Country Life
Good show
Denis Wood
When I went to the Royal Show I had very much in mind a book which I had just read, Can Britain Feed Itself? (Merlin Press) by Dr Kenneth Mellanby who considers that taking into account the fodder and fertilisers which we import "our feed consumption depends almost 50 per cent on imports," and further that whether from habit or pure gustatory pleasure we eat more than we need — except in the cases of pregnant women and nursing mothers. If we could bring ourselves to undertake a carefully planned alteration in our farming practices and consent to modify . our eating habits we could save immense sums on imports, probably be healthier, and even make more of the world food supply available for the undernourished.•
, With all this in mind I went first to see the English Longhorn beef cattle an old breed of which there are still only a few herds. I had discussed them with my veterinary daughter who said that like other primitive cattle (not the delicate specialist beasts most people go for now) they are 'thrifty,' do well on a basic diet of roughage and might come back into fashion now that foodstuffs have gone up astrono mically because as she said, "If you could produce a reasonable carcass Of good marbled meat not unduly fat from grassland your costs would be very low."
In this connection, there was an article in the Farmer's Weekly of June 27 on beef production for light land arable farmers avoiding the expense and commitment of mak ing silage. On light land, all the year round grazing could be possible, the cattle going on to stubble turnips, beet tops, kale, followed by straw and barley until in April they are able to return to grass. These Longhorns are docile, hardy and, an important consideration in these days, easy calvers. Certainly they are picturesque in pastures as I saw them at Rousham in Oxfordshire where I went on Gardeners' Sunday to see William Kent's ideal landscape and happened to see some of Mr Charles CottrellDormer's Longhorns being loaded for the Royal Show where they won several prizes. The Honorary Secretary of the Longhorn CattleSociety is John S. Brigg, ARICS, Bishops Gorse, Lighthorne, Warwick.
Another breed which interested me is the Bavarian Gelbvieh, first seen over here in 1973, a unicolour brown dual purpose breed. Like the Longhorn it is a comparatively primitive breed which over the years has been selected for carcass quality, tenderness of beef and also for draught purposes — something for draught purposes. The Gelbvieh Cattle Society is encouraging crosses with more familiar breeds in which so far the first generation appear to be of uniform colour — Friesians all black, for example, and Herefords all brown without white heads. The intention will be to cross these first generations back to Gelbvieh bulls. The Secretary of the Gelbvieh Cattle Society of Great Britain is Mr F. W. Culley, 17 Fisher Street, Carlisle. There was no class for these at the Show, but there were classes for the French Limousin, rich golden red cattle shading to a lighter wheat or tan colour. These, too, derive from poor and harsh country, have a history of foraging on poor land and also are said to be easy calvers. The address of the British Limousin Cattle Society is, Room 41, British Rail Offices, Chester Street, Shrewsbury.
Not surprisingly in these days of the Common Market, there were
classes for the immense French Charolais, the 'British' Simmental, along with the more familiar Beef Shorthorns, Lincoln Reds, Herefords, Devons, Sussex, Aberdeen Angus, Galloways, Welsh Black, 1Highland and the Longhorns. Remote and ineffectual dons and loutraged members of the striking classes ought all to go to the Royal Show, if only to recognise that, protest and rage as they may, their roles are essentially and inescapably ancillary in the business of feeding' a nation for given enough land (and there is enough if it were determinedly brought into cultivation) it is perfectly possible to 'farm' and 'forest' organically without chemicals or pesticides or mechanised transport. Such transport as
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