The Sad State of Europe's countryside

Yesterday I went on my first ever, and probably last hot-air balloon trip. It was to celebrate my girlfriend's birthday, and I must say that against all odds for Belgium, the weather was beautiful. The balloon operator said he was unlikely to get 10 days in a year with such good visibility, in fact.

So off we went, hovering over the fields of maize, potato, cabbage and grass, and spooking the cows that were grazing on the small plots of plain green grass that were scattered throughout Flanders small scale farming countryside.
A bit all over this landscape little villages sprawled into small built-up areas of recent houses where people sunbathed, had drinks or were already starting their grills for a late afternoon bbq.
The new neighbourhoods were starting to bite into the surrounding farming land, and there were factory chimneys out in the distance. But despite these things, there was still a nice feel to the region. Almost idyllic. But then I made the mistake of looking down.

We were flying over a field of maize, I remember. The stalks had grown to around one meter, perhaps. But that was not what pricked my idyllic bubble. It was the way that there was not one single shred of green in the land between all of those stalks of maize.
And this continued throughout the hour that we were floating about. In field after field, you could see the potato, maize, or cabbage plants growing, but nothing else. Absolutely nothing in between. Just brown yellow earth.
It did not take long for me to notice that nothing moved there either. Well, okay, a couple of pigeons would fly about on occasion, or a pair of crows. But nothing else. Not a rabbit, or a fox, or a bird in those fields. There were also no nests to be seen anywhere in the middle of the crops, nor much in terms of mole holes that I could spot. Just even, smooth brown yellow earth.

We always grew maize back home as I was growing up. My father was never much of an environmental man himself, and would often use biocides in quantities much higher than the recommended dosage, and twice as often as recommended. As many farmers did, and, I think, still do. And yet, even so, weeds would start showing up from the time maize got to half the size I saw yesterday. Moles wreacked havoc and birds would always take at least some grains here and there.

So, knowing how much my father used to love spraying things with chemicals, and how we still got some 'nature' fighting back, I have to wonder what in the blazes they are using on the fields I was seeing from the balloon yesterday to leave them completely deprived of any life but the crop.

No wonder the number and diversity of countryside birds in Europe has fallen 40% in the last two decades. 40%! That's on top of all that had happened before. 40%! And in places like Brazil, China and even America it is even worse.

And you know what is almost even more annoying? It is that it is all a matter of lazyness on the part of farmers.
In the middle of all those sterilised fields there was one that had weeds covering a good part of the soil between the stalks. I do not know why, perhaps it was an organic farm. Or perhaps the farmer was simply less spray-happy.
But I do know the following: the maize there was no smaller or looking less productive than anywhere else. If anything it was the contrary.

In fact, studies of farming yields throughout the last 200 years in the UK have shown that traditional farming methods produced as high a yield and in some cases a slightly higher yield as methods using biocides. Unlike what we get hammered into our heads all the time by agribusiness propaganda, the higher agricultural yields of contemporary farming have never been due to chemical pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or even fertilizers. They have derive from more and better machines, better knowledge of seeds and natural processes, scale, and other positive developments.

The only real reason farmers have started using and have stuck by chemicals, in my view, and from my experience, is laziness. It's simply less work. Organic farming is more trouble. You might have to spend hours weeding, chasing bugs and critters, etc. With chemicals, instead, spray once and you're done working on pests for two weeks.
Ok, lazyness and marketing on the part of chemical companies. Some of those chemicals are not even all that effective anymore.

Now, back home, we have decided to go biocide free, and my father has stopped messing about in the farm. The place is slowly recovering, though it will probably take years before all of the ground is finally clean of the chemicals he dumped on it. Yet, I have already spotted over 10 species of small birds close to our house. Species I had never seen there before. And we even got a woodpecker showing up now.

On a recent visit to Heidelberg, where I was studying German for a few weeks (took the train to get there, in case you're wondering), on the hills across from the town, there are dozens of private orchards along the Philosopher's trail. I often saw people there pulling out by hand creepers and weeds during the weekend and evening, so I assume there is little in the sense of herbicides at least. Well, the whole area seems to be teeming with life, with the enormous racket of birds singing and chirping accompanying you permanently even as you walk into the residential areas at the edge of the hills.

Even where we were flying with the balloon, on the plots that were just growing grass for cattle, there seemed to be some nature still clinging on. I saw at least two hares and a fox as we flew past these.

So the difference between the sterilised farms that take up most of the countryside here, and I guess, almost everywhere, and a clean countryside is enormous.

