I mean, yes, it kind of does. Combine harvesters cut and flatten everything in a field, and kill any animals unfortunate enough to be in their path, which isn’t great for biodiversity.
In modern industrial agriculture, pesticides and poisons and traps kill other plants and animals anyway, so it’s not as relevant.
If you want biodiversity in a ryegrass field, the way this meme shows, you need perennial companion plants and an insect and small animal ecology. So you have to use less destructive forms of harvesting to avoid killing everything in the field.
I don’t know if there are less destructive mechanical harvesting processes available, but showing workers with scythes is a good shorthand to get the point across.
There are plenty of ways to encourage biodiversity in agriculture other then what this meme shows.
It used to be, for example, that big fields like this would be harvested by machines but surrounded by hedgerows, which were left uncultivated, serving as wind breaks and as habitat for many beneficial insects and animals.
That’s not possible in modern industrial agriculture, because Roundup and other herbicides and pesticides are too toxic - for corn or soybeans, for instance, they plant varieties immune to glyphosate and then dump so much glyphosate on the fields that everything else dies..
But organic farming techniques that don’t soak the soil in poisons can easily leave uncultivated space for the bugs and the birds - and even benefit from it, by, for example, planting native flowers that attract pollinators to the crops, or plants that provide habitat for insect predators that eat the bugs that would eat the crops. Or so on or so forth.
That being said, I think it’s likely the farm in this meme wouldn’t be profitable given current food prices.
But food in the United States is as cheap as it is because industrial agriculture (ie the poison spraying folks) is heavily subsidized by the US government and fueled by deliveries of oil and fertilizer and chemicals from a vast global supply chain.
Well, the thing is, if you’ve got a whole bunch of biodiversity and you cut down a small patch in the middle of it, where you grow your monoculture and use your big machines and whatnot, that’s when this fuck-biodiversity approach is rather profitable.
But if you scale that up, if a whole bunch of farmers kill biodiversity in the same region, this will obliterate profitability. You need biodiversity for:
pollination
enriching the soil (we have no industrial process for creating humus; it’s mostly just earthworms doing their thing)
pest control (birds and whatnot can eat your pests, if they settle nearby; they won’t settle nearby, if there’s no food for half the year because you’ve killed everything else)
resilience against pests and climate variations (if your harvest consists out of multiple different plants, then some of them failing from pests or droughts etc. is much less of a problem)
I’m probably forgetting more aspects, and we probably don’t yet know all aspects either. But ultimately, plants have evolved to exist in rich biodiversity. It isn’t just some moral thing to do, to keep that intact. Plants will falter without biodiversity, no matter how much fertilizer and pesticide you pour onto them.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Brandt experimented with different combinations and species of cover crops, such as radishes and sunflowers, to improve crop yield and improve soil quality. As a result of these cover crops, Brandt was able to cut back on commercial nitrogen additives, which also saved money. Additionally, Brandt saw less mold and blight and fewer insects among his crops, to the point that he was able to reduce or stop using fungicide, herbicide, and insecticide on parts of the farm.
And there’s where I stopped reading. Farming is not an easy business to make money at. How is anyone going to pay for the cost of hand harvesting rye grass?
Biodiversity requires manual scything? They can’t use a combine?
Not gonna work on a commercial farm if harvesting costs more than the crop is worth.
I mean, yes, it kind of does. Combine harvesters cut and flatten everything in a field, and kill any animals unfortunate enough to be in their path, which isn’t great for biodiversity.
In modern industrial agriculture, pesticides and poisons and traps kill other plants and animals anyway, so it’s not as relevant.
If you want biodiversity in a ryegrass field, the way this meme shows, you need perennial companion plants and an insect and small animal ecology. So you have to use less destructive forms of harvesting to avoid killing everything in the field.
I don’t know if there are less destructive mechanical harvesting processes available, but showing workers with scythes is a good shorthand to get the point across.
So biodiversity is wholly incompatible with running a profitable farm?
Absolutely not.
There are plenty of ways to encourage biodiversity in agriculture other then what this meme shows.
It used to be, for example, that big fields like this would be harvested by machines but surrounded by hedgerows, which were left uncultivated, serving as wind breaks and as habitat for many beneficial insects and animals.
That’s not possible in modern industrial agriculture, because Roundup and other herbicides and pesticides are too toxic - for corn or soybeans, for instance, they plant varieties immune to glyphosate and then dump so much glyphosate on the fields that everything else dies..
But organic farming techniques that don’t soak the soil in poisons can easily leave uncultivated space for the bugs and the birds - and even benefit from it, by, for example, planting native flowers that attract pollinators to the crops, or plants that provide habitat for insect predators that eat the bugs that would eat the crops. Or so on or so forth.
That being said, I think it’s likely the farm in this meme wouldn’t be profitable given current food prices.
But food in the United States is as cheap as it is because industrial agriculture (ie the poison spraying folks) is heavily subsidized by the US government and fueled by deliveries of oil and fertilizer and chemicals from a vast global supply chain.
And it’s not impossible that will change.
Well, the thing is, if you’ve got a whole bunch of biodiversity and you cut down a small patch in the middle of it, where you grow your monoculture and use your big machines and whatnot, that’s when this fuck-biodiversity approach is rather profitable.
But if you scale that up, if a whole bunch of farmers kill biodiversity in the same region, this will obliterate profitability. You need biodiversity for:
I’m probably forgetting more aspects, and we probably don’t yet know all aspects either. But ultimately, plants have evolved to exist in rich biodiversity. It isn’t just some moral thing to do, to keep that intact. Plants will falter without biodiversity, no matter how much fertilizer and pesticide you pour onto them.
It’s agriculture, there’s always profit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brandt_(farmer)
And there’s where I stopped reading. Farming is not an easy business to make money at. How is anyone going to pay for the cost of hand harvesting rye grass?
yep absolutely no hand-harvested crops, just unheard of, nobody makes any money farming those
High value crops like fruit, sure.
Cheap grain crops, you’re outta your mind.