Loss of Soil and New UK Strategy.

(image)Spreading organic fertilizer

• Talk about U-turns! Picture the incredulity on Peter Melchett's face (Policy Director for the Soil Association) when he heard Hilary Benn's(Defra Secretary of State) proclamation about the need for a strategy to protect the soil for agriculture. "UK land has been steadily degraded by 200 yrs of intensive farming and industrial pollution, warned the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs(Defra)in a major study of soils".(Guardian,30/09/2009, John Vidal).
  It might have taken Peter Melchett a while to recover from the shock of hearing this belated statement from the government (belated by 60 years),because this is the length of time the soil association has been telling the government about the effects of intensive farming on soil. He welcomed Defra's..' recognition that introducing large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer was not sustainable in the long term,' but added that the government's proposed measures did not go nearly far enough.( from Community Newswire Reporters,Sep.24,2009)
  It appears that the government is finding it increasingly difficult to ignore the evidence which is presented to them. The real situation can no longer be disguised by assurances that intensive farming methods are the way forward to feed the world.Until a few weeks ago Defra was dismantling existing environmental measures which had served to maintain the quality of soil, and a healthy environment. It still aggressively promotes the use of systems and chemicals which degrade the soil, pollute the environment and damage health:-
  1)Defra defends farming of large monocrops which it claims produce higher yields.This system depends on high inputs of artificial fertilizers and pesticides.
  2)Earlier this year when new EU rules removed around 15% of pesticides, Hilary Benn confirmed his intention to vote against the new pesticide rules when they came before the Agricultural Council for final agreement.
  3)When Georgina Downs won her High Court case against the government for its failure to protect rural residents from pesticides, Hilary Benn refused to acknowledge the evidence and took it to appeal. As Georgina Downs states,' the government adopts the improper approach of 'balancing' harm to human health against the benefits of pesticide use, in which it accepts a degree of damage to human health on the basis that it is outweighed by other benefits(eg cost/economic benefits for farmers)..'
  4)Behind the premise that more land would be needed to produce food for rising populations, set-aside land and buffer zones were ploughed up in the last two years to use for food production.Set-aside land had previously provided valuable habitat for wildlife, and helped counteract flooding and wind erosion.
  5)Planting of large acreages of monocrops require the removal of hedgerows which previously prevented wind erosion of soil and run-off after heavy rains.
  All the above practices are currently being driven forward by Defra, so it is difficult to see how they will reconcile such industrialised onslaught on the land with their recent statement that .."Soil erosion already results in the annual loss of around 2.2m tonnes of topsoil. This costs farmers £9m a year in lost production. Climate change has the potential to increase erosion rates through hotter, drier conditions that make soils more susceptible to wind erosion, coupled with intense rainfall incidents that can wash rain away."(Hilary Benn, from The Guardian,24th sept.2009)
  Professor Bob Watson (Defra's chief scientist) compiled the report on loss of soil, and to be fair to him, he has warned the government regularly about the drawbacks of intensive agriculture and the limits of GM's in a future strategy for food production across the world, not simply in the UK. In April 2008, IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge and Technology for Development) published a report after four years of research by 400 international scientists. Professor Watson provided oversight and management of this project..IAASTD described their report as follows."This Assessment is a constructive initiative and important contribution that all governments need to take forward to ensure that agricultural knowledge, science and technology fulfils its potential to meet the development and sustainability goals of the reduction of hunger and poverty, the improvement of rural livelihoods and human health, and facilitating equitable, socially, environmentally and economically sustainable development." The following governments approved the executive summary of the report;Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, People’s Republic of China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gambia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Iran, Ireland, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Maldives, Republic of Moldova, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Republic of Palau, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Solomon Islands, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, United Republic of Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom of Great Britain, Uruguay, Viet Nam, Zambia (58 countries)
  The report can be found at http://www.agassessment.org/index.cfm?Page=About_IAASTD&ItemID=2

Despite this the UK government, and the National Union of Farmers preferred to plough ahead(excuse the pun) with current agricultural practices.
This time around, with the report on soil erosion, Professor Watson is evidently treading carefully in his attempts to keep UK farmers on board.When interviewed on Radio 4 news, where it was suggested that the soil association had been warning the government for several decades about soil degradation, Professor Watson enumerated the efforts that farmers were now making to counteract soil degradation caused by intensive farming. Unfortunately he only managed to think of three rather tame and unconvincing solutions used by farmers, which he had to keep repeating.. One is to use organic manure rather than synthetic nitrogen, secondly to reduce deep ploughing, and thirdly, is a high tech solution of using GPS(global positioning satellite)-guided machinary to test for harvesting crops and testing for nutrients and soil quality. This allows farmers to use nitrogen fertilizers and chemicals more economically apparently, but I wonder if they simply apply more to where it is needed most. I think that Professor Watson is trying his best, but the government and allied food and farming industries prefer their big profits as opposed to farming sustainably.

