On the BBC boradcast of 4th Feb 2014 Germaine Greer is interviewed by Matthew Bannister about her wonderful work on her 60 hectare land purchase in Australia.
This is no doubt wonderful work for the environment, but the slant so often given today from such an interview as this and so many others is that agriculture is responsible for destroying the natural habitats of our species.
It should be proclaimed that agriculture done properly and without the use of chemicals will actually increase species diversity. Forests do not need to be cut down to grow food to feed the world. What needs to be done is change agriculture over to a sustainable form of agriculture everywhere. This is why, the UK, needs 1 million more people on the land (Colin Tudge, organiser of the Oxford Real Farming Conference.)
An optimum form of agriculture is that of zero till agriculture with composting. Proper composting sequesters 3 times more carbon than any above ground plants are able to. Therefore by employing the land area that has already been cleared by man since ancient times and using it in this way we can preserve the species that are so threatened today. We will indeed be providing the micro-organic life in the soil to feed the higher organisms that in turn feed for instance birds. The case for real farming should be spoken about in the programmes that the environment is spoken about…not just that agriculture and man’s activity is destroying all our habitats. This is misleading for real agriculture.