“Farmland has very little to offer any wild creatures”

 “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon, if we lose the insects then everything else is going to collapse”

Prof Dave Goulson, university of East Anglia talking about the recently reported catastrophic collapse in the insect population. (75% decline since 1989)

Q. Why is this happening? 
A. Plant protection products (PPPs) are thought to play a major part.

PPP's these words conjour up a pleasant picture: one of the farmer, the steward of the land protecting his crops, and they are meant to do just that.

I have a real issue with this phrase,  it is makes the chemicals used on our food sound ok. It tells us that they are safe, that they are good and are there for our benefit.

Can we assume then that these products, supposedly  created to help us grow more food are indeed that: benign, and are there for protection? Even more fundamentally are they necessary to feed the world?

The mass spraying of our countryside, and the routine use of chemicals as a preventative measure is destroying ecosystems. It is chemical warfare on our natural world and it is destroying the very life we depend on to survive.

A UN report in March was severely critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions”. Click here to read the full Guardian article.

The same UN report denounced the myth that pesticides are necessary to feed the world.

Insects make up about two thirds of life on this earth and 75% of them have disappeared over the last 30 years. Click here to read the full Guardian article

Next time you drive down the motorway, check your windscreen, where once there would be a layer of dead insects now there are none, where have all the insects gone?

The chemical industrialisation of our food production system is very real, and is on a scale unprecedented in our history, mostly we don’t see it, but the consequences affect us all. 

It is nearly impossible for the average farmer to break out of this system because the supermarket model controls very tightly the price a farmer can command for his produce.

This wheel of food production is controlled and driven on the one hand by corporate greed and unethical tactics of the chemical producers, and on the other hand the price slashing tactics of the supermarkets.

The solution:

Set up a food system where the farmer gets a fair price for his food and then grow food without chemicals, it is as simple as that, it really is. Plant patches of wild flowers, put in hedge rows, leave areas to go wild and pay the farmer what he needs to make this happen.

Organic food production offers solutions to these problems, will you join us?

Thanks

Kenneth

PS There is a FREE baby pumpkin with all orders over €35 next week just enter “pumpkin” at checkout.

PPS We have had an amazing response to our crowdfunding campaign. THANK YOU all so much for spreading the word and donating, there are some amazing rewards, why not join us on the farm for a half day workshop on organic growing followed by tea and a farm tour. To see all the rewards and to donate please, click here.