The study suggests that by restoring biodiversity, we can vastly enhance the soil’s potential to store carbon.

That’s good news for the climate. And there are co-benefits: healthier, more resilient soil and plants, not to mention wildlife habitats.

Scientists have long believed that soil aggregates—clusters of soil particles—were the principal locations for stable carbon storage. These clusters develop when tiny particles of soil clump together.

Mycorrhiza—the microscopic fungi which live in healthy soils—produce sticky compounds that help “glue” these clusters together helping to stabilize and protect the carbon particles inside them.

Now, a recent study out of the Michigan State University (MSU) Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, suggests that this soil clustering is most efficient when soil has a healthy “pore structure.” And the key to a healthy pore structure is plant biodiversity.

According to the report, soils from restored prairie ecosystems, with many different plant species, had many more pores of the right size for stable carbon storage than did a pure stand of switchgrass.

Pores and clusters

Soil pores are the spaces between soil clusters (soil without pores is basically rock!). The pores are formed by the movement of roots, fungi, worms and insects, and by expanding gases trapped within these spaces.

The amount of carbon that soil can hold depends on the type of soil—and soil type also affects porosity and carbon storage.

Clay-based soils, for instance, hold organic carbon for longer than sandy soils. The ins and outs of this “carbon budget” are also affected by regional climate, how often the soil is disturbed and even the levels of organic material, which in turn are influenced by  the health and diversity of in the soil.

A connected network

Soil pores, large and small, form a connected network underground and are important because they are reservoirs for groundwater and for the oxygen that plants need to thrive.

But what the MSU scientists found was that they also provide the optimal micro-environment for accumulating carbon.

Over a period of nine years, the researchers studied five different cropping systems in a replicated field experiment in southwest Michigan. Of the five cropping systems, the two with the highest plant diversity had many more pores of the right size for stable carbon storage.

According to Alexandra Kravchenko, MSU professor in the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences and lead researcher on the project:

“What we found in native prairie, probably because of all the interactions between the roots of diverse species, is that the entire soil matrix is covered with a network of pores. Thus, the distance between the locations where the carbon input occurs, and the mineral surfaces on which it can be protected is very short.”

That, he says, means that a lot of carbon is being stored in the prairie soil. In contrast he noted that in monoculture switchgrass the pore network was much weaker, so the microbial metabolites had a much longer way to travel to the protective mineral surfaces.

Monocultures of corn were even worse at storing carbon than the switchgrass.

The upshot is that while we tend to think the best way to put more carbon in soil is to have plants produce more biomass, either as roots or as residue left on the soil surface to decompose, a focus on plant diversity may be a more effective and elegant long-term solution.

Fast and slow cycles

That’s because soil is dynamic. In any field there are likely to be several different natural carbon cycles operating simultaneously at any one time.  Carbon in the soil is made up of different types of organic materials at differing stages of decomposition. In terms of carbon turnover and storage, these materials fall into three broad categories, or pools: “fast pools,” “slow pools” and “stable pools.”

For climate change mitigation slow and stable pools are key.

Some carbon, in the form of plant residues and the carbon secreted by plant roots, will only stay in the soil for a short time—weeks to years—before it is emitted back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. This fast pool is necessary, in part, because it provides an important source of energy for soil microorganisms.

The “slow pool,” where carbon can remain for years to decades, is made up of processed plant material, microbial residues leftover from the fast pool, and carbon molecules that are protected from microbes in soil clusters. This pool helps to maintain soil structure and the distribution of soil nutrients.

A third “stable pool” is made up of decomposed organic material—humus—as well as soil carbon that is well protected from microbes. It can be found below one meter deep and can retain carbon for centuries to millennia.

There is also a fourth “pool” of what’s known as recalcitrant organic carbon, made up of organic material that doesn’t decompose.

We can do better

We can’t rely on soil as our only means of climate change mitigation. Nor can we escape the fact that climate and soil are locked into a kind of push–me-pull-you battle. The more our climate changes, and the more heat and drought we experience, the more soil structure will be affected. making it harder for soil to sequester carbon.

