At last the long autumn has given way to winter, with the arrival of the first frosts. Although the cold nights have come as a shock, they will do the autumn sown crops no harm. The warm damp days are not entirely helpful this late in the year, but now the frosty nights will check their growth, and hopefully also any pests and diseases lurking amongst the lush foliage.

No doubt people will be reaching for their thermostats and turning up the heat in their homes. Fortunately for now there is hopefully enough capacity in the electricity supply to cope with the extra demand. However, one has to wonder if this time next year things may turn out a little differently.

On Wednesday Amber Rudd the Energy Secretary confirmed that the Government will oversee the closing down of all our remaining coal-fired power stations. At present these supply a third of all the electricity we need to keep the country functioning as an industrial nation.

It is incomprehensible as to why successive governments are prepared to damage beyond repair the UK’s capability to produce enough power to keep the lights on in our homes, and the wheels of British industry tuning.

Why they want to risk the nation’s energy supply by closing down irrevocably our fossil fuel power stations which still provide two thirds of our power, remains a mystery. To solely rely upon “carbon –free” renewables, and possibly in the future, nuclear energy if and when the Chinese decide to build some, is quite beyond comprehension.

The Government has been warned that by next winter, following the closure of more coal-fired power stations, we could well be faced with the prospect that we run out of any surplus energy supplies.
This will be when not only our central heating systems fail to respond and our lights go out, but so too will the entire transport system grind to a halt. Our computerised economy, so dependent upon electricity, cannot afford to rely upon dodgy renewables providing essential energy on cold, dull, windless winter days.
The Energy Secretary claimed last week that we are doing this to ‘set an example to the rest of the world’. It seems that ‘the rest of the world’ are taking not a blind bit of notice. They are supporting their economies, their citizens, and their futures, rather than vainly trying to reverse the natural phenomena of Global Warming.

Both China and India have already announced, ahead of the Paris climate conference, that over the next 15 years, they plan to double and triple their CO2 emissions by building hundreds more coal-fired powers stations. The UK has but a handful left, and it seems our Government is hell bent on putting them out of action.

It would at least be wise to moth ball these valuable sources of power rather than destroy them. It is certain that sooner rather than later politicians will come to their senses and realise the error of their ways. They will then need to fire up these reliable sources of power just to keep the lights on.

‘Should the UK remain a member of the EU or leave?’ This was the subject debated by Maria Caulfield MP, and Richard Ashworth MEP, last week at a well-attended meeting in Lindfield.

Maria, very much the Euro sceptic, said that since she has become an MP she has become even more sceptical. Amongst her constituents are the fishermen in Newhaven who are struggling to cope with EU quotas.

She was disappointed by David Cameron’s letter stating his demands, which she felt did not ‘dig deep enough’. And she is concerned about our increasing lack of sovereignty, and the major problem of immigration.

Since joining in 1973 the EU has been in economic decline, and she pointed out that then the European population was 17%, is it now less than 7%, of the world population.

She also noted that when we originally joined the Union our voice was one of a few. Today it is diluted as we are now just one amongst 28 countries.

Richard Ashworth said he remains convinced that the EU has prevented World War 3 happening. He believes the Prime Minister’s negotiations will be successful, and that it is vital to remain within the EU as Great Britain alone cannot invest in productivity, and research and development.

He feels that the free movement of people within the EU is vital, and to close down our borders would have unintended consequences, and he believes there is no credible alternative.

He also felt there was a high level of misinformation regarding such issues as the Court of Human Rights.
These arguments for and against remaining in the EU are of course relevant. However it appears that increasingly the general public’s decision when it comes to the referendum will be determined by their overriding concerns relating to the Nations security, and how the Government deals with the immigration crises across the Continent.
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On this occasion the audience when polled were almost neck and neck. At this stage, if I were a betting man I would put my money on the Out team winning the debate.

​My early morning routine includes walking the dogs and checking the over wintering polo ponies, and eventers. This takes me on a circuit of the farm of around two miles. On my journey I take a short cut along a footpath through my neighbour’s smallholding which lies on the edge of the farm.

I enjoy checking the ponies and having a brief chat with each, making sure they are all well and sound. However, I have to admit that increasingly the part of my morning rounds which give me the greatest pleasure and amusement, is when I divert through Peter and Liz Burton’s smallholding which covers around four acres.
Before I even get there the Guinea Fowl announce my imminent arrival with their jabbering, and if I am lucky, particularly in the spring, the Peacocks call out and display their wondrous plumage. At this time of year the Turkeys are magnificent and infinitely noisy and curious. The Geese and hens, if already released from their sheds where they are locked away over-night, safely out of reach of Mr Fox, look inquisitively at the Whippets and Lurcher, as they tease these now ravenous beasts, from the safety of their pens.

Some sheep emerge from beneath the fir trees, and the goats peer out from beneath their shelters. All these assorted livestock are lively, healthy and a pleasure to see each day. The Burtons run an immaculate small enterprise, despite having busy day jobs, and their love of all things rural is all too plain to see by the care they take to ensure their various livestock enjoy their enchanting environment.

