A Walk In The Countryside – Get Involved In Nature’s Resurgance
August 14, 2011 by Doug Kennedy
[SinglePic not found]It is an August Sunday in Cuddington, in rural South Buckinghamshire. The air is a mild 20 degrees centigrade and an occasional breeze wafts the ripe wheat, and the sun has a pleasant intensity when it moves out from behind the broken cloud.
However, a little further on in Spickett’s Lane there are several more plum trees festooned with fruit of different varieties. The first of these are small and crimson when ripe, and quite deliciously sweet with an intense flavour. Juice dribbles down my chin. There are damsons, small and black and too high to pick without a ladder, more small yellow fruit and one in-between. On the other side the lane, the blackberries are not ready yet, but will be black and luscious in a couple of weeks.
[SinglePic not found] [SinglePic not found]
I turned right, past the piggery where a few Oxford black-and-tan rare pigs remain, snoozing in the gentle morning, then round the edge of the bean field down towards the river. Waddesdon Estates farm this land and, as part of their Environmental Stewardship Scheme, all of their fields have a wildlife strip around the edge where wildflowers (weeds) prosper and bees and butterflies dart and settle in their search for nectar. A month ago, when the wildflowers were at their best, there were lots of butteflies: meadow brown in particular, common blues and small whites, green-veined whites, red admirals, peacocks. Now these are fewer, but they are still to be found along with a gatekeeper (small meadow brown) or two.
[Gallery not found]There are rustlings in the high, scrubby hedgerow and I hear some squirrels having a fight, squeaking and jumping about but see nothing. I cross the stile that penetrates it and step into a cow pasture with a wooded, watery drainage channel on my left. This is where newts, grass snakes and waterfoul skulk and a source of dragonflies and damselflies, and I see a large one zoom over my head, too fast to identify.
There is a brown bull with broad shoulders and a deep chest right ahead of me, on the footpath route over the field, and I approach with a little caution; but he is quiet and docile as I skirt around him. The air is fairly quiet now where it was alive with birdsong a month or two ago, but there are birds about. A buzzard circles up on a thermal, but doesn’t come close enough for me to see his colours. There are a lot of crows in the sheep meadow, and rooks in the wood at the top of the field, and an owl box in the tree near the cattle bridge where I saw a tawny owl last march. And there are the ubiquitous pigeons, flapping away noisily as I approach, and sparrows.
The cattle bridge crosses the River Thame, and a pause to see if I can see any fish in it’s fast flowing water. The reeds are varied and luxuriant and a shy moorhen pokes it’s head out of them but doesn’t emerge this time. A couple of cows gaze vacantly at me as they chew their cud.
I cross a gate and a stile, entering the Eythrope Estate, home of Lord Rothschild, who also owns the entire Waddesdon Estate.
[SinglePic not found] [SinglePic not found]
Again there are wide, wild field borders, and as I skirt the field through longish grass, I see more white butterflies, and a couple of brimstones that look like a leaf when they stop to feed.
Above, buzzards and red kites glided under the blue sky and seemed to be gathering over the hill to the north: perhaps there was some carrion there.
[SinglePic not found] [SinglePic not found]
As I walk, young pheasants suddenly burst up from the wheat and tall grass, flying further down the track or running into the scrub for cover. These are being bred for the shooting season that starts in October, but that is not the only doom that awaits these tasty game birds!
[SinglePic not found]From only a few feet away, a fox springs up from the wheat where it had been lying in wait to catch a pheasant dinner, and runs off disconsolately through the golden crop. It is amazing what a wheat field conceals: along with the fox, and the pheasants, various small birds would suddenly appear, wings flapping at great speed in their panic to reach the nearby trees.
I come to a wider area of wildflowers still in bloom: this area would have been planted with a rich variety of native species as part of the Waddesdon environmental work. The air hums with honey and bumble bees, many different flies and some small blue butterflies. This is a sound I hear too seldom these days where it used to be the norm on a summers day. It is the sound of nature at work in a healthy countryside and alien to blank squares of monoculture. This land is intensively farmed, but space is left for natural ecosystems to work and it’s health protected from chemicals and machines.
[SinglePic not found][SinglePic not found]
I stop to enjoy this buzz of life, then as I turn, a hare bursts out from the undergrowth a few yards away, and disappears into the hedge. About half a dozen kites are still circling in the air high over the hill, and a sudden birdsong bursts from nearby trees.
