On the farm I am investigating, beef cattle are grazing day and night in approximately 100 ha of grass and forests. The river that passes through the grazing land is once stored in a dam located downstream of the ranch, flows into the city, and then flows out into the Pacific Ocean. Some areas around the farm are conserved as water source recharge forests in the area, so there is concern about the effect of grazing on river water quality. From the previous studies, the ion concentration in the river water flowing through the ranch showed a slight increase in nitrogen concentration. Still, overall there was no significant difference with the water quality in the mountain stream area, and the effect on the downstream area was minimal. It’s not easy,” he continues. “We need more engagement from consumers for sustainable food. This is happening, but slowly.” It’s an old farming technique called silvopasture, in which cattle graze on a variety of plants, either in forests that have been thinned and planted with grasses and shrubs, or pastureland that’s been planted with widely spaced trees. Planting trees will help water management on your farm. They can reduce flood risk, remove water pollutants and increase water efficiency. Silvopasture encourages a thinned forest, which results in both quality trees and healthy growth of plants on the forest floor.

The decisions we make today about trees will impact future generations for centuries. So it's pivotal to get them right, as each tree species offers unique benefits. Along with planting edges, we’ve used agroforestry elsewhere to attract biodiversity to our land. For instance, we’ve put in a range of different plants on our farm’s steeper ground – which is unsuitable for grazing – to, once more, help us accommodate the diverse wildlife found throughout the Scottish Uplands. Benefit 3: Trees provide access to a range of nutrients I’m certainly not asking for charity,” she said. “But any business that wears the financial impacts to put out a litre of milk needs to be paid well enough to continue to farm so that litre of milk still gets on the kitchen table.As in Brazil, the emphasis is on improving the quality of the fodder given to the cows, although in this case to improve milk production. By encouraging the farmers to replace some of the maize they grow with nutrient-rich fodder crops such as elephant grass and the shrub Calliandra calothyrus, farmers can double the daily milk production from each cow to seven litres, while also boosting its protein content. While research is still in early stages, Project Drawdown, a leading organization promoting climate solutions, has heralded silvopasture as an agricultural solution to the climate crisis due to hopes it can increase carbon sequestration through plants pulling carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, sinking it into soils, and holding it in their own biomass.

Soil is amazing in many ways, and one of those ways is that it contains plenty of useful nutrients, which often cannot be accessed through shallower-rooted grasses or other plants in your farm’s sward. With trees, however, you can access them, thanks to their roots. These reach deep down into the soil profile and draw up these hard-to-get nutrients, which your cows can then benefit from by munching on your trees’ leaves. Probably around 750 trees and hedgerow plants. This season, we're planning to plants another 500 or so. Some trees also have high levels of chemicals like tannins. These act as natural antioxidants: giving our farm’s foliage an even more fantastic edge.

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We've got 14 Dexter cows, and one Guernsey cross Hereford, which we intend to use as a house cow. We also have around 60 ewes and 40 lambs. Same problems: These two Sharon McAuliffes don't really look all that much alike, and while Christa McAuliffe (she went by her middle name rather than "Sharon") the schoolteacher was obtaining degrees in education from Framingham State College (Massachusetts) and Bowie State University (Maryland), teaching social studies at Concord High School (New Hampshire), and training with NASA, Sharon McAuliffe the lawyer was attending Syracuse University and working for an accounting firm in Syracuse (New York). Yes, the late Ronald McNair looked a lot like his brother, Carl, as many siblings do (but they're still easy to tell apart, as Carl has an obvious gap in his front teeth that Ronald didn't). And this proves what, exactly? It might be a curiosity if there were no record of the existence of "Carl McNair" until after the Challenger explosion, but that isn't the case. Are we supposed to believe that Ronald secretly took over his brother's identity after the Challenger "accident" and somehow engineered the disappearance of the real Carl? Of course, the real point of this comparison is that the creators of this conspiracy theory couldn't find a similarly named doppelgänger for Ronald McNair other than his own brother. You don't have to be an expert in mathematics to know that those odds defy statistical probability.