FARMER FOCUS: Drought fears brought to abrupt end
Close to 13cm of rainfall in the last week of July certainly brought the fear of drought to an end in Cumbria.
The prospect of making any further silage on the milking platform was looking grim, as grass growth rates plummeted to half that of demand in mid-July, but now approaching mid-August we are back on track with grass growth peaking at 130kg/ha – almost 100kg above that of three weeks ago.
With so much growth, a large area has been taken out of the grazing round and will be cut and conserved shortly so we can start to build grass cover to graze into the autumn. A recent visit from a fellow Nuffield scholar from Queensland Australia made us realise how fortunate we are to have guaranteed high rainfall.
Receiving all the annual rainfall in four months followed by eight months of extreme heat and drought would make pasture allocation tricky to say the least, not to mention saving drinking water for two years in case the normal rains don’t arrive.
Drawing together all my learnings from my Nuffield travels it’s startling to see how much of the world relies on irrigated crops for their food supply. The area of irrigated land globally has more than doubled in the last 50 years with the vast majority of this water coming from unsustainable aquifers. Today half of the world’s population now reside in countries that are over-pumping aquifers.
It’s difficult to appreciate this in our green and pleasant land where, although like the rest of the world we see ever more erratic weather pattern, we do have the ability if we choose to sustain food production largely from our own means. So if peak oil, peak phosphorus and now peak water have all indeed passed, business as usual will become increasingly threatened for livestock systems that are both energy and grain dependant; now might be a good time to examine how sustainable these systems are. In a world of growing food shortages and resource scarcity the EU’s ever more complicated reformed CAP offers little reward for increased efficiency. It’s as if we’re isolated and totally unaffected.
Robert Craig farms a 160ha all-grass dairy unit in north-east Cumbria. A passionate grassland farmer, Robert aims to maximise profit while ensuring a balanced and enjoyable life. Robert is also current Cumbria NFU chairman
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