8 ms·

Restoring nature is good for farmers, fisheries and food security

33 points by ianai 3y ago

mydriasis 3y ago
> According to a UNEP report, some 20,000 flowering plant species upon which many bee species depend for food could be lost over the coming decades without greater conservation efforts. However, if done in harmony with nature, agriculture – one of the biggest drivers of biodiversity loss – can be pollinator friendly, which ultimately helps bees and farmers alike. This is important to me. When we moved into our country home, we noted that there was a lot of agriculture around us. We've made a concerted effort to plant and maintain lots of native species, and we've seen a boom in the concentration of unique bugs. While this is small-scale and anecdotal, the results of our efforts have been super visible to us, and I imagine if everyone had just a couple of native flowers in their yard -- let alone rebuilding "green walls" -- it would go a long way.
- xnx 3y ago
  Biodiversity/species loss through habitat destruction (either directly or through anthropogenic climate change) should be one of the greatest shames of society.
  - User23 3y ago
    On the other hand mass famine and children starving to death, especially in the global south, is pretty shameful too.
    - abeppu 3y ago
      I think deaths from malnutrition are shameful regardless of age, but I think that's far more an issue of how we distribute resources than our actual ability to produce calories from the land. Aside from simple inequality, both food waste and meat production are huge sources of inefficiency. In recent decades, actual deaths from malnutrition have declined meaningfully though we still have a ways to go. And IIRC the absolute numbers of people suffering from malnutrition, though a couple orders of magnitude larger than those that are actually killed by it, has also declined in absolute terms, even as the population has grown. If you're actually concerned about children starving to death, rather than make comments against people trying to avoid species destruction, you might do more good by giving up meat, aggressively reducing food waste, and making periodic donations to an organization like Direct Relief International. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/malnutrition-death-rates?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~African+Region+%28WHO%29~North+America+%28WB%29~Eastern+Mediterranean+Region+%28WHO%29~Region+of+the+Americas+%28WHO%29~South-East+Asia+Region+%28WHO%29~South+Asia+%28WB%29~Sub-Saharan+Africa+%28WB%29~European+Region+%28WHO%29~Europe+%26+Central+Asia+%28WB%29~Western+Pacific+Region+%28WHO%29 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/malnutrition-death-rates?...
- mistrial9 3y ago
  key word search "hedgerows" congrats on your local success! many more to come...
- dopa42365 3y ago
  Are those 20000 plant species of any actual relevance though? There're hundreds of thousands. For context: >The world’s food supply depends on about 150 plant species. Of those 150, just 12 provide three-quarters of the world’s food. More than half of the world’s food energy comes from a limited number of varieties of three “mega-crops”: rice, wheat, and maize. Not everything is valuable by just existing.
  - digging 3y ago
    Not all value comes from being mass-produced by humans. Specifically, the 20,000 species you're talking about, are > some 20,000 flowering plant species upon which many bee species depend for food which has intrinsic value. And if you really need to tie it back to humans, we need those native bee species, because the ones we've mass-produced are not as good at the job. https://www.ecowatch.com/honeybees-pollinators-native-species.html https://www.ecowatch.com/honeybees-pollinators-native-specie...
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    The problem is that we are not able yet to judge which are valuable and which are not. Most of the current chemical techniques are still extremely inefficient in comparison with what can be done by living cells and we are not yet able to design catalysts comparable with the natural enzymes. The disappearance of any species of living beings may have as a consequence the definitive loss of some valuable knowledge about useful chemical processes, which might be discovered again by humans decades or centuries later, if ever. When we will become able to recreate some kind of living being, after storing enough information about it, then we will afford to decide that it is not valuable and that we can let it become extinct or even intentionally eliminate it from nature. Until then, permitting the destruction of information that we do not understand yet, and which has a chance, however small, to become essential for our own survival, is extremely stupid, even for those who believe that the other living beings exist only to serve them, as written in the Genesis.
  - tinyplanet-o 3y ago
    [dead]
protontypes 3y ago
Unfortunately, UNEP does not address the unpleasant truth here either. The biggest destroyer of nature is intensive livestock farming, especially for meat production. Today, about 40% of the inhabitable land is used for feeding livestock. Removing subsidies in this area could very quickly bring back biodiversity, fight climate change and increase food security worldwide. Unfortunately, for many, eating meat has become like a fetish and such measures are politically almost impossible to implement. Here some more data about this: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use#half-of-the-world-s-habitable-land-is-used-for-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/land-use#half-of-the-world-s-habi...
- foobarian 3y ago
  The diagram included in that document is fantastic, thank you.
- ianai 3y ago
  So they use 77% of their available land to produce 37% of their protein and 18% of their calories. Imagine how much cheaper calories would be if the land dedicated to plants were simply doubled. Thus eliminating a huge amount of starvation.
  - FredPret 3y ago
    The thought of that many lentils makes me gag. Cows and sheep can easily live on land not suitable for crops. Livestock is a way to essentially turn unproductive, dry grassland into meat.
    - myshpa 3y ago
      What you're missing is that half of the year they live on soy from deforested Amazon. https://ourworldindata.org/soy https://ourworldindata.org/soy And that "unproductive dry grassland" used to be natural habitat for wildlife, until we took it from them, and more often than not used to be forested. The potential for carbon storage afforesting those areas is huge, so huge that we could store our entire 1.5˚C carbon budget in them. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4 https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/ Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000010 https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal... Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agriculture_production_as_a_major_driver_of_the_Earth_system_exceeding_planetary_boundaries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...
WalterBright 3y ago
I let my yard grow wild, just removing some of the invasive weeds. It saves me a ton of watering costs, and the hum of bees is ever-present.

