Roger Merry

Good to see our salt story followed up here👇 The slow motion collapse (actually no longer slow motion) of Britain's chemicals industry is a BIG deal. But NB it's not just salt. Ammonia, sulphuric acid, ethanol, and a host of other foundational chemicals too. All going or gone

🚨 Labour stitch-up 🚨 Steve Reed’s gerrymandering of local government is going to cost all of us. Labour politicians redrawing boundaries. Overriding local communities to maximise political advantage. Higher council taxes under Labour to fund Reed’s vanity project. And he couldn’t even be bothered to turn up to answer my Urgent Question.

@EberhardBaehr @SamaHoole And those numbers from 100,000 years ago... robust? We dont have numbers from 200 years ago... so dry land co2 methane cycle very different from warm wet.. but dead grass produces methane we do this in bio digesters and call it green tech..

@RogerMerry1 @SamaHoole More ruminants produce more Methan, less ruminants produce less. And today we have 10 times more ruminants than 100.000 years ago. Going back to the original number will reduce Methan accordingly. The cycle will turn over a lower quantity.

Here is what happens to a blade of grass whether or not a cow is present. The grass grows. To grow, it pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This carbon becomes the grass. The grass contains it. The sun drives this process. The rain enables it. Now two scenarios. Scenario one: no cow. The grass completes its growing season. It dies. It decomposes. Bacteria and fungi break down the organic matter. The carbon that was in the grass returns to the atmosphere as CO2. This takes weeks to months. The cycle is complete. Atmospheric carbon is unchanged. Scenario two: cow present. The grass grows. The cow eats it. The cow's rumen ferments it. Methane is produced. The methane enters the atmosphere. Over the following ten to twelve years, atmospheric hydroxyl radicals oxidise the methane back into CO2. The CO2 is absorbed by the next season's grass. The carbon goes: atmosphere → grass → cow → atmosphere → grass. In scenario one: atmosphere → grass → atmosphere. The destination is the same. The route is slightly longer in scenario two. The net atmospheric carbon at the end of each cycle is identical. The cow did not add carbon to this system. The carbon was already there. It was in the grass. It was going back to the atmosphere regardless. The cow is not the source. The cow is a temporary stop on a journey that was happening with or without her. This is the biogenic carbon cycle. It has a Wikipedia page. It is not obscure. It is simply inconvenient for the argument.

@EberhardBaehr @SamaHoole Methane cycle .. is a cycle... ruminants of all types produce methane but as they produce it so methane breaks down to CO2... so stable numbers don't increase total methane.. the only methane that matters to GW is "new" methane... ruminants dont produce that...

@SamaHoole Sama Hoole, the master of omissions: All correct, just one thing left out: Methan (CH4) is about 80 times more effective as a GHG as CO2. So during those 10-20years until it converts to CO2 (and continues to be active) it drives global warming 80times more. That's the key point.

building trust for wildlife conservation action ‘on the ground’ may require a cup of tea or a bout of drinking

Here is footage of @CommonsSpeaker telling Boris Johnson to answer questions. Something he keeps insisting he is constitutionally unable to get Starmer to do @TimesRadio He and the PM have rendered PMQs pointless.

@WineGal8603 @SamaHoole There's a lot of paperwork involved... you have to register land you're keeping goats on .. even a pet... you need a movement order to move them, there are rules for temporary grazing but that's within 10 miles of the registered holding... tricky...

@SamaHoole I see a business opportunity. Need a trailer for goats. Need goat supervision so that Steve is not visited by strange goats. Could drop off goats to various properties for weed abatement. Must supervise goats to keep them off the roof. Good job for college students.

Once upon a time, there were goats in Britain. Large populations of domestic goats on marginal land across England, Wales, and Scotland, eating the things no other animal would touch, keeping the scrub open, maintaining the browse pressure that their wild ancestors had provided since the Pleistocene. Then, gradually, the goats left. The markets changed. The economics changed. The upland goat herd declined through the 18th and 19th centuries. By the 20th century, the commercial goat sector was a fraction of what it had been. The browse pressure went with them. And then: The bramble advanced. Across southern Britain, on the margins and hedgerows and abandoned land and the woodland edges that goats had kept open, the bramble moved in. Monoculture. Dense. Four to six feet high. Impenetrable to almost anything except a goat's complete indifference to thorns. The Japanese knotweed arrived in 1850, introduced as an ornamental, and found that nothing in Britain's remaining agricultural ecology would eat it. It advanced through river margins, roadsides, and gardens at three metres per season. It is now legally classified as controlled waste. Removing it from a single property can cost thousands. The blackthorn thicketed. The scrub woodland advanced on land that, with browse pressure, would have remained open semi-natural grassland supporting the wildflower communities and ground-nesting birds that people now fund conservation programmes to protect. All of this happened because the goats left. Keith arrived in Devon fourteen months ago. Dave's east ditch: clear. The knotweed: retreating. The red campion: arriving. Keith received no government grant for this. Keith received bramble, access to the east ditch, and the gate budget. The gate budget is £387. The knotweed treatment the Environment Agency quoted: £4,000. Keith is the most cost-effective conservation tool in British agricultural history that nobody is talking about because Keith is also in Steve's garden and Steve is on the phone again. The goats are back. Steve is not ready for the goats to be back. Steve is going to have to get ready.

@Longsidehoney @ElmTreeBees If you can do early splits it'd pay its way I think 🤔

@RogerMerry1 @ElmTreeBees Absolutely, I've not even advertised mine and I've loads of people asking just for that reason. Unfortunately my nucs weren't as successful as usual last year so I don't have as many available as usual. Plus, there's bound to be a few that don't come up to scratch

I don't think I'm going to do any splits this year. Last year I went from 450 down to 300 & this year I start on 350 but would like to trim that to 300. The main problem; we're having problems finding beekeepers. If you're not feeling optimism then cut the reproduction rate.

