stuff we could grow and don't - daft that we import wine when the Romans considered britain the best vine region (perhaps it was warmer then). There are varieties of Pecans that are frost hardy. Wales has the ideal climate for monkey puzzle nuts as a fod source. We don't eat sweet chestnut porridge any more, pears are undervalued and why the heck we import french apples i'll never know (or any apples for that matter with modern storage solutions). Almonds grow here, quinoa does ok , kale, watercress - all components vegans appreciate for their dietary needs and high in Calcium.

[Maysie]

It all makes about as much sense as why our lobsters are caught here and then sent to the continent, while the lobster we actually eat here mostly come from Canada!  What on earth is that all about?!

We import lamb, yet my neighbours lamb is nearly all sold to be exported, as is the lions share of the rest of it locally (or so I am told). 

The economies of scale seem to drive the financial decisions taken by all the major players nowadays, yet without some form of legislation to control it, it will just continue.  Consumers demand cheap produce, so the suppliers provide it. 

We all know that what we produce on our holdings does not always make financial sense, but we do it anyway because we want to and it feels 'right' to rear your own meat/veggies/whatever.  I am fortunate though, as I do not (thankfully) have to make a choice between feeding cheap chicken to my children, or watching them go without.