Neonicotinoids are destroying bird populations. What can we do?

in #farming5 years ago

A new generation of pesticides known as neonicotinoids emerged in the late 80s and 1990s, and quickly became the new standard in pest control due to their unrivalled effectiveness.

At the time, they were marketed as more green than organophosphate and carbamate insecticides, as less of the chemicals ended up in birds and other small mammals.

However, their sheer effectiveness at killing insects is causing a catastrophic collapse of bird populations in many places around the world, due to a lack of food.

Insect numbers have dropped by around 80% since the introduction of neonicotinoids, resulting in a drop of bird populations between 30-70% since the beginning of this century.

Government targets aimed at a 50% reduction in pesticide usage, but sales have instead grown year-on-year.

The sad irony is that birds are nature's own pest control – if we wipe them out through starvation we will create a cobra effect of even greater magnitude once, for whichever reasons, we must stop using pesticides.

If we are to feed billions of people without destroying our ecosystems, we need to do agriculture differently.

Firstly, we need to end monoculture cultivation, which are very vulnerable to infestation. We must return to polyculture and permaculture techniques that work with the flow of the systems of nature instead of against it. Smaller fields, biodiversity-rich hedgerows, and increased crop rotation can be used to create a healthier, richer countryside.

Permaculture has been trialled successfully in small, disparate subsistence farms, but it has yet to be properly scaled up to the level of industrial farming. We must invest in learning how to scale this knowledge to fit within economies of scale.

Whilst such techniques may be less efficient, we can compensate through technology, applying robotics to better manage the planting and harvesting of crops in smaller areas. A less-intensive requirement for fertilising and killing bugs may in the end work out to be less expensive for farm owners, even ignoring environmental externalities. Of course, If externalities were properly accounted for, then these alternatives would seem even more attractive.

We can also move to vertical farming, in pristine, hermetically-sealed environments that pests cannot enter, so that pesticides and herbicides are no longer required. Country land may instead be re-wilded, or turned into orchards and groves.

We don't have long to make these shifts. We are presently on track to the complete destruction of practically all wild birds in intensively-cultivated lands within a generation.

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"Permaculture has been trialled successfully in small, disparate subsistence farms, but it has yet to be properly scaled up to the level of industrial farming."

Monocultures are necessary for industrialization. Robotics and AI may make permaculture more potential, but in fact, as you note, it is in controlled environments such as vertical farms that it is possible to exclude pests and reduce pesticide use.

The collapse of natural ecosystems is highly profitable to agriculture. However, it also decimates the quality of life of the beneficiaries of agroindustry, and hoists them on their own petard. The real solution to agroindustry is DIY. Decentralization is the cutting edge of every industry today, and agriculture is leading the charge. Aquaponics promises to enable everyone to eat organic fresh food they grow themselves.

The only way to have healthy ecosystems is to allow them to occupy real estate that is not doused with chemical pollution. The end of the extant economic system of industrial parasitization is necessary to end the privatization of natural ecosystems and the death of life.

Fortunately, this is happening today.

As good becomes harder to find, I think more & more will be motivated to grow their own healthily. Hopefully it will be enough to make a real difference

When I was a kid the yellowjackets at my house would swarm you like angry soldiers & sting you as much as they could till you got far far away.

The other day I was literally pulling hives out of an old car by hand, that the same type of yellowjackets were trying to nest in & they barely even buzzed around me to defend themselves & no stings at all.

My guess is that it is a symptom of pesticides or geoengineering, lots of possibilities. None good

We need to protect nature & fight the chemical & heavy metal industry

On permaculture, here are some good videos:



To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.

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