I am no Sandra Sully, but I did try and read with expression on ABC radio national’s Ockham’s Razor on Sunday. Hosted by Robyn Williams I got the spot after complaining to Williams about Jared Diamond hogging a whole hour of ‘The Science Show’ some months ago.
Anyway, in the speech – which you can hear via podcast or by listening to radio national this Wednesday evening at 9.45pm, and the transcript is at the website, click here – I take issue with Jared Diamond misrepresenting Australian agriculture and Ian Lowe’s attempt at reinventing science. But I go on to explain that I am concerned about rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and that I am quite happy to keep riding my bicycle.
A reader of this blog posted the following comment at a different thread earlier today:
I enjoyed your commentary on ABC Ockham’s Razor … I specifically found your comments regarding solution focused campaigns that will provide real environmental benefit thought provoking. You have agreed with Prof Tim Flannery regarding atmospheric carbon dioxide reduction levels. Would you also agree that the other solutions that he proposes for the individual like you and I are a great place to start for people that wish to make a difference for the environment and future generations? … I would really like to be a positive steward for future generations, so Tim Flannery’s suggestions are simple ways for me to try and make a difference, I guess I am just trying to also understand how I can make a judgement on what will deliver real benefits to future generations. (end of quote)
In Chapter 35 of his new book The Weather Makers, Tim Flannery makes the following recommendations for individuals who want to do their bit to reduce carbon dioxide emmissions:
1. Switch to green power (where the provider guarantees to source a percentage of power from renewables);
2. Switch to a solar hot water system;
3. Buy small devices where possible i.e. a small car, small fridge;
4. Consider buying a hybrid car.
Flannery writes on page 306, “If enough of us buy green power, solar panels, solar hot water sytems and hybrid vehicles, the cost of these items will plummet. This will encourage the sale of yet more panels and wind generators, and soon the bulk of domestic power will be generated by renewable technologies.”
Who agrees with Tim Flannery? What are some other ways of reducing our ecological footprint?
…………
I now have my own website www.jennifermarohasy.com that lists many of my newspaper articles, a few of my publications, and I will also endeavour to get more speeches up there. The website also gives me a capacity to send out a monthly newsletter to everyone who subscribes. So please subscribe and you will get to hear when, for example, I am next on Ockam’s Razor, click here!
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
I heard the program on podcast today. It was pretty good. You listed 4 things with global warming being one of them however did not touch in more detail on this.
Another is installing grid-tie solar panels. One of the easist and best is still replacing incandescant bulbs with compact fluoros (CFD).
I don’t agree with flannery. He’s picked the expensive, big ticket items. He will cost people more money than they need to spend. Doing it because ‘if enough people buy it the costs will plummet’ is a lousy reason for an individual to decide to do something.
Here’s some less exotic, less exciting, not quite as effective, but still very effective and MUCH CHEAPER ways to do something on global warming:
1. Install a AAA showerhead (saves energy for hot water). Probably the most cost effective greenhouse reduction measure there is. Will pay for itself in reduced energy costs in a year. Huge range available now.
2. Install a couple of fluro (or compact fluro) lights around the house. If you are unsure whether you like the kind of light they give off, stick them in high use but low requirement areas such as the outdoor front light, hallways etc.
3. Don’t worry about buying a small fridge. Bar fridges are LESS efficient! Next time you need a fridge upgrade, just buy a fridge to suit your needs, but make sure it is 4+stars – many fridges are these days. Fridge is probably next biggest electricity consumer after electric hot water.
4. If you have mains gas, make sure your next hot water system is gas. Electric hot water is the biggest consumer of electricity in most homes.
5. Pay attention to your home and how it responds to climate. Getting a bit hot in the north facing loungeroom in summer? Try shading the windows a bit. Bit cold in the backroom in winter? How about a door snake, shutting doors when heating the room, closing windows when its really cold outside.
6. NExt time you get a car, buy a fuel efficient one. Doesn’t have to be hybrid, that’s just for the cashed up at this stage.
7. Forget about grid-tie solar panels unless you are an enthusiast or have plenty of money. This is the most expensive way to reduce your household contribution to emissions.