Energy Dependence of Modern Agriculture.

Above - fourteen 600kg bags of nitrate.

Way back in 1980 Fritjof Capra (physicist) wrote a critique of Western societies overreliance on the ‘scientific method’. He predicted how a reductionist approach, and obsession with economic growth and production was depleting the planet’s natural resources. He even accurately predicted catastrophic climate change through ozone depletion. Not many people took any notice back then, but we’re paying for it now.

The world’s governments have emerged from the G20 summit claiming to have taken ‘unprecedented steps’ to rectify the global recession. Infact they are stubbornly avoiding dealing with the real issues. Rather than grasping the opportunity to invest in new technologies to counter the effects of climate change and depleted natural resources, our world leaders have instead chosen the same old paradigms that led us to the current crisis.

In his book ‘The Turning Point’ Capra made reference to the work of the geologist M.King Hubbert who as early as the 1950’s predicted the rate of depletion of the planet’s natural resources. There have been decades of negligence by Western governments.

A report by Caroline Lucas(Green MEP)in 2006 cuts through the establishment prevarication. It’s called ‘Fuelling The Food Crisis-The Impact of Peak Oil on Food Security.’

Whilst there is no concencus on how soon global oil will peak(the point at which half of the total oil known to exist has been consumed, and beyond which extraction goes into irreversible decline) many expect it to occur well before 2020.

Caroline Lucas states…..
..."Petroleum has become the lifeblood of both industrialised and developing economies. It would be difficult to find a single product available to us in the UK that has not consumed crude oil derivatives (as well as natural gas or coal) during its production, distribution and retail. Yet there is increasing evidence that days of easy access to cheap oil are fast running out.
The implications of this are vast. Since the first oil crisis of 1973, some of the inevitable consequences of addiction to fossil fuels have been well documented, particularly in terms of its impact on our transport systems. What has been much less analysed, however, is the impact of higher oil prices on our increasingly industrialised food system. This report aims to help address that question, by highlighting the extraordinary dependence of existing food and agriculture policy on cheap oil, and by demonstrating why this will have to change....
In my work as an MEP, I have long argued that the European Union's policies of ever greater free trade and more open markets must change, since they destroy the livelihoods of small and medium sized farmers, jeopardising food security, and increasing our dependence on imports. They also adversely affect the environment, as agricultural commodities are transported ever longer distances,and are processed and packaged to survive the journey. To these social and environmental problems must be added a new imperative - weaning the industrialised food production system itself off its high-energy use....
The priorities are clear. The Common Agricultural Policy must be replaced by a policy framework that minimises fossil-fuel use through the prioritisation of self-reliance, so that Europe can meet this new challenge head on, delivering food security into the future. The current emphasis on ever increasing international trade needs to be replaced by policies to relocalise our food systems.Finally, the EU must urgently refocus its development policies, so that poorer countries can put food security before exports, and replace their dependence on Western markets by much greater national and regional self-reliance. These are ambitious goals. The purpose of this report is to demonstrate why they are so urgently needed.
Higher energy and fuel prices will be a triple blow for the synthetic fertiliser industry, and for those farmers that have become dependent on this quick fix and are unwilling to consider the alternatives.Firstly, because of the large amount of energy required to extract ores and consumed during the manufacturing process; secondly, the use of natural gas as a feedstock, and thirdly, the costs of the fuel required to transport these bulk commodities. The export of fertilisers and their raw materials are a significant constituent of sea-borne bulk trade: the fourth most traded bulk commodity in world shipping trade after iron ore, coal and cereals.
Initially, the energy required to produce nitrogen fertilizer was provided by cheap electricity and derivatives of coal, inputs that were mostly available only in industrialised countries. Trade in fertilisers has increased because the fertiliser industry has gradually relocated plants to countries that have low electricity prices as well as the required natural gas feedstock. These include the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Venezuela. The need to access raw materials forother fertilizers has seen the industry also move into areas that have extensive natural reserves, including Africa, China, the US, and Morocco. Worldwide demand for fertiliser has necessitated significant levels of international trade. Shipping costs are relatively high for these low-value bulk commodities: the lower the value of the shipped material, the greater the incidence of transport in the landed cost.
The fertiliser industry does not see peak oil and natural gas as being a problem for fertiliser producers. According to the International Fertiliser Industry Association"...processes for ammonia production can use a wide range of energy sources. Thus, even when oil and gas supplies eventually dwindle, very large reserves of coal are likely to remain. Coal reserves are sufficient for well over 200 years at current production levels, and their location is geographically diverse. 60% of China's nitrogen fertiliser production is currently based on coal." The consequences in terms of climate change, however, would be catastrophic. Additionally, production of ammonia from coal is 70% more energy intensive than production from natural gas.
Given the high energy input required to produce nitrogen fertiliser, it is inevitable that manufacturing costs have risen as oil and gas prices worldwide have increased. Since 2003, ammonium nitrate costs, for example, have risen from £90 per tonne to over £170 per tonne in early 2006.”….

