I heard about this on wireless four today!

 http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)61753-0/fulltext

"Agricultural food production and agriculturally-related change in land use substantially contribute to greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide. Four-fifths of agricultural emissions arise from the livestock sector. Although livestock products are a source of some essential nutrients, they provide large amounts of saturated fat, which is a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease. We considered potential strategies for the agricultural sector to meet the target recommended by the UK Committee on Climate Change to reduce UK emissions from the concentrations recorded in 1990 by 80% by 2050, which would require a 50% reduction by 2030. With use of the UK as a case study, we identified that a combination of agricultural technological improvements and a 30% reduction in livestock production would be needed to meet this target; in the absence of good emissions data from Brazil, we assumed for illustrative purposes that the required reductions would be the same for our second case study in São Paulo city. We then used these data to model the potential benefits of reduced consumption of livestock products on the burden of ischaemic heart disease: disease burden would decrease by about 15% in the UK (equivalent to 2850 disability-adjusted life-years [DALYs] per million population in 1 year) and 16% in São Paulo city (equivalent to 2180 DALYs per million population in 1 year). Although likely to yield benefits to health, such a strategy will probably encounter cultural, political, and commercial resistance, and face technical challenges. Coordinated intersectoral action is needed across agricultural, nutritional, public health, and climate change communities worldwide to provide affordable, healthy, low-emission diets for all societies." (my bold and underlining) Source the Lancet

I don't suppose there are any views about this outthere.  Personally this just makes me despair they have already reduced cattle 30% since the late 1908s early 1990's in this country. These guys are supposed to be respected scientists not clowns. This is supposed to be peer reviewed. It goes to show there is no agricultural expertise looking over it.

In defence of defra at least they stamped on this

The NFU is not happy about this report. I'm just writing a story now.

I see the BBC is for once slightly ahead of you.  The report highlights the inevitable stupidity of having separated out some of the remit of DEFRA into another department, leading to confusion and red faces all around.

This story also took up two pages of the London Evening Standard yesterday.  No counter views were offered in that publication.

motley:

I heard about this on wireless four today!

Good old Motley. Wireless! A wonderful word, expressive of the wiring within the brains of many of those in who commission research today .

I have often wondered who paid the wages of those cardinals who, years ago debated the pressing issue of " How many angels could stand on the head of a single pin".

My guess is that the mediaeval tax payers of Britain paid for that research which, was about as useful as most of the research for which we now pay.

 

Isabel Davies:

NFU is not happy

Nothing new there then.

When I consider the NFU I am reminded of the two indians in a film (dances with wolves -  I think) where they see two angry white men, and one says to the other 'they are angry'. the reply comes 'how do you know they always look like that'.

Another image is of baity ben gill throwing his desk around, so like flash.

Brown watch 185 days.

 

 Out of the mouths of babes and the BBC "What we learned, though, is that the left hand of this government does not always know what the right hand is doing." The editing is mine!

Here is an emerging clean energy technology that will make such stupid suggestions as the cull of farm animals obsolete.  It produces electricity so cheap, the free market will have to cut emissions dramatically to save money.

This independently verified clean energy technology produces electricity at the astonishingly low cost of 1 cent per kilowatt hour. As reported by both CNN and the New York Times:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1iqa0dSJO0

Check out above link to a 2 minute youtube video of a CNN report. What are the odds that the independent testimony below is fraudulent (not bloody likely unless you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist)? Here is a silver bullet technology: clean cheap and abundant energy.

In a joint statement, Dr. K.V. Ramanujachary, Rowan University Meritorious Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dr. Amos Mugweru, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and Dr. Peter Jansson P.E., Associate Professor of Engineering said, "In independent tests conducted over the past three months involving 10 solid fuels made by us from commercially-available chemicals, our team of engineering and chemistry professors, staff, and students at Rowan University has independently and consistently generated energy in excesses ranging from 1.2 times to 6.5 times the maximum theoretical heat available through known chemical reactions."

Also, check out this article: http://www.nytimes.com/external/venturebeat/2008/10/21/21venturebeat-blacklight-power-bolsters-its-impossible-cla-99377.html

Brad Arnold
St Louis Park, MN, USA
dobermanmacleod@gmail.com
www.myspace.com/dobermanmacleod

I heard on the radio yesterday that 98% of Americans will eat turkey today, I think that is a little high, but none the less proves most of us still enjoy meat.  Quite a few of those Thanksgiving tables will also have a ham beside the turkey.  We revolted once over taxes, in particular a tax on tea led to the Boston tea party.  If my countrymen would cast out King George III over a tax on tea, I reckon King Obama I will be in big trouble if he tries to tell us what to eat.  I see this all as the extreme arrogance of the elite.