33 points by ianai 3y ago

> According to a UNEP report, some 20,000 flowering plant species upon which many bee species depend for food could be lost over the coming decades without greater conservation efforts. However, if done in harmony with nature, agriculture – one of the biggest drivers of biodiversity loss – can be pollinator friendly, which ultimately helps bees and farmers alike. This is important to me. When we moved into our country home, we noted that there was a lot of agriculture around us. We've made a concerted effort to plant and maintain lots of native species, and we've seen a boom in the concentration of unique bugs. While this is small-scale and anecdotal, the results of our efforts have been super visible to us, and I imagine if everyone had just a couple of native flowers in their yard -- let alone rebuilding "green walls" -- it would go a long way.

xnx 3y ago
Biodiversity/species loss through habitat destruction (either directly or through anthropogenic climate change) should be one of the greatest shames of society.
- User23 3y ago
  On the other hand mass famine and children starving to death, especially in the global south, is pretty shameful too.
  - abeppu 3y ago
    I think deaths from malnutrition are shameful regardless of age, but I think that's far more an issue of how we distribute resources than our actual ability to produce calories from the land. Aside from simple inequality, both food waste and meat production are huge sources of inefficiency. In recent decades, actual deaths from malnutrition have declined meaningfully though we still have a ways to go. And IIRC the absolute numbers of people suffering from malnutrition, though a couple orders of magnitude larger than those that are actually killed by it, has also declined in absolute terms, even as the population has grown. If you're actually concerned about children starving to death, rather than make comments against people trying to avoid species destruction, you might do more good by giving up meat, aggressively reducing food waste, and making periodic donations to an organization like Direct Relief International. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/malnutrition-death-rates?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~African+Region+%28WHO%29~North+America+%28WB%29~Eastern+Mediterranean+Region+%28WHO%29~Region+of+the+Americas+%28WHO%29~South-East+Asia+Region+%28WHO%29~South+Asia+%28WB%29~Sub-Saharan+Africa+%28WB%29~European+Region+%28WHO%29~Europe+%26+Central+Asia+%28WB%29~Western+Pacific+Region+%28WHO%29 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/malnutrition-death-rates?...
mistrial9 3y ago
key word search "hedgerows" congrats on your local success! many more to come...
dopa42365 3y ago
Are those 20000 plant species of any actual relevance though? There're hundreds of thousands. For context: >The world’s food supply depends on about 150 plant species. Of those 150, just 12 provide three-quarters of the world’s food. More than half of the world’s food energy comes from a limited number of varieties of three “mega-crops”: rice, wheat, and maize. Not everything is valuable by just existing.
- digging 3y ago
  Not all value comes from being mass-produced by humans. Specifically, the 20,000 species you're talking about, are > some 20,000 flowering plant species upon which many bee species depend for food which has intrinsic value. And if you really need to tie it back to humans, we need those native bee species, because the ones we've mass-produced are not as good at the job. https://www.ecowatch.com/honeybees-pollinators-native-species.html https://www.ecowatch.com/honeybees-pollinators-native-specie...
- adrian_b 3y ago
  The problem is that we are not able yet to judge which are valuable and which are not. Most of the current chemical techniques are still extremely inefficient in comparison with what can be done by living cells and we are not yet able to design catalysts comparable with the natural enzymes. The disappearance of any species of living beings may have as a consequence the definitive loss of some valuable knowledge about useful chemical processes, which might be discovered again by humans decades or centuries later, if ever. When we will become able to recreate some kind of living being, after storing enough information about it, then we will afford to decide that it is not valuable and that we can let it become extinct or even intentionally eliminate it from nature. Until then, permitting the destruction of information that we do not understand yet, and which has a chance, however small, to become essential for our own survival, is extremely stupid, even for those who believe that the other living beings exist only to serve them, as written in the Genesis.
- tinyplanet-o 3y ago
  [dead]

protontypes 3y ago

Unfortunately, UNEP does not address the unpleasant truth here either. The biggest destroyer of nature is intensive livestock farming, especially for meat production. Today, about 40% of the inhabitable land is used for feeding livestock. Removing subsidies in this area could very quickly bring back biodiversity, fight climate change and increase food security worldwide. Unfortunately, for many, eating meat has become like a fetish and such measures are politically almost impossible to implement. Here some more data about this: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use#half-of-the-world-s-habitable-land-is-used-for-agriculture https://ourworldindata.org/land-use#half-of-the-world-s-habi...

foobarian 3y ago
The diagram included in that document is fantastic, thank you.
ianai 3y ago
So they use 77% of their available land to produce 37% of their protein and 18% of their calories. Imagine how much cheaper calories would be if the land dedicated to plants were simply doubled. Thus eliminating a huge amount of starvation.
- FredPret 3y ago
  The thought of that many lentils makes me gag. Cows and sheep can easily live on land not suitable for crops. Livestock is a way to essentially turn unproductive, dry grassland into meat.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    What you're missing is that half of the year they live on soy from deforested Amazon. https://ourworldindata.org/soy https://ourworldindata.org/soy And that "unproductive dry grassland" used to be natural habitat for wildlife, until we took it from them, and more often than not used to be forested. The potential for carbon storage afforesting those areas is huge, so huge that we could store our entire 1.5˚C carbon budget in them. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4 https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/ Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000010 https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal... Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agriculture_production_as_a_major_driver_of_the_Earth_system_exceeding_planetary_boundaries https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...

WalterBright 3y ago

I let my yard grow wild, just removing some of the invasive weeds. It saves me a ton of watering costs, and the hum of bees is ever-present.