Under these circumstances more soil carbon will enter the “fast pool” cycle releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere.

But we can keep learning about our soil and how it works, and use this knowledge to help make it much more efficient and impactful in terms of the carbon it can sequester. One way to do this is through careful and conscious land management.

Better farming, grazing practices are key

A 2017 study estimated that with better management, global croplands have the potential to store an additional 1.85 gigatons carbon a year. That’s equal to the annual emission of the global transportation sector.

While the capacity of soil to store carbon isn’t infinite, some scientists believe our global soils could continue to sequester carbon at this rate for 20 to 40 years before becoming saturated. Plenty of time for us to get our collective act together on lowering global emissions.

Farmers can help soils reach their carbon storage potential by planting cover crops, practicing crop rotation, rotational grazing and agroforestry, minimising tillage and using green and animal manures. All of these things, which are key activities of organic and regenerative farmers, help slow down carbon turnover and encourage sequestration.

An added bonus is that carbon storage isn’t just something we do for the future. It directly benefits farmers today by improving soil fertility, reducing erosion and increasing resilience to droughts and floods.

Healthy soil also produces healthy plants—which means better nutrition for all of us.

Regenerative farmers know that healthy soil doesn’t just help us fight climate change. Improving biodiversity, soil structure and workability and the level of nutrients in our foods it will also help us adapt to and survive it—and that really is a future worth fighting for.

• This article first appeared on the Organic Consumers Association website.

This matters because such insects are critical both for the reproduction of wild plants and for agricultural food production.

The decline of these pollinators is linked with destruction of natural habitats like forests and meadows, the spread of pests such as Varroa mite and diseases like foulbrood, and the increasing use of agrochemicals by farmers. Although there have been well documented declines in managed honeybees, non-Apis (non-honeybee) pollinators such as bumblebees and solitary bees have also become endangered.

There are more than 800 wild (non-honey) bee species in Europe alone. Seven are classified by the IUCN Redlist as critically endangered, 46 are endangered, 24 are vulnerable and 101 are near threatened. Collectively, losing such species would have a significant impact on global pollination.

Though much of the media focus is on honeybees, they are responsible for only a third of the crop pollination in Britain and a very small proportion of wild plant pollination. A range of other insects including butterflies, bumblebees and small flies make up for this pollination deficit.

Not all pollinators are created equal

Pollinators also vary in their effectiveness due to their behaviour around flowers and their capacity to hold pollen. Bigger and hairier insects can carry more pollen, while those that groom themselves less tend to be able to transfer pollen more effectively. Bumblebees, for example, make excellent pollinators (far superior to honeybees) as they are big, hairy and do not groom themselves as often.

Where they are in decline, honeybees suffer primarily from pests and diseases, a consequence of poor nutrition and artificially high population density. This differs from other pollinators, where the decline is mainly down to habitat destruction. It seems pesticides affect all pollinators.

Curiously, the issues facing non-Apis pollinators may be exacerbated by commercial beekeeping, and attempts to help honeybees may even harm efforts to conserve wild pollinators.

The problem is that there are only so many flowers and places to nest. And once the numbers of honeybees have been artificially inflated (commercial-scale beekeeping wouldn’t exist without humans) the increased competition for these resources can push native non-Apis pollinators out of their natural habitats. Honeybees also spread exotic plants and transmit pathogens, both of which have been shown to harm other pollinators.

Over the coming decades, farmers and those who regulate them are faced with a tough challenge. Agricultural output must be increased to feed a growing human population, but simultaneously the environmental impact must be reduced.

The agriculture sector has tried to address the need to feed a growing population through conventional farming practices such as mechanisation, larger fields or the use of pesticides and fertiliser. Yet these have contributed to widespread destruction of natural landscapes and loss of natural capital.

Limited resources and land use pressure require conservation strategies to become more efficient, producing greater outcomes from increasingly limited input.

Cooperative conservation

So-called agri-environment schemes represent the best way to help insect pollinators. That means diversifying crops, avoiding an ecologically-fragile monoculture and ensuring that the insects can jump between different food sources. It also means protecting natural habitats and establishing ecological focus areas such as wildflower strips, while limiting the use of pesticides and fertilisers.

