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Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

theguardian.com

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Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#91

Post by ryanmarsh »

DoctorBit wrote: post #23

"Despite a government plan to cut pesticide use in half by 2020, sales in France have climbed steadily, reaching more than 75,000 tonnes of active ingredient in 2014, according to European Union figures." That's an incredibly large amount of pesticides - over two pounds of active ingredient per French citizen per year.

Considering the amount of food, by weight, a human consumes over a year only two pounds of pesticides is an incredibly efficient use as far as my experience. I’m impressed. I probably have to use a half pound per year for my small vegetable garden which might feed me for a month if I had a really good season.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#92

Post by relyio »

bambax wrote: post #73
adrianN wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative seems to be importing a lot of food that has been grown in countries that might care even less about the environment.

No, the alternative is changing agriculture, regulating it and helping it be more environmentally friendly, and not alleviating environment taxes on fuel and water. Tax pesticides, too.

>regulating it

Why no one has thought of that before? Problem solved!

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#93

Post by lowleveldrone »

cjensen wrote: post #20
sverige wrote: post #2

I don't know of any studies to prove it is true, but I suspect that the US Midwest (in particular) has had a similar decline. Anecdotally I can say that there are certainly far fewer insects here than there were in the 60s and 70s when I was growing up, and also that there seem to be far fewer birds. I wonder if we'll stop dumping this stuff into the environment before it's too late. It would require a whole new way…

No there are not fewer birds. Ornithologists routinely census areas for species and counts. They notice when species decline in an area. They notice when new species arrive in an area. There have been zero reports of birds in general declining. EDIT: Here's a reference [1]. Note that it specifically calls out species in general decline: the Northern Bobwhite, American Kestrel, and the Loggerhead Shrike. [1] http://ww…

North American birds are absolutely in decline. From this article [1], the overall population has decreased by about 1.5 billion birds since 1970. For some groups of species, for instance, aerial insectivores [2], things are much worse. For instance, the population of bank and barn swallows, chimney swifts and common nighthawks has decreased by 70% over the past twenty years alone.

The Christmas Bird Survey is done after most birds have migrated and so captures data on the relative abundance of resident birds, which as a group, are doing better than birds in North America overall.

[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/report-fi... [2] http://www.bsc-eoc.org/download/BWCwi08.pdf

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#94

Post by hrktb »

ajmurmann wrote: post #90
ealhad wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If farmers are “sacred”, how do you explain their horrible suicide rate? There are a lot of problems with the french agro-food industry; but I wouldn't blame farmers alone.

Question from someone who knows nothing about this and is trying to understand: how much of agriculture in France is dominated by big agriculture? Is it possible that small farmers are having a hard time while economics of scale and subsidies work well for big ag?

Not knowing that much either, but I was more under the inpression that farmers working small had a better chance to live decently than the ones working on big contracts.

My perspective is how supermaket chains establish almost direct relations with producers and waive their weigh around to get better and better deals as time goes. Basically a variant of cuting the middle layers to eliminate bargaining power.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#95

Post by grigjd3 »

lumberjack wrote: post #70
briandear wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the alternative is importing food from countries who have a competitive advantage in agriculture, such as the United States — thus improving the economic condition of the 98% of French who aren’t farmers. Also, your theory holds no water: France still manages to import vast numbers of cheap Chinese consumer goods which are often produced under extraordinary bad environmental conditions. So if the idea that France…

Go talk to Venezuela about competitive advantage. They purposefully neglected their native food production in favour of food imports from abroad. Now they cannot source enough USD to import enough food and they are fucked. Food is a national security issue. You cannot become dependent on other countries.

I think suggesting today's outcome in Venezuela as the result of intention to have imports rather than the obviously bad result of land redistribution is disingenuous. Chavez took land from farmers and gave it to people who had never farmed before. That's not intentionally relying on food imports. That's shooting yourself in the gut while on a drunken bender.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#96

Post by ivanhoe »

adventured wrote: post #59
adrianN wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative seems to be importing a lot of food that has been grown in countries that might care even less about the environment.

France has commonly been one of the five largest agriculture exporters for the last several decades. As recently as 1995 they were the world's #2 agriculture exporter after the US (I believe they're currently #6 or #7 globally, having lost ground the last few years). As in the case with California exporting vast quantities of its water to Asia in the form of things like Almonds - at a steep resource cost for a very m…

The part that you don't see in those numbers is that "affording to reduce exports" really means that many people would have to drastically change the life style their families had for centuries. It's not easy for farm owners who've had that land for generations to just turn the switch and start living of something else. In Europe workforce has a lot more of inertia than in US or Canada, people are far less used to relocating and re-skilling in the search for jobs...

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#97

Post by ealhad »

hrktb wrote: post #94
ajmurmann wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question from someone who knows nothing about this and is trying to understand: how much of agriculture in France is dominated by big agriculture? Is it possible that small farmers are having a hard time while economics of scale and subsidies work well for big ag?

Not knowing that much either, but I was more under the inpression that farmers working small had a better chance to live decently than the ones working on big contracts. My perspective is how supermaket chains establish almost direct relations with producers and waive their weigh around to get better and better deals as time goes. Basically a variant of cuting the middle layers to eliminate bargaining power.

Yup. And that is how farmers find themselves with huge debts, because they are strongly advised by companies to buy big machines.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#98

Post by Outpox »

bambax wrote: post #50

What's so infuriating in France is that farmers are basically sacred: nothing can be said, let alone done, to curb their behavior. They benefit from all kinds of advantages: they don't pay taxes on fuel and don't pay for water (water in France is very expensive for everyone else except farmers), have all kinds of special conditions and fiscal deductions, and that's in addition to the direct payments they get from the…

My uncle has been a farmer for quite a while and his children took on the farm after he "retired" (you never really retire when you're a farmer). I've worked with them and I've never seen them water the crops. They don't even own the tools to do so and yet they're growing cereals (and a hundred cows) on 300 acres. They live in the east of France where I've never seen crops being watered. Not to say that you're wrong but I can't confirm your statement given my experience with farmers.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#99

Post by DanBC »

vincentperes wrote: post #85
ealhad wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If farmers are “sacred”, how do you explain their horrible suicide rate? There are a lot of problems with the french agro-food industry; but I wouldn't blame farmers alone.

"horrible" is going a bit too far? It is 20% higher than average. http://www.lepoint.fr/sante/en-france-les-agriculteurs-se-su...

Suicide is normally a preventable death, and suicide is a leading cause of death. So if a population has 20% higher than average rate of death by suicide that's a pretty big deal.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#100

Post by misnome »

sologoub wrote: post #28
almostApatriot1 wrote: post #22

Interestingly not mentioned is that many migratory birds that go through Europe pass through a lot of hostile territory. Covered several years ago by none other than Jonathan Franzen: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/songbird-migration... Maybe not a significant reason for the decline; I don't know, but obviously you can't blame the conditions in France alone for a decline in 70% of migratory songbirds. Fran…

Speechless after reading this... EDIT: it’s fascinating that HN has people that don’t get that disbalancing a fairly balanced system (ecosystem) will lead to severe and, usually, hard to predict results. Birds and insects make up a vital part of our shared ecosystem. By breaking the balance in it further and further we are indangering ourself a further and further. The equation will balance itself, but that balance m…

It's incredibly depressing, but it seems most people have trouble feeling empathy for other humans, so what chance do the birds have?
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