8. When buying any whitegoods, pay attention to the energy ratings and water ratings (stars). OFten you can buy more efficient models without it costing any more – not a direct correlation between efficiency and cost.
8. When you next get a washing machine, buy a front loader. Saves STACKS of water, and if you wash warm or hot, it therefore saves stacks of energy. They don’t take longer if you use quick wash selection, which is fine unless your clothes are covered in mud. Washing machine is the biggest user of water after garden and shower.
9. When putting in plants in your garden, buy ones that don’t need watering.
10. Most important: don’t listen to me. I’m just a guy on the web. Don’t listen to flannery either. THink of someone you trust, and ask them. Maybe your electricity company? Maybe planet ark? IF you are interested, then educate yourself.
Could think of more, but i’m probably getting a bit carried away.
Steve
I commend your list and suggest you add to it and re-post some time – really good to see. Nothing wrong with efficiency.
However overall a couple of problems.
(1) Even if we all did these things – how much difference would it make overall (he says not having done the calculation) – I’m guessing a bit but not enough. – so we still need to do something at the source of power generation – options – solar, nuclear or scrubbing the CO2 out.
(2) So if we get the greenhouse warming impact from (i) nobody taking notice (ii) China and India modernising (iii) the die is already cast fro CO2 growth and technical fixes too far away – that will send most of us to the air-conditioners in heat waves – no amount of passive design will be enough. And that means air-conditioners are more widespread. I think we are moving to a fully air-conditioned society anyway.
(3) Many new homes built everyday with no idea of house/sun orientation, insulation standards, water recycling etc. Not sure when councils will ever get serious. 10,000s of homes each year – most of them dreadfully inefficient. Easier to hang an air-con on the side of the house.
(4) interestingly in some green urban developments – a trend is now noticed that if people has enough money – the issue becomes “oh buga it” – let’s just spend more and pay more for the water and air-con anyway. So perhaps people don’t want to cut back – just earn more so you can have what you want (obviously not universal). It’s the difference between – dolphin free tuna and no tuna at all. most people think they finished with the environment when they got a yellow wheelie bin. How far can you push people before the voter backlash.
There is a lot of feigned concern for “the environment” and “the global warming” problem. But how many people would take a major lifestyle or economic hit. I reckon would be impossible to sell it politically.
(5) what if you have a larger family and need a big car – not everyone can be satisfied with a little car. Would 2 small efficient cars use more (or about the same) as a big car (e.g. a Commodore/Falcon). Probably need to also look at whole of life costs as well. What cars do taxi fleets buy (in general?). Of course if we were rich enough we could all live close to work and cycle. We wouldn’t be ferrying the kids to footy and ballet classes etc.
You could also add rain water tanks (popular at the moment) and grey water systems (depends on block size and whether you’re up to the technology complexity (sort of like owning a pool – not everybody is up to it) – also an electricity hit here for the pump – startup current is the gotcha.
So I’m not saying your suggestions are not worthy or that we should not try. Efficiency surely is a good thing in the long run. It maybe that it is simply not enough of a reduction overall.
So .. .. it’s a big problem eh ? If this is so we need BIG scale technological fixes.
(or if the sceptics are right – not a problem at all)
Also not wishing to detract in anyway way from Jen’s most excellent presentation on Ockham’s Razor (does being obsequious get you banned less?) I should draw posters attention to:
Busting Myths About Farming by Mike Stephens
below her talk on the ABC web site.
A very passionate pro-agriculture and positive vision that Jen’s talk builds on – combined with Ian Mott’s views in a previous post gives some good hope for a better future.
I think the challenge is still there for a better city/bush dialogue, we can build rural landscapes that have both biodiversity and hydrological outcomes – as well as having some good old fashioned and maybe some really fandangled high tech farming too. To do this we need positive suggestions, new ideas for rural landscapes and people have to meet half way.
And I think it may transcend simple economics – I think there’s a bit of ethos and sense of the aesthetic in there too.
David Tribe – bring on the GM solutions – but explain to us why the benefits are so great and the risks so low. If the cotton industry has seriously reduced pesticide use by 80% (and it wasn’t just drought rangeland conditions a nd low Heliothis years) – well has to be good news (except for the chemical companies – but maybe they’re evolving too).