I have said it before, I will say it again.  Animal agriculture is a big part of the holy grail of sustainable agriculture.  I wish a few of these highly educated dimwits would actually farm for 4 or 5 years before coming up with theories on how we should do it. 

dobermanmacleod:

Here is an emerging clean energy technology that will make such stupid suggestions as the cull of farm animals obsolete

Talk of Black Energy, reminds me of my chief mentor when I first started work. In the 1950s he was telling me of a chemical process whereby various salts were added to water and the resultant reactions produced fuel with only 2% wastes. This happened in the 1920s when he was working in Chemnitz in what was later to become East Germany. The work did not go beyond field trials because he said the Oil Companies bought out all the patents and paid off the teams working on the project.

 I hope this works out because if there is one nation on earth that has the 'attitude' to defeat defeatism, it is the the US.

If it works, the first gallons of oil/fuel produced should be poured into a 747 and the plane filled with members of FOE. Green Peace and Al Gore. Once airborne they will watch his movie the Inconvenient Truth before parachuting down into the Sahara, there to establish a new colony devoted to the worship of Alladin's lamp.

 If it doesn't work however, we should put the last drops of oil in the world into a 747 and carry out the same procedure as detailed above. 

kansasfarmer:

Animal agriculture is a big part of the holy grail of sustainable agriculture.

Kansas, you are entirely correct there.  This thought sprung to my mind when I was reading this article about one of our heroes, a military vet, who is helping Afghan farmers to improve the welfare of their livestock.  Clearly these people need the education he is providing, especially given the quote:

"Farmers here have absolutely no idea about animal husbandry.

"There is near total ignorance about causes and spread of disease, breeding cycles and how milk is produced.

"If a goat stops milking, it is said to be Allah's will rather than the fact that it has not bred for 18 months and therefore has no anatomical reason to produce milk."

You simply cannot divorce animal husbandry from survival for these people because they live where crops edible to humans have little to zero yield and depend upon the animals to convert the sparse vegetation to protein humans can eat.  It is clear to me that, like this vet is doing on a small scale, the task of our governors should be to help people learn to better utilise their stock rather then dispose of 30%.

On current evidence, I do not believe that the Obama administration is as terminally stupid as that we in the UK are currently saddled with and that he would not go so far as to make this particular suggestion.  However, I may very well be wrong ...

kansasfarmer:

I have said it before, I will say it again.  Animal agriculture is a big part of the holy grail of sustainable agriculture.  I wish a few of these highly educated dimwits would actually farm for 4 or 5 years before coming up with theories on how we should do it. 

I didnt see anything there that would differentiate between grass based animal agriculture and some of the more intense forms. Does that mean we were right to slaughter those vast herds of bison that were miles across but wrong to replace them with cattle? Today I will have afternoon chores done before noon (I'm being pushed out the door s I type). Then I will spend the afternoon drinking beer and watching football on tv, which will be followed by a multicourse meal featuring turkey and ham (honey cured, spiral cut and baked with a pineapple brown sugar glaze is what I heard) An article in the NY Times today said that being in Oregon I was likely to be exposed to "tofurky". I've actually seen that in the stores before. (kansas, you really got to quit growing soy beans for those people, you see how they get) I listened to Obama doing his presidential pardoning of the turkey thing on NPR yesterday. Thought he meade it pretty clear that he would have preferred to eat it. I think it was one of the Bushes that started the turkey pardon thing, the previous presidents did eat the presidential turkey which was why the turkey farmers sent them the prime bird. Wiish he'd followed his instincts and just handed it over for the whitehouse chef to take around back. Reminded me of Sarah's turkey pardon during the election where turkeys were being stuffed into kill cones and slaughtered in plain view behind her. Speaking of Sarah, saw this week where she said that the Israelis should keep building settlements on the west bank as a lot more jewish people would be moving to Israel. This is of course a requirment to bring about the end of times which will make all this global warming stuff (which she doesnt really believe in) moot.

Jon

Humans are more of a problem than cows. Why doesn't someone in the West start to implement policies like the Chinese to stabilise the population? (Yeah, Yeah - I shall now stand back whilst every population-promoting religion and global business requiring an exponential rise in customers shouts me down.) Yes, I know the Chinese have had a few social problems with their "one child" policy but - at the end of the day - space on this earth, resources on this earth are limited. You can't fit a quart into a pint pot and the sooner these lily-livered politicians realise the root of the problem, the better. We spend hours of intellectual effort tinkering at the edges with our endless recycling and energy saving lightbulbs. All very noble but pretty damn useless. Overall, we are living longer and reproducing more - therefore an adjustment has to be made. Of the two, I presume most people would find some form of reproduction control more acceptable than an enforced cut off once you reach, say, 70!! The other alternative is to allow the situation to continue unchecked and the matter will be resolved when either the resources run out or some pandemic kills off most of the population. Not very pleasant but Nature has a wonderful way of curbing excesses!

