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There's some real nutters out there....
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oaklandspigs



Joined: 14 Jan 2009
Posts: 113
Location: East Sussex
PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 11 7:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

arvo wrote:
What bothers me about the militant veggie view of the world (ie we should all just grow veggies etc) doesn't take into account how landscapes differ. In the UK you'd never turn the whole of the country over to veggies, some of it isn't suitable,


I believe that 70% of UK agricultural land could not be used as arable, due to type & slope.

Hairyloon



Joined: 20 Nov 2008
Posts: 15425
Location: Today I are mostly being in Yorkshire.
PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 11 8:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

oaklandspigs wrote:
I believe that 70% of UK agricultural land could not be used as arable, due to type & slope.

Terrace it.

Ty Gwyn



Joined: 22 Sep 2010
Posts: 4562
Location: Lampeter
PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 11 9:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Subsidence farming?

Rob R



Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York
PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 11 9:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Ty Gwyn wrote:
Subsidence farming?


Is that a miners thing?

earthsoul



Joined: 10 Feb 2011
Posts: 320
Location: Ceredigion West Wales
PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 11 9:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

surely the real issue is the large supermarkets.....if people keep expecting to buy food at very low prices then it is down to supply and demand.
If they demand from the farmer then the farmer is pushed into a position of having to find a way to supply the meat, milk, vegetables (whatever) at the price they are being offered...and still make enough profit to live off.
I know we can say it is down to the conscience of the buyer, but my closest friend is a real green eco type (she has room for chickens but not much else) but faced with also being a single parent with 3 children and an ex husband who pays nothing towards her children she will buy what is cheapest. This lady cooks from basic but when those basics are cheaper she buys them cheaper.

And I share a name with this intolerable woman from the mail....could she not please change her name.

By the by all my friends who read the Daily fail do say to me...you'll never guess what that lunatic has written this week, so maybe not all of them believe what she says is gospel. I think she is extreme for even the Daily Fail readers.

LynneA



Joined: 25 Oct 2006
Posts: 4893
Location: London N21
PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 11 9:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Can't grow veg without manure - need livestock for that

Mutton



Joined: 09 May 2009
Posts: 1508

PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 11 10:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

I think you can grow without manure providing you do a lot of composting, perhaps have comfrey to compost etc. However cannot be as intensive as with manure, blood and bone meal, fishmeal or artificial fertilizers.

And that is speaking as someone who keeps livestock for meat.

Three other "things" relating to the topics discussed here:

1. The film the other year, "The Lie of the Land" - investigation into farming. Very interesting and not veggie promotion. Journalist who saw the Countryside Alliance marches and followed one hunt back home, finished up investigating all the interlinked rural system. So hunt slaughtering dairy calves and feeding to hounds, she then filmed dairy farming and beef farming. It was very moving - there were calves left out in a pen for the hunt to kill and take and one was a cow calf. The men were upset about killing all of them, bull calves included - said they hadn't been brought up to slaughter perfectly good beasts.

2. The carcase size and shape thing hits sheep too. When we first starting keeping Soay I approached a couple of butchers who did local meat and rare breed meat. They were not interested in Soay as didn't give a big enough chop. Apparently housewives wouldn't be interested.

3. Agroforestry rather than terracing perhaps. Would also give more of a wildlife habitat, though perhaps not the wildlife of the open meadow.

Rob R



Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York
PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 11 10:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Mutton wrote:

2. The carcase size and shape thing hits sheep too. When we first starting keeping Soay I approached a couple of butchers who did local meat and rare breed meat. They were not interested in Soay as didn't give a big enough chop. Apparently housewives wouldn't be interested.


That's a lie, housewives are interested, it's just that there's more margin for them in bigger cuts. I was told the same about Dexters.

Mutton



Joined: 09 May 2009
Posts: 1508

PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 11 10:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

[quote="Rob R:1155861"]
Mutton wrote:


That's a lie, housewives are interested, it's just that there's more margin for them in bigger cuts. I was told the same about Dexters.