Phil – I enjoyed that program as well. I was very interested in Jen’s statistic that GM cotton has saved 85% of pesticides. That is a huge gain.
I really have no objection to GM at all. After all breeding programs etc are just a different form of it and we have been doing that for thousands of years. I objected to large corporations suing farmers for saving seeds. The ONLY objection I have is corporations getting in charge of a very precious resource – humanities seed bank.
Steve – all your suggestions are really good. I do agree with the grid-tie – it is for enthusiasts like myself, however in the future roof top solar panels will form a major part of a distributed power generation net.
In WA we get a rebate for a front loader and water saving shower heads. When we got ours our water use dropped dramatically. The difference is that our top loader used 200 litres per wash whereas the front loader uses 50 litres.
Another is to buy a pool cover. I am really anal about putting the cover on my pool and hate having to top it up.
Eating less meat is one very easy way to reduce energy and resource consumption. I don’t know why it gets mentioned so rarely in these sorts of lists.
Another which is a bit less straightforward, but worth looking at, is whether investment in high quality teleconferencing facilities to replace/reduce the need to travel (esp aeroplane travel) for meetings, hearings, etc would deliver a reduction in footprint (and expenditure) over time.
I did list a great, inexpensive way to save 25% of your water bill but then deleted it. I was also going to suggest buying some land and regenerating native forest (as both me and my father did) might be the best thing to do about CO2 but after the betrayal of forest owners under the Veg Act, that is just not going to happen.
Come to think of it, you folks better redouble your efforts because your government has just created a whole new cohort who will sit back drinking tea as the next bushfire bowls round the hill. We forest owners used to risk our lives fighting other people’s fires. We believed we were part of the community and were protected by rights and liberties enjoyed by all. We were mistaken. So get in there and mind your carbon stocks folks. It will take about 50,000 of you to undo the consequences of me not showing up any more. So fight your own #%@&# fires.
Phil and Andrew,
A big (huge?) problem with the way that some environmenal groups market themselves at the moment is that they fail to -pragmatically- fill in the gaps between where we are now, and the vision of a sustainable society.
Its very easy to say ‘this is where we need to be’, and very hard to work out a practical way to get there. If you are too idealistic in your vision and supposedly simple solutions, then eventually people start to ignore you. I see this happening to a lot of green groups at the moment.
Being vegetarian is probably a great way to reduce resource consumption, and its good to reiterate that point from time to time. A vision of the future where everyone eats vego sounds like a much more sustainable society.
But when you are thinking about the most useful things that people are going to do now, telling people they should become vegetarian i think is great way to get them to ignore you because that’s too big a stretch.
Lets focus on the easy wins first, especially on this particular blog :-). Lets, step from here and go forwards. Lets get some movement.
And Phil, agree with you on supply side stuff, but this thread is about what individuals can do yah?
Ender – pool cover is great. But no pool is better. Got a beach or a public pool nearby?
Pools use stacks of water and stacks of energy. you’d need a $10,000+ solar power system to offset the energy consumption of the pool pump. If you have alternatives to a pool at home, better to use them.
If you go to energy australia website here:
http://saver.energyaustralia.com.au/start.html
you can do a simple or detailed (your choice) model of where energy is consumed in your home. Fascinating, and great interface, easy questions, good info, very comprehensive. There’s also the chance to win a hybrid car at the moment at the website.
(I don’t work for energy australia i promise 🙂 )
Steve – you know I live about 10 mins from the beach . This is really bad I know. Try about a $20 000 system – I have priced it as I am becoming a solar systems designer.
In the end I am just as bad a consumer as everyone else.
Doh! Well, at least you don’t get sand in your swimmers in the pool!
Nice one on the decision to become a solar designer. Market will only grow. You going to install as well?
How does widespread vegetarianism help the environment? If we all became vegetarians it would require an enormous increase in cropping, with consequent reduction in diversity of plant life due to all those monoculture crops and conversion of rangeland to cropping. Not to mention increased pesticide use and/or increased GM crops (if these things are actually bad for the environment).