 If these researchers studied the symbiotic relationships between the grazing animal and the plants they feed on, they would realise there is a cycle whereby the animal wastes are re utilised by the next generation of forage plants, unlike the emissions from fossil fuels.

It is this cycle that maintained the vast herds of wild ruminants for millions of years without human 'management', while emissions from intensive units are more concentrated, the same principle applies, the waste products are derived from the feed, and return to the vegitation both cultivated and natural. With the increasing interest in utilising the methane for generating electricity, this renewable resource will become an asset rather than a pollutant.

I still believe the present climate change is part of the natural climate changes which the earth undergoes on an ongoing basis, but our being more responsible in our conservation of the environment is desireable in order to pass on what little we still have to the next generation.

I agree here guys,  Whether you have Afghan goats turning sparce vegitation into good quality protein for humans or a fresian cow grazing in Carmarthenshire, at the end of the day there are huge chunks of land around the globe where it's physically impossible and economically unviable to grow crops.  On the other hand these areas are able to grow grass.  Through the process of photosynthesis we are utilising the FREE solar power that falls upon these vast areas, and using the ruminants ability to convert something that we can't eat, into something that has more essential amino acids than we care to imagine, is in my mind, EFFICIENT!!.  (Ok, we may not wish to eat grass, but whoever wrote the report that we need a 30% cull in stock numbers, must have been smokin it!!!!!!)  

What makes livestock production less green is down to waste and public perception.  How much of a carcass is thrown away because people don't like the thought of eating tongue, or oxtail etc.......???  Likewise, milk has to be thrown away because the cell count level is'nt what it should be.   And lets not forget about the dairy bull calves that were worth nothing, yet if there was a market for pink veal, they could of mopped up all that high cell count milk and made good use of it.

Anyway, I'll be getting up tommorow and the work will be waiting outside there for me.  These scientists and politicians have to think of how much bullshit they can talk in order to get their next paycheque.  The most popular sentence ever,- more work will need to be done in order to varify these findings before we can reach a conclusion.

 

jd drivers last paragraph lets me know he is my kind of guy. 

What mystifies me the most about all these "plans" for food production is how poorly thought out they are.  For instance.  About 90% of my county is grassland and that is all it ever has been or will be.  Our public schools and county government are funded nearly completely from property taxes.  In the make believe world many of these people live in, greatly reduced demand for meat I would assume would lead to much lower prices for said product, meaning our county would go into a permanent state of financial crisis, because the primary taxable property would become gradually more worthless.  There is a segment of the sustainable ag crowd that is OK with grass fed beef...but what they ignore is about half the year in many places the grass is about the same nutritional value as ground newspaper.  Long ago people in my locale began the practice of growing feed crops on what little farmland there is here while the cattle grazed in the summer, then in the winter fed those crops to cattle, works perfectly well. 

The big hole in their reasoning is that somehow if folks over here would just eat less, there would be more food for hungry people in say, Africa.  What they fail to address is how American farmers could ever raise food cheap enough for that cause, worthy as it is. 

kansasfarmer:

educated dimwits would actually farm for 4 or 5 years before coming up with theories on how we should do it

What is sauce for the turkey is sauce for the dimwit?

These dimwits don't farm because like 99% of people, they simply do not have the cash wherewithall to do it. 99 people out of 100 have nothing to do with agriculture, why are they dimwits, especially if they are highly educated? What is wrong with being "highly" educated? I wish I was.

I suggest that farmers give up their farms too the dimwits for 5 years and go and do a work swap. Oh Mao tried that did n't he, and now the Chinese own 30% of the USofA debt and in another generation will be bigger in economic terms. They have been bigger in people terms always. And as I always say it is people wot do it.

Don't suppose that I am your type of guy, being "off message". I am after all a  troll I believe, and proud. "Tolls of the world unite" (tune of red flag)

I'm not quite sure why people get quite so exercised by these types of reports.  Probably, in this case, the reason is that they have taken no notice of the brief given to the researchers in the first place.  The Lancet studies were the result of briefs given to different groups of scientists to 'think outside the box' (an expression I loathe but can't immediately think of a more elegant substitute for) and come up with some strategies that would combine benefits in greenhouse gas emissions and public health.  The different groups studied different areas of human endeavour just one of which was agriculture and food. 

Given the press coverage and Bennite anger this has caused one would be forgiven for thinking this was the only report published.  I suppose Benn had to come out with the attitude he did to appease the farming lobby, but inside he must have been secretly pleased to hear that there was scientific backing for reducing sheep and cattle numbers by 30%.  After all, the policies he and his predecessors have pursued over the life of the New Labour government have seen UK livestock numbers falling at such a rate they are likely to achieve this level of reduction without any further action at all.  We'll have to watch out to see if this is one of the UK 'achievements' to be bragged about at Copenhagen!

