Tom Heap (5:56)

So I was with BBC News for about 15 years and the latter part of that was as science and environment correspondent and then rural affairs correspondent. That kind of took me through the noughties and since then I've still been working for the Beep, but on other programs, longer form programs, both television and radio here in the uk. UK Country File is a very big Sunday night show all about rural life, environment, countryside, farming, things like that. And on the radio and podcasts costing the earth and now Rare Earth, which is very much a deeper dive into all matters environmental, wildlife, natural history and stuff like that. So that's the context of me professionally and in the last, I don't know, five, six, seven, maybe up to 10 years, I've been aware that a lot of people have been coming up with what they call nature based sort pollution. So this is this idea that we've got problems with the amount of wildlife we've got out there, lack of it, the amount of food production, how that's made, obviously climate change as well, where we get our materials from, you know, how we're going to deal with floods, how we're going to get renewable energy and all these things are demanding land and space on our land. And so the question was in this kind of race for space on earth, if you see what I mean, how do we do it? Can we do it? Who's doing it?

Robert Llewellyn (7:19)

Well, yeah, no, that's good. I think it's only fair to point out that your partner on. On Rare Earth is. Is a very popular presenter on the fully charged show. Helen.

Tom Heap (7:31)

Very own.

Robert Llewellyn (7:32)

Yes. No, well, I wish. She's amazing. Yes, she's. Yeah, we should argue about Helen. We're very. Whenever she deigns us with her presence, we're very, very grateful because she is.

Tom Heap (7:41)

Extraordinary name for that conversation, Helen Chersky. Did we name Her I'm not sure we did. Anyway we can.

Robert Llewellyn (7:45)

Yes, well, we have now, so we can ignore her completely from now on. So then the book you wrote for this, correct me if I'm wrong, 39 ways to save the Planet. But that was. I was really intrigued by that as well. But I think this one's really grabbed me, I think, I suppose partly because my first job was on a farm when I was 15, you know, and I still have one skill, I think one mechanic or one driving skill, which is reversing trailers. And I don't know how I learned to do it because I know I did an enormous amount of damage in the farmyard. But when you reverse a tractor with a trailer on it, you see which way the wheels are going and it's like if I think for a second, if I consider intellectually how to reverse a trailer, it's hopeless, I can't do it. But if I go like, I go like that and I do something, it's. I'm. I'm really good at it. It's the only thing I would say I'm really good at anyway. But I was. So. I've been aware of the impacts of farming. Of what? Of the struggles that farmers have gone through really all my life in, in phases. And I'm known quite a lot of farmers, nothing like as many as you have. But so that starting point, I thought, well, I kind of know this. And then when I started reading I went, I kind of don't know anything. I was supremely ignorant. But I love the way you started out because I do a lot of gardening. You started out in a way in your own garden. What you do in your small bit of farm, your garden and how that expands on. And that was fascinating.

Tom Heap (9:13)

Yeah. So I, I thought there were some guiding principles that folk who have gardens, which is obviously in, in terms of readership more than the people who have farms could, could give them a sort of a hanging on point to this because one of the guiding thoughts throughout the book is that we need to think about multifunctioning our land, using it for more than one thing.

Robert Llewellyn (9:34)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (9:35)

And when I looked out in, in my garden here, here on, on a sunny day, and indeed the, the roof above my head and the space that I'm in, so the space that I have control of, which isn't that big, it's probably about the size of a tennis court and a half if, if I include the allotment, maybe two within that I've got obviously shelter, I've got beauty, recreation, in terms of the garden, I've got space for nature in that I try and manage it pretty well in terms of what the local buzzy and crawly things might like. I've got some food because I, you know, have a greenhouse with tomatoes and allotment, as I just mentioned. I've got energy generation because I've got, in fact, two lots of the standard 4 kilowatt array on the place, one on a sort of garage building and one on the house. And because I've become a bit like a lot of weirdos of our kind of age, I become obsessed by compost.

Robert Llewellyn (10:39)

Oh, I love you. Can't beat compost now.

Tom Heap (10:42)

Have an embarrassingly large number of bins out there doing different things. And so, I mean, that's good for the food production, but it's also good for soil carbon as well.

Robert Llewellyn (10:50)

Yeah, there we go. That.

Tom Heap (10:51)

That's. I don't know, five or six things that. The little bit of how my house is doing. Energy, carbon, shelter, housing, you know, wildlife, et cetera.

Robert Llewellyn (11:00)

Yeah. And I mean, that's certainly something that I've always been aware of, that, that we. The. Where I live, where I live, we have a bit of extra space and I'm hugely. I realize I'm hugely privileged to have that because of things like I can have four compost bins. I've got room to have them. And I mean, obviously a lot of people can't. I thought it was very interesting it was to look his name up. Mark Rizdell. Ridzel Smith.

Tom Heap (11:24)

Yeah.

Robert Llewellyn (11:25)

Urban gardener. But that was such a cool thing because I've got some mates who grow way more sort of weird, interesting things than I do. I grow potatoes, carrots, beetroot, you know, really basic stuff.

Tom Heap (11:37)

Me too.

Robert Llewellyn (11:37)

And they grow amazing peppers and weird cucumbery things in tiny space. My daughter does her front yard, which is a tiny yard in the middle of Bristol, loads of veg. She brought a cucumber up. I've never eaten a cucumber like it that was grown near a main road in Bristol, you know.

