The United Kingdom has been agrarian for a long long time. In fact, you have to go back to the 13th century to see the more or less identical farming look. Granted there were more farms closer to the big city, but still, in Norfolk, you can find local maps that show farmland largely identical to what it is today.
When we purchased our farm in 2018, the first step was to hire an ecologist and biologist to look over the entire property and see what needed to be done. Where were the springs (we have three on our property) what is their flow, where are the field walls, topography and what is the soil condition. Our farm had stopped being productive in the late 1990s, and the vast majority of the working fields were leased to various local farmers for their crops -- nothing unusual there.
We had developed a 20-year business plan and had well capitalized the business so that it may be successful. We acquired 20 permanent greenhouses that would be built over two or three years. We had plans for a small meat processing plant and for cold and dry storage for various crops. Again, our focus was always on the restaurant and hotel trade, because it is higher priced and they have very different demands than do supermarkets.
Our ecologist developed a plan for our pasture's rejuvenation. We continued to lease land to other farmers to allow them to find new land for their requirements. Standard stuff. We worked hard in re-rehabilitating abandoned fields where some smaller trees had grown. All that was cut was then pulverized and was either sold for bedding or used in our operations. We do not need additional water, since our springs are more than sufficient to meet the land requirement. We use only natural herbicides and manure, of course, we use sheep, pig, and chicken manure since they have different characteristics. We also contracted to produce massive amounts of compost to improve soil depth and quality.
So far, the vast majority of the criticism by the greens as to our carbon footprint is way off base. 25,000 liters of diesel do not constitute a major issue here, and it would be worse if we were growing plant mass such as wheat, soya, or corn.
Now, where the green is right, is that protein produced from Beef, pork, or chicken is far more expensive than protein produced from plants. There is simply no getting away from that fact. Meat protein costs about 10 times more to produce than vegetable protein.
They got us there, but so what. Meat production is far more ecological and friendly to the land than intensive grain and vegetable production. That is a real fact too, that is always disregarded.
As a side note, wild boars are a huge problem on our farm, and over the past three weeks, we've had nightly shootings of wild boars on our land. They are incredibly aggressive and dangerous, a wild boar will kill you...and then eat you! Our our farm alone (because of our water springs) we have killed a total of 33 boars this year (and no you cannot eat them, the boar meat is full of parasites). Initially, we had tried more humane ways of diminishing the wild boar population but in the end, shotguns were required
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