PASTURE BASED FARMING

Halal and Tayyib

The essence of Halal in the context of farming and animal rights, is to provide animals with the highest standards of welfare and to minimise their distress in any way. Halal means simply ‘lawful’ and contrary to popular perception, encompasses not just the way an animal dies, but also its entire life. Demanding rearing with care and giving an animal the best quality of life possible.

In conflict with this is societies continuing demand for cheaper meat, which has resulted in ever decreasing condition’s for animals welfare, regardless of whether that animal is intended for halal or non halal markets.

Issues around Halal slaughter have been the focus of much discussion recently within the UK, yet few raise concerns over the poor treatment of animals before they even enter the abattoir.

Whilst factory farming techniques and mechanical slaughter persist on a mass scale, should the last 3 seconds of an animals life be the sole focus of vets and animal welfare groups?

Certainly that is up for every person to decide, yet we feel at least that the Halal industry focuses too much on how an animal dies then on how it lives.

The concept of Tayyib, meaning what is wholesome and pure, is equally as important as Halal, however many Halal meat producers fall into the pitfalls of the mass food industry, concentrating on cheapness and expediency rather then sustainable production and kindness to animals.

MULTI SPECIATED MEADOWS

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all…Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”

Wendell Berry

Multi speciated meadows produce feed and habitat for a wide variety of flora and fauna, in addition to being a rich source of nutrients and minerals for our grazing sheep flock.

The population of clover, wild flowers and other beneficial plant species are all too often wiped out by artificial fertilisers, which encourage the growth of invasive grasses which smoother and out compete native pants.

We farm with organic principles at Pendle Pastures and due to this our fields are blooming with vibrancy and life when summer arrives, from many species of bees, insects, birds and other important wildlife.

Grazed delicately in the spring, then benefiting from mob grazing, the fields have ample time to flower and set seed.

Timing of when sheep return to graze are appropriately staged, allowing different species to populate, keeping the diversity wide and vibrant, offering our sheep flock , along with many other species, nutritious food.

Rotational Mob Grazing

“The intelligent land owner divides up his acreage into several parts…over which the animals pass in succession. The result of these divisions is that while the grass of one section is being grazed, that of the other sections is regrowing, so that the animal is always sure of fresh food and plentiful grass”

Royal Academy of Lyons, Jean Francis Rozier 1786

Rotational mob grazing is the contemporary development of this fruitful, often forgotten traditional farming practice, and is an essential tool we use at Pendle Pastures, to engage in food production healthily and sustainably.

Utilizing grazing ruminants (animals such as cattle and sheep) to maintain and stimulate grass growth, was common farming practice, until the post WW2 agricultural world saw the introduction of nitrogen phosphates and other artificial fertilises.

These were sold to post war civilian markets as artificial growth stimulants, along with other chemical inputs, which morphed the very landscape of the countryside, hedgerows dividing countless thousands of small paddocks where ripped out, to create larger fields. Additionally the practice of “set stocking” became the new adopted norm; a set number of animals is left to eat in a field, for an extended period of time, sometimes for an entire season.

The dramatic consequences of set stocking upon the land, are similar with a flock of sheep in the UK or a grazing animal anywhere in the world, as shown in the following example, with elephants in Zimbabwe,

“park rangers shot them away from the river and the elephants soon learned that the riverbank was the safer place to be…As more elephants crowded…the vegetation along the riverbank was badly overgrazed and over browsed”

Alan Savory, Holistic Management

Domesticated ruminants still have the instincts of prey animals ingrained, which would be expressed in the wild in the form of bunched herds moving at regular short intervals together, to find fresh grazing and keep stalking predators at a distance.

Rotational mob grazing replicates this natural behaviour expressed by grazing animals, in fields for short time periods. Moved onto new pasture daily or so, they don’t come back to the same growing area for several weeks of even months.

Grazing pasture in this manner as prior generations knew, profits not only the animals but also the health of the land, the surrounding wildlife and ecosystem.

Permanent Pastures

“The truth is that no one has ever advanced a scientific reason for ploughing”

Edward Faulkner, Plowman’s Folly1943

Permanent pastures are a wealthy bank account of flora and fauna.

Fields that have not been ploughed for five years or ideally more, can be classed as permanent pasture.

Consequently, they contain a wide diversity of grasses and other plants.

The grass (sward) grows dense and thick above the soil, protecting it from poaching by bad weather and animal impact.

Also, like a seed bank, pastures can hold huge varieties of seed stock, for many years awaiting favourable times and conditions to germinate.

PERMACULTURE

“There is simply no excuse for any type of agriculture that degrades the environment”

Joel Salatin

Permaculture set out to design agriculture and a culture in general that would function in a more permanent manner within the ecosystem we live, in contrast to many current volatile and fragile systems.

Permaculture operates on three key principles, an ethical framework, a knowledge of how nature works, and a design component.

The approach helps to establish productive systems that are non polluting, healthy and can support humanity for many generations into the future, in harmony, not in conflict with nature.

Since our completion of a Permaculture Design Course, we have been committed to implementing and following its principles when and where we can.

As mentioned we keep our animals grain free and mob graze, therefore our flock do not supplement their dietary needs with energy intensive, polluting inputs, whilst in the mean time benefiting the land they consume from.

Our sheep shed their wool themselves during the warmer spring months, the wool is absorbed back into the soil, feeding the microbicidal life.

For information on Permaculture (and to see a rather shaggy looking Abdur Rahman!) watch & visit:

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The drive for Beyond Organic and Sustainable.

“Sustainable is a popular buzzword today, everybody wants to be sustainable…Why in the world do we want to sustain a degraded resource? Instead we need to work on regenerating our ecosystem”

Gabe Brown

We believe that to be sustainable, every farming system needs to be organic, but not every organic system is sustainable.

Put differently, lets imagine an unfortunate, but all too common scenario.

An “organic” farm in Baja, California, grows strawberries for export, on a big monoculture, watered by fossil aquifers, both depleting a limited water resource and gradually poisoning the surface soil with the high levels of salt brought up with the aquifer water.

Such crops are grown by underpaid, undervalued, over worked labourers who grow and harvest the strawberries, which are then transported thousands of miles by ships and trucks guzzling diesel, to a supermarket shelf near us.

Millions of tons of food can be produced in this manner and be considered organic, yet have a whole plethora of other issues which make them all but sustainable.

Many other examples of organic vegetable production is grown by a monoculture system on farms which do not incorporate livestock in their biannual rotations, which would otherwise keep soils healthy and regenerative, allowing nutrients to cycle and sequester carbon.

Organic practices are certainly included here at Pendle Pastures, along with permaculture and holistic farming methods. However we don’t limit ourselves to the “entry” requirements of organic certification. By mindful consideration of specific conditions, soils and climate of the farm, we mindfully choose our breeds and farming methods to ensure our activities are sustainable and regenerative. We aim to keep an antibiotic and medication free system, which is seasonal, halal and pure, raising healthy animals naturally and produce nutrient rich food.