Today I heard Defra head Caroline Spelman tell some farmers that more food could be produced in the uplands without damaging the environment. But can it, and which will be given most priority in a few years when the price of food is sky high and there might even be shortages in Western Europe?
After her forestry debacle she is hardly expert in these matters. If the management/cropping ( cereal ,stock,trees) is changed the environment is changed, damaged, certainly in the short term.Simples.
More food can be produced but it would change the upland as we know it. Careful management would be needed control the change. Humankind is often in too much of a rush/greedy to handle this very well.
Agriculture has long been producing hardier cereals and hybridising stock to suit conditions. Not to mention forestry techniques, lots of deforestation gives us the present uplands.
Stat on TV only yesterday - takes five family generations to clear one square mile of forest sufficient for the family to farm. Exact or not it gives perspective of the clearances and the work involved. Still happening in some parts of the world as long as wood is a major fuel.
There are plenty of upland areas where overstocking is a problem. I can't see how these could produce more food.
Marginal grazing land often has interesting plant species because of the poor quality of the soils. Improving the carrying density of the land by adding fertiliser could improve the amount of food that each hectare could produce, but it would alter the environment, and often degrade the habitat.
Soils are of poor quality because of seriously bad land management. It would take maybe five years to improve it fully - simply allow a diverse range of plants to flourish as bio-diversity is pretty much non-existent in the hills.
Plant hardy fruit plants on the hills. They will flourish and encourage all manner of wildlife.
WARAG in wartime and after brought many acres into production with fertiliser,pesticides,drainage,with the more powerful machinery we have now have a lot could be done but it changes the environment .
Problem with the hardy fruit option is the picking in isolated places. Scotland supports a fruit /seed spud industry as the weather conditions suit and deters pest and disease.
It will be the Country Land Owners Assoc who will be telling Spelman what they could do with loads of grants /subsidies.
A friend in wales has in the past year set up a kind of experiment re: hardy fruits and what vareities may or not grow on a hillside....not upland but not lowland either. Obviously 'the peoples orchard' as he is calling it (working title only) will take the next twenty years to develop before anything bares any real fruit but in his misquoted words clearing land for the breeding of animals to eat is blatantly daft as the energy to grow the said beasts takes more than the energy to grow and human eating of the grains etc. produced to produce the animals.
If we look at the deforestation in south america we can see how the enviroment changes for the worse especially as the climate changes that are obviously happening all over the world today are going to continue for what ever reason man-made or otherwise.
oh I'm not a vegetarian but I think it kinda makes sense...
