UK Land ‘Row’: How Can We Feed, Power & House Everyone? | Fully Charged Show Podcast with Tom Heap
Everything Electric Show 
In this episode of the Fully Charged Show Podcast, Robert Llewellyn chats with Tom Heap about his brand new book, Land Smart. As demands for food, renewable energy, carbon storage, and housing grow, we’re running out of land to meet them all and having to ask how we strike the right balance. Tom, known for his work on Countryfile, Rare Earth, and The Climate Show, shares insights from his tour across the UK, where he’s met with farmers, scientists, and conservationists who are pioneering smart land solutions that support both humanity and nature. Listen for an exploration of how we can create a future where land serves multiple purposes without compromising our planet’s health.
https://atlantic-books.co.uk/book/land-smart/
00:00 Introduction
05:10 Tom Heap
57:16 Concluding thoughts
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About The Author
Animals are composters but we can do that ourselves and improve soils with growing trees alongside and keeping roots in the ground! Brasil is deforesting the Amazon due to minerals, Cattle and Soy!! We should ban international trade in animals and their parts!!
We still have plenty of room in the islands of Scotland for plenty of Highland Coos 😊 the Highlander❤
I think your points on the effects of 'blocks' of weather are telling: wetter sowing and harvesting conditions are making it very difficult for a lot of farmers to break even let alone make a profit. Can't blame them for going for solar panels on a few fields.
1000s of new houses have gone up all over the country almost none have solar panels or EV chargers. In our part of North Yorkshire I was told 3 years ago that new build houses would at leastvm have ev chargers. Persimmon Homes are building without and when I asked they said the ones being built now were given planning permission before the rules changed! The very newest have a ridiculous token 2 solar panels. How stupid and cynical is that. The new government need to get a grip on this and insist that all new houses have both and ideal heat pumps too.
Human waste with wood shavings or dried shredded straw added to it and left for about 12 – 18mths to fully decompose is perfectly fine to use on the garden. Some permaculture projects do it this way & in some places in Africa, there are communities that have integrated this into projects that NGO's helping communities to improve their sanitation/toilet access have been involved with.
Use of human waste in the food production cycle is a practice that's certainly hundreds at a minimum, and probably many thousands of years old. There is nothing new here. It's just in our modern sensibilities that we've become overly squeamish about such things relating to the land. When our septic tank was emptied annually on the farm, Dad used to get the tanker driver to go spread it out on the hay paddock opposite the house. It was a running family joke that that was why it used to grow some of the best grass on the farm. The tanker driver was always thrilled at not having to drive back to a regulated disposal point because it saved on time and it meant that he could carry on to another farm, getting more done in a day. Many but not all farmers took the same approach if the weather meant the tanker not getting stuck in the mud; it saved on the disposal part of the bill.
Just stop eating cows.
70% of land is used for pasture or to grow animal feed.
If we stopped eating animals (mostly cows), we would have a surplus of land.
Now you just need to add an event in Toronto!
👍👍👍👍
What about Toronto??
Human overpopulation is the root cause, do something about it! Think about habitat loss for the other species. ALL humans want to improve themselves but too many humans equals almost every environmental problem.
If we want bigger and better plants, we need more CO2 in the atmosphere. The Earth had 10x as much CO2 during the time of the dinosaurs. It allowed bigger and better plants, enough to feed massive plant eaters for millions of years and the carnivores had plenty of plant eating dinosaurs to eat.
Doubling the CO2 PPM would increase crops for us and our meat supply to eat.
🌅 We have Food Farms with Solar Power systems that have no grid, but electricity for all operations…inc. Winery & Livestock.
Many of Amish Communities (U.S.) are solar PV powered now…one county, Holmes, is 80%. They can use electricity if Not from the 'World' & must Not have to pay 'the english sytem' for it!!🎉🧑🌾🌞
I see the book is in the local library, so I will get it from there.
Problem with living on an overcrowded island
I have a wood burner and yes it pollutes but it is a modern efficient and very clean burning type called DEFRA (government) approved standard, which is 2 or 3 times more efficient and clean than normal wood burners. I only use local waste wood, no fossil fuels used in transport as I use an EV powered by green energy. The ash from my fire goes on my organic veg garden cutting transport of veg and me to shops. The wood, waste wood if left to rot wood release its carbon anyway (with no benefit) and this would bond in the atmosphere to form carbon dioxide. Is it the cleanest, no, is it worse than other fossil fuels, no, not if done right. Clear felling US forests and shipping over using ships powered by 'bunker' fuel and diesel trains to burn in Drax (subsidesed by millions a year to do so) is the wrong way to do it.
🌅🧑🌾 Conclusion: Ariable farmland will produce up to 15 times more Calories for humans vs. same land used for livestock(ruminates) to eat! 🌾🥦🌽🍅🫒🫐🥭🍊🍑🍉🍎🍓🍓🍇🥥🥑🌶️🥕🍏🥒🥬🍍
"biofuel production for airline companies are not the way to go"
Ok. To that I would ask, what would YOU suggest then?
And I can hear right now people saying "take trains!"