Small holdings, such as this are today all too rare. In days gone by they were the heart and soul of the countryside. They and small traditional family farms were the very glue which kept rural villages and communities together. They provided jobs for the locals, and their existence ensured none farming locals understood the connection between the livestock, farming and the food we eat.

Today there are children attending rural village schools, who incredibly have little or no understanding of how closely their daily lives and the food they eat are connected to the countryside about them. The advent of mechanisation, large farming enterprises, run to take advantage of the economies of scale, and talk of mega farms, take the food on our plates even further away from where it all stems from. Not only are children less aware for this dis- connection from the countryside, but so too are our communities and the public at large.
Some County Councils across the country are now planning to sell off publicly owned agricultural land, thus removing valuable opportunities for young people aspiring to farm, despite coming from non-farming backgrounds, getting a foothold into the industry by renting council farms.

Small family farms and smallholdings such as my neighbours, in years to come could be just a distant memory of times gone by. The countryside and our communities will certainly be the poorer if this is allowed to happen.

Talking of Guinea Fowl which I briefly mentioned in passing; I am tempted to start up a new enterprise. Each year the ‘powers that be’, best known as Brussels, add to the list of chemicals that we as farmers, are not allowed to use on our crops. These we require to protect growing crops and keep them healthy and clear from a myriad of diseases, aphids, bugs and slugs.

I am beginning to think that a significant flock of Guinea Fowl could well be the answer. They would also raise my somewhat flagging ‘green’ credentials. These low cost, low maintenance birds, a native of Africa, which forage all day in search of ants, flies, slugs, wasps and ticks amongst other living grubs and insects. They are also known to eat small vermin which they gang up and stalk before going in for the kill.

If faced, as we were this summer, by a horrendous invasion of slugs on the Lupins; instead of broadcasting slug pellets which are now on the highly restricted list, the Guinea Fowl could provide the perfect chemical-free, environmentally perfect form of pest control. These birds would make their way across the fields mopping up the slugs and leaving the crop free from predators, but untouched by the Guinea Fowl which are strictly carnivores, as they are no veg type of guys.
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I could also lease them out to my neighbours to clear their fields at a very reasonable rate, and then at the end of the season the Guinea Fowl will make a healthy alternative to chicken. These birds are low in fat and have a distinctive deliciously gamey flavour. Definitely a win win solution, and yet another form of diversification desperately needed to subsidise our flagging income as prices continue to tumble for our traditional farm produce, particularly the grain.

The weather has been positively balmy and there is little change predicted in the short term. So, perhaps we should be alarmed that despite the mild temperature for this time of year, the National Grid was forced to resort to emergency measures to keep Britain’s lights on last week.

Major industries were for the first time asked to down tools, and were paid ridiculous sums to switch off or reduce their power consumption. No doubt little men in Hi-Viz jackets were pouring over the Radio Times, trying to predict when exactly the UK coach potato brigade would drag ourselves away from our TV sets to put the kettle on.

The problem was blamed on a combination of unexpectedly high demand, power plant breakdowns and very low wind power output.

The real problem is EU diktats which have forced the closure of coal-fired power stations for environmental reasons, and the UK has been slow to build replacements for nuclear power stations scheduled to close over the next few years.

It is increasingly clear that the green alternatives, such as wind, solar and wave, are unable to fill the gap. Despite this, more useless wind farms are on the way as the Government has foolishly committed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. Surely the incident last week should now be ringing alarm bells.

It would be reassuring to believe that somewhere in the bowels of Westminster someone with an ounce of common sense will pipe up and say ‘Enough, we need to re assess the situation’. If not, as Charles Moore said last week, ‘the obsession with global warming will put the lights out all over Britain’.

We recently watched as two perfectly good coal fired power stations were raised to the ground, and now another two are due to be shut and similarly destroyed in the next six months.

Meanwhile China builds a new coal-fired power station every few weeks. No doubt President Xi Jinping on his recent visit was bemused to see what a ‘pig’s ear’ the Government has made of our power generating industry. We have exceptionally high electricity prices, forced up by green taxes to pay for useless solar and wind farms. These high costs and China’s cheap products, have closed much of our remaining steel industry, and only last week the Michelin tyre plant in Northern Ireland.

It is time that politicians stopped listening to “Scientists”, and profiteering green lobbyists, who use improper statistical methods, short-term temperature trends, or faulty computer models to make analytical and anecdotal projections about the significance of man-made influences to Earth’s climate.

Global climate and temperature cycles are a result of a complex interplay between a variety of causes. Global warming started 18,000 years ago as the earth started warming up. Before then ice ages and glaciers had dominated the previous past several million years. It is said we are now in a temporary ‘Reprieve’ from the deep freeze; approximately every 100,000 years the Earth’s climate warms up ‘short term’. These periods are called ‘Interglacial periods’, and appear to last approximately 15,000 to 20,000 years before regressing back to cold ice age climate.