Even without the Peak Oil situation, Capra describes the damaging effects of fertilizer use in agriculture. Remember he wrote this in 1982.
"...The long-term effects of excessive 'chemotherapy' in agriculture have proven disastrous for the health of the soil and the people, for our social relations, and for the entire eco-system of the planet. As the same crops are planted and fertilized synthetically year after year, the balance in the soil is disrupted. The amount of organic matter diminishes, and with it the soil's ability to retain moisture. The humus content is depleted and the soil's porosity reduced. The changes in soil texture entail a multitude of interrelated consequences. The depletion of organic matter makes thesoil dead and dry; water runs through it but does not wet it.
The ground becomes hard-packed, which forces farmers to use more powerful machines. On the other hand, dead soil is more susceptible to wind and water erosion, which are taking an increasing toll. For example, half of the topsoil in Iowa has been washed away in the last twenty-five years, and in1976 two-thirds of America's agricultural counties were designated drought disaster areas. What is often called 'drought,' 'wind breaking down the land,' or 'winterkill are all consequences of sterile soil.
The massive use of chemical fertilizers has seriously damaged the natural process of nitrogen fixation by damaging soil bacteria involved in this process. As a consequence crops are losing their ability to take up nutrients from the soil and becoming more and more addicted to synthetic chemicals.Because their efficiency in absorbing nutrients this way is much lower, not all the chemicals are taken up by the crop but leach into the ground water or drain from the fields into rivers and lakes".....

Intensive industrial agriculture, reasons why not.

What is intensive/industrial farming?

Intensive farming is an agricultural system through which (it is claimed) more food will be produced and the lower the price will be for the consumer.

This system infact generates huge external economic costs and other serious impacts on humanity and the environment:-

• Loss of farmers' livlihoods, and cause of malnutrition in developing nations.


• Severe and chronic illnesses caused by pesticides/fungicides


• Environmental pollution.


• Soil degradation.


• Lack of biodiversity.


• Extinction of crop varieties and gene pools.


• Loss of nutritional value of food.


• Huge external economic costs, involved in production and food-supply chain.

More information on the above included in this post.

• Brief description of farming system below:-
  
  · Monoculture. Large areas of a single crop, often grown year after year on the same land, or with little crop rotation.
  
  · Agrichemicals. Intensive use of pesticides and fertilizers to fight pests and diseases and provide nutrients.
  
  · Hybrid seed. Use of specialized hybrids designed to favour large scale food distribution, eg ability to ripen off the vine, to withstand shipping and handling.
  
  · High mechanization.
  
  · Large scale irrigation- heavy water use and in some cases growing of crops in otherwise unsuitable regions (rice paddies on arid land).
  
  · Genetically engineered crops. Use of genetically modified varieties(GMOs) designed for large scale production (with ability to withstand selected herbicides)
  
  Opponents of the intensive system of agriculture say that politicians, business leaders and the media are misleading the public in their claim which states ‘ the more that chemicals and technology are applied to agriculture, the more food will be produced and the lower the price will be for the consumer.’
  
  Opponents also question the fundamental objectives of the structure of the modern food chain.:-
  
  The Ecologist Magazine, in its article ‘Fatal Harvest’(01/11/2002) says ‘The myth of cheapness completely ignores the staggering externalized costs of the food, costs that do not appear on supermarket checkout receipts. Conventional analyses of the cost of food completely ignore the exponentially increasing social and environmental costs consumers are currently paying and will have to pay in the future. Americans spend tens of millions of dollars in taxes, medical care, toxic clean-ups, insurance premiums and other pass-along costs to subsidise industrial food producers. Given the ever –increasing health, environmental and social destruction involved in industrial agriculture, the real price of food production for future generations is incalculable.’
  