That is why I have come back from this trip even more convinced of the need to stick to buying organic whenever possible.
Some people got into organic because it is healthier.
Some others, like me, because it also tastes good and it tend to provide a lot more types of things to buy, like types of vegetable you haven't seen in years but might still remember from your childhood, or your grandmother might remember from her childhood. Or vegetables that might be exotic but super healthy and tasty. And then you also tend to get a lot more varieties of the things you already used to buy, like apples or pears.

But more and more I feel that I should stick to organic (as well as local and/or fair trade whenever possible) for ethical reasons.
It is simply so much better for the environment. It's better for biodiversity, it's better for the quality of water resources, and it is even better for us, because then we can actually enjoy going for a walk in the countryside and being in the middle of nature, instead of being in a simulacrum of nature, which is what a lot of the countryside has become, not much better than if it had been made out of plastic.
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Anyhow, we came back from the balloon ride and went to visit my girlfriend's mother. The first thing I notice when I get there is the plastic bottle of RoundUp, (in)famous among herbicides, and a favourite of that most irresponsible of Agrimonsters: Monsanto.
It had been brought by my brother-in-law, to kill the handful of pitiful weeds growing through the gravel outside the house. He also plans to use it all around his new house, despite the fact that he is father to a young girl, barely able to walk, who is sure to play there for years to come.
Well, I tried informing them of how dangerous the stuff is. I mean, just look it up. Wikipedia alone is enough to make me want to stay well clear of it. But, of course, it's 'Oh, the place is overwhelmed with weeds', 'Oh, it will take forever to clean up by hand', 'Oh, this and that non-chemical method will only have the weeds grow again within days', 'But it says here in the pack it's gone within 2 weeks, anyhow, so why are you worried?'

Sometimes you just have to accept people do not want to listen. You have to avoid having yet another fight over something that will not change a single thing. Had more than enough lost battles over organic produce, over saving energy, over how buying stuff just because you can will only generate trash, not happiness. The list could go on and on.
So I let it go after a while. Maybe I'll try again some other day. When my chances they'll listen are better.
Maybe when they're tired? Hmm, probably won't work.
I wonder if I'd get a better chance if I hit them with a frying pan over the head?

Sustainable living - How do we actually consume, and can we keep it up?

1634 Million Kgs (that's 3594,8 million lbs) in minerals, metals and fuels. That includes:

- 224826,297 cubic meters gas (7939665,75 cubic feet)

- 310499 litres oil (82025,1581 US gallons)

- 29728 Kg cement (65539,0213 lbs)

- 421 Kg Lead (928,15 lbs)

- 13442 Kg Iron Ore (29634,54 lbs)

- 2577 Kg Bauxite (5681,31 lbs) for aluminium production

- 266629 Kg Coal (587816,32 lbs)

- 9996 Kg Phospates (22037,4 lbs)

- 49018 gram Gold (1729 oz)

- 594 Kg Copper (1309,55 lbs)

- 12899 Kg Salt (28437,43 lbs)

- 8737 Kg Clay (19261,79 lbs)

- 305 Kg Zinc (672,41 lbs)

- 730940 Kg Stone, Sand and Gravel (1611446,86 lbs)
Source: "Blinkt alle goud? Mijnbouw, ecologie, en mensenrechten" report available on http://www.mo.be/fileadmin/pdf/MO-paper_Mijnbouw.pdf
Original data from the Mineral Information Institute (2008)

That is how much every American being born today is expected to use up throughout his or her life, maintaining current consumption patterns.

There are at least three important considerations directly related to global warming coming from this, and then a number of other considerations relating for example to sustainability, biodiversity, exploitation of vulnerable and poor people in the regions where many of these are obtained, etc.


Relevance for Global Warming


The first important element to remember is that although these numbers pertain to the US, it is unlikely that Europeans, Japanese or any other rich nation's citizens rate any less gluttonous. In fact, if we take CO2 emissions as an indicator of what we might expect in terms of raw material consumption, well, despite the US's bad reputation, some European countries rate almost as bad, Canada and Australia rate worse, and middle eastern oil-States rate gigantically worse. So they probably do similar when it comes to resource consumption.

So, to get any idea of the strain we put on our resources, multiply the numbers above by the number of Americans, but also Europeans, rich middle-easterns, Aussies, Japanese, Canadians, and a growing number of Southeast Asians and Chinese.

Clearly, even with the best of hopes in regards of recycling, improvements in mining and efficiency in the usage of materials, crisis notwithstanding, this sort of consumption raises big questions in terms of sustainability, in the broad sense, i.e., can the Earth actually keep up the supply?

But there are also direct global warming effects to this level of consumption of minerals, metals and fuels:

- mining uses up enormous amounts of energy, and emits large amounts of greenhouse gases. You have just to look at the extraction of Canada's tar sands to make oil, for example, to realise that. Canada's own National Energy Board says the production of one single barrel of oil from tar sands emits 75 Kg of greenhouse gases.