Considering humans have been eating meat for hundreds of thousands of years, how does stopping eating meat suddenly make society more “sustainable”?
Paul,
I for one think we should eat more
1. kangaroo, see:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=199
and
2. minke whales, see:
see http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3634 .
From an energy perspective there are certainly advantages in GM soy over grain fed beef.
Being rural based and not having broadband meant I listened to some of the presentations on Ockhams Razor on Real.
Mike Stephens was philosophical on rural life; my understanding that for many people to sell the farm to free up their assets is a traumatic process – OK if you are retiring but not OK if you are still working.
I know that when we 9eventually) sell up we will do OK but it wont be like winning Lotto, moving home is a wrench.
Many I know fit that category, reasonably happy with the rural life but keenly aware of the cultural divide brought on by distance, perception and lack of cash.
I’ll try to catch the repeat, if I can stay awake.
Are you sure Jennifer? I have eaten some kangaroo that I wish to forget.
By the same token I have eaten some pretty old cows too, might be the processing?
As for whales, they capture the spirit of freedom for the eco warrior, you cant eat a sacred idol even if its an animal.
“From an energy perspective there are certainly advantages in GM soy over grain fed beef.”
And disadvantages nutritionally. Range fed beef is better all round, I suspect.
I agree about the kangaroos and whales. Imagine whale steaks at the local supermarket!
Rog, as I wrote in my piece for OLO (see above link):
“I enjoyed the most magnificent meal of char grilled kangaroo fillets (on a bed of warm potato and horseradish salad with beetroot jus) over looking the Yarra River some weeks ago.”
And I buy kangaroo-meat sausages from Woolies at St Lucia (for those who live in Brisbane). Makes environmental sense and tastes good too! I am passionate about environmentally-friendly delicious food.
And why not eat the ‘sacred idol’ – so you care more about idols than saving the environment!
Steve – I think so as I was a RAAF technician and I have most of the skills necessary. I am not sure where the money is. My wife does not drive so the pool is a real help with her back so it works out OK.
Rog – why not buy a cheap MP3 player as all these programs are podcasted. I download them using a free program called iPodder – I am pretty sure you can schedule downloads with it. Then listen to them at your lesiure. I use my PDA to listen to the downloaded MP3s. You can pick up really cheap iPods (though you do not really need one) from eBay at the moment because a models have come out. An iPod mini would be less than $100.00 since the nano was released. A local discount store had 128M MP3 players for $30.00.
Paul – it takes roughly 8 kgs of plants to produce 1 kg of meat. If we just ate the plants instead then more than 8 times the amount of food would be available ot less area would have to cultivated using less water and fertiliser. In ancient Japan for many years it was illegal to eat meat and they got their protien from soy products like tofu and okara. We feed 8 kgs of soybeans to a cow to get 1 kg of meat which has does not have 8 times the protein of the original soybeans.
Ender, its the size of the download that kills it.
Jennifer, its OK to have your Kangaroo served in a nice restaurant etc etc but to be acceptable to the mainstream it will need more than “jus” to kick it along. It might need a media makeover.
Roo wont do in a burger as it is too lean, in the US they inject fat in the beef if it is under 20/25%. Its got to hit the char grill and sizzle.
Greeks traditionally eat goat, or kid, but after living in Australia wouldnt touch it with a barge pole. Its very gamey.
As for whales, funny how they are worshipped by peace lovers, is this animism? Whales are impressive at sea, if you have never seen one before. I think horses are impressive too, I have eaten horse in Paris (slow gallopers) but it would not be popular in this house right now.
Ender – Have you ever tried eating 8 kg of grass? It seems to be a common misconception that beef in Australia is produced mainly by feeding grain. Mostly it is pasture fed, with some supplementation with grain if necessary. It is more expensive to grow plants that humans can eat than to grow grass that cattle can eat, even if it takes a bigger area. Besides, much range land is unsuitable for horticulture, but very suitable for grazing.
Humans are physiologically designed to eat meat.
And the clincher; If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did He make them out of meat?