I leave the Waddesdon land, and climb through a meadow, then over another stile onto a neat and tidy field of rye grass: green and even and silent. The field edge has been mown, and it is empty of flowers, insects or any interest and the contrast is staggering.
We have turned much of our countryside into an aseptic monoculture which has been profoundly destructive to the diversity of nature in the British countryside. We have cut down hedgerows, ancient forests (over 80 percent have dissappeared this century), poisoned waterways and tried to turn the land into a factory floor which, for sterility, this field resembles. The terrible thing to me is that we have forgotten what the countryside should be like, and was like until very recently. The land along the Thame Valley shows that we can have both efficiently produced food and healthy natural ecosystems.
Waddesdon manages to farm profitably and efficiently, and because the people running it leave some land for nature and take care how they use modern technologies, after only a few years there is a resurgance of a diverse and healthy countryside. This creates a balance that protects crops, a balance that is destroyed by over-use of expensive chemicals and over-intensive practices. The result is that many of our species of birds and mammals are on endangered lists, and the countyside is often silent and boring.
My walk took me less than two hours, and in that time I have come across dozens of species, and been inspired and amazed by seeing the web of life at work. We do need more of it throughout our country, and it is us, all of us who have to make it happen realising that it is our health and quality of life that is at stake, and doing what we can to understand and restore our countryside.
[SinglePic not found]Genetically Modified (GM) Foods Are An Unnecessary Evil
June 15, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
Yesterday I walked for about a mile through grassy fields, about half of them overgrown with grasses, nettles and other vagrant species. This was not in the middle of nowhere, but in prime Buckinghamshire farmland: some of the most fertile and longest farmed in England. These fields were completely vacant – no livestock, and certainly no crops.
Were these fields to be left alone, apart from mowing, for long enough, they could become meadows, rich in wildflowers, with nesting places for skylarks and other birds, and a refuge for hares. That is unlikely – it’s not the culture around here, but if we are so much in need of food that we want to plant GM crops, why are the in this state?
Much of the actively farmed land in this area has livestock on it – beef cattle mostly, some sheep and a little dairy. Cattle are notoriously inefficient in terms of food per acre, eating and drinking many times the weight of meat produced during their lives, let alone the methane they blow out of their rears.
Then there is all the land throughout the South East that is used for rearing horses, which are a hobby. There is an industry around them which provides work and pleasure for many of course, and they are lovely animals. But again, this is land that is supposedly so scarce that we need to plant GM crops.
Again the same question is begged – if we can afford to put so much land to livestock, can there really be a food crisis so severe that industrially produced GM crops are needed?
It may well be that the prices paid to farmers for crops make them less attractive, or even unaffordable to grow, but that raises questions about the ‘free and efficient market’ that is supposed to apply. The market for food is a bit of a free-for-all, certainly, meaning that it is the interests of the rich and powerful that are best served, rather than the good of the land. The fact that farmers are sometimes paid less than the food costs to grow creates great inefficiencies and waste, and also that the problem is not short supply.
It is a fact that the UK has a growing population. They need to be fed, and some very knowledgable people say that this will become a problem. But why are GM crops necessary? We seem to have plenty of land available for growing crops that could feed any number of people, but we just don’t use it. Of course, as long as supermarkets can import food cheaper than our farmers can produce it the problem is even less urgent. If we foresee a problem down the road, which is quite likely,we should plan for that both in terms of quantity of food grown and population size.
GM crops use lots of aggro-chemicals, including pesticides. Pesticides are intended to kill things – the bees, butterflies and other vital insects that unintentionally ingest them included. Even without GM crops this is a problem: One of our local villages had an open gardens day on Sunday and in 4 large gardens I didn’t see ONE honey bee (quite a few bumble bees) and few butterflies. The advent of GM crops in the UK is only likely to make this situation worse, owing to the quantities of chemicals needed for them.
Then there are the ‘unintended consequences’ of planting GM crops. By their nature, we don’t know what these will be, but these are alien plant types that require a lot of technology to make them successful, and their wide distribution could be catastrophic. You can forget about organic farms nearby as their crops are likely to become infected.
Then there is the fact that GM seed takes a lot of research and development – they cost millions and millions of pounds. So the companies that produce them own the genetic material, and will want to sell it as widely as possible once they are allowed to. They are very powerful and will offer big incentives to get farmers roped in. As the market grows, the company becomes more powerful, and eventually, the trap shuts, and the farmers and consumers are in it – you can’t re-use the seed, nor cross it with other varieties yourself. You have to buy the seed, AND the ghastly pesticides from The Company PLC (probably American or Chinese owned).