While tar sands are an extreme example, mining most of the above mentioned raw materials involves huge amounts of energy and emissions, simply from the machinery involved.

- Mining also generates emissions by releasing greenhouse gases from natural sinks. One obvious example is the destruction of forests for the purpose of mining. This happens, again, in Canada, on account of tar sand exploitation, but also a bit all over the world, especially in developing countries with little to show in terms of environmental protection rules, or few ways to enforce them.

Tropical deforestation is currently responsible for about 20% of emissions, both by burning and by the emission of gases during the rotting of cut wood.

Another example of an effect is coal mining which, according to the EPA, is one of the main emitters of methane, because of the methane that exists within coal and which gets released when coal gets mined. Yet another example, oil in Northern Alaska. It is so cold there they actually have to spend huge amounts of energy warming up the tundra to get the oil out. Imagine how much that emits, and don't forget that the tundra also stores enormous amounts of methane which then goes into the atmosphere to warm up the environment even more.

- Transportation and processing - Most of the developed world is now short on most of the above materials. This means they need to come from elsewhere. Even when they still exist, they are often more expensive to mine, due to scarcity and stricter regulations, meaning the market forces have shut down the mines in rich countries and buyers source their materials from other countries. That means all of the above gets transported from mining areas, to the different processing areas, and then to the consumption markets. All of this requires energy.

Add to this that processing itself is often extremely energy intensive, like for aluminium, iron, cement, zinc, to mention but a few.

Using recycled materials helps, but even then, recycled materials are not enough, and they still use a large amount of energy to be reused, even if it is less than the energy necessary for virgin materials.

Beyond Global Warming

Well, all of this lust for raw materials has profound effects on our climate, but exploiting these resources also puts an important strain on the local environment and on local populations, leading to loss of biodiversity, contamination or soil, water and air, often conflict for the possession of the resources, and impoverished local populations who get kicked out from their fields or who lose the forest upon which they depend through the action of governments, militias, or even private 'security' services working for the mining companies.

The loss of biodiversity and the contamination of the local environment is something that is particularly prevalent, especially in developing countries where mining is often either done unofficially, for example in eastern Congo, or in the Amazon; or by large mining or oil companies which can impose their will on unstable or weak authorities, or which simply go there because they have less rules to comply with.

As a result, mining can use unsafe, or dirty chemicals and methods of productions which will severely damage the environment of a large area, especially through the contamination of rivers and underground water sources. The local population seldom receives much of the generated income, but they do have to deal with problems arising from the exploitation of their resources. The Delta region in Nigeria or gold mining in some areas of the Amazon are good examples of what can happen.

This sort of damage happens on a grand scale even in developed countries. Again, the tar sands exploitation in Canada has led to enormous patches of forest being cleared, water sources being contaminated with the run-off from the refinement of the sands, and bird-life, for example is suffering damage all across North America because the area is a breeding area for many bird species. Even here, albeit in a less dramatic fashion, the locals have won little, since most of the labour involved in the exploitation comes from elsewhere, and on temporary contracts, which means they add little but hassle to the local community.

Conflict and human rights' abuses are frequent when the business interests and the interests of the population collide. The most dramatic examples are the ones that have to do with civil strife and guerilla conflicts, where the proceeds from mining end up financing the sides at war. The Blood Diamonds from Sierra Leone and Angola, the Coltan in Eastern Congo.

In places like Burma too, many of these activities are still organised around forced labour by the government itself.

But there can also be abuses when mining companies legally explore mineral resources, especially if property laws are weak or difficult for their holders to enforce against big companies and governments. Oil in South American Indian regions, gold in Mongolia, a number of different minerals in other, less troubled areas of Congo again... Let's not even get into non-mining business like soya, wood and cattle, where this sort of abuse is rampant.

So what can we do?

Well, becoming an activist for all sorts of good causes is always an option, and that will no doubt help. ^_^

Going into politics might help too, if you are any good at it, which I, for example am not.

But it is probably as a consumer that most people can do their bit:

For some types of resources, or goods made from these resources, there are certifications that are supposed to guarantee the origin and manner in which the resources are obtained. Of course, every certification has its flaws and ways to fool the audits, but on average, if it is certified, it is a lot better than if it is not

Buy recycled and recyclable. It is true that recycling still uses energy and pollutes a bit. But a lot less than if the materials used are all virgin materials. For example, if you buy a car, your car dealer should be able to have at least a raw estimate of how much of the brand's production is based on recycled materials. If a company has no data on that, while their competitors do (for example, in the car industry at least some of them do), it probably means they just don't really care about that and use few recycled materials.

As time goes by you can find more and more companies in more and more sectors coming out with figures on their recycled materials usage and their longer term aims.

