Upland Sheep Farming

[HateIsNotGood]

I've read a few posts over the past 3 years giving various opinions on this - most recently I read a post stating that it would be better for the environment if subsidies to upland sheep farmers were removed.

I can only think of one poster here who farms sheep in the uplands and maybe one or two more that might. I'm not, though have kept and worked with lowland sheep.

My tuppence to add is that upland grazing by livestock is environmentally beneficial.

Lowland sheep farmers rely on the highland breeds to X breed with to enable the lowland lambs to be hardy enough to survive the fickle UK climate. It really does matter 'how far up the mountain' your breeding ewes come from.

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If I remember correctly, sheep are about the only thing you can farm in the uplands.

Should make more use of wool as well.

It really depends how you define environmentally beneficial.
The uplands would do better if we just left them alone, no sheep or grouse farming. Deer have quite a big impact so we still need to do something about them, and we need to actively re-wet and manage land cover to get over the risk threshold for fire.
But the loss of the farming industry in the uplands would be devastating for rural communities and have knock on impacts across other farming sectors too, as well as tourism, recreation etc.
But honestly even trade deals aside I don't see how upland farming will survive the loss of BPS.

The comment wasn't that we should stop sheep farming there but we should stop subsidies. Its always seemed odd that we happily subsidise farms and even pay them not to farm.

Paying people 'not to farm' is a way of giving unprofitable and poorly performing businesses a way out, and of avoiding supply issues, like the milk production reduction grant; we haven't paid set aside for years.
If the BPS golden handshake comes about it might give a chance for lots of unprofitable farms to wind up with a bit of dignity and exit strategy.

For upland grazing livestock, nearly all of their income after costs, is basic payment subsidy.
Only the best upland livestock farms will be able to make the transition, I think. As long as they don't go into large scale commercial forestry as an alternative (we need somewhere to plant 30 million trees in the next four years - 625 thousand a month), and we're prepared to accept the long slow change to the current landscape, it will be an environmental plus. All the other factors, I think aren't good news.

I think that there needs a big rethink about subsidies. Areas with substandard land like uplands probably need subsidies but perhaps to reduce the flocks and replant/rewild/reintroduce woodland and upland bogs. We need to reintroduce these to improve our carbon footprint also the reduction in red meat eating would be beneficial environmentally. Subsidies to breed more environmentally friendly beef and dairy stock, subsidies to reduce the use of unsustainable cattle feed, things like that.

I'm hoping that the productivity support payments will go exactly that way - looking at better nutrition for livestock ie away from soy based cakes and even maize forage to more appropriate stuff, genetic work to breed reduced methane cows & sheep like they are doing in NZ, better methods to deal with manures & ferts etc.
And overall higher payments for landscape-scale restoration like herdyshepherd (James Rebanks) is doing in the Lakes.
It's the one bright side of brexit for me, that it has kick-started these sorts of conversations - let's hope it all comes to fruition.

Exactly Ihavent, I saw a farmer harvesting seaweed in Northern Ireland and converting it into cattle feed with great success. It had the added benefit of reduced methane production as well as the reduction in use of soy and maize.
Also like to see an incentive for the use of wool in things like wall insulation, thus using the unused wool and reducing the use of synthetics in building.

You can buy wool-based insulation made in a factory near where I live. It's not cheap though.

Wool could be used in packaging instead of those bloody airbags.

I know chatongris, but I would like to see wool subsidised so it's more economical to use it thus removing the synthetic types.

If there's a surplus of wool then it is likely not the cost of the wool itself that makes wool-based insulation expensive.

Wool prices paid to farmers are very, very low. We actually don't sell it any more because it isn't worth the time and effort. Our land doesn't count as upland but is in an LFA (and just to make life more difficult, an ESA and SSSI). We have to manage grazing and cropping to avoid disturbing rare birds or damaging orchids, among other things.

I fully expect all subsidies to stop. In the west of Scotland a huge number of crofters will be hit hard but they can't not farm because there are only two things which can see a crofter evicted and the failure to work the land "according to the rules of good husbandry" is one of them. If your family has lived in a place for ten generations, it's hard to just give up and go somewhere else.