@GrahamDenny9 @julian_voelcker @DefraGovUK Short grass tidal saltmarsh... sheep know their way out and back with the tides perfect habitat mix... and losing the hefted flock is mad.. decided that sheep are stopping the Dee saltmarsh estuary being good for birds.. 🤯 despite it being one of the most important in Europe..🤬

@RogerMerry1 @julian_voelcker @DefraGovUK Wigeon won’t be pleased or all the waders that rely on worms using muck to find worms , what is RSPB wanting water buffalo so it can pull a few more visitors in ! 🤦‍♂️

Wild bird populations like pochard, goldeneye, pintail and woodcock are under pressure. We're planning to consult on new measures to strengthen their protection against shooting and support their recovery. Find out more: gov.uk/government/new…

Surrendering the Chagos is Ecocide on a massive scale. The British Indian Overseas Territory is one the only places in the Indian Ocean not decimated by Chinese and Asian industrial overfishing. If the deal goes through, the Chagos archipelago will be ransacked by trawlers. Unusually, there is almost complete radio silence from British conservation organisations. It’s inexplicable. ecos.org.uk/the-chagos-con…

@lesbashford I can send you some !!

Where are the wood pigeons? 🤷🏼‍♂️everyone I speak to right across the country are saying the same.

@GrahamDenny9 @julian_voelcker @DefraGovUK Friends have lost their marsh grazing because RSPB think sheep are bad for the marsh... the marsh has been grazed from before the Vikings arrived ... They are selling up and moving... the bird numbers will fall ...

You had better consult first instead of listening to the organisations that haven’t got them because they think they should ! Birds respond to good management there were good numbers of woodcock everywhere last year because of management that is needed ! Facts before fictional claims , true numbers before low counts on unreliability of poor habitat !another GL disaster cannot happen or other measures if your information is weak again ! @Gameandwildlife @ScarecrowNeste1 @AndrewGilruth @MoorlandAssoc @TrooperSnooks @PaddyGalbraith @BASCnews @CAupdates

@omid9 @TomTugendhat Time they used their own military to police their own back yard...

🔴 We have waited for this. And now it’s happening: a stark rebuke of the Islamic regime in Iran by one of the Arab world's most senior diplomats. Iran’s ideology claims it defends Islamic causes. But the bare facts are now exposed: for 47 years Iran has used a proxy network funding and promoting Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and allied militias across Iraq, Syria, & Sudan all in the name of “a resistance movement defending Islam and the Palestinian cause”. It is a sham that many fell for. Arabs countries finally calling bs on Iran is highly significant and the final nail in the coffin of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Watch:

@ElmTreeBees Hi losses here too...

Oh boi.... some of the bees are looking absolute pants. Reports coming in of heavy losses (It's not 'damp'... seriously?!) What is everyone else seeing?

Under the government's proposals, not one of the 900 wrongly convicted subpostmasters would have had a right to trial by jury. The Prime Minister himself concluded in a report that the scrapping of jury trials led to miscarriages of justice in Northern Ireland in the 1990s. The right to trial by jury must be protected. #JusticeNeedsJuries

@AnnaLongthorp @bencm305 @Ondaintreefarm Amazed Richard Perkins experience of the REKO system hasn't taken off... Facebook based, presold, take the produce to a designated collection point - supermarket carpark- share that cost with other suppliers if possible, customers collect within a limited time slot...

@bencm305 @Ondaintreefarm 🎯 relationship with end user is key, our mainstream food supply chain is so befuddled for a reason, so customers don’t ask qu’s, don’t know where their food comes from so corporates can extract maximum £ from consumer whilst exploiting the farmer. We need to take back the reins

I’ve had had a few comments recently about my Posted Potatoes from people saying they can buy bags of potatoes cheaper from farms local to them. If you can, go and buy that bag, support your local farmer! I’m just trying to offer potatoes for people who don’t live near a farm that sells them, but still want to support British Agriculture by buying direct from a farmer like me. It’s expensive to post a 15kg parcel, and unfortunately I’m not Amazon Prime, but I’ve tried to keep the cost affordable for the consumer, but fair to the farmer and to reflect the cost of producing high quality spuds. Farmer Luke’s potatoes is the first time in my farming career that I have been able to set the price for my own product and I truly appreciate every single potato that you guys have brought from me 🥔🚜 If you don’t have a local farm you can buy from, you can order direct from me here: farmerluke.co.uk 🥔📮 #FarmerLuke #DownOnDaintreeFarm #Mrsfarmerluke #spudwife

🚨And there you have it. Sly News are finally GETTING IT! If Labour actually cared about reducing carbon emissions and making us less dependent on imports from Qatar they would do *MORE* drilling in the North Sea. @Ed_Miliband's entire Net Zero argument DESTROYED in 2 minutes

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that this ludicrous policy will address the backlog and none whatsoever that it speeds up waits in RASSO cases. @Keir_Starmer is not only wrong on this, he knows full well that @DavidLammy hasn’t got the evidence to push this through.

@JoeWStanley Are there nutters on all social media... yes... are there genuinely unpleasant people.. yes.. do they disappear with the block button .. yes.. I follow interesting people not all of them I agree with, some I vehemently disagree with but that's ok .. So stay, argue and block 😁

I finally realise no conversations of value occur on this platform when it comes to food, farming & the environment. What should be a marketplace of ideas is largely a cesspit of wilfully misinformed tribalism. I’m out 👋