  ‘Around 31,000 tonnes of chemicals are used in farming in yhe UK each year to kill weeds, insects and other pests that attack crops and in 2004, 40% of the fruit, vegetables and bread samples tested in the UK contained pesticides. There is very little control over how these chemicals are used in the non-organic sector and in what quantities or combinations. The Food Standards Agency recocnizes that most people do not want pesticides in their food. Pesticides have a devastating effect on the environment and there are real concerns about the effectiveness of official safety regulations of pesticides, and some risks to human health are unknown.’ (Soil Association)
  
  For information concerning exposure to agricultural pesticides for rural residents in the UK, visit the website pesticidescampaign.co.uk
  
  Summary of Impacts of Intensive Agriculture.
  
  1. Health problems. Vast quantities of pesticides and fungicides are sprayed onto farmland every year- 31,000 tons in the UK. This leads to a range of health problems. Pesticide exposure can happen through skin contact, inhalation, or pesticide residues in food and water. .Studies have shown that a combination of low-level insecticides, herbicides and nitrates can effect our bodies in ways chemicals in isolation do not. ‘Studies have shown that 3 pesticides consumed together equal up to 100 times the effect of any one on its own.(sometimes referred to as the cocktail effect) Along with their cancer risk, pesticides can cause myriad other health problems-especially for young people. For example, exposure to neurotoxic compounds like PCB’s and organophosphate insecticides during critical periods of development can cause permanent damage to the brain and nervous and reproductive systems’(Ecologist Magazine,article Fatal Harvest).
  
  2. Environmental Pollution..
  
  1. Pollution though spraydrift in the air. Spraydrift can be carried for many miles by the wind/air currents..Rain water in parts of Europe contain such high levels of dissolved pesticides, it would be illegal to sell it as drinking water.
  2. Pollution through agrichemical build-ups and run-off.
  3. Carbon emissions. Use of fossil fuels for agrichemical manufacture and for farm machinery and long-distance distribution. Processing and packaging also adds to high energy use.
  
  3. Soil degradation. Heavy use of fertilizers, and lack of crop rotation, causes degradation of soil quality and lack of soil fertility.
  “The overuse of chemicals and machines on industrial farms erodes away the topsoil-the fertile earth from which all food is grown. The US has lost half of its topsoil since 1960, and continues losing topsoil 17 times faster than nature can create it”(The Ecologist)
  
  4.Lack of Biodiversity. Biodiversity can refer to:-
  (1) Genetic diversity in agriculture
  (2) Animal/insect/plant species.
  
  The UN Food and Agriculture Organization report that 70% of genetic diversity in agriculture disappeared in this last century. The resulting monocultured crops are genetically limited and far more susceptible to insect blights, diseases and bad weather, than are diverse crops.
  
  Biodiversity in wildlife. Pesticides and fungicides are toxic to insects, fish and wildlife. Some birds, butterflies and non-pest insects have become endangered or extinct through intensive agriculture. This represents a threat to the ecological system.In addition many target insects and plants which damage crops are becoming resistant to pesticides. 1000 species of insects, plant diseases and weedsare now resistant to pesticides.
  
  5.Loss of indigenous crops. Indigenous crops are going out of production because demand is driven by the global market.
  
  6.Crop varieties and gene pools are under threat from monocropping system. - “The world’s crop gene pool contained in seeds is essential for increasing crop productivity, mitigating environmental stress such as climate change, pests and diseases, and ensuring a genetic resource base for the future. Crop diversity contained in the world’s seed collections is constantly under threat from natural and human-led disasters”(Jacques Diouf, Director of Food and Agriculture Organization of The United Nations.)

7.Loss of farmers' livlihoods. "The economic pressures of industrial
agriculture have led to a sharp decline in the numbers of so-called 'inefficient' farms with smaller family farms being particularly badly hit. For example in the US there were close to seven million farms in the 1930s, but less than 1.8 by the mid 1990s; in France 3 million farms in the 1960s, yet fewer than 700,000 in the 1990s, 450,000 farms in the UK, in the 1950s, half that number in the 1990s. Over the past 50 yrs the number of actual farmers has declined by 86% in Germany, 85% in France, 85% in Japan, 64% in the US, 59% in Korea, and 59% in the UK." (Food Wars,Tim Lang & Michael Heasman).

