Interdependence is described as the way in which two or more living things depend on each other to grow and remain healthy. To start off this topic we looked at a presentation describing interdependence and what it involves. There are three types of interdependence :
- Economic Interdependence – global marking and trading
- Social Interdependence – cultural integration, media and advertising
- Environmental Interdependence – looking beyond local impact at global repercussions and responsibilities.
The key concepts of interdependence include: food supply and security, plant and animal breeding, crop protection and animal welfare. The presentation also discussed symbiosis and its three different types.
- Mutualism – where both species benefit
- Commensalism – Where one species benefits but the other is not significantly affected
- Parasitism – Where harm is caused to the host but there are symbiotic benefits.
A case study was also discussed. It told of how Inuit women in northern Canada were found to have high levels of pesticides in their breast milk, more than five times that of most industrialised nations. One pesticide that was found was banned in 34 countries more than 20 years ago. This happened because the chemicals flowed from tropical regions in the air currents and when the chemicals reached colder climates the chemicals condense and fell into the sea where they were absorbed by plankton. The plankton were then eaten by seals, which are the main food source on the North Canadian Inuits, and the chemicals in the seals fatty tissue were taken into the human system.
Following on from the presentation the whole year went of a field trip. We were split into two groups and headed off to two very different farms. One group went to Strandhead farm near Tarbolton and the other group went to Mossgeil farm near Mauchline. The first farm I went to was Strand head. From the outside the farm doesn’t really look like much, there is a large barn with open sides and a big building that we all thought was a house. The farm is very new and was very clean, so all together not what I was expecting or am used to. Upon entering the farm however, I was completely surprised as were the rest of the group at the sheer size of the barn. We started off with a short talk from a woman from the Royal Highland Education Trust (RHET). She spoke about the opportunities they provide from school children to visit farms all over the country and how these visits have an impact on their learning. Then we heard a few words from local farmer Willy, who talked about the processes of having a farm and how in recent years the farming community has been struggling, especially from dropping milk prices. Then we went on a tour of the barn. One thing you should know about Strandhead farm is that it is not your ordinary farm. Strandhead is the most technologically advanced farms in Britain and one of the highest ranked farms in the world. Everything is done remotely by machines and robots. There is a machine called Vector that roams up and don the barn adding fresh silage to the cows feed, there is another machine that goes in where the cos are kept and sweeps the floors. There are grates all over the floor when the manure is pushed into and then travels to large slurry tanks underground. There is a machine that fills up Vector with the feed, the bucket is on a roller hanging from the ceiling that comes down and pick up the different types of silage one bucket at a time, it then carries to Vector who mixes it remotely. This is all done via lasers and is an amazing thing to watch. The farm is technologically advance that the cows even milk themselves!
There are two large huts on either side of the barn where the cows go to be milked. Up to four times a day, the cows can go up to these huts, they stand in a cattle crush and a robot uses lasers to find the heifer’s teat. Once the robot has attached the teat cup to the cow a machine starts to pump out the milk. The machine is very sophisticated, it measures the cows weight, scans its tags for its name and number, records the milk yield in total and from each teat as well. While the cows are being milked they are fed with nutrition packed feed, the machine knows how much to give the cow. If anything is unusual when milking, e.g the cows weight has changed, the milk yield has reduced or increased or the cow doesn’t eat her food then a notification is sent to the farmers phone and they come and see what is happening. The machine can also detect if the milk has been contaminated, this would occur if the cow had contracted mastitis, a fatal mammary gland infection. After the cow has been milked her teats and udders are sprayed with disinfectant and she is released. The cows also have a few massagers that they can use whenever they please, all they do is walk up to it and a laser recognises that they are there and it starts to spin. The massager hangs from a crossbar so it is very agile and the cows can move it around. The cows have their own beds that run down the centre of their pen, they are very comfortable as they are made with the organic material left over from the slurry straining. The beds are changed regularly and topped up with fresh material every few days so as to prevent infection. The living areas run along the full length of one side of the barn and along half of the other side of the barn. The rest of the space is taken up by the calves individual pens. When the calves are first born they stay with their mothers for three days and are then put into individual pens. Some people thought that this was a bit cruel, taking the calves from their mother’s so early.
