@Eceni I have Dexter cattle. I have them mainly for conservation grazing, because my land is old biodiverse pasture. But the question does arise whether preserving the pasture is the best use of the land.
@Eceni@simon_brooke the way it was presented to me was as a cattle welfare scheme. The stockman told me the cattle have preferences in the pasture and they go first for their favourite type, and if they are moved from park to park, they keep doing that. Over the years apparently it has greatly improved the health of the herd and reduced veterinary bills.
The stockman told me when he started in his current job he thought it was a waste of time, but now he is a convert !
@Eceni@simon_brooke She’s fabulous- she’s on X as ‘Howemill’ but I don’t think she’s on here. She also heads up Regenerative Women on the Land which is hugely supportive to women in the industry.
Related thought: my seven acres of pasture produce about 200kg per year of high quality beef protein for human food. That is essentially sufficient protein for ten people.
How many kilos of quality protein could I produce if I put it down to a rotation including beans?
@otfrom Well, possibly. I'm certainly thinking about it hard.
I have old established, very biodiverse organic wildflower meadows, which are now a rare habitat; that's precisely why I keep cattle. Turning them over to arable production would destroy that. But when you're balancing biodiversity against human food, it's hard to know what is more important.
@simon_brooke to me biodiversity is more important. I know I'm arguing from a privileged position but in the long term humans will also not be able to persevere in a completely destroyed environment. If we don't safeguard and then expand the protected spaces eventually we'll go down with the whole lot. @otfrom
@simon_brooke@otfrom my vote would be for biodiversity on your fields, currently you are already getting some protein plus maintaining the biodiversity.
Could you grow some nut trees around the edges?
Low input once established and cows would get forage from the lower branches.
Hazel is a great one for coppicing and maybe if you plant sweet chestnuts, by the time they are old enough to produce, we might have warm enough summers in Scotland to produce a crop (last 2 years gave chestnuts in Fife)
@Hellybootwader@otfrom I have hazel and am planning to plant sweet chestnut this winter. Not confident they'll crop in my lifetime, but you plant trees for your successors!
@therealgaryc my feeling is it ought to be more. Cattle are not particularly efficient in growing protein. On the other hand, my experience is that I am really bad at horticulture. Also, although this hilltop is high and windy, it was used as arable during the medieval period, so it could be again.
@nil So, under perfect conditions (and probably with a lot of artificial fertiliser), two and a half times what I'm now producing. But a windy hilltop in Scotland is not perfect conditions. So possibly not as much of an improvement as I would hope.
@simon_brooke@nil I agree that soy production from industrial agriculture is kinda irrelevant here, but taking it as a benchmark, and taking those figures at face value:
If soy produces 513Kg protein per acre. (Not of crop but of dry protein), so for 7 acres that would be 3500kg
If you produce 200kg of meat (is that what you meant?) on 7 acres and meat is about 25% dry protein then that's 50kg protein.
The soy is 70 times more.
Of course it's not a sensible comparison, the soy will have vast fossil fuel inputs in fertiliser and mechanisation and is a lower grade protein than beef, and as commonly farmed has almost zero biodiversity, but it's still an impressive ratio.
@simon_brooke do you get that 200kg without any other inputs? Do you have to provide any additional feed or do you ever fertilize that pasture? How many head of cattle makes 200kg of protein?
@consected I give my cattle carrots occasionally as bribes (like half a carrot per day per animal) and small amounts of sugar beat pulp even more occasionally when I need them to do something. I much prefer to bribe cattle than to shout at them. But basically, they eat grass, only.
To produce 200kg/year efficiently you need two adult cpws, one adult bull, two calves at heel and two yearlings. I actually have more (eleven at present), but this is too many and I need to sell some.
@consected I should add: mine are Dexters, which are very small cattle. With a bigger beef breed you would get 200kg or more of good meat off a single carcase (but they'd eat more grass so you would need fewer animals for a given amount of pasture).
@simon_brooke thanks for the detail! I'm trying to work out for myself what is reasonably sustainable to feed ourselves balanced with a real desire to rewild spaces that are just unproductive without chemicals or foreign animal feed.
I have no answers, but I have thought a bit about the questions for a while now.
Often when I see discusssion of such questions i see people confusing protein contents of different foods by ignoring water content.
Lean meat is mostly protein and water IIRC, but the actual dry protein content is still below 50% (I think).
Protein percentages in dry grains and beans are usually quoted with minimal water content, dried as stored, not the green plant, nor cooked as eaten. So you need to make sure that you are comparing like with like.
Additionally the crop will produce a lot of non-protein calories, meat produces fat but not carbs so you really should look at total calories as well as protein content. (vitamins and other nutrients also might be worth considering)
OTOH meat is a balanced protein and you'd have to combine several different crops to grow balanced protein in combination.
I see no need to lose biodiversity, a permaculture approach to vegetable food production could easily be as diverse as the pasture you have now.
Yields for intensive agriculture are readily findable, yields for the sort of diverse permaculture that is probably a better choice will be harder to find.
Also resilience in the face of unpredictable climate.
@simon_brooke A quick search indicates that beef is about 25% protein, 20% fat and the rest water, not counting trace stuff.
So 1kg of beef is only 250g of actual protein for comparison purposes to crops, as long as the crops are quoted as % dry weight or as actual g per 100g which is more common.
No-one ever states the water content directly, but you can deduce it from nutrition facts per 100g charts as it is generally the difference between the sum of the quoted components and the total 100g. Though some of that difference in plants may also be indigestible stuff like cellulose.
compare with nutritional values of dry golden linseed:
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