Except here's the thing, most of the US and Canada do NOT have any rail infrastructure, let alone high speed infrastructure.
Not normally one for podcasts, but you are both brilliant and passionate, thank you.
More people need more space and resources, no addressing the elephant in the room, less than 3.5 billion when I was born now over 8 billion who now need more space more resource, make efficient use of existing yes but there are limits to it.
The only problem with plant based burgers is that they are often made with pesticide drenched plants.
If we have excess power production we should be building storage and generating hydrogen which actually could be used to fly aeroplanes, Australia could become a net exporter. Talking about gas being a "greener" fuel source, have a look at Northern Irelaand, moving to mains gas from burning oil.
@37 min We were gradually moving from white meat to pescatarian in 2019 for health reasons. When the pandemic hit I decided my lockdown challenge would be a vegan diet. Confession – I was a wholefood vegetarian throughout the 70s (it was really trendy then… and cheap when you're a student)… Getting in tow with my carnivore husband set me back a lot but my millennial son reintroduced me to the joys of being meat free. Compared to the limited diet I had 50 years ago it's so easy to be vegan now. 4 years and counting. No desire to eat animal flesh. I'm lucky to live in Edinburgh which vies with Glasgow and Brighton to be the most vegan friendly city in the UK!
Here in the UK if we want vegan mince/sausages/meatballs we should look for pea protein products rather than soya based stuff. Much better for the planet
Buy land. They don't make it anymore
Mike Casey's "electric cherry" farm in Cromwell Aotearoa has two electric tractors, on conversion and one new.
CANT YOU ORGANISE A COMEDY SKETCH SHOWING TODAY'S TRANSFER FROM PETROL CARS TO EVs ONLY THE SAME ARGUMENT OVER 100 YEARS AGO FROM HORSES AND CARTS TO PETROL CARS 😊😊
Impossible burger!? Keep science out of my food.! 43:14 it’s time for you to watch “common ground” and support real farmers !!
Within 5km of our small dairy farm there are plans for three solar farms with a combined area of about 7000 acres.
Add this to the thousands of acres of maize grown in the same area for biodigesters and there soon won't be any farmers producing food left!
Maybe that's what the government want though – remove the inheritance tax relief for farms so they all have to sell big chunks of the farm to pay the taxes and the only people who can afford to buy that land are those using it to produce electricity.
But don't worry about food security – we'll just import all the food we need!
Robert , I fully share your views on Clarkson. He's massively fostered climate denial and petro masculinity and no amount of pious farmery will remotely compensate for that.
One of the problems with spreading treated sewage waste on fields is the build up of toxic products, from industrial discharge into sewers, and chemicals we use in our homes.
I drove from the sea on the West Coast, to the sea on the East Coast today, and hardly saw any humans, vehicles or farms. Mostly just empty wild land. One wind farm in the distance. One hydro generation plant from the 1960s. A few Sheep and Ted Deer.
Robert if you haven't yet consider googling exxons August 2024 global outlook executive summary. Download no charge. Its an eye opener. Exxon acknowledges greenhouse gases pollution and climate change. States every 6 days another 1 million net new precious humans join the 8 billion here today. Predicts we will be 10 billion by 2050. States we're burning through 100 million barrels of oil every single day. DEPLETING reserves at 15% annually, 2X international energy agency predictions. Shows before 2050 we will have 30 million barrels available per day. Calls for Evs, solar, wind, nukes, grid renewal, electrification.
In the US some companies have been mixing the residential processed sewage waste with industrial waste which turns out to have been full of PFAS contaminants. They pushed farmers to use this stuff and now it turns out they've made the soil unusable for growing crops. Hope that's not the case in the UK!
Factory farming of meat is clearly a massive carbon emitter, but regenerative pasturing can produce carbon neutral meat. And there is enough marginal land that is not suitable for crops but can support grazing animal and that also builds top soil through dung droppings. Think of the great plains in the US. That top soil was produced by generations of bison.
See the book Sacred Cow.
My understanding is that Impossible burger is a larger carbon emitter than just a beef burger that is pasture raised. And don't forget all the fossil fuel inputs for pesticides and herbicides and fertilizer for mono cropped grain proteins.
fascinating stuff, I am glad he burst the bio-fuel bubble, it was always a red herring.
Farmers need to lease space for wind power and "fuel" their tools (bought with that wind lease money) with that wind power.
I bought the last book, it was a good read. Hey Bobby, We need an Everything Electric Show in Auckland New Zealand! just a jump across the ditch if you're going to be in Melbourne! 😁
Ps i do think that we have to be realistic regarding the "condemnation" of animal farming for meat. I totally agree regarding flat land that is suitable for arable farming as an alternative, but there's huge areas of land across the world that's totally unsuitable for arable crops and large machinery. We have a small farm with steep land full of gullies that wouldn't be any good for growing anything for example but we have raised cows for our family and sheep as they have no issues with the terrain. There's also been new studies shown that returning graizing animals to areas of desertification has transformed those areas back to fertile grass lands again. It's all about the way it's managed though, let nature do it's work and avoid Intensification.