Livestock grazing is preventing the return of rainforests to the UK and Ireland

[UngulateNerd92]

A few years back, the president of the National Farmers’ Union of England and Wales wrote a defence of the meat industry after a BBC documentary criticised its environmental impact. “British farmers do not clear rainforest to make way for beef and lamb production,” she wrote. “British meat does not come from the ashes of the Amazon.”

Many believe this but unfortunately it isn’t quite true. For one thing, livestock production in the UK and Ireland is still linked to rainforests abroad since chickens, pigs and cows are often fed imported soybeans. Brazil is the world’s largest soybean exporter, and much of its crop is grown on deforested land.

Many people might also be surprised to learn that Ireland and western regions of Great Britain are home to rainforests: temperate forests sometimes called Celtic or Atlantic rainforests. And, like their tropical counterparts, UK and Irish rainforests are threatened by grazing livestock, particularly sheep.

Livestock grazing is preventing the return of rainforests to the UK and Ireland

 

[Ned]

I watched a Youtube video about the dairy industry sometime ago ( unfortunately I can't find it now), it claimed that the amount of soy beans needed to make 7 litres of soy milk would make something like 40 litres of dairy milk. This depended where the cows were living, in drier Mediterranean climates the yield was less, in Britain and Ireland where grass is plentiful it was higher.

 

[UngulateNerd92]

Here is another relevant article.

The plan to restore Britain’s lost rainforests

A fifth of Britain was once covered by rainforest. Hidden in remote corners of our rainy isle, fragments still survive. On a walk through a regenerated English rainforest, conservationist Guy Shrubsole explains how he is mapping and protecting them, aiming to double their size in a generation.

I’m standing in the middle of the rainforest. It is – suitably – pouring with rain and steaming with mist. Moss-covered trees sprawl. Clouds of chartreuse and ochre lichen festoon surfaces. Polypody ferns unfurl and spill out of head-high trunks. Pennyworts decorate stone and wood. Up above, pearly-white mushrooms grow out of crevices. The rain pitter-pattering is a constant soothing hush. Acorns crackle underfoot. The forest gleams wet and green. I could be in Tolkien’s Middle-earth, or Jurassic Park, but, actually, I’m not too far from Totnes, a market town in Devon, south-west England.

https://www.positive.news/environment/restoring-britains-lost-rainforests/#.Y_CpvGy02r8.linkedin