Paul
There’s plenty of studies which show that producing meat uses more resources (energy, water, soil) than producing (most) non-meat foods. This is not to say that veges, grains, fruit, etc don’t have their own impacts, but it is clearly less to produce the equivalent amount of nutrition.
It is obviously true that humans can healthily eat meat, but it is also true that we can healthily survive without it.
In any case, I specifically said “eat less meat”, rather than “go vegetarian” (not that there’s anything wrong with that), specifically because of the reason similar to what Jennifer stated – something practical, easily achievable and shouldn’t make people go “too hard”, which some people do seem to feel when vegetarianism is suggested to them.
Paul – thats a good quote – I can’t remember where it came from.
No-one would expect humans to eat grass however the soybean is a legume that fixes nitrogen into the soil. Soy protein is in every way the same as animal protein.
I am with Andrew that I try to eat less meat. Mainly from a health point of view as my father had heart trouble and the more I do to help the lower my risk becomes. A secondary benefit is that it help the environment a bit. I am in no way a vegetatarian however several meals we cook have no meat.
Roo meat – er nooo, I rather have a rollmop or if its fresh, the liver of a killer, or the rump of a bumped off wether. Best of all is biltong from antelope, takes hours to chew and unlike Wrigleys, is digestible too.
Andrew – I take your point about reducing meat consumption as opposed to vegetarianism, however, your underlying premise is that producing meat causes more harm to the environment than producing edible plants.
I don’t think it is that clear cut.
1) Grazing land is much more diverse than crops, as far as number of species. It has a number of native and introduced grasses, as well as native and introduced birds and animals co-existing with the cattle, sheep etc.
2) Grazing land requires less irrigation than crops. Of course this varies, but the vast majority of grazing land relies on natural rainfall, not so for a lot of crops, especially ones that replace meat.
3) A lot of grazing is done on land which is unsuitable for cropping. If food production is displaced from this land, it puts more pressure on more arable land used for crops.
4) Meat production has useful byproducts, eg. leather. And production of useful products such as wool has meat as a byproduct. Have these effects been taken into account when calculating resource consumption of meat versus plant food?
Ender – Humans can’t use grass as food, but cattle can and they convert it into meat. They don’t have to be fed food that humans can use.
I won’t start on the “less meat is healthier” topic except to say that we evolved to eat meat.
Andrew
I think your argument is probably based upon analyses conducted in the northern hemisphere. The resources required to grow animals in Europe and the US are very high; most animals I have seen in Europe are housed almost all the time, feed is collected and brought to them, and a lot of that feed is human consumptable grain.
As Paul points out, Australia is a different context and most meat and a lot of dairy produce is from pastures not digestable by humans. Ruminants run well on cheap fuel.
European and US agriculture is heavily focussed upon paying farmers to keep the countryside looking nice. It’s a form of land management. This is either by subsidising production, or in the EU they have even started to pay farmers so much per hectare to do nothing with their land, some farmers can make a comfortable living by doing nothing but keeping the ducks in rows.
Weeelll. ..
Paul – both cause some harm.
Crop lands – issues .. .. erosion, loss soil structure & carbon, salinity, possible emissions off-site of herbicides, pesticides, fertilisers and sediment. And removal of lots of river flows for irrigation.
Grazing lands – some studies put 20% of northern Australia permanently damaged by overgrazing – usually combination of drought, overgrazing and lack of appropriate fire regime (either too much in the far north or not enough in middle and south). Consequences – soil loss, pasture species change, woodland thickening, noxious weeds, introduced grass species – Buffel grass, soil acidification from Stylo legumes maybe, loss of native biodiversity, tree clearing in some areas, feral animals and kangaroos plagues (helped by European provided additional watering points), wind erosion. Soil may end up on Barrier Reef e.g. overgrazing in Burdekin contributes 2-5 times pre-European sediment and nutrient loads to the inner Reef lagoon.
Soil loss is often not in balance with soil genesis.
(Caveat: Jen might wish to comment/argue on rates and effects).
Certainly grazing converts low quality pasture into high quality protein but animals are often “finished” in feed-lots using grain or cotton seed. Inefficient energy conversion perhaps but market likes taste much better.
