Bugs Give Monbiot the Willies.

A couple of days ago The Guardian reported on a German study that flying insect populations had declined by 75 per cent over the past 25 years.

Another report for the Dire Warnings file.

Only The Guardian's enviro-scribe, George Monbiot, says don't take this lightly.

Which of these would you name as the world’s most pressing environmental issue? Climate breakdown, air pollution, water loss, plastic waste or urban expansion? My answer is none of the above. Almost incredibly, I believe that climate breakdown takes third place, behind two issues that receive only a fraction of the attention.

This is not to downgrade the danger presented by global heating – on the contrary, it presents an existential threat. It is simply that I have come to realise that two other issues have such huge and immediate impacts that they push even this great predicament into third place.

One is industrial fishing, which, all over the blue planet, is now causing systemic ecological collapse. The other is the erasure of non-human life from the land by farming.

And perhaps not only non-human life. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, at current rates of soil loss, driven largely by poor farming practice, we have just 60 years of harvests left. And this is before the Global Land Outlook report, published in September, found that productivity is already declining on 20% of the world’s cropland.

Monbiot blames industrial agriculture and the pesticide industry for the collapse of insect populations and the knock-on effects that triggers. He suggests a global treaty to regulate pesticides, environmental assessments of the global fishing industry and the agricultural industry, a sharp reduction in land use (yes, he means to take your steak off the grocer's shelves) and an end to the use of land for growing corn for biofuels. 

There's no use in debating the fine points and nuances of Monbiot's solutions. These are things that are simply not going to happen.

Maybe when, like the insects, we've pared the human population by 75 per cent all these problems will be solved. There'll be fresh air, clean water and plenty of delicious filet mignon for everybody. We've still got a way to go before we get there.

Remember, kids. Nature bats last.

You Can't Feed Your Kids Oil, But Eating Is Overrated Anyway.

It's been here for a while.  It's what happens when you begin to run short on something everybody needs.

It's America's frackers versus America's farmers.  They both want water and there's not enough to go around.  Frackers want it to get oil and gas out of the ground.  Farmers need it to grow food.

This is only just getting started but, this year, an estimated 1.2-billion dollars of corn, soya and wheat crops are at risk to the industrial demand for scarce water.

...industrial water users typically have a higher capacity to absorb the increased costs associated with rising water prices in comparison to agricultural water users, threatening an impact on crop production and yield if farmers are priced out of the market.

The stress on water resources is already considerable. Within the US, 18% of harvested cropland is irrigated (pdf), most of which is attributed to corn, soy, wheat and hay, but also includes water-intensive crops such as sugar beets, sugar cane, rice and cotton. Some 412 irrigation-intensive US counties are currently facing moderate to high levels of water stress – around 23% of total US land area.

...approximately one-third of publicly traded US electric utilities derive more than 10% of their electric power generation from already water stressed regions. One in every four publicly traded US electric utilities operate in counties that are both water stressed and irrigation intensive.

In the US, if the situation remains as it is today, the competition for water resources may reach a tipping point that results in stranded assets, reduced productivity, and increased tensions between farmers and industry. In the medium term, policymakers may need to dictate water allocation priorities.

Of course 1.2-billion dollars worth of foodstuffs is really small potatoes but it's a problem that could grow massively as America's aquifers are being drained, wells running dry even as sustained drought continues in America's agricultural belt.

I know!  Why don't they just frack for water?  Oh, I get it, never mind. 

Range Wars, 21st Century-Style

It's a classic theme of the 'wild west' - range wars where free-range cattle ranchers clashed with farmers whose fenced fields blocked their way.  Today it's a struggle between farmers and frackers and this time the struggle is over water, more specifically who gets it and who goes without.

This has been going on in Texas for some time and, generally, it's the frackers who win.  Now the same thing has flared up in drought-stricken California, especially in the rich agricultural area of the Monterey Basin beneath which lies an awful lot of fossil fuel just waiting to be fracked.

Despite several polls indicating that a majority of California residents are opposed to the “water-intensive extreme oil and gas extraction process” known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the state’s Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has continued to pledge his support for pro-fracking legislation.

 

As Brown gets closer to signing a piece of legislation that would allow for the expansion of fracking and other controversial forms of oil extraction in California’s Monterey Shale formation, located beneath California’s “most prized” farmland, opponents have boosted their work to ban fracking in the state.