We have enough land to grow food for ourselves and more: it is a matter of how we choose to use it…. and whether we allow the global human population to continue to explode (http://www.optimumpopulation.org/).
We can’t go on like this!
August 11, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
Hilary Benn, (Dept of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or DEFRA) is now looking again for technology (eg GM crops) to provide answers to the problem of feeding a growing population. As I pointed out the other day, technology has a part to play in maximising yields from the land used WHILST NOT DAMAGING LOCAL ECOSYSTEMS FURTHER, but it cannot be the cornerstone for even the medium term.
The big argument that is wheeled out time and again is that we cannot feed 9 billion humans without GM crops and further advances in intensifying agriculture. But I believe that the Government has got it’s priorities very wrong on this one.
Crowding is not the biggest problem, but would you like to live in a World with 9 billion humans? 50% more than today: can you imagine how crowded that would be?
For example, we hear in the news today that an entire town in China was devastated by a huge mudslide and four entire apartment blocks of about 100 flats each collapsed. Why did the mud slide? Because there has been too much development in the area and the trees have been removed from the hillsides. The immediate cause is the huge storm battering the Pacific coast of China and Taiwan. Disasters involving flood, fire and famine are increasing all over the World as storms are getting worse because of global warming.
This is one example of the results of our current overpopulation which will be repeated countless times on a bigger and bigger scale if we let World population continue to grow.
So whilst technology has a part to play in producing suffiicient food to feed the human population, the more urgent and important factors are:
1. Reduce waste now – over a third of all the food we buy in the UK is wasted.
2. Share resources across the World better so that fewer children are born to slavery or starvation in ‘developing’ countries.
3. THE BIG ONE – Start focusing internationally on limiting population growth.
4. Use technology to help produce the right quantity of the right crop in the right location, whilst protecting surrounding ecosystems.
If we don’t limit the human population then the outcomes have to be:
* More CO2 so more global warming, which means
* Worse climate chaos resulting in fire, flood and famine (as in China today).
* More pressure on available land, which results in further damage to waterways, more forest removal and land degradation and so worse floods and land slips, and further loss of biodiversity. In other words, and ugly, dangerous planet.
* The lack of available good land will also result in bigger migratory pressure on the richer countries as well as wars and famine.
It is a vicious circle, and the key is human population.
The Optimum Population Trust is the leading UK think tank researching the impact of population growth on our environment. You can check them out at www.optimumpopulation.org.
Why Bother With Organic Food?
August 4, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
The Observer Science Editor, Robert McKie wrote an article in this week’s edition entitled “It’s wrong to believe that nature is always best”. You can read it all at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/02/organics-food. The gist is that a recent report again tells us that there is little if any taste difference or nutritional benefit to be gained from eating organicly produced food. He goes on to say that we should use all the technology at our disposal to feed the growing human population. Here is my answer:
Our landscape has changed with enormous speed over the past 100 years, the old woods have been removed and there is a sameness about agricultural land wherever you are: believe me, I’ve just walked its length. We read that the remaining woods are losing biodiversity and the length of the RSPB endangered list lengthens whilst agricultural run-off does odd things to our waterways. Buying organic food is not just about seeking better taste: retailers have learned that people do like their food to taste nice so the thrust of technology is focused more widely now than just looks and shelf-life.
It is about being concerned with looking after THE LAND (a term first used in this context by Aldo Leopold in 1949); that is, the landscape and biosphere which we love and upon which we depend. To take a purely utilitarian, scientific view of The Land is to ignore that dependence, which I believe we do at our peril: melting glaciers are not the only warning sign that we are placing too much load on our planet.
Mr McKie states that we need modern technological agriculture to feed a growing population, but I have two problems with this. Firstly, we waste a great proportion of what we are currently producing and could reduce the pressure on the land by using food more efficiently. Secondly, we should be taking steps to limit human population growth as we can’t have it all ways: we can feed some of 9 billion all the time (the rich), you can feed all of 9 billion people some of the time, but you can’t feed all 9 billion people all of the time. (With apologies to Lydgate). Technology offers a great deal, but we MUST also channel our ingenuity into ways of living more in harmony with the land through using less land, wasting less food and chemicals and controlling our population explosion. The last is, of course, the real biggy because the cure could be worse than the disease.