"In Brazil soybean cultivation displaces 11 agricultural workers for every one who finds employment.....In Argentina 60,000 farms went out of business while the area of 'Roundup Ready' soybean almost tripled. In 1998 there were 422,000 farms in Argentina while in 2002 there were 318,000. One and a half million Mexican farmers have been put out of work because of the Free Trade Agreement with America in which cheap (subsidized)American corn was imported." (GM Soya Disaster in Latin America, Hunger, Deforestation and Socio-Ecological Devastation.Professor Miguel A. Altieri, University of California, Berkeley and Professor Walter A. Pengue, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina).

8. Impact on nutritional value of food. This includes freshness, flavour and range of products available.
Research at Newcastle University has found that…”organically produced crops and dairy milk usually contain more ‘beneficial compounds’ such as vitamins and antioxidants. The research has shown up to 40% more beneficial compounds in vegetable crops and up to 90% more in milk. It has also found high levels of minerals, such as iron and zinc in organic produce” (Sunday Times, ‘Eat your words, all who scoff at organic food’, By Jon Ungoed-Thomas,Oct.28,2007)
. For a list of research results regarding nutritional value of organic versus intensively produced produce, see Soil Association Press release, 22/2/2008, ‘Soil Association response to Horizon programme’. ·

Genetically modified crops.

.“In the context of agriculture and animal husbandry this technology has far reaching implications as it allows the introduction into plants and animals of entirely new characteristics including genes originally found in unrelated plants, animals or micro-organisms. This is very different from traditional breeding practices”( From-‘How GM Crops Endanger Environment and Agriculture’. (Bharat Dogra, Mainstream Weekly, Saturday 26 January 2008.)

The crucial claim of gm protagonists is - because the world’s population is rising fast, famine and increasing food deficiency is inevitable without GM crops. They also claim that GM crops are good for consumers, farmers and the environment.

Opponents of GM’s point to how arguments for GM’s are based on a misreading of the worlds food problems. They say that the problem is one of distribution, and globalisation, rather than production. Further to this they strongly dispute the claims for GM crops made by corporates.

Further doubts regarding GM technology in agriculture is that they represent potential health hazards, and endanger the environment and agriculture. These issues are outlined in 'Potential Health Hazards of Genetically Engineered Foods’ by Stephen Lendman, -opednews.com March 2008.

In 2003, six principal countries grew 99% of the global transgenic crop area. The US grew 42.8 million hectares, followed by Argentina with 13.9 million, Canada 4.4million, Brazil 3 million, China 2.8 million and S.Africa 0.4 million hectares.

‘Friends of the Earth International’ has recently published a full, fact-based report called “who benefits from gm crops?"(Jan 2008)
The report seriously challenges the claims of GM proponents, and says they have failed to deliver on any of the proposed benefits, these are summarised below:-

• Claim-GM crops will need less spraying of pesticides and will therefore benefit the environment. FAILED


• Claim-Poor farmers will benefit. FAILED


• Claim-GM's will tackle hunger. FAILED
  
• Claim-Higher crop yields. FAILED
  Summary of report:-



• It describes how in the US there was a 15 fold increase in the use of herbicide Roundup between1994 and2004, because pests and weeds are becoming resistant to pesticides.


• Seed prices are on the rise, fewer suppliers means less competition and more market power to set prices.


• Fewer seed choices.


• Since gm cotton was adopted in the Makhatini Flats in South Africa, around three quarters of small farmers have gone out of business.


• Most commercial gm crops are grown for animal feed for western countries and biofuels. None have been used to address hunger and poverty issues.


• Brazilian experience in 2007 proved beyond doubt that gm crops are extensively contaminating conventional and organic soya.


• By the end of October 2007, it has been estimated that there have been over 900 cotton farmer suicides, or an average of three suicides a day (ENS, 3 October 2007;Wide angle,2007; Petition to Indian Prime Minister,Swift, April2007) Despite the increase in adoption of Bt cotton, this trend has not diminished, and farmers' livlihoods are under dire threat. In addition, many reports of poor performances of Bt cotton have been registered in the area ('The Hindu,' 16 February 2007)

Friends of the Earth International states...."in the US the biotech industry has still not introduced a single GM crop that has enhanced nutrition, higher yield potential, drought tolerance, salt tolerance or other promised traits..."

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