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Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

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Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#71

Post by HeckFeck »

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…

We can't discount the effect of the increase in cat ownership and roaming:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/14/cats-kil...

"A study published in April estimated that UK cats kill 160 to 270 million animals annually, a quarter of them birds. The real figure is likely to be even higher, as the study used the 2011 pet cat population of 9.5 million; it is now closer to 12 million, boosted by the pandemic pet craze"

The study didn't include animals that cats killed and abandoned in the wild, so it is likely higher still.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#72

Post by runsWphotons »

knutzui wrote: post #41
988747 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet a billion people in this world are starving... Cutting back on industrial agriculture means participating in a genocide, basically. Some geeks here are coming up with sci-fi ideas of producing food in vertical farms, or underwater, why don't we start by simply using existing techniques?

This is incorrect. If all food we produce world wide was distributed equally everywhere not a single person would starve. However it isn't distributed anywhere close to equally. In many societies food is instead wasted in large amounts. Cutting back on industrial agriculture is sorely needed from an environmental standpoint, as well as reducing food waste. Solving starvation requires different solutions, such as impr…

Distribution is hard, though. Will reducing food even in countries where it is wasted solve distribution any better, or will it just hurt the people at the bottom of the distribution chain more?

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#73

Post by pvaldes »

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.

The big plot hole in this master plan that many people apparently can't see or accept. If we remove the production of meat, this will severely harm the production of vegetables. They are connected.

You can't have real agriculture without manure.

Fossil guano is a finite, scarce and very expensive resource, and human manure is not so desirable as replacement by several reasons so, how do they expect to feed their green miracle exactly?.

How efficient is the conversion food-to-meat is irrelevant if you omit half of the products obtained. This food also will turn into leather, milk, workforce and manure, so the calculus is flawed from the start.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#74

Post by nforgerit »

arnoooooo wrote: post #61
unglaublich wrote: post #54

Whenever possible, buy Demeter products. Their approach to farming improves biodiversity and soil quality. https://demeter.net/biodynamics/biodiversity/ > 35% more birds and 23% more insects are found in organic farmland thanks to the creation of natural habitats and the absence of chemical and synthetic pesticides. We, customers, vote with our shopping behavior. Yes, those products are 100-200% more expensive in ter…

Biodynamics is complete hogwash. We do need labels for sustainable farming, but we need them to be based on science, not popular beliefs about moon phases and such things.

Agreed. Demeter is based on highly esoteric principles. Plus they've had an "interesting" relationship with the Nazi regime and obviously repeated their non-scientific weirdo theories in the Covid pandemic[0]. Personally, I only buy if I cannot avoid it.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter_(Deutschland)

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#75

Post by Veen »

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…

Is this a U.S. thing? Where I live—a rural part of the UK—I don't think anyone thinks twice about letting their cats out. It's just what you do with cats.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#76

Post by ClumsyPilot »

ummonk wrote: post #52
zmgsabst wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Because the Great Leap Forward was such a smashing success, we need to do it again?

This is why the West has such ossified systems. If you propose any systemic change, people dont actually evaluate the suggestion on it's merits. They just go China/communism!

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#77

Post by cjrp »

CrampusDestrus wrote: post #65
badpun wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We subsidize agriculture to maintain food self-sufficiency. Otherwise, things could get very nasty around here during the next global famine. During a famine, you can't just outbid poor countries and buy out their food, as their governments will ban food exports and there will be not food to buy, regardless of price.

Agriculture is subsidized to get the farmers' vote

It’s really not. Without subsidies, farms could not exist; we simply don’t pay enough for produce to keep them running. You could argue that subsidies are to keep the public onside. If you were the party who removed subsidies (and increased food prices by 50%), it would be political suicide.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#78

Post by runsWphotons »

hef19898 wrote: post #48
988747 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet a billion people in this world are starving... Cutting back on industrial agriculture means participating in a genocide, basically. Some geeks here are coming up with sci-fi ideas of producing food in vertical farms, or underwater, why don't we start by simply using existing techniques?

Global food production is a, and I oversimplify a lot here, more of a distribution problem than it is a capacity problem. Certain countries cutting back on theor surplus has zero impact on the starving regions of the world, because as things stand now those surpluses aren't exported there anyway. Quite the opposite, exporting said surplus, besides accute deliveries to mitigate famine, can kill local farming. There is…

But wouldnt it lower the price of chicken in those places, providing more people w access to good calories although hurting the local farmers? Couldnt this be solved by a country putting up tariffs or banning importing such chicken? If they didn't do that what was their reason?

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#79

Post by ZunarJ5 »

nforgerit wrote: post #32
megablast wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's neoliberalism 101. It's how it functions.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#80

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #14
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…

There are some counter intuitive economical things going on as well. A lot of bad farming practices are heavily subsidized. For example a lot of Spanish land is not exploited. But to claim the subsidies, farmers still work the land, which leads to a lot of top soil erosion for no good reason whatsoever. In the same way a lot of dairy production is misaligned with actual demand. And you get weird surpluses of things l…

> Instead of boosting their economies by importing stuff from those countries we kill their exports with subsidized local produce and then spend a lot on development aid.

I think a key takeaway from the pandemic is that you don’t want to be reliant of import from strategic ressources and food is priority number one.

European subsidies are mostly going to France which is a huge wheat producer.

Farming is an area where I can predict there are going to be a lot of tension in the EU between ecological ambition and the cold reality of having to feed everyone.

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