As pollinating insects need a surprisingly large area of land to forage, linking up restored habitats on a larger scale provides far more evident and immediate benefits. However, so far, connections between protected areas have not been a priority, leading to inefficient conservation.

We need a substantial shift in how we think about pollinators. Encouraging land managers to work cooperatively will help create bigger, more impactful areas to support pollinators. In future, conservation efforts will need to address declines in all pollinators by developing landscapes to support pollinator communities and not just honeybees.

• Philip Donkersley is a Senior Research Associate in Entomology, Lancaster University
• This article originally appeared on The Conversation. It is reproduced here with permission

The first survey was released by the Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food (PRiF) as part of its annual reporting this month.

The PRiF tested 3,450 samples of 41 different food types, finding residues in 48% of them – with 3% registering above the maximum recommended level (MRL).

Food from outside the UK was more likely to contain traces of pesticides with 53% of samples testing positive. Of the 1,729 food products from inside the UK, that figure stood at 42%.

The rise in pesticide residues found likely reflects the greater number of pesticide residues looked for.

For example, in 2015, PRiF looked for 388 pesticides in fruit and vegetables, 73 in animal products, 346 in starchy foods and grains, 353 in infant foods and 346 in other groceries.

In 2016, it checked for 374 pesticides in fruit and vegetables, 365 in animal products, 371 in starchy foods and grains, 376 in infant food and 370 in other groceries. This means PRiF increased its scope by 23%.

‘Safe’ levels of pesticides

Bread, breakfast cereal and grapes were the worst offenders – though no bread or breakfast cereal samples and only one grape sample exceeded the MRL. In total:

• In bread samples tested, 86% contained residues of at least one pesticide and 25% contained more than one.
• In breakfast cereals, 93% of samples to contain at least one, and 65% showed traces of more than one pesticide.
• In grapes, 95% tested positive and 83% had more than one pesticide.

Other notable products that frequently exceeded the MRL included: cumin (50%); okra (26%); beans with pods (24%; rye flour (21%); and buffalo, ewe and goat cheese (11%).

In the case of the buffalo, ewes and goats cheese all residues above the MRL were of the quaternary ammonium compounds BAC (benzalkoniumchloride) or DDAC (bicecyldimethylammoniumchloride),  used as disinfectant during productions.

While the report emphasised the low amount of foods with residues above the official ‘safe’ level this reassurance does not take into account the fact that we do not eat single foods. We eat multiple foods every day; and since many pesticides accumulate in the body levels can easily build up. In addition, combinations of pesticides may be more harmful than single exposures.

Bacteria in chicken

This year has also seen an unfolding scandal on British chicken. Most recently one of the UK’s biggest poultry processing operations, 2 Sisters, accused of poor hygiene standards and allegedly altering food safety records (claims which 2 Sisters has vigorously denied).

Earlier this year a survey from the government found record levels of superbugs resistant to some of the strongest antibiotics in British-farmed chickens.

The Food Standards Agency, which tested a large sample of fresh whole chickens from retailers, reported “significantly higher proportions” in the last 10 years in instances of campylobacter, a harmful bacteria, that is increasingly resistant to the antibiotics commonly used to treat it.

In all more than 4,000 samples were tested. Those that tested positive for campylobacter were then retested to see if they carried bacteria resistant to the key antibiotics.

Ciprofloxacin resistance was identified in more than half of the samples: for example, in 237 out of 437 tests on Campylobacter jejuni, and in 52 out of 108 of another strain, Campylobacter coli.

The report also found that the proportion of campylobacter-infected chickens which showed resistance to key antibiotics, in this case the fluoroquinolone ciprofloxacin, “has increased significantly” compared with a previous survey of chickens sold in supermarkets 10 years ago.

A farming problem

Antibiotics are routinely given to intensively reared chicken to prevent the diseases which arise from the overcrowded, stressful and unhygienic conditions in which they are reared. The results are concerning because resistant bacteria in livestock can easily spread to humans, making vital medicines ineffective against serious diseases.

