‘When we start selecting for one thing, we need to ask ourselves: What else do I need to measure?’
This is one of many quotes lodged firmly in my mind that I picked up during my Nuffield scholarship travels.
It is attributed to Ian Robertson, a farmer from Western Australia who set up MerinoTech, a co-operative of like-minded farmers dedicated to improving the merino breed.
He was, of course, talking about selection of genetic traits, but that is not the reason that quote has been in my mind recently.
I’ve been coming back to it because a few weeks ago we were told by the distilling company which has supplied us with draff for more than 20 years that we will no longer be able to buy it.
We are still negotiating with them in the hope of changing their mind, but as it stands, just weeks before weaning and housing, our plans have been thrown into disarray.
There are several reasons I’m frustrated by this turn of events. The distillery is smack bang in the middle of our farm, just 200 yards from the calf shed, and we use just 12t a week – a fraction of what is produced daily.
There are already 30t of beetpulp in the shed, usually mixed with draff at 1:6 to make grain beet, probably one of the safest and most sustainable means of feeding a growing calf.
It’s like a giant hot porridge with sugar mixed through. Fed ad-lib along with home-grown silage, calves consistently average 1.1kg+/day.
And finally, and probably most vexing, the draff will instead be carted by fossil fuel lorries to anaerobic digester (AD) plants to create ‘green’ gas.
Remembering that draff is between 70-80% water, how on Earth can that be considered ‘green’.
We’ve always prided ourselves on having an environmentally sustainable, low-cost, yet productive system. The draff, which is a by-product of a luxury goods industry, was a major part of our calf wintering. It just made so much sense.
My annoyance isn’t even directed at the distillers. They are, of course, responding to current policy. Poorly thought through policy which enables and encourages greenwashing.
Because, how on Earth can trucking a product that is 80% water around the country with ‘dirty diesel’ ever be considered a better option than turning it into nutritious meat just a few hundred yards away?
And so I ask again. And this time to the policymakers. ‘What else should you be measuring?’
When you incentivise, prioritise or select for one thing, what are you selecting against? There is nearly always an unforeseen knock-on effect somewhere else. This is true of most things in life.
We will now likely need to find another way to feed our calves, and I can guarantee it will not come close in sustainability terms to the draff we collected from 200 yards away.
We will also have to sell some calves as draff was fed ad-lib and whatever replacement we get will require every calf to have access to the feed face for once-a-day feeding.
As our calves are relatively young, we’ve always avoided putting them through the mart at weaning as we felt it was unnecessary stress. We may not have a choice this year.
Unfortunately, livestock farming falls foul of the carbon counters, though largely because the calculations do not take into account the whole system.
We’ve been carbon auditing here since 2014 and I was originally very enthusiastic about it – my inner data nerd loved the idea. But 10 years in and I’m increasingly frustrated by the continued exclusion of basic biology from the calculations.
Photosynthesis: Process by which plants use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to create oxygen and energy in the form of sugar (National Geographic).
For whatever reason, and I suspect it was to stop big pastoral countries like Australia and Argentina from getting off lightly, international methodology chose to ignore photosynthesis when considering carbon in ruminant livestock systems.
The grass we grow does not get any credit for the CO2 it uses when we complete a carbon audit. The knock-on effect is that this makes the emissions from ruminant livestock look much worse than they are and hence other industries, like distilling, then choose to distance themselves.
Imagine how different things would look if we included CO2 absorbed by grass? Distilleries would be lining up to get alongside livestock as part of a super sustainable relationship.
To be fair to energy policymakers, most of them won’t be aware a key part of the equation has been ‘overlooked’.
They’ll also have a limited grasp on the many complexities, symbiotic relationships, co-dependency, variety and nuance of food production systems. When energy policy teams see that we can make ‘green’ gas out of ‘waste’, it seems obvious to incentivise that.
It is a perfect example of the limitations of siloed thinking. And so I ask again. What else do we need to measure?
In concluding that livestock are ‘bad’ and choosing to select against them, what else are we compromising?
Communities, jobs, crucial infrastructure, rural wealth, biodiversity, public nutrition, food security?
What emissions are we creating elsewhere by moving them off one balance sheet? I think NFUS has worked hard to try to get this message across, but ultimately we are bound by international agreements and their flawed methodologies. Methodologies that mean consumers and policymakers are being told a false narrative.
I’m not looking to get us off the hook entirely. The sheep and cattle sectors can certainly do more to reduce our environmental impact. There are efficiency gains to be made – which usually result in economic efficiencies also.
In the 10 years we’ve been carbon auditing, our profitability has improved significantly. It is one of the reasons I’ll continue to audit. It makes me have a really good look at our annual inputs and outputs. It also allows me to speak from a place of knowledge when I’m talking to those outside farming. You can’t condemn something if you haven’t given it a try.
As always I remain positive. It would be easy to become a bit stressed about our predicament and dwell on it. Instead, we’ll look for a solution. We need only watch a few minutes of the news to know that this is very small fry in a world where many live day to day with the threat of war, violence and death.
How privileged are we to live in a beautiful and peaceful nation, where there is food on the table, the warmth of a fire, and a friend at the end of the phone.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here