Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

pnas.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 267 posts

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#31

Post by alex_duf »

Scarblac wrote: post #25
tfourb wrote: post #3

There are also quite convincing studies that show even worse declines for insect populations, again mostly due to industrialized farming techniques and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The standard approach in the EU to work against this really worrying trend is to a) bring more and more land under some form of protection and remove it from agricultural production and b) increase the share o…

And eating less meat, so we can do with less agricultural production.

I think that's by far the biggest lever given how inefficient meat is at converting land area & water to calories.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#32

Post by nforgerit »

megablast wrote: post #28
nforgerit wrote: post #27

IIRC EUs farming regulations stem from 60s/70s and their only adaptations were intensification and market concentration. Some decade ago the sister of a small German farmer told me how EU laws were systematically pushing him out of the market forcing him to sell his ground to bigger competitors to avoid going bankrupt. You reap what you sow I guess

Farmers have always been making excuses why they failed.

No it’s backed by some reports i’ve heard and read in the meantime. There’s no excuse but bitter results of BigFarm corps lobbying and politicians who incentivize the wrong things.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#33

Post by alex_duf »

himinlomax wrote: post #29
Scarblac wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And eating less meat, so we can do with less agricultural production.

Pasture farming on marginal land is part of the solution. Industrial meat farming is part of the problem. They're two different things.

But would pasture farming on marginal land scale to the level of consumption we have today?

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#34

Post by knutzui »

runsWphotons wrote: post #12
mschuster91 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem: both approaches drastically reduce agricultural productivity. We're overproducing anyway, with massive environmental followup issues. Switching to less meat would free up a lot of grain production and help get nitrate runoff from all the poo used as fertilizer under control, but that's politically untenable and the markets would just adapt to import more Brazilian meat grown on burned-down rainforest f…

Is switching from meat to more grains better for birds? I strongly doubt that. Converting fields to planting fields is going to kill a lot more small mammals, birds, insects and so on?

It is better, because switching from meat to grains results in less area needed for planting grains, since we don't need to feed the animals anymore. Most grains that we farm today are fed to animals.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#35

Post by winrid »

kuschku wrote: post #22

This is why all those "don't have outdoor cats, they kill all the birds" stories annoy me. At best they're misguided, at worse they're intentionally misleading to hide the fact that pesticides and farming practices are actually at fault. (In Europe, on other continents the story may be different) Similar to the CO2 footprint, it's another way to individualize social issues and distract from large corporate sources of…

Yeah, my understanding is the poor regulation of the emissions controls on container ships is huge.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#36

Post by CalRobert »

himinlomax wrote: post #29
Scarblac wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And eating less meat, so we can do with less agricultural production.

Pasture farming on marginal land is part of the solution. Industrial meat farming is part of the problem. They're two different things.

"Pasture farming on marginal land is part of the solution"

Can you elaborate? I don't see how this is superior to leaving it fallow?

I have a few acres fallow and am right next to a quaint organic farm and I do see quite a few more bees in my tall grass and wildflowers than I do in their grazed land...

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#37

Post by manojlds »

tfourb wrote: post #3

There are also quite convincing studies that show even worse declines for insect populations, again mostly due to industrialized farming techniques and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The standard approach in the EU to work against this really worrying trend is to a) bring more and more land under some form of protection and remove it from agricultural production and b) increase the share o…

I had to learn about this from Clarkson of all people. He seems to genuinely be involved in what he's doing and Clarkson's Farm is a great show as well!

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#38

Post by zmgsabst »

mkmk3 wrote: post #8
tfourb wrote: post #3

There are also quite convincing studies that show even worse declines for insect populations, again mostly due to industrialized farming techniques and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The standard approach in the EU to work against this really worrying trend is to a) bring more and more land under some form of protection and remove it from agricultural production and b) increase the share o…

I've heard that permacultural practices can compete in terms of output, it's just harder to industrialize. I wonder if improvements in robotics could make this sort of approach more feasible, or if it really is comparatively productive in any case

Maybe we could do three good things at once:

- switch to this better method of farming

- end the corporate oligarchy controlling food by having smaller farms

- shift people out of net negative “services” into farming

I don’t see the downfall of industrial farming as a bad thing — they’re a whole problem all on their own (including the recent push to take away family farms from the Dutch).

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#39

Post by CalRobert »

elzbardico wrote: post #23
mschuster91 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem: both approaches drastically reduce agricultural productivity. We're overproducing anyway, with massive environmental followup issues. Switching to less meat would free up a lot of grain production and help get nitrate runoff from all the poo used as fertilizer under control, but that's politically untenable and the markets would just adapt to import more Brazilian meat grown on burned-down rainforest f…

Please, stop this fake news of meat growing in burned-down rainforest farms. Most of the cattle in brazil is raised on biomes that were never rainforests to start, no matter what the lie the NYT told you. Free-ranged cattle are also usually raised in regions that are very marginal in arable land. And in fact, bovines filled an ecological niche in the "Pantanal" region that was once occupied by native herbivores, exti…

Well, it's not just Brazil. A lot of meat in Europe is grown on burned or cut-down forest, it just happens to be the case it was done centuries ago.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#40

Post by zmgsabst »

megablast wrote: post #28
nforgerit wrote: post #27

IIRC EUs farming regulations stem from 60s/70s and their only adaptations were intensification and market concentration. Some decade ago the sister of a small German farmer told me how EU laws were systematically pushing him out of the market forcing him to sell his ground to bigger competitors to avoid going bankrupt. You reap what you sow I guess

Farmers have always been making excuses why they failed.

Dutch farmers are having their farms seized by globalists in their government right now.

There’s a lot of corruption in farming.

Post reply on HN