Interesting. One of the butchers was quite chatty and told me that son kept Dexters "one of the not-for-profit breeds" he said.

Rob R



Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 31902
Location: York
PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 11 10:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

I won't dispute that, just add that no breed 'makes' a profit, that's all down to the owner.

Stonehead



Joined: 24 Aug 2006
Posts: 674
Location: Aberdeenshire
PostPosted: Thu Sep 01, 11 9:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Mutton wrote:
I think you can grow without manure providing you do a lot of composting, perhaps have comfrey to compost etc. However cannot be as intensive as with manure, blood and bone meal, fishmeal or artificial fertilizers.


You'd need a vast amount of compost to grow fruit and veg on a decent scale. We have 14 2m by 4m beds, a half acre field, a quarter acre field, a quarter acre of soft fruit and several apple trees.

We put seven cubic metres of well rotted muck and compost on those every year. It's barely enough, even allowing for the rotations. And that's the result of 10-25 pigs at any given time, 50 chickens, grass clippings from the "lawn" around the houses plus off the tracks, and all the garden clippings, veg peelings, etc.

Every fourth year, I get in several cubic metres of well-rotted horse muck to top things up even further.

There's no way we could fertilise our crops with just vegetable matter taken from around the croft.

Mrs R



Joined: 15 Aug 2008
Posts: 7202

PostPosted: Fri Sep 02, 11 4:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

[quote="Mutton:1155865"]
Rob R wrote:
Mutton wrote:


That's a lie, housewives are interested, it's just that there's more margin for them in bigger cuts. I was told the same about Dexters.


Interesting. One of the butchers was quite chatty and told me that son kept Dexters "one of the not-for-profit breeds" he said.


No offence but, your butcher's an idiot.

northmoor



Joined: 08 Aug 2008
Posts: 380

PostPosted: Fri Sep 02, 11 11:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

I don't dispute the women is an idiot. However she does have a valid point or two.
Dairy cattle are usually over the hill at 6, we should ask why. Its cos they have been bred to the extreme and in the need for huge lactation they are a bag of bones that produce nothing but milk. In our need for cheap crap tasteless milk by 6 year old the cows are knackered some don't make it that long cos their feet 'blow' cos of the amount of protein pumped in to them.
Any industry were young stock is a waste product to be shot at
birth is criminal. But the farmers can't be blamed for this we as consumers are guilty in our need for cheap milk and our disgust at the thought of eating veal.
The whole dairy industry needs a shake up. Supermarkets and consumers need to pay a fair price for milk, this fair price needs to be passed on to farmers. We need to rethink the ethics of veal and consider rose veal as an alternative so calves are not dispatched at birth.
I hate what the dairy industry has been forced in to. Mind that goes for most intensive farming.
This bloody country get on my nerves. We will pay over the odds for 'fair trade' coffee, chocolate etc. Whatever happened to fair trade farming and the conditions our farmers and livestock have been forced in to.

Jonnyboy



Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 23956
Location: under some rain.
PostPosted: Sat Sep 03, 11 6:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Liz ****ing Jones, that link should come with a warning!

Mutton



Joined: 09 May 2009
Posts: 1508

PostPosted: Sat Sep 03, 11 4:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

@ Mrs R - funnily enough I don't shop there.

@ b-g - couldn't agree more. Same regarding modern meat breeds of chicken whose legs collapse even when free-ranging and not massively fed and the hybrids for battery hens. Ditto some sheep breeds.
A few years back I did a lot of reading up on sheep, when we were working out what we wanted to stock our land with. Learning that modern sheep can get stranded on their backs and die was sad. Then reading how modern sheep have been bred to have more meat on them i.e. the sort of square build where they can get stranded on their backs was infuriating.

We went for Soay - sloping back and not only to they not get stranded upside down I once saw one turn a somersault. Two ewes were have a dominance fight head to head across a slope, one smacked the other off balance, which did a sort of somersault - tumbled over, rolled, feet under back up at the run and smack head again a lot faster than it takes to write it.

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