We're off to COP26 on Friday with a trailer full of sheep
It's in support of rural repopulation, worldwide 'mobile' pasturalists (nomads, transhumancers) and to show people what a wonderful, sustainable fibre we have in wool.
Stop and think - how do you measure the gaseous emissions from a cow or sheep as it grazes in a field, eating lush, herby grass and surrounded by trees and shrubs? The answer, which the research scientists admit, is that you can't
So how did they measure them then? In a sealed chamber, on a concrete floor, eating grain based feed - something their gut fauna don't really like and struggle to cope with, thus producing more gases.In the UK, throughout Europe and in fact in most of the world, the whole point of keeping grazing animals, ruminants, is that they eat grass and browse, often in areas where it is difficult to plough and cultivate more demanding crops. They are not housed except in the most severe part of winter, and then the dung and bedding are composted and returned to the land. In some countries, such as America, in some areas of that country, cattle at least, I'm not sure about sheep, are fattened in huge feed lots, with no grass or soil to sequester the GHGs, let alone trees, they are fed those grain based diets and their effluent is collected in giant open settling lagoons, with the gases floating off into the atmosphere, along with their burps and farts. I am unaware of New Zealand having an intensive sheep husbandry system - from what I've seen it's extensive, as in Australia.
Farmers are at last realising that we must challenge the figures obtained in laboratory conditions, because our animals don't live like that; they live in open fields with soil and grass and trees to absorb and sequester any emissions, thus recycling them into the ground and the plants, then back into the animals - a normal cycle.
Before you turn to vegetarianism (I was one for many years) stop and think again. It is thought that humans developed from their Great Ape relatives by growing bigger brains, fueled by eating cooked, easily digested meat on a large scale. Life is full of unintended consequences, and as far as I'm aware no real research has been done into the long term effect on human intelligence of everybody giving up meat eating altogether. Just as measuring ruminant emissions has so far proved impractical, so a world wide experiment into the effect of a no meat diet on human intelligence is likewise impractical.
I think the true carbon neutral way of managing land would be to rewild it. However, there are more than 7.5 billion people (more have been born as I type) to feed on this Earth, so we need to balance producing food against maintaining our biodiversity. A good start is to grow enough food without chemicals to feed you and your family, with enough excess to sell to your neighbours. Be positive - we need action, but find out for yourself what the situation truly is; politicians don't always speak the truth, they are often only concerned with the short term agenda of staying in power for their term of service.
One thing I have learned is that there's no point in hoping someone else will sort our problems, and it's unfair to leave it up to our children, WE have to act now, WE have to make the sacrifices for the benefit of everyone else to come, or our race has no future.
