Methane and fat fingers

They say if you can take one thing home from a meeting it’s been worth going, but when I went to RASE’s seminar on mitigating climate change solutions from the grassland sector last week I got two.

The first was about High Sugar Ryegrass (HSG). For the same inputs and the same acreage, a HSG variety can significantly lift milk yields which will give lower emissions per litre of milk, or higher liveweight gain per suckled calf or lamb which equates to lower emissions per kg of red meat.

Appreciating the lotus plant was the second thing I took away. Not only will it thrive in upland conditions, but it also contains tannins which can improve protein absorption. If protein can be used more efficiently less is expelled from the ruminant as methane.

The meeting was a follow up to the emissions debates at Agri Live. I am often critical of a lack of joined-up thinking of many knowledge transfer events so I was greatly impressed by RASE for their foresight. The morning saw a strong dose of the science of reducing emissions (mainly methane) through choice of grass or legume variety presented by a very knowledgeable panel of speakers followed by a farmer on how this could work in practice. The conclusions drawn is there is no silver bullet on this, we won’t solve the problem from a bag of herbage seed but more likely through efficiencies.

On the panel session in the afternoon, industry representatives all charged with reducing greenhouse gases as part of their roles spoke. Duncan Sinclair from Waitrose spoke on the need to optimise yield of meat from grass. ”I go onto some farms in the spring and there are 30 bullocks in a field. I go back in the autumn and those 30 bullocks are in the same field – that is not good utilisation of grassland.”

Duncan went on to talk further on the whole sustainability package at Waitrose. Currently they are involved in succession planning with their farmers. Having a supermarket take on succession was interesting, us farmers see problems with succession everywhere and like to see these issues resolved for the sake of the family. For a retailer, good succession policy ensures a good long-term supply of product.

All the panel members spoke on the importance of knowledge transfer from research across to farmers. Training is all well and good but we tend to see the same farmers and their staff on the courses. As Chair of LandSkills in Yorks and Humber this was music to my ears. In Yorkshire, LandSkills fund a project run by the Church whereby a team of field officers seek out those hard-to-reach farmers and signpost them to their training needs. “How do we engage the fat-fingered Hill farmer from the top of the Mountain?” said one lady who I won’t name for risk of embarrassing her.

This comment was a real wakeup call for me as I glanced down at the stubby offerings attached to my wrists I couldn’t help noticing the long slender digits of Shropshire lowland farmer Tim Downes sitting next to me. I now saw myself in a new light – next time I am required to fill in one of those diversity monitoring questionnaires do I bypass the white British box and instead move to the blank other please specify and insert the words ‘fat-fingered hill farmer’?

We also spoke of the need of scientists to be more ‘farmer facing’. When I researched my Frank Arden paper on climate change back in 2007 I infiltrated many a seminar in the land of academia all talking about what farmers could be doing to achieve that ‘triple bottom line’ we all yearn for yet no one seemed to be wanting to communicate any findings out to the industry.

This criticism is not all one way though; industry is guilty of not seeking out those involved in research so well done to RASE for organising this event. In a previous role, organiser Ian Smith of RASE (when working with Steve Willis in the Sustainable Food and Farming project) set up a group of around a dozen Yorkshire Farmers who meet up with Scientists based at FERA (formerly known as the Central Science Labs) this group still meets regularly and is an example of how we can disseminate knowledge back down the chain.

So as I drove back up the motorway my fat fingers firmly clasped around the steering wheel I couldn’t help reflecting that as meetings this was definitely one of the better ones.

David Hugill farms a three-way beef cross and 25,000 free range chickens on 150 hectares near North Allerton in North Yorkshire. You can contact him by email at Davidhugill2@aol.com

You can view the presentations from the seminar on the RASE website:
http://www.rase.org.uk/pdfs/RASE_seminar_Adrian_Joynt.pdf
http://www.rase.org.uk/pdfs/RASE_seminar_Dr_Jon_Moorby.pdf
http://www.rase.org.uk/pdfs/RASE_seminar_Michael_Abberton.pdf

See the Grassland Development Centre at IBERS for more science and information on grassland management for livestock farmers.