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| Brewing fat and protein |
Why we should change from farming to brewing
George Monbiot is a writer and environmental activist. On his twitter page he says that the greatest threat to life on Earth is ...... farming. According to Monbiot, farming is the greatest cause of habitat destruction, the greatest cause of biodiversity loss and extinction, one of the greatest causes of climate breakdown, water pollution and water loss, and soil destruction.
Every hectare that is used for an extractive industry like farming, is land not used for forest, wetland, savannah and other habitats which are essential to prevent the collapse of our ecosystem.
Future
projections for crop productivity are dependent on using more water for
Irrigation. Trouble is, there isn't any more water! Irrigation water is already
being used to the maximum. Aquifers
are shrinking because so much water is being drawn out of the ground.
Global warming is causing mountain water held as snow & ice to
recede. A huge arc of land from Portugal to Pakistan already risks becoming a desert.
Monbiot looks at brewing as an innovative way of helping to solve the problems. He also suggests making more use of perrenial crops
eg Kale, broccoli, asparagus, watercress which last from year to year.
This is better than annual crops which require ploughing up the ground
each year and re-sowing with use of fertilisers and chemicals to kill
other plants that might compete with them. Already, the Land Institute in Kansas, and Yunnan university
in China have developed strains of rice that have been harvested
continuously for 6yrs and produce the same yield as annual rice.
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| Land Institute perrenial rice |
Another benefit of moving away from farming is the reduction of killing animals for food and the inevitable cruelty that this involves.
What we need to do, says George Monbiot, is move farm subsidies out of animal farming and use that public money to support these whole new ways of producing food.
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| Defra land management |
You can see more of George Monbiot about these matters over on Youtube. George Monbiot YouTube presentation : Why we have to stop farming animals .