“Over 100,000 hectares of forest cover lost in South-East Asia between 2000 and 2012, study finds.” from: www.ibtimes.co.uk
GR: This is why humans have to go.
Tag Archives: Farming
Health and biodiversity restored? How farming can rediscover its long-lost roots
“As industrial agriculture continues to erode our wildlife, Dave Goulson challenges the methods and objectives of ever-increasing food production. We need to move towards sustainable, evidence-based farming systems that produce healthy food, rather than allowing the agrochemical industry to reshape our farming, countryside and nutrition to its quest for profit.
“In our rush to increase yields, based on an ill-conceived notion that this is needed to feed the world, we run the risk of irrevocably damaging our environment and hence our food production system.
“Modern intensive farming produces plentiful, cheap food but is reliant on heavy use of agrochemicals and is a major driver of the ongoing collapse of wildlife populations.
Taxpayers pay billions each year to support this system, with the bulk of this money going to the biggest, richest farming operations.” From: www.theecologist.org
GR: This excellent article argues well for sustainable agriculture, but it overlooks the most significant problem. It describes the failures of factory farming, and it discusses how we can shift to better practices. It does not mention population. The article aims at long-term solutions, but of course, everything eventually fails without population control.
China’s biodiversity declines as human demands grow
Since 1970, China’s terrestrial vertebrates have declined by half, while the nation’s Ecological Footprint has more than doubled, reveals WWF’s Living Planet Report China, 2015, a flagship research report on the country’s demand on nature.
“The fourth issue of the report, themed “development, species and ecological civilization”, tracked 2,419 representative populations of 682 vertebrates’ species in China and found that almost half of China’s terrestrial vertebrates have vanished in the last 40 years.
“Habitat loss and nature degradation by human activities and development are the most significant threats to biodiversity in China. Over-hunting and climate change are also significant threats to amphibians, reptiles and mammals.” From: phys.org
GR: Lots of nonsense in this article about sustainable development. An even more nonsensical concept now that China has left the one-child policy behind.
Who’s Responsible for Palm Oil Deforestation—Small Farmers or Big Companies? – The Equation
Last year, an important paper on the subject was published in Conservation Letters by Janice Lee and colleagues that looked at just this question. Using data from Sumatra covering the period 2000-2010, they found that smallholders were responsible for just 11% of the deforestation, even though their farms covered about 40% of the land in oil palm. Large private enterprises, on the other hand, caused 88% of the deforestation. In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the figures were almost identical: 9% and 90%. So it’s overwhelmingly the big companies that are destroying forest to create oil palm plantations and causing dangerous climate change. From: blog.ucsusa.org
GR: Having grown up on a farm, and currently owing two farms, I doubt the “little guys” are all that conservation minded; they just lack the resources to really get out there and clear that land like large companies. This is pretty much the same everywhere. Corporate farming, just like many other corporate enterprises, takes place on huge scales as it focuses on profits first and conservation second. Thus, small farming is preferable, not because small farmers are conservationists, but because small farmers just can’t tear up that much.
Deforestation and Drought
LIKE California, much of Brazil is gripped by one of the worst droughts in its history. Huge reservoirs are bone dry and water has been rationed in São Paulo, a megacity of 20 million people; in Rio; and in many other places.
Drought is usually thought of as a natural disaster beyond human control. But as researchers peer deeper into the Earth’s changing bioclimate — the vastly complex global interplay between living organisms and climatic forces — they are better appreciating the crucial role that deforestation plays.
Cutting down forests releases stored carbon dioxide, which traps heat and contributes to atmospheric warming. But forests also affect climate in other ways, by absorbing more solar energy than grasslands, for example, or releasing vast amounts of water vapor. Many experts believe that deforestation is taking place on such a large scale, especially in South America, that it has already significantly altered the world’s climate — even though its dynamics are not well understood. www.nytimes.com
GR: We need to start cutting our populations. Nature cannot survive our impact. Who would want to survive without nature? Can’t we adopt, help raise the sister’s child, play with the neighbor’s child? Why do people claim that reproduction is a right? It’s the reason for our spreading cities and roads, and our massive release of CO2, pesticides, and other pollutants.
See on Scoop.it – GarryRogers NatCon News
Livestock Raising Devastating Forests and Driving Climate Change in Australia and Beyond
https://www.youtube.com/v/VkKMDyeXJXA?fs=1&hl=fr_FR
GR: Good film documenting that raising domestic livestock is the principal cause of climate change.
Nature News Digests
How Farm Subsidies Could Save the World, Not Trash It
“Agricultural subsidies are, let’s face it, incredibly complicated and boring, and that’s the eternal problem with changing them: It’s just too hard to get the public to care even about a system that is, on its face, bizarre, destructive, and politically corrupt. It’s especially hard to care when the big losers are wildlife and the environment.
“Well, o.k., taxpayers lose, too. In the United States, agribusiness takes $20 billion worth of subsidies out of our pockets every year. Hardly any of that supports the production of healthier foods, or benefits wildlife, the environment, or the public. But most of us would rather scrub toilets or run marathons than think about it. Meanwhile, agribusiness spent $138 million on lobbying in 2012, and another $90 million on federal campaign contributions to keep these handouts just the way they are.” Sourced through Scoop.it from: strangebehaviors.wordpress.com
From the article: “And yet, it’s worth thinking hard about how to design a farm subsidy program that benefits wildlife, the public, and farmers alike. It’s worth it because—and forgive me for being the buzzkill on a day when you would rather be happily cleaning toilets–the survival of life on Earth depends on it.”
GR: Is “legalized corruption” an oxymoron, or does it describe a government system constructed with susceptibility to special interests?
Record-Breaking Wildfires, Greenland Melting and Earth’s Hottest Month Ever
Humans have some advantages over other animal species, but like the animals, we can’t control our urge to reproduce and our desire for the security of material wealth. Sentient but not sapient, sensitive but not wise, our advantages have let us to eliminate competition, disease, and danger. Thus, nothing can stop our booming population and our world-destroying “environmental footprint.” (ACD = anthropogenic climate disruption)
The following article from Truthout.org covers all that I was going to go over in Part 2 of Global Warming: the Future is Now, so here’s this instead:
Dahr Jamail | The World on Fire:
The US is now officially in the worst wildfire season in its history, as almost 7.5 million acres across the country have burned up since spring.
Articles about ACD’s impacts are now being published in more mainstream outlets, carrying titles that include verbiage like “the point of no return,” and it is high time for that, given what we are witnessing.
A recently published study by the UK-US Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Reliance revealed that “major shocks” to worldwide food production will become at least three times more likely within the next 25 years due to increasingly extreme weather events generated by ACD. One of the coauthors of the report…
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GarryRogers Nature Conservation 