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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

#101

Post by myshpa »

danielheath wrote: post #66
CalRobert wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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...

Greece has lots of land that's either too steep for humans to walk on, or too rocky to grow anything but grass on, or both. As a result, traditional Greek cuisine has lots of lamb and goat meat.

Pag in Croatia too ... it's called "island of paski cheese" iirc ... it's mostly rocky desert with patches of grass and herds of islands and goats, but leave the island and suddenly the landscape is green and lush.

"Historically, Pag had more forested areas than it does today. The island used to be covered with oak and pine forests, but due to centuries of human activity, including grazing, deforestation, and the collection of firewood, much of the original forest cover has been reduced. Over time, the vegetation has adapted to the island's specific conditions, such as strong winds and limited freshwater sources."

The land is rocky to grow anything on exactly because of those lambs and goats. They don't give the land the change to reforest.

We tend to underestimate the damage that has already been done before we came here.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#102

Post by boudin »

edumucelli wrote: post #96
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…

That is simply not true! Use of mechanical farming and fertilizers/pesticides can be beaten in productivity by permacultural practices. One example in France that has been followed by researches (and has produced several papers [1]) is the Ferme du Bec. It is able to produce multiple times more and more qualitative (organic), for the same area than the national average mechanized production in France. The pesticide i…

The real underlying issue here is that good farming practices require hands.

If we don't value back farming related work and allow people to invest a lot of there time and energy into sustainable practices we cannot have the amount of people required to do what is done at la ferme du bec at a much bigger scale.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#103

Post by clows »

cjrp wrote: post #90
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…

> increase the share of eco-farming, i.e. conventional farming without the chemistry. The problem: both approaches drastically reduce agricultural productivity. A prime example, the seed-dressing used to treat rapeseed and prevent cabbage-stem flea beetle from destroying the crop has been outlawed in the EU. Most farmers now won't grow rapeseed, because the risk of making a huge financial loss is too high. Result? We…

> Most farmers now won't grow rapeseed, because the risk of making a huge financial loss is too high.

Do you have data to back that up? The only info I could find is along the lines of the article below.

https://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2022/06/16/eu-rapesee...

> EU rapeseed crop 2022 projected at five-year high

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#104

Post by bainsfather »

Mumps wrote: post #86
pvaldes wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gree…

Dovecots [0] have been used for (likely) millenia. And, because of migration, the birds can ultimately bring nutrients in from disparate locations - as opposed to purely localally grazing livestock. Per leathers: one, we don't have to completely eliminate cattle. Two, synthetics exist. Three, alternatives are being made/investigated [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dovecote [1] https://www.felsie.co.uk/ (and ot…

I have learned something new today (re manure from dovecotes).

However, I think this is another example of something that is 'just too small to matter' in terms of feeding the world's population today. Often I see 'nice' stories about e.g. using human waste to fertilise fields, that quite frankly do not (usually) scale at all well. We (UK) use tractors to shovel and spread manure - 10s, 100s of tons of the stuff - a dovecote or 10 really isn't going to help, and certainly won't be economic.

It seems a bit like someone telling me I should use an abacus to increase my compute power - 'they were a good idea in the past, why aren't you using them now?'

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#105

Post by myshpa »

cjrp wrote: post #90
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…

> increase the share of eco-farming, i.e. conventional farming without the chemistry. The problem: both approaches drastically reduce agricultural productivity. A prime example, the seed-dressing used to treat rapeseed and prevent cabbage-stem flea beetle from destroying the crop has been outlawed in the EU. Most farmers now won't grow rapeseed, because the risk of making a huge financial loss is too high. Result? We…

I'm in country which has 15% of its farmland covered in it. Hate it.

It's sprayed 10-20 times per season, the amount of poison it spreads to the nature is staggering.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#106

Post by cmilton »

Separo wrote: post #100

Anecdotal but I noticed in Portugal recently, in summer, over the course of two months, I saw pretty much no birds.

Just to add an another anecdotal view, here in the US, I have seen more birds than recent years. I attribute the increase in my area to the halting of mosquito spraying practices.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#107

Post by myshpa »

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?

We have something that doesn't work.

Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...

We have to change the course, or it will be selected for us and we won't have a say in it.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#108

Post by chris-orgmenta »

atlantic wrote: post #88

This is anecdotal, but I see a lot of land that used to support birds and small animals and is now stripped of vegetation and covered in solar panels. Destroying habitats to save the planet is the order of the day, apparently.

This comment + the dovecote comment elsewhere makes me ponder whether solar will ever be part of crop rotation / intercropping / cover cropping.

Mini nests/pigeonholes/etc could potentially be built into/under panels (though potential issues include predator access, + guano and other substances degrading equipment.)

And/or solar panels could 'migrate' over time, plugging themselves into their nearest hub once they have moved themselves to a fallow / poor soil area. Fixed solar would always be more efficient, but perhaps migrating solar could one day have a niche position in soil science / ag, and allow solar to be position closer to cities.

Anyway... all unlikely to be economical, I suppose.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#109

Post by desas »

bitL wrote: post #99
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is plainly not accurate - manure from most aninals, especially pig farms, is a hazardous easte to dispose of. Only a small percentage of manure is reused as fertiliser because transporting it is expensive, and messy. Often it needs to be processed before it can be used safely. You can gooogle 'industrial farm US' and see pictures of ani als standing knee deep in their own poop. Also it is illegal to take photos…

Some people can only eat meat due to autoimmune issues exacerbated by vegetables. Are we going to sacrifice them?

Is this an argument made in good faith? The commentator said reduce meat consumption and that most people ate too much. They didn't say "ban it for everyone, let the autoimmune suffer"

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#110

Post by CalRobert »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #98
CalRobert wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, the entire talk of destruction of rain forests comes across as a little hypocritical when it's coming from countries with like 6% forest cover. I was up in scottish highlands recently and many hills are bold like someone just shaved them. Looks weired. The only solution O see is to habe a global forestly fund, so developing countries can get paid but dont have to destroy forests.

The bizarre thing is that Scottish (and Irish) people largely see barren moonscape as "natural". I never encountered such hatred for trees before I moved to Ireland. I drove through the Sperrins on Sunday and while the rolling hills are pretty they would be a lot prettier with native broadleaf forest...
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