Strandhead farm is an amazing place, so modern and well run, the barn has air conditioning and sensors throughout detect what the temperature is outside and sets in indoor temperature accordingly. There is one thing that sets Strandhead apart from other farms, and that is that the cows have never been outside. There are big shutters that run along one side of the barn that open and close depending on the weather, humidity and wind conditions, so the outside can come in, but the cows themselves have never been outside. This divided some people as they weren’t sure of the animal welfare when they are not getting to experience life outdoors. The farmers justification is that cows are creatures of habit and he has been in situations where ‘free range’ cows have had the barn doors opened for them and they haven’t wanted to go outside at all. Another justification was that this year has been the wettest summer in record and the fields have suffered greatly. They may be animals but I’m sure that they wouldn’t want to be in the pouring rain all the time, we don’t so why would they.
After an hour or so we moved on to the second farm. Mossgeil was like entering another dimension, it was a completely different experience. Bryce, the farms owner, started by telling us about the farms history and how they came to be the organic farm they are today. Bryce’s grandfather signed a 100 years lease back in the 1940s and ran the farm for many years before handing it down to his son. Bryce’s father expanded the farm to around 300 acres by buying some more farmland in the vicinity. When Bryce left school he decided that he didn’t want to take over from his father and became an apprentice mechanic and a local Mercedes dealership. A few years down the line Bryce was up for a managerial promotion, but he had just received news that his father was terminally ill and had but two years to live. Bryce then made the decision to go back to the farm and take over from his father. That is when the struggles started. The milk prices dropped from 27p to 17p and the farm started to lose more that ten thousand pounds a month. Then the bank sent a letter informing Bryce and his family that if they didn’t pay then £110,000 in the next few months then they would be filed for bankruptcy. Bryce made the decision to see half the herd and part of their land so they could pay back a large sum of the money the bank wanted. Then the milk prices dropped again to 15p a litre and Bryce decided that enough was enough and he made the bold decision to carry on with the cows he had and become an organic farm. To this day, the farm still owes the bank money but they are getting closer to paying off as the weeks go by.
After telling us about the farms history and its troubles Bryce took us over to the dairy for a tour. We split up into two smaller groups, one headed off into the barn to where the herd is kept and the other group stayed in the milking parlour where Willy described the process. He talked about the number of cows that get milked at once and how the milking machine works. Then we swapped groups and we headed through to the barn to hear about the herd. Bryce explained about how the cows get out as often as the weather allows and that the 4 bulls are kept in with the heifers. He also explained about the separation of the calves from their mothers. When he first took over the farm Bryce decided that he would let the calves stay with their mothers for as long as they needed, but he informed us that they lost 16 calves in the space of a few months. It turns out that the calves were dying because there was a bacteria living on the mother’s teats and because the teats weren’t being sterilised before the cows suckled they were contracting the virus and because calves don’t have immune systems when they are born they were dying. This was a shock to hear as it explained why it’s actually better to separate the calves from their mothers. So that the calves still see their mothers their beds are kept in front of their mothers, but in reality the mothers don’t really bother with their calves after a few weeks. The calves stay in their pens for 8 weeks before they are transferred to another barn where they are kept with other calves so as to develop socialisation skills.
Bryce also explained about the feed the cattle get, including hay and silage that is full of clover which is very good for the cows, beer nuts (which are highly nutritional pellets) and potatoes that have been rejected from the supermarkets. On the farm there was a very large heap of perfectly good potatoes, I would guess at maybe two tonnes, that Bryce cheaply bought from a local farmer because they had all been rejected from the supermarkets because of either their colour, shape or size. The waste is atrocious, although it means that Bryce gets a reasonably cheap food source for his cows the farmer who grew the potatoes is losing thousands of pounds on them because of the way they look. The visit ended with Bryce giving each of us a small bottle of their milk to take home and try, and I can say it was absolutely delicious.
For the second input on interdependence, we were tasked with making an infographic about the ocean. We were to read and take notes on different sources and then put together our information using a website called Piktochart. We were to put our information under 4 headings:
- Biodiversity
- Economy and Industry
- Policy
- Community Impact
In our groups we split up the reading and took notes on them before the session so as to have more time to work on the infographic. This task was quite good fun, the only difficult part was finding relevant information from everyone’s readings. Here is our infographic.
Overall, I would say that the farm visits were very beneficial and I would definitely consider using the services provided by RHET in m future classroom. Piktochart is also a very useful resource and I would use it in a classroom as well, having the children either create their own infographic or using one of the templates provided.