Tom Heap (11:52)

Yeah. I mean, it is extraordinary what you can do in a small space if you've got the. The wit and to a certain extent, the time to do it. And Mark Rizzle Smith, who you mentioned, he's got a great book called Vertical Veg and a website for anyone who's interested in that kind of thing. You know, he. He proves that the variety you can get, the quantity you can get. A little caveat on that in a moment. The quantity you can get and the Engagement you can get out of it and the joy you can get out of it. He does say two things that are a bit of a reality check. First of all, he says you'll never get the. Well, it's very difficult to get the big staples out of this. You'll always struggle to get really big quantities of potatoes or the sort of carbohydrates, small space. If you've got allotment, you could get closer. And the other thing which is a rather sad reflection is that he's noticed particularly he also has an allotment and he's spoken to other fellow allotmenteers, he's up in Newcastle about this, is that allotmenting has moved from being a working class activity to rather a middle class activity. And the sociology of that is probably a book in itself, but it says something, I think, about the position of food and labor and perceptions of that kind of labor within our society. But he does say, and I think he's right, that that is a slightly unwelcome trend.

Robert Llewellyn (13:15)

Yeah, actually you're absolutely right because now I reflect on my grandparents. So my mother and father had a peculiar class. They jumped the class barrier. So my father, very working class, rural family background. My granddad, veg patch. Everything in the garden was growing food. My mum's mum, posh, wouldn't dream of doing gardening, you know, middle class woman, she would. I mean, that was dirty. You get. You've got your hands in the earth and that's completely flipped around. You're absolutely right because now the middle class family would. Oh, we grow all our own vegetables. And the working class family haven't got a garden as well. I suppose that's a garden.

Tom Heap (13:52)

There's issues with. With access and time and I think poly plays into this, the relative cheapness of food.

Robert Llewellyn (13:59)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (14:01)

Because as a proportion of our income, even for those on lower incomes, it has decreased quite markedly in recent decades.

Robert Llewellyn (14:08)

I just want to mention this because I had you do mention at one point using human waste as a fertilizer. And I did. I lived next to a house for. I lived in a house for about six months of two houses, farmers, cottages in the middle of fields. And the garden was. It's the most productive garden I've ever known in my life. The soil was phenomenal. It's in Oxfordshire and the people that this was. We're going way back, Tom. You'll remember these times, this is in the 1970s and they were really proper, organic, you know, meditating, yoga, practicing hippies, good life. They had chickens yeah, but they were like very hippie ish. You know, they had even longer hair than I did. I was challenged by the length of the hair. But they buried their poo in the garden and they did a seven year cycle so they didn't grow anything where the poo was and they buried it deep and I helped dig the holes. It wasn't like just scattered on your neighbor. Yeah, right. Well, I used their loos because they only had earth closets. It was very, very basic house. No electricity in the houses. I've been past them, they're down the lane. They're really posh houses. They've got electricity and they've got very ornate, well manicured gardens, but very fertile soil which I help fertilize. But is that something that's a. I would assume that is a challenge from a health point of view. You've got to be careful if you do that.

Tom Heap (15:32)

Yes, I think so. I mean, I don't advocate it or investigate it directly. Using your own fecal matter to fertilize yourself. I think your friends had clearly the right idea of, you know, burying it deep and leaving it time because then I think the biology within it and some of the microbes that might be perilous will have of got absorbed by the, by the surroundings. However, as a national notion, the idea of using our waste material from both our own bodies, our food processing, et cetera, et cetera, to make fertilizer and to use that on the fields is something. I very, very strongly advocate that principle. But put in a modern industrial, clean setting and people are doing that. In fact, I mentioned them briefly in this book, but also in the 39 Ways to Save the Planet. This company, CCM Technology Technologies, who are, who, who are trying to, to do that on a large scale and make it easy for farmers. So it's just another pelletized application to the soil, but it's a fertilizer that hasn't got all the climate change impact of chemical fertilizer, both in its product or especially in its production, but also in its use on the fields, where famously nitrogen fertilizer, traditional chemical fertilizer, a lot of it just goes up into the atmosphere or down into the water.

Robert Llewellyn (16:52)

Down into the rivers. Yeah, because I mean that is one thing that's. I, I don't think I got that from your book, but it was, it's been in the news recently. The amount of, you know, I don't want to call it treated sewage. That's being. Because we have that on the fields around here. And we're very aware of it. When they dump a huge pile of black stuff, you can smell it. And it isn't like a poo smell, but it's not the most delicious smell.

Tom Heap (17:16)

No, it's not.

Robert Llewellyn (17:17)

And they, and they spread that. I mean, but they've been doing that for years. That's not new. So. But, but the stuff you're talking about is pellet. Is that pellet. This isn't pelleted.

Tom Heap (17:25)

This is. It's taken quite a few steps and actually the combination at. With a sort of food waste, organic matter as well in it. And he's taken, yeah. Quite a few stages further than that. And I've seen the pelletized form and it doesn't have any particular. It's not true, it has no scent. But you certainly don't think, oh, I'm, you know, rummaging through a bag of poo here.

Robert Llewellyn (17:49)

Yeah, let's move on. Let's move on from poo. So I just had to. But I've completely forgotten about this. This couple back, back in the 70s who buried their poo. Anyway, the other one, when. That's another one that's very much been in the press recently is the. Is the use of, you know, arable land or agricultural land from putting solar panels on. And you do cover that, but I quite. There's one. It's less than 1,000th of UK land, according to your book. Is that currently covered with solar?

Tom Heap (18:20)

Would it be currently covered in solar? And. Yeah, I mean there's, there's clearly plans for more and I mean, I'm a. I don't know if you want to get into it here, but I mean, I think we may as well. I'm a. I'm a big fan of solar, as I know you are as well, but in a land analysis, there's a particular reason for that and that is because if you are going to use an area of land for generating energy, that's if, you know there are lots of other things and sometimes you combine it. But if you're doing it for generating energy, solar is so much better than the other thing that uses sunlight, which are plants. Yeah, I mean, it's orders of magnitude. It's between. It depends how you measure it, but it's anything between 20 to sort of 100, 300 times more energy you'll get from a square meter or a hectare of land if you put solar panels on it rather than growing some kind of biofuel crop, which you then have to burn.

