From Cow Poo to Energy: A Farming Revolution

 FOOD AND WATER - SURELY THESE ARE LIFE'S ESSENTIALS!

Having had an idyllic upbringing on a family farm with staunchly Conservative forbears boasting army officers and a long line of countrymen and landowners, but having spent my working life in traditionally left of centre  occupations, I consider myself a reasonably qualified floating voter- my political stance swayed by whichever party best addresses issues I consider most important at the time.

Currently my biggest issue is with the short sightedness of all the political parties - seemingly in total ignorance of the most rudimentary, yet most crucial, importance of our need for plentiful, good, sustainable food and pure water, ensuring sufficient land, waterways and reservoirs are ready and available to cater for the majority of the country’s basic nutritional needs should global instability spread to our shores and foreign food imports no longer be relied upon.

It is high time that our politicians accepted that in order to sustain life, any life, these two needs should be prioritised over and above EVERYTHING else. This is why looking to the future of farming and the countryside has been my main political issue during the recent General Election.

During the paltry electioneering efforts in our neck of rural East Anglia, our Labour candidate’s leaflet told us absolutely nothing except about himself (I had no clue what his policies were on anything, let alone countryside issues, although I think he probably mentioned ‘serving his community’) Nothing arrived from Reform, The Greens, Liberal Democrats or our Independent candidate so again I was none the wiser. In the small print however, our Conservative candidate did mention the importance of farming and the countryside and not plastering solar farms on prime land – he thus secured my vote! 

Our local planning officials are currently being inundated with planning proposals for fields boasting some of the best and most fertile farmland in the country, to be smothered in ‘temporary’ (40 years!) solar panels, thus giving farmers half a lifetime of high returns for little or no effort. I cannot blame them for applying, given the current paltry financial returns and lack of support for their efforts to grow crops and care for livestock, with all the attendant uncertainties that price rises, changes in climate, pests and diseases bring and yet, as a farmer’s daughter, I can’t help thinking that should farmers be given governmental respect, recognition and appropriate financial incentives, the majority of these solar applications would have never seen the light of day.

Don’t get me wrong – I am not against solar power or wind power for that matter but, call me a nimby if you wish, I think it’s just not right on prime and beautiful East Anglian land where good food should be being produced. We can ration electricity, even live, if uncomfortably, without it – worldwide many do, but without adequate potable water and a reliable supply of food, mankind will cease altogether.

Excremental Energy - is this the way forward?

On a more positive note, I was mightily impressed to hear a farmer from Glastonbury’s Worthy Farm in Somerset on the radio the other morning, extolling the virtues of his new initiative which collects and extracts hydrogen from slurry and also, miraculously, uses it to manufacture valuable graphene. Let’s have more of this please! it does not exploit the world’s most poverty stricken, slaving in appalling conditions to mine finite natural resources to feed our energy needs, allows us to continue growing food crops, keeping (and eating) livestock, relieves the risk of ‘run off’ into our rivers and  makes positive and financially rewarding use of methane producing cow poo which some would have us believe is the devil incarnate.

Is this perhaps where the future of farming lies? – food and alternative energy in symbiosis. It’s being done on a small scale so let’s have a government which encourages it on a massive scale. If more support were given to farmers to capture and utilise their waste on site, we could perhaps continue to keep our fields of grain, our beautiful cattle and our chickens to feed our large population - better still, why not a government which has the courage to invest massively in capturing and channelling our own effluent to generate electricity, rather than flushing it into our precious waterways whenever it rains hard.

Just imagine - an inexhaustible supply of an energy producing commodity with no fears of over extraction, exploitation or carbon emissions from transportation - a hospital, school or even the Houses of Parliament running on their own excrement!

Unrealistic – possibly, but governments must look to the long term future of our food security and precious countryside, supporting such initiatives rather than slapping solar panels over prime farmland, panels which only provide power when the sun shines – a rare event this year in this neck of the woods. I am fed up with the short sightedness of politicians who all appear to take a populist, short term view of government.  

Farmers are a small minority and therefore easy to ignore when canvassing for votes but without them we would starve. Water sustains us all but as long as we have an E coli free supply from our taps and do not receive sewage backing up into our bathrooms, we take it for granted, whilst our precious water sources are gradually dying from a potential power source being wasted and pumped into our rivers.

I freely admit to possessing large doses of naivety and idealism, but the importance of listening to landowners, farm managers and tenant farmers - giving them full and unbiased support to make a decent living out of agriculture surely cannot be denied and must be addressed by the new Government, starting with the new minister in the DEFRA hotseat. I only hope our urban based Minister for Environment is prepared to listen, learn and act on behalf of the people who actually till the fields, care for our waterways and truly love and understand our countryside, (A good start might be ensuring he receives regular missives from Scribehound – a breath of fresh air and country common sense in an increasingly urban world)