Optimal Carrying Capacity - In Conversation With Robert Barbour
We are joined by the Sustainable Food Trust's Senior Researcher Robert Barbour for our sixth episode of this season. Tune in to discussions surrounding methane, carbon footprints, and the complexities and challenges of measuring environmental impacts associated with livestock. Robert draws on his experiences as a researcher and his family farm (an upland beef and sheep farm that also produces timber in Highland Perthshire, just north of Pitlochry), to dive into the positive role livestock can play from a food systems and environmental perspective. He considers grazing strategies, livestock breeds, and the role herbal leys can play, whilst emphasising the productivity levels that can be achieved in pasture-based systems. He points out his family farm is running a system that has very low levels of inputs so what determines their carrying capacity is largely what the land can naturally support, and one limiting factor for them is a lack of early season grass growth. Show notes: Explore the two papers by Hannah Van Zanten, the paper Robert wrote with Richard Young and Michael Wilkinson that looks at the production of meat and milk from grass, the Agricology profile of his family farm, and learn more about GWP and GWP* here: https://tinyurl.com/5dr8kv75