The land at the proposed site is of a good quality and is very productive agricultural land. This land is a good source of local production and produce has a low carbon footprint as a result. Once this land has been taken to be built on it no longer exists. It cannot be used again.
In the event of these plans being submitted, common sense alone would guide you to OBJECT to this development proposal. Plans of such magnitude are not acceptable and realistically, with nowhere available to replace such production, coupled with world food shortages that everyone is aware of, surely it would be better to let common sense prevail and leave the development on the drawing board.
MILK
There are approximately 310 acres of rich pasture land, having a herd of 100 cows, which in turn produces over 500,000 litres of milk a year.
MEAT
In addition to the production of milk there is the suckler cow herd and finishing units. These have 250 cows and produce 200 calves per year. There is also the fattening cattle, totalling 650 animals, which provide 185,900kgs of meat per year (after carcass wastage has been removed).
WHEAT
Wheat is grown on 550 acres of land. Averaged (at a very conservative) 3.5 tonnes per acre, Lubbesthorpe provides 2,000 tonnes of wheat per year. A single tonne of wheat provides 1,000 loaves of bread. In total this is over 2,000,000 loaves of bread.
UK AGRICULTURE
The future when:
- The world’s population is growing fast and expected to reach 9 billion people within 40 years.
- Increasing wealth and changing patterns of consumption are leading to a rising per capita, demand for food.
- Most of the world’s potential arable land is already under cultivation.
- The supply of fertiliser is limited and now expensive.
- Climate change, of whatever origin, through drought, desertification and extreme temperature is limiting the productive capacity of some farm land.
- Energy crops are required to substitute the increasingly expensive cost of fossil fuels.
- The revolution of using plants to produce useful non food crops, ranging from plastics to pharmaceuticals is just beginning.
It’s right to preserve every possible acre of agricultural land for future generations and to start developing the agricultural science that will help us deal with the challenges ahead. For a small densely populated island, agriculture in the UK has never been more important.