We are now much nearer the end of the current interglacial vacation period than the beginning. And, since the end of the last Ice Age, Earth’s temperature has risen approximately 16 degrees F, and sea levels have risen 300 feet.

We tend to over-estimate our actual impact upon the planet. In this case the magnitude of the gas emissions involved, even by the most aggressive estimates of atmospheric warming by greenhouse gases, is inadequate to account for the magnitude of temperature increases.

This is controlled by cyclical eccentricities in Earth’s Rotation and Orbit, as well as variations in the Sun’s energy output.

If we are on the brink of another Ice Age, the last thing we should be doing is limiting carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, just in case they may have a positive effect in sustaining present temperatures.

Global climate cycles of warming and cooling have been a natural phenomena for hundreds of thousands of years, and it is unlikely that these cycles of dramatic climate change will stop anytime soon. We currently enjoy a warm earth, can we count on it continuing forever? The answer is most likely …no.

Instead of crippling the British economy in order to achieve small reductions in global warming, our resources would be better spent making preparations to adapt to global cooling and global warming, and the inevitable consequences of fluctuating ocean levels, temperatures, and precipitation that accompanies climatic change.

Of the 186 billion tons of carbon from CO2 that enter earth’s atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth’s oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference is due in Paris at the end of the month. Let us hope the binding and universal agreement will be that ‘Man cannot and does not influence global warming’. So go home, adapt and support your industries. Do not waste time and resources fighting Mother Nature.
 
Carola Godman Irvine

The unseasonal weather has given the winter sown crops a good start, they are now very well established and looking well. The pastures are awash with grass which continues to grow. Although beef cattle have been housed for several weeks, the overwintering polo ponies are happily filling their bellies and getting fat on the lush grass and clover. They are also hoovering up the acorns from under the oak trees which I am quite sure is not good for them, but there is little one can do.

150 lambs arrived at Randolphs Farm last week and are happily grazing the plentiful grass over there. Less welcome are the moles which have pitched up once again. Having blitzed them hard in the spring, we had rather hoped to have seen the last of them. These latest arrivals are an energetic bunch which are busily digging in and making themselves thoroughly at home. I have put out a call to Richard the mole man, who will hopefully come soon to work his magic before they colonise the whole field, as they did last winter.

The media frenzy following last week’s report from the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), suggesting eating just 50g of processed meat a day can increase the risk of bowel cancer by 18 per cent, inspired me to take a straw poll.

I must admit my poll was not exactly scientific, or thorough, but suffice to say it gave me an interesting view as to the discerning public’s reaction to this news story.

I visited three farm shops, and two high street butchers. I also listened to shoppers in the fresh meat and processed meat isles in Tesco, and I popped into Lidl. My purpose was to find out if local punters had changed their shopping habits, or if the IARC report was discussed amongst themselves or with the butchers.

Out of the farm shops and high street butchers, one reported that a regular customer had mentioned the report, and on the strength of it had ordered an extra large joint of beef for the weekend. Another said a gentleman had enquired if the butcher knew how much carcinogen he would gain from the leg of lamb he had just bought!

My foray into Tesco resulted in overhearing a couple discussing how many rashers of bacon they would have to eat to match the 40 cigarettes they both smoked daily. And I overheard a mother telling her young son that their visits to Mc Donald’s would now have to be restricted to twice a week, instead of their regular four.

At the rather long checkout in Lidl, there was quite a debate on the subject. I got the feeling that few if any were about to change their eating habits. The consensus of opinion was that it would not be long before this advice is turned on its head and the scientists come up with a very different scenario.

The mainstream media have gone to town and sensationalised this story. The Sun declaring “bacon and sausages are as bad as plutonium”, and the Guardian that “processed meat ran alongside smoking as a cause for cancer”. The BBC thoroughly overplayed the story, dragging into their studios anyone prepared to blame livestock farmers for trying to wipe out the human race!

As reported in the Farmers Weekly, the real problem with the report is that while it assesses so-called “cancer hazards”, it makes no attempt to quantify the risk. It simply lumps processed meat and red meat into certain categories, along with more than 900 other products and activities.

Statistics show that an average 50-year-old man would have a 0.68% risk of bowel cancer in the next 10 years. And eating processed meat increases that to 0.8% - a rise of 0.12%. On the other hand, smoking just three cigarettes a day increases the chance of lung cancer – the biggest killer- by 600%. Somewhat different from eating a little more processed meat.

The average daily consumption of processed meat in the UK is just 17g, this is well below the IARC’s perceived threshold. It was interesting to note that the rates of bowel cancer were similar in both vegetarians and meat-eaters.

Healthy eating is a question of consuming a balanced diet, including a variety of foods, and as the late Dr de Winter advised, ‘everything in moderation’. Over consumption of anything is inadvisable and clearly unhealthy. A modicum of common sense by consumers would it seems, save the medical profession and scientists a shed load of time and money.
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The problem is not so much what we eat but how much we eat, and increasingly how little exercise we take. The combination is proving to be costly to the nation, and increasingly lethal. This disease of the 21 Century needs to be addressed sooner than later.