Robert Llewellyn (19:25)

Yes.

Tom Heap (19:26)

And so in a World where we are short of space and I think we are. It is a really bad idea to be making biofuels out of, out of our land area there. As you'll know. You read the book. It's actually a fairly pragmatic book. I'm not particularly idealistic about a lot of things. This is one of the few things where I see it in almost black and white terms, right. That it's not a good, not a good idea. I think biofuels. And there's a big threat from the airline industry here because they are eyeing up biofuels as their get out of climate jail free card. And it just isn't. I mean if they start doing that in any serious percentages of the amount of airline fuel, you know, you really can kiss goodbye to your rainforests and your savannahs and.

Robert Llewellyn (20:16)

Yes, because they're just going to. Yeah, they probably won't do it.

Tom Heap (20:19)

It's a huge error. I mean stat that I think I've used and there are lots of stats. You can do this. I'll go, I'll do one about transport because part of your empire is very interested in transport. But if, if the, if the predicted transport fuel by 2050, there's a figure for that. If just a third of that were to come from biological sources, it would take the entire calorific production of the world's crops, so in effect the entire of the world's crops just to do a third of our transport by what's projected by 2050.

Robert Llewellyn (20:53)

And when you say that that's everything we eat at present. So we can't.

Tom Heap (20:56)

Everything we eat. Everything we eat at present would be just filling a third of our 2050. I mean it's so ridiculous, just a nonsense. I mean there are other ways of expressing this, but the fact is that liquid fuels that are currently made from stuff. Excuse me, largely currently made from stuff we get out of the ground. Too much army to biofuels already. But largely made of stuff that come out of the ground are incredibly potent. And if we try, start trying to replace those with stuff that comes from biology. Sadly photosynthesis isn't very effect efficient. Only 1% of what the energy that falls from the sun is turned into carbohydrate by the plant by photosynthesis. You know, if we start demanding plants fuel our lives in a big style, you know, other parts of our lives are going to vanish in many ways our lives are going to vanish.

Robert Llewellyn (21:40)

I mean it is. I don't want to go off on the topic too much, but it is fascinating that say an airline executive or in fact a liquid, any liquid fuel like top dog can hear like biofuels, that really is a, that is a solution and then can say we really believe biofuels are a solution going forward. And yeah, well they're really not, you know, they don't care.

Tom Heap (22:04)

They're not. And to be fair I did speak to the. He's now no longer the chief executive of Rolls Royce. Chief executive Rolls Royce I think it was two years ago Rolls Royce engines that was. And he actually, he did admit, I mean he did say no that this isn't, this isn't the one forward. He's not in the job anymore. Don't think those two things necessarily related But I think there is some awareness if they stop and think for a minute it's what can't happen.

Robert Llewellyn (22:29)

But then so you explain very well how solar and farming can go together because I mean I've got to admit I'm pro solar but there's a particular bit of the M5 that you drive down and it's open fields and open country either side of you and then you go, go oh my God, that is just like half a farm covered in solar panels with grass. And I did notice there were sheep in that field once I've seen as well as solar panels but you sort of think well there's a massive warehouse just down the road and hasn't got any solar on the bloody roof. What? You know there is a side of me that wants to make sure all the roofs are covered first and then do the robin.

Tom Heap (23:05)

I mean I couldn't, I couldn't agree with you more and I have a lot of sympathy with elements of the sort of anti panel on fields lobby when they say it should be on roofs, you know, absolutely should be. You know I was just, yeah last week I was doing a country file about housing was in a bunch of new housing estates. Very, very few of the houses we've got solo. Why not? I mean it is. You're banging your head on the desk. I'm totally with you. And it seems such an easy win at the time of construction putting so cheap.

Robert Llewellyn (23:36)

I mean I don't the thing I heard. Yeah but it is cheaper per square meter to put solar panels on your roof now than tiles. It's a money saving way of roofing and it's so obscene that the builders who still live in the 1970s are not doing it.

Tom Heap (23:52)

Yeah but they're not being regulated, they're not being told to, you know and that's the problem. And then, you know, you mentioned the warehouses. I mean, that gets quite a big outing in my book, as you'll know. And I speak to the boss of the British Warehousing association, and to be fair to her, she is pushing this very hard. She's pushing this at every opportunity. But the potential is enormous. I think the figure is that the. Just those big distribution warehouses, so I'm talking the big new ones that are already up around the place. If they had solar panels on the top, I think that would equal our current solar generation in this country. So in effect it would double it.

Robert Llewellyn (24:26)

So we've doubled it. Just on buildings.

Tom Heap (24:28)

Well, yeah, just. Well, just on those buildings.

Robert Llewellyn (24:30)

On those buildings, on those warehouse buildings. Right.

Tom Heap (24:32)

And so the potential there is absolutely enormous. And the reason why not one terrible reason, one slightly less terrible reason, the terrible reason is that there's complicated ownership structures and responsibilities within these distribution. Who's going to pay, who's going to agree, blah, blah, blah. I think that's a terrible reason. That's a banging heads together exercise. You know, the other one is our friend the grid. You know, some people I've spoken to said, look, we'd love to put panels on here, but we've been to the grid and they say, yeah, you can do that in 18 years time. Yes, that needs improvement.

Robert Llewellyn (25:04)

And that is shocking, isn't it? No. I heard, in fact, Greg Jackson from Octopus Energy has the planning permission, the finance and the technology to install a huge solar farm up in Yorkshire somewhere and local planning and support for it. And he's got to wait exactly 18 years for a grid connection. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that will change, I think. And also he's prepared to pay for the grid connection.

Tom Heap (25:30)

Right.

Robert Llewellyn (25:30)

As part of that. And that might be. There might be a thing where they can interlock there.

