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Once
again the human race thinks about turning to biology for
its energy. It was ever thus.
The
original bioenergy source was humanity itself: from the
individuals and small communities who invented
agriculture to the slave cultures that built pyramids.
 Then
there were 30-manpower oxen and horses, and
civilizations powered by deforestation. Even now a good
slice of mankind relies on hands, wood, livestock and
dung for its energy.
When
fossil supplies are threatened, each technologically
advanced nation-state anxiously makes inventories of its
energy resources, looking for potential home-grown
replacements.
One of
these is the solar photon, a constant flux of which
falls, gratis, from the sky onto every inch of sovereign
territory.
 Something
like 70% of the non-urban surface of the UK is, in the
broad sense, grassland. What could we do to exploit the
photons captured by grassland?
Much of
this environment is remote and rugged and it's too
impractical and energy-demanding to send agricultural
vehicles up there to harvest the biomass and bring it
back.
What we
need is a solar-powered self-driven all-terrain
machine. If it's also a sort of factory-ship,
processing biomass as it goes, so much the better.
 Of
course such a machine already exists. It's called a
sheep. Throughout history the sheep has been so
effective that it almost completely replaces forest and,
even in the case of the Highland Clearances, people as
the means of securing the national upland photon
resource.
Ruminants
like sheep and cattle really are remarkable machines.
The ruminant is the customer for the products of forage
crop breeding and its supporting research.
From the
behavioural side of diet selection and intake, the
microbial ecosystem of the rumen, the physiology of
animal nutrition all the way through to the
environmental impact of what comes out of the beast's
back end, it's an amazing story.
The
livestock production chain is complicated and many of
its challenges are not even biological in origin;
nevertheless plant science can intervene in several of
the sensitive points (arrowed) to improve its economics
and reduce its unwelcome influences on the environment.
Much of
the thinking and hands-on research in the area of
plant-ruminant relations has been done by my colleagues
Mike Theodorou, Alison Kingston-Smith, Phil Morris,
Roger Merry, Richard Dewhurst, Mike Humphreys, the late
Raymond Jones, Mervyn Humphreys - I've certainly missed
out several others who should be acknowledged too.
The most
readable accounts of developing ideas and achievements
in this area can be found in contributions to
IGER Innovations, the annual report of the
Institute's research.
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