 

On this one, Jerry Brown is dead wrong.  Those oil and gas reserves have been securely sequestered underground for millions of years.  They're not going anywhere.  They'll still be right where they sit when the drought ends.  It's the farmers who have long contributed to California's prosperity that are at mortal risk if they're not given priority access over frackers to the limited water supply.

Living Large Chemically

China is taking a page out of North America's book, discovering that antibiotics are the key to industrial livestock production.  Already half the antibiotics used in China go to keeping livestock ticking over until they can be slaughtered. 

Shocked?  You shouldn't be.  China is at 50%.   In the U.S., the livestock industry consumes 77% of that nation's antibiotics.

China's teeming factory meat farms have a drug problem. To make animals grow quickly under cramped, feces-ridden conditions, animals there get fed small, doses of antibiotics—creating ideal breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens that threaten people.

A research team led by scientists from China and Michigan State University recently found "diverse and abundant antibiotic resistance genes in Chinese swine farms," as the title of the paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, put it.

The ratio of farm-to-human use of antibiotics obviously tell us as much about trends in human antibiotic use as they do about farm use. As the chart above shows, US antibiotic consumption for medicinal purposes has held steady for a decade. Meanwhile, Time reported last year, per capita human antibiotic use is 10 times higher in China than in the United States, and "70 percent of inpatients at Chinese hospitals received antibiotics; the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a maximum of 30 percent." So one reason a lower percentage of antibiotics go to farms in China is because so damned much is being used for human medicine there.

So, given China's staggering human consumption of antibiotics it seems likely that they're actually medicating their livestock more heavily than we do.  And in China, where many farmers are known to live in close proximity to their farm animals, resulting in animal to human transmission of avian and swine flues, the emergence of antibiotic resistant disease strains is a nightmare in waiting.

And you'll probably remember last year when thousands of dead pigs turned up in rivers that provided drinking water to Shanghai.

Is the British Potato in Peril?

It is estimated that the people of the United Kingdom consume their way through their country's annual agricultural production by about Easter each year.   Overall, therefore, Brits rely on imports for about two-thirds of their foodstuffs.  Put another way, for two-thirds of the year, Brits eat other peoples' food.

In good times that's an unhealthy dependence on foreign food stocks.  These aren't good times.   Many months ago the UN Food and Agriculture Organization declared the world has moved into a permanent food crisis.   Droughts and floods and depletion of groundwater reserves are hobbling our ability to grow enough food to affordably feed our civilization.

A few years ago when Labour governed the UK, British farmers were urged to ramp up agricultural production to make the UK at least somewhat more food self-sufficient.  And then the drought set in.   East Anglia farmer Richard Wrinch argues that Britain needs an agricultural reformation.

"We can't rely on the water sources we used to, we have to plan for a future with much less water," he said. "It is more important than ever that we get private reservoirs built on farms, that we use water more economically and find more drought resistant crops." The Environment Agency and Defra must loosen regulations around building water tanks and farmers will have to work together more, he believes. "We need that investment and help from the government – if they don't do it now it is very short-sighted."

Farmers are facing financial ruin because of the lack of water, with many forced to change their planned crops for others that require less water. "People are having to stop growing crops that use a lot of water, like potatoes or salad crops. If farmers are in contracts and can't supply the produce they can be hit with financial penalties and there are farmers facing that throughout the country."

 Although the public are aware of the drought, they are disconnected from the stark situation facing many farmers who rely heavily on water for their livelihoods, he said. "It's been in the news enough for people to be aware of a hose-pipe ban, but I doubt very much people realise what this means for farmers," he said. "Not being able to wash your car or your patio is a an inconvenience, but when people are paying an extra 50p for their lettuce, or potatoes drop in quality and become more expensive, then it will hit home," he said.

The public disconnect between climate change and food security is widespread and even crosses Canada.   Those with no connection to agriculture have difficulty linking warm, dry winters with agricultural calamity.   Farming is inherently dependent on climate stability.   It's a function of the right amount of precipitation at the right times throughout the crop cycle.   Too much rain at the outset and the farmer can't get on the land to plant.   Too much rain during the growing season and the crops can rot in the fields.   Too little rain and the crops are stunted.   Too much rain at harvest time and the farmer may not be able to get on the land to bring in the crop.

Global warming creates agricultural havoc.   A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapour creating a water deficit elsewhere in the hydrological cycle.   But, when a super-saturated atmosphere does unload, it can be torrential, leading to floods or, worse, cyclical droughts and floods, both of them potentially lethal to agriculture.  It doesn't take much to create agricultural climate instability.