Tom Heap (25:35)

There is a bit of unlocking there, isn't there, with this new. The new grid government.

Robert Llewellyn (25:39)

I've forgotten what it's called. That's a whole other topic anyway. But one of the other ones, it was the. A really good way of looking at it is how. How much land you need to produce 1 megawatt hour of electricity, which we've kind of hinted at with solar and biofuels and everything. But I thought that was really interesting that. Well, effectively it was. It was nuclear came out very nuclear and solar came out very well. Biodiesel, an absolute disaster.

Tom Heap (26:03)

Wind is pretty good as well. And wind, yes, wind is very, very good. I mean, slightly, depending on how you measure it. I mean, there's the actual footprint of the turbine, which is basically pretty tiny.

Robert Llewellyn (26:12)

Very small.

Tom Heap (26:13)

There is a bit of disturbance in order to build it, in order to get access to it. That's a little bit bigger. If you want to include the visual impact, then you're talking something very large, I'd say is a big issue.

Robert Llewellyn (26:22)

But then a visual impact of a nuclear power plant, you know, can be impressive from a distance.

Tom Heap (26:27)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean the other thing, and you may know this from your own work, but it's something that impress me because people think, oh, those little patches on houses, they don't do very much.

Robert Llewellyn (26:38)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (26:38)

I worked out from the amount of energy I've got from my solar panels over the years that each year I'm getting enough electricity to drive the average electric car, twice the average annual mileage. So just my roof is providing enough oomph for two cars.

Robert Llewellyn (26:54)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (26:54)

And you think that's extraordinary. In the old days, that would have been having an oil well and a refinery.

Robert Llewellyn (27:01)

And a refinery in your car.

Tom Heap (27:02)

In order to fuel my vehicle. Vehicle. I'm doing that from my own roof. And people can do that for now. Less than £5,000. Even the retrofit, probably.

Robert Llewellyn (27:11)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (27:12)

You know, it's just.

Robert Llewellyn (27:13)

No, those things are all. I mean, that was. And also, I mean, one of the. Because of my connection with Australia through my missus. The impact that rooftop solar's had there, you could argue, has been quite negative. It's messed up their energy system completely. It's. It. It's bankrupting the old coal plants because peak use is in the middle of the day in Australia for air conditioning and all that stuff. Well, that's now more than completely covered with solar. They have excess solar. There's so much. So much rooftop solar in Australia that they literally don't know what to do with it. I mean, they're having to. All the same things we're having with wind, they're having with that, but it's also transformed their grid structure, the way they buy and sell electricity. The cost of electricity is much cheaper there than here. All those things are. You know, it's had a really big messy. Because it's a disruptive industry, effectively, isn't it? And it has messed things up there. Yes. I've been. Wind stuff. That was another thing that reminded me, one of the things you talked about. The book reminded me of projects I've heard about in Australia where there was going to be a wind farm in a rural area. Everyone was up in arms about it then they re. They Cancelled it and said we'll do it it. If you want to get involved, you can buy shares in the company. Suddenly there's a wind farm and it's really successful and all the people who live near it love it because they actually, they don't have an electricity bill. They make money, you know, they're actually having an income from it. And that's a kind of critically important thing. I think in the next few years.

Tom Heap (28:42)

I think it is people have got to feel part of this energy transition, not have it imposed upon them. And you make a very clear example of that. But I think in other ways as well. I mean it seems to me a bit of a no brainer.

Robert Llewellyn (28:55)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (28:55)

That if you're putting a turbine in, in a, in an area where it will impact visually or otherwise the people who live there, that you either need to be thinking of options where they can make money out of it as well or you're compensating them or whatever. You know, you can call this sort of bribery if you want if you. But in, in effect it's saying no, this, this is something that we, we're sharing the benefits.

Robert Llewellyn (29:16)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (29:16)

With you.

Robert Llewellyn (29:17)

And that's what should happen because was that. I've made a note, Bristol docs, I can't actually remember that was. Is there an element of public ownership or of.

Tom Heap (29:28)

I've just forgotten the name of the suburb of Bristol but it's a, it's a pretty deprived suburb of Bristol where they, they are. They with basically own the big turbine, one of the few onshore turbines that actually went up during the last Conservative government. One of two. One of less than five anyway. Yeah, and, and, and so they, yeah they, they borrowed money. Yes, partly with, with council backing so they could actually borrow money. But yeah, they own the turbine. The revenue from it obviously some of it goes into some of, some of that revenue, you know, you spread to pay off the debt, et cetera, et cetera. What made me laugh slightly and was that obviously being representing a low income area on the whole they're very against high electricity prices. When they start their own turbine they confess to being a little bit conflicted because when you know they getting a lot for their turbine meant more for their community in other ways. Yeah, that's the definition of walking in someone else's shoes. They walk the gap.

Robert Llewellyn (30:31)

Well then there's also, we should mention Ripple Energy in the uk who've done an amazing job with you know, selling shares in wind turbines that are well now offshore. They're, they're now Investing in offshore window. That's their next step. Yeah. So they're doing really well. But the other one that I always get, I now get very depressed about biomass. Totally understand that. And the whole thing with the Drax Power Station importing wood chips from Canada to. Let's not necessarily dive into that embarrassment though, because. But also I had an amazing heart and lung specialist doctor who lives in London on the podcast recently because he drives an electric car in London, because he actually sees the damage caused by diesel particulates, as in. In people's actual lungs, you know, really. So he's very aware of that. But then he really. I got really depressed because. And I knew he was right, but I was hoping he wouldn't mention log burning stoves, but he did.

Tom Heap (31:23)

Oh, yeah, yeah, of course.