Anyway all that sounds very negative – but no system is perfect – most agriculture and pastoralism has some impact. It’s science’s (and farmers) job to find ways of improving and sustaining production for all of us.
Here’s one I’ve NEVER seen on these “help the environment” lists.
Drink less artificial drinks, ie beer, wine, spirits, tea, coffee, soft drinks, bottled water.
Less monoculture crops such as barley, hops, sugar cane. Don’t even get me started on the environmental impact of vineyards!
Not to mention the resources used in producing, packaging, transporting and storing these products. Less aluminium refining, less power used for refrigeration.
As an added bonus, the infrastucture to get drinkable water right into our homes already exists.
The health benefits are obvious, reduced obesity, less road accidents, reduced tooth decay. There’s probably many more.
Adam’s ale, anyone?
Is monoculture a bad thing. Does diversity matter.
An optimum level of diversity is more resilient, economically and environmentally.
But there are checks and balances. A highly diverse hobby farm is, at the end of the day, less productive per hectare than a 1000 hectare paddock of wheat-wheat-barley-lupins-wheat-wheat etc Too much diversity leads towards economic inefficiency. This not only affects the financials, it also increases the resources it takes to feed us. If we all lived the agrian ideal of a supposedly self-sufficient small property (an example of which I have never seen), the rural countryside would be an inefficient mess and Australia would be a net food importer.
whoops – I mean agrarian. Not sure what “agrian” is, but I’ll google it to find out.
Another way to reduce our ecological footprint.
Move to a city. They are “population sinks”, it takes less infrastructure to provide amenities, and frees up more of the countryside for other pursuits (such as hunting preserves, privately owned of course).
And another. Buy some land and return it to natural vegetation typical of the area. Fence it and eradicate introduced animals. Use your own funds. I believe Germaine Greer is doing this, when she’s in Australia.
I often wonder about the monculture vs diversity argument. I reckon “it all depends” on the system e.g. in cotton a diversity of crops provides a sequence for pests like Heliothis moths to jump around in – they migrate from one to the other and keep cycling. However with GM cotton I know they were using susceptible cotton as a refugia crop to try to reduce BT resistance. BT being code for the toxin production genetically engineered into the cotton plant from the natural Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium.
For cotton at least monoculture seems to give you more control for pests.
But does it work for say wheat – one rust spore will start an rust epidemic is there is a veritable sea of wheat.
Of course diversity and companion crops are at the heart of much permaculture philosophy.
Similarly in nature – are rainforests and reefs more stable as they’re more diverse or does it really depend on the system, environment, climate and pest complexes – i.e. there are no general rules really.
Paul, the reason for the bile in my earlier post about restoring native vegetation, and the reason for dismissing the option again, is that we have just heard that Qld Cabinet is currently considering “phasing out” private native forestry on freehold land. And for all the families that have not only protected forest but actively expanded it over the past 70 or more years when the bulldozer has reigned supreme, this is deeply, deeply offensive. Most private forestry operations are such partial harvests that they cannot even be detected by Landsat. Yet, at the behest of Aila Keto et al, a bunch of ignorant, landless and treeless political Johnny-come-latelys have taken to themselves the prerogative of passing judgement on our record.
Many of our forests have been restored to land that our grandparents were forced to clear on pain of forfeiture of title. Others had to pay the full price to the State for every millable tree on the property when they converted from Leasehold to Freehold. And whither the public debate? We don’t even know if, let alone what, arguments in our defence have been prepared for this august gathering. But what we do know is that only five years ago most forest owners would have chests bursting with pride as they showed people around their place. But now their pride and joy has been converted into an instrument of oppression. Basically, all the people who have actually done what you suggest, restore native forest, now regard such a suggestion as a very cruel and nasty hoax to play on the unsuspecting. It is extraordinary that such an intellectually and emotionally nourishing activity as tending a forest can have every drop of light leached from it.
Ian – Wow, a case of regulation gone mad! The original clearing order wasn’t so flash either, I guess. These things should be left up to the property owner, who somehow manages to make the best decisions without Government interference.
I had read your post, but forgot it when I made my “eco-friendly” suggestion above. Thanks for enlightening us on this.
