Pat Wilson's Farm View: The hypocrisy of a jet-fuelled COP26

I would like to think, for our future, but more importantly, for future generations delegates will deliver relevant outcomes. So far – from what I’ve heard – they’ve arrived in private planes, sat down to New Zealand lamb, and travelled between Glasgow and Edinburgh in cavalcades of vehicles.

No-one could have failed to notice that you could actually see China during lockdown, the smog around London disappeared and our countryside was greener than it has been in decades, to mention just a few positives that occurred to me.

How the hell can you fly in from various corners of the globe and eat lamb flown in from New Zealand and expect us to take what they say seriously. The hypocrisy of it.

Flights produce greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, from burning fuel. In turn, these contribute to global warming. Emissions from a plane are known to be significantly worse than any other form of transport.

To add insult to injury, private jets generate significantly more emissions per passenger than commercial flights. Politicians expect us to make sacrifices to save the planet but deem themselves too important to do the same! Was it all nothing more than a PR exercise?

China and Russia are two of the biggest offenders when it comes to their contribution to global warming. Yet neither country has bothered to turn up! China alone emits twice the amount of greenhouse gases as the US. So how can anything agreed be effective without the world’s biggest players? They’re conspicuous by their absence.

More than 100 plus countries have pledged to take steps to reduce their methane output by 2030. But is it just lip service? Anyone can pledge anything – it’s putting the pledge into practice that matters.

We can’t blame all the negativity on delegates and politicians, the media in general have a lot to answer for. I’m ashamed to say that I was once a member of the 'news brigade' who continually use a picture of livestock to headline the plan to cut methane.

As usual, we get the biggest kicking as reportedly being the biggest producers of methane. Has anyone told these numpties that it also comes from wetlands and from landfill sites. Probably ... but they don’t want to know. Cue the pressure to eat less meat and dairy products to solve the problem.

I’m sure livestock industry representatives are doing their best to get the message across that we are not the enemy. Boris seems hell bent on bringing in cheap food. It doesn’t matter where it comes from, what their welfare standards are or the state of their abattoirs, just as long as it cheap.

Politicians aren’t stupid (I assume) but surely, they know bringing food from abroad presents a bigger threat to the environment than using what’s on our doorstep. The UK has already proved that our farming methods for beef, lamb and dairy are among the most sustainable in the world.

Farming contributes positively to the management of our unique landscape, supporting sequestration of carbon in soils, grassland, hedgerows, and trees. Our system delivers for the environment and provides high quality, nutritious food to boot.

Fossil fuels are the real problem, yet COP26 delegates had the audacity to jet in from various corners of the world ... and then blame methane. They don’t want not to fly, so they don’t want to hear it. Let’s give agriculture a kicking and everyone else will forget about fossil fuel.

What we need to do is get behind the drive to spread accurate facts about greenhouse gas emissions. We need to dispel the myths and stop our industry being used as a scapegoat. Here are some to pass on:

* Fewer than 3% of total UK emissions come from dairy farming;

* Almost half of the emissions coming from the dairy cow is from their digestion – a perfectly natural process of ruminants;

* It takes eight litres of tap water to produce one litre of milk;

* It takes 158 litres of tap water to produce one litre of almond drink;

* The fact is, dairy products aren't only good for human health, they are also good for the planet.

It’s always great to hear that dairy consumption is increasing in the UK, however, to meet that demand we need a solid workforce. The current labour shortage – which extends beyond farms, includes workers in dairy and meat processing plants, and the haulage industry – is hindering the supply.

EU labour is essential on dairy farms, with almost half of dairy farmers employing foreign workers in the last five years. It’s estimated the industry needs access to around 650 foreign workers a year on dairy farms alone. The foreign worker shortages have escalated across many agricultural sectors, adding additional strain on the industry.

The worry is we could see a repeat of the problems that happened in the pig industry because of this labour shortage, if red meat meat processing plants can’t take the same volume of cattle. More than half of all British beef sold in the UK comes from the dairy herd.

The British Meat Processors Association said that more than 60% of staff are of non-UK origin, but the last thing we want to do is import more meat. So this needs to be sorted as research indicated a poor image of working on dairy farms, with many UK workers simply not liking some of the features of dairy farming, the need for flexible hours and working outside.

The Royal Association of Dairy Farmers is looking at longer term solutions, including education programmes in schools, working with colleges and universities to promote dairy farming, and working with farmers to look at ways to make working conditions and shift patterns more favourable.

One thing we can’t control is the weather and it seems like it has been trying to play catch up and giving us all the rain that we didn't get over the summer in the last wee while. I don’t know about you, but pneumonia has been a bit of an issue with our calves and local vets have said it’s widespread. There’s nothing more soul destroying than seeing an otherwise healthy animal going down with this horrible disease.

On the plus side this is probably the latest that we’ve ever had youngstock out. The longer cattle are out, the less we have to feed and if you aren’t aware of the rise in feed costs over the last year, I don’t know where you’ve been.

Feed is only the tip of the iceberg – fuel, wages, electricity are only a few that have taken a hike. Fertiliser is astronomical. Nitrogen is probably the dearest of all – more than double what it was this time last year.

Some have already said they’ll use less and that means lower crop yields, so the knock-on effect could be yet higher feed prices. Extrapolate that out and this could mean more dispersal sales, fewer farmers, less production, fewer semen sales, less machinery sales, fewer jobs and so on. That's if we don't get a 'wage' rise, ie an increase in farmgate prices

The list of outcomes is endless, the repercussions are not!