Robert Llewellyn (31:25)

I've got one. We inherited one when we bought this house many years ago, so. And I kind of still love it. You know, it's been part of my whole life is you burn logs in the winter, that's how you keep warm if you're in the rural area. But biomass. Well, actually that burning wood produces half of all domestic energy on the planet. Is that. Was that right? Did I get that right? For the global population?

Tom Heap (31:48)

I think that's true because there's so many people in the global south are still.

Robert Llewellyn (31:52)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (31:52)

Burning wood for their energy.

Robert Llewellyn (31:54)

For cooking really.

Tom Heap (31:55)

But for cooking. Yeah, cooking. Some for water heating, but. Yeah. So. And in some parts of the cooler world for heating as well. So it's still a very big deal. And it is a. It is a problem in a number of ways because you're obviously deforesting a bit in order to get the wood in the first place. You've got the local air pollution that you just mentioned. Generally it's quite a smoky thing.

Robert Llewellyn (32:18)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (32:19)

Which isn't great in your kitchen. Particularly often women who are doing the cooking suffering from that. And then you've got the climate change and then you've got the black soot that goes in the atmosphere, which is an enhancer of ice melting and things like that. So it's not good. I mean, I don't really get into. In the book, but there's quite an interesting debate about whether it would be good to move those people from that to gas. Gas, obviously fossil fuel. Yes, it is. But in many way, many immediate ways. A lot less damaging for people's personal health and possibly planetary health. But quite an interesting debate there.

Robert Llewellyn (32:54)

Yeah, no, there's. Because there's just a. I've just reported on a report about how how, you know, gas is more damaging than coal is the latest one.

Tom Heap (33:05)

Oh, this is the thing about leakage and methane.

Robert Llewellyn (33:07)

Is it leakage of methane and, and burning it and everything. You know, the whole not. It's not a clean transition fuel is the argument. I don't know enough about it to know how true.

Tom Heap (33:15)

You've just done a commentary on it, so I might have to read that.

Robert Llewellyn (33:18)

Yeah, yeah. Oh God, yeah. Now fertilizer is a, is because of the connection with fossil fuel. So can we get that right? Because, and I often just spout out, we don't just use fossil fuel for fuel, you know, you know, we, we don't use oil, oil for fuel. We use it for, I know, pharmaceuticals and plastics and all the others, a myriad of products. But we do we get actual fertilizer. Is nitrogen fertilizer effectively a fossil fuel based waste product?

Tom Heap (33:47)

Yeah, it is. It absolutely is. I mean the actual, the, the process of making it, the chemical reaction that makes it involves natural gas usually. So if that is a fossil fuel, the energy to make it is nearly always derived from fossil fuels. So those two things are clearly fossil fuels. And you know, there's quite an interesting argument that basically says a lot of the world's population is being basically being fed on fossil fuel because that's where a lot of the chemic originated from. But it is a real dilemma this with fertilizer because given the successes of the green revolution that happened in the late 20th century of increasing global food production to match global population or in some ways to exceed it, which a lot of is, many people thought was a miracle in itself, a lot of people were predicting mass starvation in that period. Yes, didn't happen. Fertilizer can take a lot of the credit for that. And so people say that, you know, you can argue that half to a third of us in the world today are being kept alive by fertilizer. And so if we change the way we farm and you know, I think, I don't think that's a, you know, I think that's required actually in many ways. We need to be very careful about doing and we need to find new ways of farming new types of crops and new methods of creating fertilizer, some of which we talked about earlier.

Robert Llewellyn (35:12)

Yes, yeah. I think one of the critical things of that, which is another one of those where I know that vegans are right, I totally get it and I do think they are absolutely right. But it's the same struggle, you know, if I eat some, you know, roast chicken in front of my Log fire. I just, I couldn't do it. I couldn't do two things. Those two things. I feel, I'd feel too guilty. And I was a vegetarian for about eight years and I've slipped off the, off the wagon. But I'm. I'm still minim. I'm in very, very minimal amount of meat. But I do occasionally have some meat and fish. But that, the, the statistics of beef farming in particular and the map I think you've got, amazing map which shows how much land is used to produce beef is, is stunning.

Tom Heap (35:59)

I mean, I mean, this is the map. I'll just actually get it up.

Robert Llewellyn (36:03)

It's a great map.

Tom Heap (36:04)

It's the only illustration book and people can. You can. You can, yeah.

Robert Llewellyn (36:09)

So that dark color that goes from sort of north of Birmingham to Scotland.

Tom Heap (36:13)

That. Yeah. What, what actually that map is. And people, if they want to look at it, they look at the National Food Strategy. Henry Dimbleby, creative. But basically that's a map of the proportion of the country that's given over to different land uses. And what you see from that is more than half of the UK is given over to pasture farming. It's actually sheep and cows.

Robert Llewellyn (36:33)

Right, Correct.

Tom Heap (36:34)

And also within that included is the area of crops grown for their feed them.

Robert Llewellyn (36:40)

Right.

Tom Heap (36:40)

And that's about, it's about half to two thirds in the uk. Globally it's close to two thirds, but a similar kind of proportion. So the demand of livestock on land is huge.

Robert Llewellyn (36:52)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (36:52)

And there are people, you just mentioned them, who would say, look, all this production side is stuff that you've got in your book. It's all very well, but actually we just need to change our behavior.

Robert Llewellyn (37:01)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (37:02)

If we ate less, we wasted less and we ate less meat, we could solve this, this space race. We could win, you know, humanity and nature could win this space race tomorrow.

Robert Llewellyn (37:12)

Right.

Tom Heap (37:13)

The problem is that advocating for behavioral change is very easy for those who've already made the change.

Robert Llewellyn (37:19)

Yes.

Tom Heap (37:20)

And it is very hard to get behavioral change instantly and widespread. And so actually my view of this, a bit like yours, is, is in many ways there's a lot of, you know, in some ways they are right. There is a solution to be had there. But I live in the world as it is, not as I want it to be. And so whilst I think we could see more effort from the government and from institutions on all those three things, our wastes. Waste and meat. Yes. I'm kind of realistic about the potency or the fact that they are not a panacea because.

