Goodbye butterflies, goodbye birdies, goodbye bees.
Posted: 14 Sep 2016, 12:18The State of Nature has found that intensive farming has put one in 10 species in the UK under the threat of extinction. We probably all realise the species' have been and gone, but their extinctions took hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Many modern day extinctions are happening in periods of decades, even a few decades.
The problem is that industrial farming is necessary to feed us, and it is a global problem, but the UK makes for a suitable microcosm to study. WWII highlighted our problem with food - we did not grow enough. Post war all that changed and the UK became the world leader in getting more form less. It was not driven by simple efficiencies, that would have been fantastic, it was driven by the introduction of chemical fertilises, pesticides and selective weed killers. It worked, for a time, and we nearly became self-sufficient in many foods. Then came the population explosion and that sent us back to square one. Unfortunately the huge steps once made have now gone and we are putting more and more effort (chemicals and GM) in for minuscule gains.
We now import about 40% of our staple foodstuffs - apples from Chile, potatoes from Egypt, green beans and peas from Kenya and so forth. These are not exotic or fad foods, they are what we have been eating for hundreds of generations. Unfortunately we do not have enough land left to grow our own.
And on the subject of land: another report says that the Earth has lost 10% of its wilderness, mostly forests and jungle, since the 1970s. This has been turned over to industrial use such as oil sands, mining and logging, or to create grazing for animals. These woodlands are the Earth's lungs and a major factor in locking up atmospheric CO2 yet we have chopped them down to be able to produce more of it!
We should probably put humans on the 'goodbye' list...
The problem is that industrial farming is necessary to feed us, and it is a global problem, but the UK makes for a suitable microcosm to study. WWII highlighted our problem with food - we did not grow enough. Post war all that changed and the UK became the world leader in getting more form less. It was not driven by simple efficiencies, that would have been fantastic, it was driven by the introduction of chemical fertilises, pesticides and selective weed killers. It worked, for a time, and we nearly became self-sufficient in many foods. Then came the population explosion and that sent us back to square one. Unfortunately the huge steps once made have now gone and we are putting more and more effort (chemicals and GM) in for minuscule gains.
We now import about 40% of our staple foodstuffs - apples from Chile, potatoes from Egypt, green beans and peas from Kenya and so forth. These are not exotic or fad foods, they are what we have been eating for hundreds of generations. Unfortunately we do not have enough land left to grow our own.
And on the subject of land: another report says that the Earth has lost 10% of its wilderness, mostly forests and jungle, since the 1970s. This has been turned over to industrial use such as oil sands, mining and logging, or to create grazing for animals. These woodlands are the Earth's lungs and a major factor in locking up atmospheric CO2 yet we have chopped them down to be able to produce more of it!
We should probably put humans on the 'goodbye' list...
