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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

#41

Post by knutzui »

988747 wrote: post #20
hef19898 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, and I have to admit I don't have any current numbers on that, that Europe is actually producing more food than we currently need. So cutting backnon industrial agriculture, ranging from grains to meat, so covering all sorts of foodstuffs, can only be a good thing, for people, the environment and animals.

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 improved distribution, as well as political stability.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#43

Post by msrenee »

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…

Do you have a source for this?

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#44

Post by runsWphotons »

knutzui wrote: post #34
runsWphotons wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting. But rough time to be a cow.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#45

Post by hug »

shellac wrote: post #30
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 also quite convincing studies that show even worse declines for insect populations Has the evidence improved recently? About 3 years ago there were a few papers, including a meta analysis (-ish), which were suggestive but also noted the lack of longitudinal studies, and their lack of geographical diversity (Germany and UK as I recall). The consensus was that everyone was certain there was a serious issue,…

While not particularly useful as a scientific method, and obviously not attempting to counter your broader point asking for more detailed analysis, there’s incredibly compelling evidence: Go for a 100 mile drive at night, and count the bugs on your windshield. Ask your parents about it. Ask every 70 year old you know. Bugs are in decline.

There’s absolutely no lack of evidence. We know it’s real. We just haven’t catalogued that evidence very well.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#46

Post by Lutger »

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

I don't think the problem is in output-per-acre (really, increase in yield per acre is shockingly low in the past 50 years), but rather in the amount of labor required. That, plus the inertia of vested interests codified as bureacratic regulation and protected by lobbyists. Essentially: intensive agriculture uses monocultures, extremely large machines and herbicides/fertilizers/pesticides in order to reduce or displace labor costs, which dominate. And it still can't really exist without heavy subsidies.

Any kind of regenerative practice in the current market situation needs to be competitive on a labor per output basis in the first place, not on the output per acre. Lightweight machines and robotics are part of the equation for sure, but will not be sufficient.

However, agriculture in Europe is already build on subsidizes and heavily regulated. So we have the tools, we just need to use them and defeat agro corps lobbying efforts. Not easy, considering a political party from an Agro PR firm won the elections in the Netherlands, and legitimized a toxic blend of corporate disinfo, conspiracy theories and populist violence.

Moving beyond the path of destruction seems as hopeless as ever.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#47

Post by Y-bar »

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…

Precisely! The people reiterating that study also acts like it is valid all around the world, including places where cats are not invasive. For example in mainland and southern Europe the cat has been tamed since at least 1200 BC and the wild cat has been since the ice age. Birds in those areas have long since adapted, as evident by the wild cat which predominately hunts ground-dwelling mammals.

It is of course a good argument to consider the study generally valid on e.g. the British isles and North America where the cat was more recently introduced into the fauna.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#48

Post by hef19898 »

988747 wrote: post #20
hef19898 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, and I have to admit I don't have any current numbers on that, that Europe is actually producing more food than we currently need. So cutting backnon industrial agriculture, ranging from grains to meat, so covering all sorts of foodstuffs, can only be a good thing, for people, the environment and animals.

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 no way small, just a bit above subsistance farming can compete with the surplus of industrial farming in, e.g., Europe. Take chicken for example, in Europe we prefer chicken breasts and legs, the wings are a far, far third place. As a result, a lot ofbthe chicken left overs, legs, wings and so in, didn't have a market in Europe. It got expoeted to Africa, with a purchasing price of close to nothing since the meat sold in Europe already covered costs, overhead and profits. With shipping being close to nothing per chicken wing, the imported food was way cheaper than locally produced food, driving a bunch of local farmers out of busimess and into poverty. And reducing local food production, increasing the risk of local famine while increasing dependency on global food markets (not really a good thing neither....).

Same principle applies for donated clothes, only now local tailors, often women, are affected.

So no, cutting back on industrial over production is by no means taking part in genocide (!) (you couldn't aim lower than that, could you?).

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#49

Post by msrenee »

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…

Ok, don't have outdoor cats because they live short lives with high risk of dying painfully.

They definitely do stalk feeders and add to the stressors already in place for bird species. More than one thing can contribute to the reduction of bird populations.

Re: Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

#50

Post by Symbiote »

jabiko wrote: post #11
taneq wrote: post #9

> Common bird time series in Europe have shown a general decline in abundance between 1980 and 2016 (−25.4% ± 2.8) In case anyone else was skimming through to find over what time period this occurred.

Thanks. It's always a bit annoying when someone throws around percentages of changes without giving the time frame.

The authors of the paper give the percentage right next to the time (as quoted), it's the submitter who has invented a new title.
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