Robert Llewellyn (38:03)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (38:03)

Yeah, they're not, but, but I do think they're important.

Robert Llewellyn (38:07)

Yeah. And I mean globally the thing, I mean we've done a lot of stuff about China and what's happened to China in the last 40 years, I think and India is fair to say that there are literally billions of people who could never have afforded to eat meat 40 years ago who now can. And that means the meat production is, has. I mean I don't know if that. I don't remember that statistic but I'm assuming meat production has increased least in the last 40 years by considerable.

Tom Heap (38:32)

It has and I think I. My memory of this, I'm not sure I got this directly, directly in the book but actually it has gone down. It's plateaued in America and I think it's gone down a bit in Europe. So the, and India I think is still relatively. In India is still largely a vegetarian country. Yeah. In China it's gone up and, and the other booming areas of population, sub Saharan Africa I think, you know, he's coming into more into their dark. There isn't so much a cultural or religious antipathy towards it. So you'd see as a luxury and as you know, as people develop they tend to get more luxuries.

Robert Llewellyn (39:07)

Yes, yeah. So one of the just. I don't want to harp on about meat too much because I probably have some in the next week but the, you know, some of the arguments about, you know, deforest cutting down rainforest, planting soy, feeding the soy to cows, eating the cow, cows. There's a lot of energy consuming and land consuming steps to produce what probably ends up as very cheap meat. But I mean that's a. Yeah, yeah.

Tom Heap (39:34)

And, and I think it's. There's a really interesting issue here about how your animal is reared and how that fits into our story of climate change, animal welfare and indeed farming more generally. So on one side this sort of intensive system where soy is often part of it, in some ways it could be considered more climate friendly because unfortunately if your animals skipping about having a lovely time in the field, all that longer life and exercise and if you like pleasure for the animal isn't, you know, isn't very efficient in terms of turning sunlight into food for us. And so the carbon footprint often even animals had a lovely life is often much higher, often much higher than one that's had a rather industrial and grim life. That's a problem needs to be debated. But on the other hand we mentioned earlier about having to find ways of farming and producing enough food without less much Less chemical fertilizer and in a much less sort of traditional system. A lot of people say animals are a critical part of providing the soil fertility that we will need to do that. So animals as part of a fertilizer system and animals a certain extent as sort of fed on waste or as a sort of waste disposal unit, I think are a very plausible idea and might have, you know, a better life. So, yeah, I, I think it's much. I think if you're an absolutist and had, you know, animals completely out of the system, apart from being idealistic, I think we mentioned earlier, I think there are some considerable hiccups in that in terms of our future farm coming.

Robert Llewellyn (41:16)

Yeah. I mean, because millions of cat or hundreds of millions of cows have got to produce gargantuan amounts of cow poo. I mean, well, the one thing that I always remember made me really not buy an impossible burger when I was working in California was we just where we were filming, we drove past an animal feed, an animal slaughterhouse and yard, a massive yard on a scale. I had no notion that anything could be on that scale. I mean, it was like half an hour driving past animal pens full of cows. And we knew before we got there because we could smell it. And it was a big slaughter yard and I mean a massive industrial unit in somewhere north of Los Angeles out in the boondocks. And that was like, you know, when you see it in real life you go, that is quite a shocking way for the human race to operate.

Tom Heap (42:05)

Yeah, I'm just going to make a view to the starter, Robert, because you said it made you not buy an impossible burger isn't impossible.

Robert Llewellyn (42:10)

I'm sorry, no, not an impossible burger. An in and out burger burger, sorry, which I had one and I loved it. And it was, you know, the franchise of In N Out burgers is very supportive of the local community. All those arguments you hear then you go, oh, but this is where the, the in and out burger comes from. No, not an impossible. The exact opposite of the impossible burger. Yes, well done. Thank you for picking me up on that. No, I do, I do quite like the Impossible burgers. I had one here in the UK recently. I think you can get them here.

Tom Heap (42:36)

I mean, just coming back briefly to our, you know, eating less meat. I mean, no doubt that helps enormously in the transition.

Robert Llewellyn (42:42)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (42:43)

That just the plant based options, both in terms of fake meats but also just in terms of recipes and knowledge and awareness out there of what you can do has just made that the low meat lifestyle A lot more pleasant.

Robert Llewellyn (42:57)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know what the impact. Because that's another thing. I've heard arguments on both sides of that the impact of producing the basic ingredients to make an impossible burger. I mean, then it becomes so complicated. The arguments. I, that's beyond me, but I think.

Tom Heap (43:13)

But I think generally. And this refers to the remark you made earlier about the complexity of, you know, taking sunlight to grow a crop which you then with them goes into an animal. I think most people agree. I mean, there are some figures in my book that actually a. An area of land will produce if you, if you just take the crop off, it will generally be between around 15 times more. More calories or more protein from that area of land of using it as a plant.

Robert Llewellyn (43:44)

Continually using it. Right.

Tom Heap (43:46)

Than having turned it into meat.

Robert Llewellyn (43:47)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (43:48)

As a rule of thumb. So just in terms of land efficiency, I think that those figures apply. Of course, there are some areas of land where it's pretty difficult to grow.

Robert Llewellyn (43:59)

Yes.

Tom Heap (43:59)

Human consumption. And that's another area.

Robert Llewellyn (44:02)

I mean, one of the last things that I'd love to just quickly cover. Well, a couple of things, but. But one of the things that caught my eye was the. That there is a. I probably got this wrong now. I wrote it down, but that we are losing rainforest in sort of tropical and subtropical areas, but we're gaining forest in like north, the northern hemisphere, which I think we never hear, or you would all normally hear, the sort of shocking news. You know, 15,000 million acres have been rainforest cut down and then there's nothing else which is bad. But, but we're. So there are, Are there more. Because it feels like where I live, there's more trees now than when we moved here 35 years ago.