The FSA warned in its report that “It is therefore important to handle chicken hygienically and cook thoroughly to reduce the risk to public health.”

However a statement Cóilín Nunan, scientific adviser to the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, suggests that putting the onus on consumers like this is missing the point. This is a farming problem:

“It is scandalous that [government rules] still allow for poultry to be mass-medicated with fluoroquinolone antibiotics. Twenty years ago, a House of Lords report said this should be stopped. Even the US banned the practice over 10 years ago because of the strength of the scientific evidence. So why are British and European authorities still refusing to take action?”

• For more on this topic see our articles Why is the government ignoring the role of livestock in antibiotic resistance? and Alarming rise in antibiotic resistance in Europe

The important study, directed by Northeastern University in collaboration with The Organic Center, provides a new significant proof point that organic agricultural practices build healthy soils and can be part of the solution in the fight on global warming.

The findings were released ahead of publication in the scientific journal Advances in Agronomy and come as the world is witnessing extreme weather events, with devastating human and economic consequences, which are a result of man-made climate change.

It’s also a bit of good news in the middle of the UK’s month-long Organic September celebrations.

One of the largest field studies of its kind ever conducted, the study pulled together over a thousand soil samples from across the United States. It used cutting-edge methods to look at how organic farming affects the soil’s ability to lock away carbon and keep it out of our atmosphere.

One of its most compelling findings is that on average, organic farms have 44% higher levels of humic acid – the component of soil that sequesters carbon over the long term – than soils not managed organically.

Agriculture is one of the main causes of the depletion of carbon in the soil and the increased presence of carbon in our atmosphere, as evidenced by a recent study published by the National Academy of Sciences that estimated agriculture’s role in global soil carbon loss. Organic farming can play a key role in restoring soil carbon and in reducing the causes of climate change, and this study proves that.

Citizen scientists

Working with the National Soil Project at Northeastern University, The Organic Center, a non-profit research and education organisation, contacted organic farmers who acted as “citizen scientists” to collect organic soil samples from throughout the country to compare with the conventional soil samples already in the National Soil Project’s data set. Altogether, the study measured 659 organic soil samples from 39 states and 728 conventional soil samples from all 48 contiguous states. It found that ALL components of humic substances were higher in organic than in conventional soils.

“This study is truly ground-breaking,” said Dr. Jessica Shade, Director of Science Programs for The Organic Center. “We don’t just look at total soil organic carbon, but also the components of soil that have stable pools of carbon – humic substances, which gives us a much more accurate and precise view of the stable, long-term storage of carbon in the soils.”

“To our knowledge, this research is also the first to take a broad-view of organic and conventional systems, taking into account variation within management styles, across crops, and throughout the United States.  It gives a large-scale view of the impact of organic as a whole, throughout the nation,” said Dr. Shade.

“We were focused on developing and adopting reliable methods of soil analyses for this national project. It was a huge, cooperative effort involving hundreds of sample donors. The results of this project will be of value to farmers, policymakers and the public at large,” said Dr. Geoffrrey Davies from the National Soil Project.

Digging deeper into the matter

Healthy soils are essential for robust and resilient crop production, and the amount of soil organic matter is one of the most critical components of a healthy soil. Organic matter is all the living and dead plant and animal material in our dirt that makes it more than dirt – earthworms and insects and microorganisms, plant and animal residues, fermented compost, decomposed leaves and plant roots.

Soils high in organic matter support healthy crops, are less susceptible to drought, and foster a diversity of organisms vital to soil health. Soils rich in organic matter can also maintain carbon for long periods of time, and help reduce the causes of climate change.

“A number of studies have shown that practices commonly used in organic farming increase soil organic matter and soil health,” said Dr. Tracy Misiewicz, Associate Director of Science Programs for The Organic Center. “Some of these practices include the use of manure and legume cover crops, extended crop rotations, fallowing and rotational grazing. These same practices are likely also involved in increasing the important humic substances in soil.”

