Countryside Vandals
Despite the efforts of some farmers to work with nature, not against it, intensive agriculture is still the chosen way for the big and powerful, says Tom Lane.
They have become the…
Myths are like dandruff – difficult to get rid of. One of the most tenacious is that farmers are the guardians of our countryside. It’s like praising the National Front for its contribution to race relations.
I’ve lived in the countryside for years and one image sticks in my mind – a man stalking the pastures of a dairy farm dressed in space suit and helmet. The life support system on his back was, in fact, a pesticide container and he was spraying any weed that poked its leaves above the ground – docks, thistles, nettles or whatever. Grassland is usually sprayed with fertiliser and pesticides at the start of the season but this was to knock out the few hardier plants that had survived.
Perennial weeds are vital to birds both for the insects they harbour and for the seeds they produce. Not only are crops almost entirely devoid of them but increasingly, field margins have been reduced to a minimum and sometimes even these are sprayed.
One billion gallons of pesticides – and that includes herbicides and fungicides – is sprayed on to the land every year. More than 200 chemicals, 50 of them linked to cancer.
Silage cutting takes place exactly at the time when ground-nesting birds are rearing their young in the safety of the long grass. It has devastated them. And the sowing of winter wheat leaves bare soil exposed to winter rains and has played a major part in the recent floods.
Modern farmers are not allies of nature but its opponents. The natural world is in direct conflict with their profit margins. The lower branches of mature trees shade grass and reduce its growth, so they’re cut off until the tree takes on the appearance of a shaving brush. Hedgerows are mechanically flailed into park-like regularity and with the trimmings go hips, haws, sloes and ivy berries – food that sustains birds throughout the winter. In many parts of the country you can gaze into the distance and see only a few ancient trees standing alone and isolated in hedgerows with no new growth anywhere in sight – all flailed into oblivion.
EU grants enable every wet spot and every tract of marshland to be drained,
dried out and planted. Drainage channels, sluices and silt removal have ensured
that the beauty of water meadows is almost a thing of the past. With them
has gone over 80 per cent of our chalk and limestone downlands, ploughed
up to produce fodder crops (mostly). Despoilation of hill country has been
almost absolute with the over-stocking and over-grazing of sheep.
Perhaps the most devastating loss has been that of hedgerows with more than 100,000 miles grubbed out – enough to circle the earth four times. Forests have suffered just as badly and islands whose land surface was once largely woodland can now boast a surface area of just one-and-a-half per cent. And they’re still chopping. Much of this damage has been done in the last 50 years since the advent of intensive, chemical-dependent agriculture.
The combination of artificial fertilisers and pesticides has had a devastating effect on water life and insects. It’s no accident that you can drive from one end of the country to the other in mid summer without barely a squashed bug smearing your windscreen.
There is hardly a creature dependent upon the country side which is not under severe pressure. The cry is out to slaughter the few deer that remain in tiny pockets of woodland because they trespass on crops from time to time. Fencing is obviously too difficult! Rooks and crows are slaughtered because of the ludicrous myth that they peck out the eyes of new born lambs. Magpies, pigeons and jays are also killed on the basis of equally outdated myths. And areas where organised shoots take place are almost wildlife-free zones as hawks and owls are illegally wiped out and even the humble hedgehog is destroyed in brutal steel leg-hold traps.
Other beautiful but more ‘edible’ birds are destroyed for fun – partridge, woodcock, ducks and snipe. In fact, a combination of all these factors is devastating bird life as the populations of once common species collapse. Starling and tree sparrow numbers are down by over 90 per cent and sky larks have become a rarity. Populations of 22 of Britain’s most common birds have dropped by more than 50 per cent. And every mammal is under attack.
Perhaps the most craven act, though, has been to approve the slaughter of 20,000 badgers in a valueless and unscientific ‘experiment’. It is nothing more than a sop to the demands of farmers who have brought the problem of bovine TB on their own heads.
Nocturnal and secretive, most people have never seen a live badger. It is a harmless devourer of fruits, worms and grubs. It lives in close-knit family groups and its habits have remained unchanged for possibly millions of years. Almost disease-free, it lives in complete harmony with nature. This hasn’t prevented farmers from pouring manure slurry down badger setts or shooting and snaring them then dumping their bodies beside the road to look like traffic accidents.
Dairy cattle, on the other hand, represent a terrifying example of human’s perversion of nature. Let’s forget, for a moment, that we are the only mammals to consume milk after weaning – and then that of another species. And let’s forget it’s sold as a product of contented cows. There is little contentment in the bellows of a cow when her calf is taken away at a day or two old to be shot.
Cows spend their entire lives under stress – carrying the double burden of milking and pregnancy at the same time. Their milk yield has been so manipulated that they may produce 30 litres daily, distending their udders under its weight of up to 50 kilograms. No wonder one third suffer from painful mastitis and foot problems.
Few survive beyond five or six years and even then it takes a battery drugs – antibiotics, growth promoters, vaccines containing mercury and formaldehyde and god knows what else. The grass they graze on is equally deficient as it also relies on artificial chemicals. And for as much as six months of the year they stand shoulder to shoulder in dimly-lit sheds, hock deep in their own excreta – a wonderful environment for spreading diseases. Is it any wonder that given this fertile ground, TB has spread like wildfire through the national herd?
Interestingly, cattle reared under the Soil Association’s more humane standards, without constant drugs, have remained clear of TB. But despite this, it is the badger who is being targeted rather than the cruel, unnatural and unsustainable methods to which most dairy cows are subjected.
Badgers are caught in cage traps baited with peanuts and are then shot. But that’s only part of the story. The trapped animals suffer terribly, enduring fear, discomfort, stress and injury over many hours. Many non-target animals are also trapped and die or have to be killed. There is a pause in the cubbing season but there are still reports of females leaving behind unweaned young who invariably die.
Killing badgers has not been a last resort for this Government but a first. Farmers have demanded this and they’ve got it. No other avenues have even been considered. There is no work on the effect of transmission between cows, improving cattle health, restricting the movement of cattle or developing a vaccine.
A simple look at the facts shows that destroying badgers is designed solely to placate farmers and feed their innate belief that wildlife is of no consequence and is there for one reason only – to be killed.
TB was widespread in cattle before 1960 and was controlled by testing and slaughter. The first badger with TB wasn’t found until 1971. It is almost certain that far from badgers giving TB to cows, it was the other way round – probably through infected worms who have feasted on cow pats. Badgers don’t even appear to be very susceptible to TB. It isn’t spread from one to another inside the close conditions of the sett and researchers believe that it would die out if they weren’t continually reinfected.
The reason for reinfections is that the test for TB in cattle fails in up to 32 per cent of cases and so these animals continue to spread the disease in herds which are supposedly TB free.
This Government cave in is a repeat of the sheep farmer syndrome. It has been accepted byGovernment that foxes need to be controlled, even though three surveys have dismissed fox predation on lambs as ‘insignificant’. Set this against the actions of farmers.
By forcing their sheep to bear too many lambs, too early in the year, farmers are responsible for the death of 20 per cent of new born lambs who succumb to cold, starvation and disease. Yet it’s foxes who are painted as the demons.
Had the Countryside March taken place they would have mentioned none of these things. The few animal welfare and environmental improvements that have been introduced were all forced on farmers by so-called townies – defined as anyone who opposes the Countryside Alliance. It is we who are the real saviours of the countryside, not them.
For more information contact National Federation of Badger Groups.
Tel: 020 7498 3220 or 0976 153389.
E: elaine.king@nfbg.org.uk.
W: www.nfbg.org.uk
Thanks to Chris Kennet, Natural Living Consultant, for his help