Pesticides have even poisoned the minds of farm scientists. Wildlife will save us.

University of Western Australia just published a paper that perfectly illustrates the dangers of basing an economy on ever decreasing circles of environmental degradation. However, the scientists don’t see it that way. The researchers predict collapsing profits if farmers are forced to stop using glyphosphate. In the same week though, the US Wild Farm Alliance showed us that that ‘At Orchards and Vineyards, Birds Are Outperforming Pesticides‘. The truth is, wildlife-driven environments have always been key to viable farming. It’s only because we we broke natural systems that we’re now dependent on artificial remedies. This is how pesticides have even poisoned the minds of farm scientists.

What is glyphosphate

You would know Glyphosphate as ‘RoundUp’, a chemical patented by multinational giant Monsanto. It kills weeds from the roots. Moves to ban or restrict its use are accelerating worldwide, because there is increasing evidence of serious health effects on people. Monsanto also create crops resistant to the poison and that has encouraged farmers to become dependent on both. It’s a perfect business modelThe process, either mathematically or in the human brain, of creating an internal version of something that we can refer to, to better understand how it functions and our place within. Scientific modelling is where we take the best knowledge we have and build a version of what will happen, if we assume certain parameters. For example, we might model More. Break nature, replace it with a crop you own and make that crop dependent on the continued use of a chemical you own.

The problem is, any use of chemicals upsets the balance of nature and disrupts systems to the point, that you become ever more dependent on intervention. This costs a lot of money but the invisible costs are akin to digging the landscape out from under your feet.

The midas touch

Enlightened researchers are finding glyphosphate does the opposite of what is commonly claimed. Nature pushes back, creating new strains of poison-resistant plants, meaning the amount of herbicide (and insecticide) needed, actually increases.

As usual, human intervention creates more problems than it solves. The agricultural gold rush that was built off the back of genetic engineering and poisons has destroyed the household–in the true sense of the word ‘eco’, which comes from the greek Oikos meaning the units that have to work together, to make a family. It’s another example of geo-engineering gone mad!

So, it is terrifying to hear leading agricultural scientists unable to see this. When asked, Hugh Beckie, director of the Australian Herbicide Resistance Initiative told the ABC, that he ‘doesn’t see an alternative‘. Yet, how can he not know, that ‘business as usual’ is destroying the livelihoods of farming communities worldwide and threatening the future food security for all humanity?

As Elizabeth Kolbert says in her book Under a White Sky, humanity has become “… about people trying to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems”. Surely in this day and age, scientists should not be working to propose anything so destructive?

Poisons are the real plague, wildlife is the alternative

There is an alternative but it clearly requires a shift in the mindset of agricultural scientists. The world cannot continue to separate farming from nature.

As I have written here, there is a strong economic rationale for rebuilding degraded ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More. The benefits of ditching poisons and rebuilding wildlife are greater than we can possibly imagine, because we don’t live in those systems. No-one knows this way of life because it was destroyed before many of us were born.

Maintaining economic yield will have to be done by refinding a balance between animal impactWhat is Animal Impact? Without wildlife, Earth would not be habitable for humans, because it's animals that stabilise ecosystems. It’s a fundamental law of nature that animals (and humans) exist because we are the most likely lifeforms to minimise environmental chaos. Animal impact, therefore, is a measure of how much all wildlife is collectively responsible for creating a habitable Earth. The More and food, ideally where one begets the other. Fortunately, there are already many farmers doing this successfully. They will end up being the economic winners in years to come.

And I’m not saying it’s going to be easy either. Rebuilding takes time and commitment to push through to completion. It will also take the most enlightened scientists to work on natural remedies.

If anything, this is what worries me most about our future. We’ve borrowed so much from nature already and if we continue on this path, we may end up in a deadly debt cycle. Meanwhile, it’s clear that the intensive marketing rhetoric about pesticides has even poisoned the minds of farm scientists The sooner we wake up and realise that killing the land is not the way forward, the sooner we can have a conversation about the only viable alternative – nature and wildlife.

References

1. Benbrook, C.M. Trends in glyphosate herbicide use in the United States and globally. Environ Sci Eur 28, 3 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12302-016-0070-0