In the same way it is a good idea to buy stuff that can be recycled. Looking ahead of course. Again, more and more companies provide that type of information, at least if you ask for it.

But the most important thing is:

To consume less.

I know, I know. Everybody is saying that we have to get consumption going again so that we avoid economic meltdown. And to a degree, I admit they are right. But, I hope it has now become patently clear that the level of consumption the west has had for the past while is completely unsustainable. Even if you don't care about the emissions, or the amount of resources we consume, you have to admit that the only way we can get consumption back to its previous level is through giving people as much credit as before, and we have seen where that leads!

So, when I say consume less I mean, consume at a more reasonable level. I'm not saying buy nothing, but you don't really need to change computer every six months, or mobile every three months. Do you have any idea how much stuff is needed to build a laptop, for example? Those 2 or 3 Kg required gigantic amounts of land to be sifted through for minerals, litres of oil for the plastics, for the energy to manufacture it and to transport everything around the world I don't know how many times before the final product ends up on the shop shelf, litres and litres of water, etc, etc.

And this applies to everything from the runners you take jogging and which probably do not have to get thrown out with the next fashion season, to the Hi-fi speakers that still sound pretty good, to the lawnmower which probably just needs to be taken to the shop to fix or to that throw-away bottle of mineral water which can easily be replaced by a refillable one.

And of course, use the car and the plane less, save energy at home, use renewables and all the other things I've been writing about in previous posts.

At the same time, what you do buy, you're better off buying certified, preferably made from recycled materials or natural, renewable materials like wood, and, if you can, preferably local production. That way, not only do you keep down the emissions from transport, but you also promote local employment in a more sustainable way, even from a financial point of view. In fact, I am convinced that even for developing countries it ends up being better if they can grow less dependent on our consumption and bad habits in the west and grow by focusing on their own markets, and their own needs, not our desires.

Organically Farming and gardening - Bugs, plant diseases, seeds, and a lot more

I must admit I'm in a lazy mood. Maybe it is te winter snow that dropped by to say hi for a week or two. Maybe it was simply the holiday season that got me slow. Maybe it is that I got a bunch of starlings dropping on my balcony to tussle over the birdfeed, and a Blue Tit also flies up here to the 3rd floor on occasion and I just can't keep myself from stopping everything to go look. Or maybe it is simply 2009 doesn't really seem like a year to look forward to. But I'm just feeling lazy.

As always, when I'm lazy, I end up doing things I've been putting off for ages, just as an excuse to not do the stuff I need to do now.
As it turns out, this time the lucky winner was my email, which got a nice wee clean up, and it's contacts organised, for the first time in, well, ever.

And in the process of doing so, I came across a bunch of links I had mailed myself throughout the last couple of years, and which I had lost when I had to format the harddrive.

There are a number of really useful pages in there for anyone interested in gardening or in doing a little bit of organic farming someday. Not all the pages are necessarily organic farming/gardening related, but I find they still have some useful info.


1- Info and advice 0n insect pests, diseases and other possible stress causes (chemical and alternative solutions), as well as prunning advice - CUES - University of Minnesota

2 - Is it a pest? Is it a good bug? Hell, you're just curious what it is or want to confirm your guess is right? Great website to find the oddest and the commonest of creature by looking at pictures and descriptions. If need be you can send the picture of your bug in and they'll post it and then somebody, usually Mr. Saugstag, will post the answer. I use it as a good starting point to find out what I'm dealing with: http://www.pestcontrolcanada.com/Questions/Whatisthispest.htm

3 - A great website for simple, natural, or homemade solutions and treatments to all sorts of problems a garden or field might encounter, from insects to diseases and even to deal with the ravages of, er, overly energetic pets destroying one's plants. Straight onto the insect treatment page, but the bar at the top will lead to the other sections: http://www.ghorganics.com

4 - Seeds and stuff like that. I mostly look for stuff there and see if I can find it closer to home, but it is good to have this as backup and as info. http://www.organiccatalogue.com/catalog/index.php

5 - This is a great website for anyone looking to plant anything, in particular if you're looking to seed uncommon varieties of vegetables. Besides being a really worthy NGO, it also has a pretty cool online guide for the differente seeds and varieties. Unfortunately, the online access is limited to only a few plants in English. Oddly, it is a lot more extensive in Portuguese and Spanish. So, anyone who can read portuguese or spanish, enjoy.

6 - Vegetable guide. I'm afraid it is only in Dutch :-(

7 - Australian Agriculture Portal - If you happen to be growing anything on their list of agricultural industries, it has quite a lot of info, well organised and in digestible layout. Definitely not particularly organic farming oriented though, of course.

Hope it is some help to someone at some point.
Happy gardening and farming.