The gold standard of organic matter are the humic substances. Humic substances – made up of carbon and other elements – are the lifeblood for fertile soils. These substances – which form part of the organic matter in soil – resist degradation and can remain in the soil for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. They don’t just mean healthy soil; they are also one of the most effective ways to mitigate climate change. The more humic substances in a soil, the longer that healthy soil is trapping and keeping carbon out of the atmosphere.

This stable pool of carbon is therefore more representative of stable carbon sequestration in the soil. Specifically measuring humic substances in soil gives an accurate understanding of long-term soil health and carbon sequestration.

Organic stores more carbon

The study shows that the components of humic substances – fulvic acid and humic acid — were consistently higher in organic than in conventional soils.

The research found that, on average, soils from organic farms had:

• 13% higher soil organic matter
• 150% more fulvic acid
• 44% more humic acid
• 26% greater potential for long-term carbon storage

This is the first time scientific research has given an accurate picture of the long-term soil carbon storage on organic versus conventional farms throughout the US, since most studies focus on individual farms or total soil organic carbon.

Real-world impacts

Since 2008, the National Soil Project at Northeastern has been measuring the organic soil content of soil throughout the nation. Its collected samples were primarily of conventional soil and it was seeing very low levels of humic substances in these conventional soil samples.

In 2014, The Organic Center helped the National Soil Project design and develop a study to compare the project’s conventional soil samples to organic soil samples.  The Organic Center worked with the researchers as organic experts through the project, contacted organic farmers throughout the country for soil samples, and performed the statistical analyses of the data.

Farmers collected the samples in 2015 and 2016. Fifty-gram samples (2-3 tablespoons) of air-dried surface (0-30 cm) agricultural top soil, along with the geographical (GPS) location, texture and classification (if known), were provided.

A positive difference

“This study shows there are positive differences in organic soil,” said Minnesota organic farmer Carmen Fernholz, who sent in soil samples from his 425-acre organic corn, soybean and small grains farm. “We are showing that organic farming enhances the soil, so this is how we have to move forward. For me as a farmer, the most important result of this research is that USDA should now prioritize its organic management system and our organic research dollars.”

“The more we understand about the soil organic matter system, the better we can monitor, measure and maintain it,” said organic produce grower Helen Atthowe who submitted samples from her and her husband’s 26-acre Woodleaf Farm in northern California. “The results of this study can make soil organic matter more predictable to manage and thus easier for more farmers to adopt practices that encourage organic matter.”

“Our study compares soils from the real world, and its findings can have a huge impact on the real world,” said Dr. Shade

“These results highlight the potential of organic agriculture to increase the amount of carbon sequestration in the soil, and by doing so, help decrease a major cause of climate change.”

• See also our articles Organic food is more nutritious – and it can feed the world, Organic milk contains more healthy fats than conventional milk  and Organic crops higher in beneficial antioxidants, lower in pesticides
• For more on farming see our Environment section.

The idea that they want you to believe in is that only they can produce enough for the future population. They wish you to therefore believe that non-industrial systems of farming, such as all those which use agroecological methods, or SRI, or are localised and family-oriented, or which use organic methods, or non-GMO seeds, cannot feed the world. This same PR strategy is followed by every major commercial participant in the industrial food system.

To be sure, agribusiness has a few other PR strategies. Agribusiness is “pro-science”, its opponents are “anti-science”, and so on. But the main plank has for decades been to create a cast-iron moral framing around the need to produce more.

Therefore, if you go to the websites of Monsanto and Cargill and Syngenta and Bayer, and their bedfellows: the US Farm Bureau, the UK National Farmers Union, and the American Soybean Association, and CropLife International, or The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, or now even NASA, they will raise the “urgent problem” of who will feed the expected global population of 9 or 10 billion in 2050.

Likewise, whenever these same organisations compose speeches or press releases, or videos, they devote precious space to the same urgent problem. It is even in their job advertisements. It is their Golden Fact. And as far as neutrals are concerned it wins the food system debate hands down, because it says, if any other farming system cannot feed the world, it is irrelevant. Only agribusiness can do that.

