There are greenhouse gases and there are greenhouse gases, and whilst Carbon Dioxide hogs most of the limelight, it has a couple of partners in crime which, despite grabbing less of the headlines, are much more deadly.

Nitrous oxide is a staggering 300 times more damaging than CO2, and (as I have already pointed out in an earlier post) the very fact that we are an organic farm and therefore do not apply soluble nitrogen fertilizer to the fields, dwarfs any of the other measures we might take in the fight against climate change. If you are a farmer and would seriously like to make a difference – then this should be your first step. This will also have a beneficial knock on effect on the other unseen enemy – Methane.

Thirty times more damaging than CO2, and a quarter of world wide emissions come from belching and farting livestock. It’s the burps that cause the most Methane, and such is the extent of the problem that scientist across the globe have been tasked with researching possible solutions.

It is now acknowledged that the greatest threat the Chinese pose to global warming is not by hankering after a washing machine and/or family saloon, but it would be a simple change of their eating habits towards the western diet of red meat with every meal that will cause the most damage.

What I love about these debates is the ludicrous statistical parallels that are quoted to illustrate the point. So - believe it or not - in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the production of 1kg of prime beef is equivalent to driving an average car 160 miles. Does that make it any clearer? What if – like us – your nearest MacDonald’s is 14 miles away?? What price a Big Mac then???

Anyway, as it turns out, the boffins have discovered that diet of the cow can have a dramatic effect on its flatulence output, with plants such as white clover and birdsfoot trefoil being the best performers.

While very interesting, this comes as no surprise to me. For while these species are generally less productive and hard to establish from new, they are both abundant on our low input organic holding. No nitrogen fertiliser with fewer animals eating a less potent diet. Once again we are reinventing the wheel within agriculture when good old fashioned traditional farming already has the answers – even to ‘new’ challenges such as global warming.