The industrialisation of farming, with its swathes of mono-cropping and chemical sprays, has had a huge impact on the countryside and our farm animals. Now, there is growing evidence that bees, the essential pollinators of much of our food crops, are being hit hard. The decline of the honey bee is now being described as “a global phenomenon” and is now being reported in countries such as China and Japan, as well as Europe and the US.
A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), warns that without profound changes to the way we manage the planet, we will see continued declines in bees and other pollinators that are so vital if we are to feed a growing human population.
UNEP’s Executive Director, Achim Steiner, says, “The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century. The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world’s food, over 70 are pollinated by bees”.
In other words, bees are both essential agents of a healthy food system and, at the same time, our ‘canary in a coalmine’. Are there other signs that all is not well with our industrial agriculture system? Are there other canaries in the mine? The massive use of antibiotics in factory farming suggests that all is not well with our farm animals either.
The move toward industrial livestock production has meant that huge numbers of animals, mostly pigs and poultry, are now permanently confined indoors and their food grown elsewhere, often with the use of mono-cropping and chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Nearly 90% of antibiotics used in UK agriculture are for pigs and poultry. Is it a coincidence that these are the most factory-farmed animals? Or do the crowded and stressful conditions found in factory farming make our pigs and chickens more prone to disease?
The obvious suffering of animals in factory farms is not only inhumane, but is also another sign that that our animal farming is out of balance. When pigs bite each other’s tails because of the barren intensive systems they are kept in, they are telling us something. When we dose animals up with antibiotics or cut pigs’ tails to deal with the symptoms and not the causes of these problems, we show that we are not listening.
These ‘canaries’ serve to underscore how our future is interconnected with the way we treat our environment and fellow creatures. UNEP’s Executive Director again: “Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less dependent on nature’s services in a world of close to seven billion people”.
Compassion’s recent report, commissioned jointly with Friends of the Earth, shows that not only can we feed the world without factory farming, but that doing so would hugely benefit farm animal welfare and “provide environmental benefits such as promoting biodiversity and reducing environmental pollution”.
The rise of industrial agriculture over the last 50-60 years has had devastating consequences; to the welfare of the factory farmed animals, to our countryside and often to our public health. In a chilling parallel, Dr Peter Neumann, who headed the UNEP research, described how the “transformation of the countryside and rural areas in the past half century or so has triggered a decline in wild-living bees and other pollinators”.
It all adds up in my mind to an even greater need for a new way forward for world farming, based on humane and sustainable practices; for the sake of people, our environment, our fellow creatures of the countryside, and the welfare of farm animals.
Photo; © Christian Bauer
To my mind we have people who care on one side and corporations whose only thought is profit on the other. There appear to be increasingly worrying findings on the effects of Roundup in the food chain – http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Opinion/Comments/gmo_foods_0309110636.html.
There is no proof yet but I suspect that in the fullness of time we’ll find the Monster Monsanto at the heart of the destruction.