Global Warming

Global Warming isn't a Prediction. It IS Happening James Hansen

No-one involved in land can deny that the climate is changing. We can argue whether it is a natural phenomenon or man made, but the evidence of change is for all to see. Gone are the days when we relied on frosts to ripen the Golden Promise, gone are the days when fishing in March was a lottery with frozen ferrules, gone are the days when floods were a rarity.

Carbon emissions in farming are inevitable. There is  at present no substitute for diesel, and the act of turning the soil releases carbon. We can though reduce those carbon emissions.

Bigger machinery uses less diesel per acre, and minimum tillage reduces disturbance (see our agricultural section). Community pellet boilers and individual wood burning stoves reduce our reliance on kerosene for domestic heating and hot water (see our renewables section). Yet as a business we emit much more carbon dioxide than we can capture through trees and by off-setting.

Working With Nature.

In Fighting Nature, Man Can Win Every Battle Except The Last Thor Heyerdahl

Always Work With Nature; Work Against Nature and it Will Bite You on the A**e Anon

Put too many store cattle in a court, and you get pneumonia, put too many pheasants in a pen and you get Hexameta, put too many farmed salmon in a sea cage, and you get sea lice infestation. We have got away with this abuse of nature by treating the symptoms. Not for much longer. Penicillin is becoming less effective as immunity builds up, and the cocktail of drugs used in aquaculture (deltamethrin, enamectin , hydrogen peroxide et al) are unable to cope in many cases.

We need to use nature and not abuse it. We need to compensate for large fields and the resultant monoculture by installing beetle banks, and by extending headlands especially by hedges. We need to build ponds at the foot of burns to act as silt traps. We need to create buffer strips by water margins to stop run-off. We need to be more accurate with our fertiliser and spraying.

Above all we must work with nature.