Tom Heap (44:40)

Well, that, that is probably true. And certainly across Europe, it, it. It's definitely true. I mean, the forested area of Europe has grown quite dramatically. Forgive me, I don't know the, the figure exactly at my fingertips, but it has. And, and that is quite interesting and as to how that's happened. Now, some of that is forests planted, but not all. Some of it is natural expansion. There have been areas, particularly in southern Europe, where the forest area has increased land abandonment, which some people think is a bad thing. I think it's funny how land abandonment carries negative connotations, rewilding carries positive connotations. In effect, some of it's obviously through managed plantations. And some of those plantations vary in terms of their quality for wildlife and indeed for carbon storage. But it is definitely true that area is expanding And I met a really good forester. We don't talk about forestry much Interesting because maybe for Britain it's not considered to be a huge industry but yeah, I mean the forested area of Britain is increasing. Not fast enough but it is increasing from I think the low point was around the sort of 19th century. I think we're now up to. It's a. I think it's about 13% in the UK it's a higher percentage in Scotland, lower in England. But the forester that I met a young woman up in just south of Edinburgh and her approach to forestry which I thought was really interesting was instead of having a big air and then clear felling the whole lot and then you sort of. Which is an incredible shock to the sort of natural system must be.

Robert Llewellyn (46:23)

Yeah, yeah.

Tom Heap (46:24)

Her approach was what's called continuous cover forestry which is that you find the most valuable tree and you pull that tree out, you cut it and pull it. Now you might get. It's a more expensive system per cubic meter of wood for the actual wood but it's less harming to nature and also makes your forested area less exposed to disease and other and less vulnerable to winner weather damage and and things like that. And works well with her kind of slightly smaller forestry operating they've got their own timber yard etc the timber can be of a higher value. It's not all just going into you know fence panels and wood chip. It's going in into things of greater value, the joinery world. And I thought that was really really interesting. And you know she thought productive forestry had I think an important plant to play. It's often painted as the bad guy she thought managed correctly. It can definitely be the good guy once again helping with those multifunctional things of you know providing a use in this case a timber and material for humanity, you know a home for nature and a carbon store and indeed floodwater storage because forests are pretty good for that as well reducing speed of runoff.

Robert Llewellyn (47:40)

But I mean that is. I mean I wonder whether you came across this in your conversations with people. I mean that the particularly I've been in Canada recently. They you know they've had the most horrendous forest fires in their history. The floods. Every time I look at the news there's some another Ardash. There's actually a town I know in southern southern France in the Ardash region that is was effectively swept away really last week. I mean really recently with phenomenal heavy rain in a like in a 24 hour period. And you see cars Being washed down streets. Those images are becoming very common in, particularly in Eastern Europe in the last. This year. Year.

Tom Heap (48:19)

Yeah.

Robert Llewellyn (48:19)

I mean, is that a. Like. If you speak to a farmer in Derbyshire now, like on Country Value. I mean, is the concept of the changing climate discussed, acknowledged? Right.

Tom Heap (48:32)

It is most definitely. Most often in terms of the weather becoming bigger and blockier, as in, you know, we don't know if this summer is going to be, you know, really dry, white or really wet. Really wet. But it tends to happen in big blocks that make farming planning extreme. And this year, I mean, there's been a. Is the case in point. I think it was a stator about. Out about a month ago, having been the worst harvest on second worst harvest, I think, for decades. Last year that was because of the, you know, difficulty of harvest, difficulty of planting. And actually they're having the same planting problems this year for next year because it's a very, very wet. That is a big deal. So they're very aware of that. I mean, interestingly, some of the plot. Some. The farming methods that we're talking about do make your farm much more resilient to that. You know, if you have a better quality soil, it will hold more water, and that is a. Stops flooding because you're holding more water in that field, but also it provides more water when. When there's. There's a dry period. So that is. That is definitely coming the case. And it's driving, I mean, driving a lot of farmers to distraction if they weren't, you know, weather was always the big unknown for them, but it sort of become that square and is pushing. And interestingly, a lot of farmers are saying, well, I. I've got to find some kind of indoor farming system because I can control it, you know, and I need that control because, like, you know, I could vaguely rely on the weather out there in the past, but I can't now.

Robert Llewellyn (50:02)

Wow, that's extraordinary, isn't it? Yeah. But I mean, one of the other ones that I've certainly has been a big change since I was a kid working on a farm. Farm is what I remember then in the. And this is in the kind of Oxfordshire flatlands in the Thames Valley, but, you know, huge fields plowed in the autumn and then left. And now all the fields around where I live now, they're never bare earth, really. They've got. Well, they. They grow, they. I don't know what they do.

Tom Heap (50:31)

Cover crops and things.

Robert Llewellyn (50:32)

Yeah, cover crops, yeah. Yeah, it seems to be a. That's really taken off, actually. Well, you Know who the farmer is because he works with the. On Country Farm.

Tom Heap (50:40)

Mr. Henson. Yeah.

Robert Llewellyn (50:41)

Basically this is most inside whatever that you could possibly have. It's like we both work with Helen Chesky. Adam Henson's my neighbor and you work with him anyway. Yes, yeah. So yeah, I guess that's what he's. Yeah, they're. They're doing cover crops, I guess.

Tom Heap (50:57)

Yeah, they are. And this. But I shouldn't paint current of current sort of traditional farming entirely in a bad light because a lot of these moves towards protecting your soil, getting more carbon and respect for the worms. You know, love for the soil.

Robert Llewellyn (51:14)

Yeah.