There are work-arounds, adaptation strategies, to be sure and they can offset some climate change impacts.   Farmers like Richard Wrinch envision giving up part of his land to construct reservoirs while using his water resources more carefully and switching to drought-resistant crops.   Fortunately for Mr. Wrinch, he lives in East Anglia, by the sea, far away from the tropics and equatorial zones.   That means he has options that many others will not.  And, unfortunately, those "others" tend to live in countries that Britons often look to to make up their own agricultural deficits.

America's Climate Change Kiln

America's farmers and their representatives are rallying to fiercely oppose the climate and energy bill now before Congress. McClatchey Newspapers reports that farmers fear the legislation will undermine their bottom line by raising prices on electricity, gasoline and natural-gas based fertilizers.

It's no small irony that the states that stand to be most severely impacted by global warming include most of America's key agricultural zones. The news service published this graphic of the changes to come - with or without major emissions cuts - and it's not good news for the south and midwest.

Feed A Man a Fish... Teach a Man to Fish... Take Away His Fish

Oh hell, kumbaya, here goes - feed a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. But what if you then go one step further and take away that man 's fish altogether?

In a number of ways, that's happening right now in Africa. Along the west coast of Africa, European, Asian and other fishing fleets are emptying the seas. The Euros put the blame on corrupt African officials who oversell fishing quotas in their territorial waters - as though blame was going to relieve the people of this region of the abrupt end of their fish supply. This overfishing is now blamed for an exodus of migrants heading north from West Africa.

Another way we're screwing these people up is garden-variety, climate change. They put out about as little greenhouse gas as any people on the planet but they get the most severe impacts. This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa, another centre of massive northern migration.

Global warming brings a brand new meaning to the old saw about how "it never rains but it pours." It never rains - until it pours. Few know the meaning of this better than the people of Zimbabwe. Already bearing the scourge of a maniacal tryrant, Robert Mugabe, and his ZANU-PF brigands, these folks have also endured a 6-year drought that crippled their agriculture. That drought ended this year.

The deluge arrived in December, the wettest month Zimbabwe has experienced in 127-years. At the end of the month the government declared a state of disaster and, in Zimbabwe, conditions have to get borderline apocalyptic to warrant a disaster declaration. From the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office:

"Farmers in flood-affected districts, who had planted early, trying to take advantage of the predicted good rains, have seen their crops drowned, along with hopes of a marketable surplus.

"We prayed for the rains but the rains have now caused us pain and suffering," said a despairing Esther Chiwodza, a communal farmer in the low-lying district of Chiredzi in Midlands Province.

She invested in seeds and fertiliser and planted early in October. "All the crops I spent my entire savings on have been washed away and there is no prospect of saving any crops, as the whole fields are waterlogged and the remaining crops will not survive the current rains."

Neighbours lost livestock and homes collapsed. "After the rainy season is over everyone in my village will become a candidate for food aid, and if the donor agencies do not come we will starve to death," said Chiwodza."

Not all regions of Zimbabwe have been as hard hit. Some of the best farmland in northern areas has, so far, escaped flooding. And, while the deluge may wipe out crops in the rest, the excessive rains are expected to eventually restore the parched earth for grazing.

The world's food supply is coming under unprecedented stresses and global warming is just one cause. Another is the diversion of grain stocks, particularly corn, from food into biofuel. According to the Financial Post, corn prices have shot up 44% over the past 15-months. That's an enormous hit for poorer nations with populations dependent on corn for sustenance, countries as nearby as Mexico.

And then there are the new gorillas joining the rest bouncing around the room - China and India. FP quotes Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group as warning of a global food catastrophe that's due to hit later this year:

"It's not a matter of if, but when," he warned investors. "It's going to hit this year hard."

Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry.

"The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it's getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we've got to expand food output dramatically," he said.

Let's get this straight. The "greatest challenge" to the world is to do whatever it takes to ensure that the emerging Chinese and Indian middle class can eat the way our middle class does?

Mr. Coxe said crop yields around the world need to increase to something close to what is achieved in the state of Illinois, which produces over 200 corn bushes an acre compared with an average 30 bushes an acre in the rest of the world.
"That will be done with more fertilizer, with genetically modified seeds, and with advanced machinery and technology," he said.

Sounds like a piece of cake. A few more bags of fertilizer, man-made seeds and some state of the art machinery and - bingo. Curious that Mr. Coxe hasn't factored in the spreading drought and deluge pattern or the rapid exhaustion of groundwater reserves worldwide in his calculations of ramping up production of one of the most water-intensive crops of all.