Farm wildlife protection plan 'fails'

[Jax]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27719414

 

 

A bid to protect wildlife and give value to the funding of Europe's farm policy by taxpayers has failed, a damning study suggests.

Farm subsidies cost every EU household more than 490 euros (£400) a year, and a process of reforms aimed to ensure the cash helps the environment.

But the report in Science journal calculates that 88% of farms will be exempted from key green measures.

Europe's farm union says the original greening proposals were unrealistic.

The paper argues that the "greening" of the 363bn euro (£295bn) farm policy could actually make the environment worse unless member states take individual action to protect wildlife.

Its authors warn that already some states have moved in the opposite direction and transferred still more funds away from wildlife.

The greening plan involves rewarding farmers for three main activities: keeping grassland; creating environmental focus areas; and growing at least three crops on any farm bigger than 30 hectares.

The report says the rules governing these are so vague as to be useless. Farmers can get paid for replacing species-rich wildflower meadows with "monocrop" grass for cattle; the EFAs don't have proper guidance; and there's no evidence that growing three crops on a big farm helps the environment at all.

What's more, the reform will allow a 5% loss in grassland - Europe's most endangered habitat.

 

[4wd]

It doesn't help that most of those inventing the new rules, and the likes of Roger Harribin reporting on them are utterly clueless about agriculture.One of the proposals was that if a farm had any arable at all,  they must grow three different crops.Well that might work out fine in Holland or Germany but I'm at a loss what additional crops we would be supposed to grow here since the only realistic crop is a couple of fields of barley rotating through clover leysSo they would force this farm to not reseed any grassland and thus need to reduce stock numbers and/or use more chemical fertiliser, because worn out grass produces less than half the yield of a new ley?Their main priority is  the desire to impose controls, and invent jobs for inspectors I think.That piece is laced with green lies e.g. about farmland bird populations in freefall.Ground nesting birds have declined dramatically mainly due to the huge increase in badgers which have virtually wiped out Lapwings in many areas for example.It's easier to trot out the favourite catch all statement blaming "Modern Farming Methods" as if everything would be OK if farms were somehow forced back to 1930s technology.They are clueless, hopelessly out of touch, and do not understand the first thing about what they are wanting to legislate on.But the Green propagandists have convinced them that modern farming *must be somehow bad* and organics *must be somehow good*.It would do them good to starve for a while and appreciate how close we all are to going hungry if their ignorant interfering is allowed to go ahead. 

[4wd]

 

 

A few years ago, the RSPB put nest-cams by skylark nests on its Hope Farm to determine the extent of mammalian predation. More than half of the predation was done by badgers.Now, did you see the CRT and me on Countryfile the other day? Or did you blink? That, too, was bizarre. The BBC’s approach to us asked: “Why have farmland birds declined? Are they still in decline or are agri-environment measures working? What is being done to stop the decline? What methods does the CRT favour?â€All very simple and right up our street. The only problem is that the programme did not show what we are doing – our mosaic method of husbandry – and all the original questions were completely ignored.Instead interviewer Tom Heap dived straight in with questions on predators and predator control. Oddly, the RSPB was featured with no mention of predators, shooting foxes or badgers eating their skylarks; all very strange. In his youth, Heap lived three miles from Lark Rise Farm as the crow flies – I told him that if he had walked over the fields from his home to Lark Rise Farm in 1976, after dark and with a spotlight, he would have seen lapwings and their chicks in almost every field in the spring.Over the same fields today much of the farming is virtually unchanged, but there has been a dramatic increase in the number of foxes, badgers, magpies, crows, etc. Result?No lapwings. Sadly, viewers never heard this. It, and much more, was edited out.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/country-diary/10863461/Country-diary-thirsty-lambs-and-Aga-sagas.html

[Jax]

Think the under current issue is all that money chucked at a 'project' that has failed in its mission statement.

[Snowyowl9]

I won`t make a new thread as this is farm related.

This is shocking rare shropshire sheep killed in Canada.

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/06/07/cfia-destroys-life-of-innocent-shepherd-by-murdering-her-flock-of-rare-sheep-now-she-faces-up-to-12-years-in-jail/

Abit of history.

http://shropshiresheep.org/the-breed/history/

Edited June 12, 2014 by Snowyowl9