Really good bit on the BBC about how this whole issue developed politically. Worth reading

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8379759.stm

Jacobus:

I'm not quite sure why people get quite so exercised by these types of reports

Oh Jacobus you are so coool.

I shout at television, transit vans, the world. I am entirely irrational. I became angry at the fact that Burn-them of health ministry save all hearts from colesterol, school boy ed (i am inhereting the mess of the world you old gits left me), and international minister of all things wanted to put out a press release about this research. They to probably did not read the briefs (underwear?).

I feel better, again. That will be until 5.15pm on saturday when I can watch Norwich play Carlise in fa cup. When I will be exercised again. The biggest disappointment this week is I found that Yvette's (paxo likes me) husband of balls name, supports Norwich. I now understand why we have been having such a s*** time. I noticed to, that he managed to watch Norwich when they played Hartlepool. Is this not  the home of darthmandy,no?. Hmmmmmmmm wonder what the man of balls, ed that is, and darthmandy were taking about at half-time? culling cows maybe.

motley:

Oh Jacobus you are so coool.

I shout at television, transit vans, the world. I am entirely irrational

It would be nice to say I had grown out of that, but the truth is that, having suffered from mild hypertension for a number of years, one of the medications I take is a beta-blocker.  The effects of this soon became apparent when, not long after starting taking them I was part of a contentious negotiation (a business buy-out).  Everyone else in the meeting started to get emotional but I was able to stay utterly detached in a situation where I would have previously been very 'exercised'.  Just when everyone else got to fever pitch I calmly pointed out the glaring deficiencies in the would be vendor's pitch in such terms that his wife was reduced to tears (not a result I had envisaged).  We called a break in the meeting during which my client said she thought I must have gone to sleep.  No I said, I was just waiting for the right moment, now let's go and get this business at the right price.

I can understand why beta-blockers are the exam takers friend, and why they are a banned drug in sports. 

Now I understand.

I apologize for my ignorance of your condition, I am always digging into holes and seeing an aussie!

Poor woman, but did make me laugh, I know i should but it's the way you tell 'em.

 

townie:

You simply cannot divorce animal husbandry from survival for those people who live in areas where crops, edible to humans have little to zero yield, and who thus depend upon animals to convert the sparse vegetation to a protein humans can eat.

Nicely put and should be one of the phrases on those daily 'tear off' desk calenders.

 

I can answer your question about dimwits clearly and easily Motley.  I am not a doctor, I have been to a doctor, I know a doctor or two, my wifes uncle is a doctor, but I am not a doctor.  I watch a few shows on TV about doctors, but that doesn't mean I know anything much about being a doctor.  When it comes down to making choices about healthcare, I will listen to doctors first, not a politician, or an actor who played a doctor on TV.  Another nice analogy, the oil field,  I have a pasture that has had 19 oil wells drilled in it.  I have lived around oil production my entire life.  I know just a little about the realities of it though.  Who do I believe knows the most about oil production?  The people who actually do it. 

 I can't for the life of me figure out what is so difficult to understand about my irritation over a group of non-farmers running their mouths off with a bunch of half truths about farming.

kansasfarmer:

Who do I believe knows the most ...........  The people who actually do it. 

Now you see Kansasfarmer I don't. I can give examples but one is Mr Brown and BP oil refinary explosions, another is use of DDT, another is field drainage and re routing rivers and floodding.

I agree the performers know an awful lot, in their given field. Whether it is farming, research, medicine or oil production. I am what is called a skeptic.

The trouble is the doctor, oil company or farmer carries a lot of baggage.

Vets, for example use drugs, and charge me for them and make money. Sometimes, I might not use them, use them incorrectly or challenge their use as a cover up for bad mangement. So now veterinary care has become more consultative or taken on the route that they have in Denmark for example. Life changes and knowledge moves on. Once in a while the dimwits are right, they irritate us because they challenge convention. No, what annoyed me about this story was the readiness of our clown politicians to do a press release in support of the "findings".

motley:

what annoyed me about this story was the readiness of our clown politicians to do a press release in support of the "findings".

What amused, rather than annoyed, me was that just because a bit of taxpayer money got into the mix, all these ministers who, until it was published in the Lancet. didn't even know of the existence of the project, automatically assumed they must have had a hand in directing it and may be called upon to act upon it. 

It seems that nowadays any attempt to think laterally about any problem, real or imaginary, must constantly have one eye on the possibility of someone leaking.  How many times have I sat in meetings (in my former life in a big firm) where all the ideas written on a flip chart during brainstorming, would be suitable for general release?  There are always the weird, wonderful or outright wacky suggestions some of which may ignite a spark of originality, but which themselves are just non-starters or even riot-starters!

Now if these boffins had suggested that the human population should be reduced by 30%, they might have been on the right track.