Ian’s example demonstrates how much real damage both environmentally and economically can be done by politicians who are stampeded into stupid actions by lobby groups. Some of these groups, in their attempts to gain more political influence will stop at nothing. They start off green but after some time in the game, they become loyal to “the party” (as Howard puts it), or whatever other organisation they identify with, in the mistaken belief that the organisation is attending to the future of the planet in some way. But like so many organisations such as ngo lobby groups and political parties, the environment or the electorate end up being secondary issues. Power and influence.
Diversity – a specialist field in ecology by itself, but not my field. It appears that the most diverse natural systems are actually the harsh environments like heathlands in the SW of WA, which is one of the planet’s regions of maximum diversity. When it somes to mass production of food and wood fibre for a modern society, monoculture risks are more than off-set be the improved efficiency of monoculture systems.
I suspect that permaculture et al are fine at the garden scale, but if we were to feed the world that way, there have to be a lot of people who were prepared to grow our food as peasant farmers. Peasant farmers don’t move to the cities to improve the view from their window, they move there for better pay and working conditions.
They are only “considering” the legislation, will they have the backbone to enact it?
If they do so it is a gross intrusion by The State on freehold title.
Thats how Mugabe started.
Am I imagining i,t but this thread and recents posts are different to earlier one- there so much POSITIVE STUFF. I think Jen’s started something.
I read so much nay saying its great to have normal conversations instead of tedious disagreements. Thanks people.
It does make me wonder, if modern agriculture is said to be reducing the land to a hostile soil-less life-less saline environmental nightmare then how do farmers year after year continue to produce unsubsidised food that is increasing in quantity, quality and variety yet keep prices down to levels below that of the subsidised EU?
And have surplus from the domestic market sufficient to successfully trade on a global market?
The evidence does not support the hypothesis that modern farmers are “raping and pillaging” the land for profits.
rog – they do it with fossil fuel fertilisers and pesticides. Also with cheap fossil fuelled transport their surpluses can be easily transported to where it can be sold.
If we look at how much land we had in good condition in 1900 we do not unfortunately have that amount of land in good condition today. Farmers have adopted crop yield improving agronomic practices including use of fertilisers, herbicides and insecticides. Better genetic varieties. Yet despite this terms of trade still decline and in some industries yields are starting slide backwards. Technology has given few recent improvements.
Rog
The rate of degradation is less than the rate of improvement in agronomic practices, so far. Less efficient farmers are culled from the industry or they survive by working off-farm and become irrelevant to the total output. 80% of ag production comes from 20% of the farmers.
I don’t agree with the raping and pillaging label, but farmers are under continually worsening terms of trade because supply of food is outstripping demand.
Transport has also become increasingly efficient. A driver used to move 25 tonnes per load and now moves 50-75 tonnes at higher speed and lower fuel consumption per tonne kilometre. How are the solar panels going Ender?
“Technology has given few recent improvements”
Time for GMO Pundit: How about the most dramatic changes to agricultural efficiency in a century , perhaps ever – GM crops. Min-tillage, Bt, hybrid vigour in canola, Bt-rice in Iran and China and more to follow. How about conversion of straw to liquid fuels using GM enzymes from Novozymes, NREL and Genencor. Salt tolerant crops. Virus resistant papaya?
http://gmopundit.blogspot.com
Yes but yield decline in sugar cane and cotton despite advances. Areas of soil salinity, acidification and also land degradation through overgrazing – all up. Woodland thickening through poor fire regimes and overgrazing up. Areas affected by noxious weeds – up. Water extraction – at the limit in Murray Darling. Agricultrual terms of trade – worse. We need the GM just to try to keep level. Does min till give you more disease in the long run?
GM still needs good soil and water – until you guys start brewing the cotton fibre in swimming pools (on the books I hear).
Keeping level under declining terms of trade seems to be better than going broke doing things the old way. Many problems have a political foundation and many are also the result of traditional practice. Using GM organisms to produce diesel from straw might be better than buying oil from the Middle East and now going there to fight over the bit that’s left.
Detribe, do you have any information or links relating to the production of liquid fuels from straw using GM enzymes? This is serious question; I’m not checking up on your sources.
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