Tom Heap (51:15)

Is definitely, you know, taking roof. Your pardon the pun within conventional farming and the overlap between what might be called regenerative or even some of the organic principles and conventional farming is much greater than it has been in the past. I mean it needs to go further and faster. But it is definitely happening.

Robert Llewellyn (51:34)

Yeah. And I think just to be fair to Adam and to explain to people who don't know, you know, from outside the uk, he's not a kind of hip, he's not like the hippies that I lived with in the 1970s who, who has horse drawn plows. I mean the biggest tractors I've ever seen in my life are at his farm. You know, they are massive machines and you know, extraordinary stuff. So.

Tom Heap (51:55)

Yeah, Anyway, well, also Mr. Clarkson around the corner must be quite close to you and he is quite close actually doing quite a lot of interesting things on his farm and a lot of it, you know, for televisual enjoyment perhaps. But nevertheless he is doing, I mean experimenting with some quite interesting and regenerative farming, I think.

Robert Llewellyn (52:11)

And it's annoying because I don't want to like anything he ever, he's ever said or done. But that's just me personally. But I think it's an extraordinary program and really popular around the world. It's kind of explained a lot of, and I think explained farming to a lot of people who would never, you know, they watch it because of him and suddenly they're seeing something completely different from their normal output. And also he did mention in the, I think in the last series that the climate's changed where he lives, you know, unless we have to do something about it. But can I carry on driving my Range Rover? Yeah. All good, clean fun. Yeah, that's what the last thing. Because I don't know how much you've seen of this. I actually test drove an electric tractor on Adam's farm a few years ago and we had to go, we had to go. We had a diesel one and an electric one. Basically they just did exactly the same thing. There was no difference. You know, the electric one can do a full day's, a full shift on a farm on one charge. It doesn't need recharging. But is that something. You know, I'm seeing quite a lot of heavy plant machinery like quarrying stuff, big diggers becoming electric, you know, big companies, jcb, Volvo, those sort of people doing it. I haven't seen as much in this country. You know like electric tractors or combines or.

Tom Heap (53:29)

No, I think it's a little bit slow. I've seen electric quad bikes.

Robert Llewellyn (53:34)

Yes.

Tom Heap (53:34)

Struck me as quite a good idea. Some stuff in, in, in tractors as well. I mean, I guess you still, you know, to a point. I mean you'd know more about this than me. Got this, you know, power density commas, the incredible power density of diesel. Having said that, you would have thought, you know, the one thing that you're not doing with those kind of vehicles is generally going many, many miles from. So you know, the idea that you could, you know, you can recharge at the end of the day or even halfway through the day in your lunch break. So I would have thought that is, I mean there is a lot of. You'd know this actually from having worked on a farm and also your sort of scrap heap challenge days. Even with modern farming there's a lot of what can I do to repair and maintain on my own farm.

Robert Llewellyn (54:23)

Yes, that's true.

Tom Heap (54:24)

You know, technology that, you know, engineering that you know, is something much to be desired and the complexities and I suspect the upfront expense of some of these electric technologies and just the fact that they're new and we all know that for quite a while new things can be temperamental. Actually it doesn't electric car but you know, they can be and I suspect that puts farmers off. And I just think the other thing we should mention is for an awful lot of farmers, farmers, their margins are tiny. They haven't got the financial luxury of experimenting with things. They're hand to mouth in terms of the amount of money they're making. And this applies not just the technology you're talking about but also some of the changes in farming practices I've been talking about earlier.

Robert Llewellyn (55:15)

Right.

Tom Heap (55:15)

You know, it's notable that the people who are doing that are often the people with the money. It's the dices, it's the ones that have the big, you know, PepsiCo contract, you know, Pepsi Cola or you know, those organizations are doing more of this stuff, I think it's partly because they have the money and also partly because they are measuring and being measured on their climate and carbon and nature footprint. And so as we know, what's measurable becomes important. But I do think a big part of this is it's difficult for farmers to make the change and finding ways to make that with that less risk to them is really important.

Robert Llewellyn (55:57)

Yeah. Tom, this is. I mean, it's been really good to talk to you and I just. I do want to genuinely plug your book. It's called Landsmart, please. And it is really good because I think that is really the last thing I wanted to say. And actually this is what I wrote. I don't want to be rude and my knowledge of farming is limited, but I will claim the majority of people have no idea where their food comes from and they don't care. And it's been your job in many ways to. To challenge that, you know, and we all do it. I mean, I do it all the time. I'll buy a loaf of bread. Doesn't occur to me like I used to buy petrol and never thought, where does this bloody stuff come from? Just moan about the price. But it is something that I think is worth more people being aware of, you know, because that then it. That does affect your choices and your attitudes. And when you drive through the country or go in a train through the country, you go. It's just fields and trees and stuff.

Tom Heap (56:48)

Yeah.

Robert Llewellyn (56:48)

A lot going on there, which is, you know, often ignored.

Tom Heap (56:52)

Well, thank you very much. And you know, my. My contention is that if we do it smartly, we can get this right. And to be absolutely clear to your listeners and viewers, most of my book is reporting from people who I think are doing a really good job and trying to learn from them. And it is fairly optimistic in being solved these problems if I think we. We get this right. But thank you very much indeed for the time.

Robert Llewellyn (57:17)

Really hope you enjoyed that. Tom's just such a great guy. Isn't it such a pleasant pleasure to talk to him? And we'll certainly. He'll be coming back on the show in the future. I'm sure we'll do other things with him because he's very, very well informed about all that stuff. Please do subscribe to the Fully Charged show and the Everything Electric show. That would be wonderful. Tell your friends about it. Do spread the word. And we're continuing to create huge amounts of quality programming. Notice I didn't use the word content. And we look forward to seeing you at our live events that are coming up in 2025. And that's it. As always, if you have been, thank you for listening and watching.