The real food crisis is of overproduction


Yet this strategy has a disastrous weakness. There is no global or regional shortage of food. There never has been and nor is there ever likely to be. India has a superabundance of food. South America is swamped in food. The US, Australia, New Zealand and Europe are swamped in food. In Britain, like in many wealthy countries, nearly half of all row crop food production now goes to biofuels, which at bottom are an attempt to dispose of surplus agricultural products. China isn’t quite swamped but it still exports food; and it grows 30% of the world’s cotton. No foodpocalypse there either.

Even in Bangladesh the farmers do not produce the rice they could because prices are low, because of persistent gluts.

Even some establishment institutions will occasionally admit that the food shortage concept – now and in any reasonably conceivable future – is bankrupt. According to experts consulted by the World Bank Institute there is already sufficient food production for 14 billion people – more food than will ever be needed. The Golden Fact of agribusiness is therefore a lie.

Truth restoration


So, if the agribusiness PR experts are correct that food crisis fears are pivotal to their industry, then it follows that those who oppose the industrialisation of food and agriculture should make dismantling that lie their number one priority.

Anyone who wants a sustainable, pesticide-free, or non-GMO food future, or wants to avoid climate chaos, needs to know this weakness. They should take every possible opportunity to point out the evidence that refutes it. Granaries are bulging, crops are being burned as biofuels or dumped, prices are low, farmers are abandoning farming for slums and cities, all because of massive oversupply.

The project to fully industrialise global food production is far from complete, yet already it is responsible for most deforestation, most marine pollution, most coral reef destruction, much of greenhouse gas emissions, most habitat loss, most of the degradation of streams and rivers, most food insecurity, most immigration, most water depletion, massive human health problems, and so on. Our planet is becoming literally uninhabitable solely as a result of the social and ecological consequences of industrialising agriculture. All these problems are without even mentioning the trillions of dollars in annual externalised costs and subsidies.

So, if one were to devise a strategy for the food movement, it would be this. The public already knows (mostly) that pesticides are dangerous. They also know that organic food is higher quality, and is far more environmentally friendly. It knows that GMOs should be labeled, are largely untested, and may be harmful. That is why the leaders of most major countries, including China, dine on organic food. The immense scale of the problems created by industrial agriculture should, of course, be understood better, but the main facts are hardly in dispute.

But what industry understands, and the food movement does not, is that what prevents total rejection of bland, industrialised, pesticide-laden, GMO food is the standard acceptance, especially in Western countries, of the overarching agribusiness argument that such food is necessary. It is necessary to feed the world.

So, if the food movement could show that famine is an empty threat then it would also have shown, by clear implication, that the chemical health risks and the ecological devastation that these technologies represent are what is unnecessary. The movement would have shown that pesticides and GMOs exist solely to extract profit from the food chain. They have no other purpose. Therefore, every project of the food movement should aim to spread the truth of oversupply, until mention of the Golden Fact invites ridicule and embarrassment in the population, rather than fear.

Divide and Confuse


Food campaigners might also consider that a strategy to combat the food scarcity myth can unite a potent mix of causes. Just as an understanding of food abundance destroys the argument for pesticide use and GMOs simultaneously, it also creates the potential for common ground within and between constituencies that do not currently associate much: health advocates, food system workers, climate campaigners, wildlife conservationists and international development campaigners.

None of these constituencies inherently like chemical poisons, and they are hardly natural allies of agribusiness, but the pressure of the food crisis lie has driven many of them to ignore what could be the best solution to their mutual problems: small scale farming and pesticide-free agriculture. This is exactly what the companies intended.

So divisive has the Golden Fact been that some non-profits have entered into perverse partnerships with agribusiness and others support inadequate or positively fraudulent sustainability labels. Another consequence has been mass confusion over the observation that almost all the threats to the food supply (salinisation, water depletion, soil erosion, climate change and chemical pollution) come from the supposed solution–the industrialisation of food production. These contradictions are not real. When the smoke is blown away and the mirrors are taken down the choices within the food system become crystal clear. They fall broadly into two camps.

On the one side lie family farms and ecological methods. These support farmer and consumer health, resilience, financial and democratic independence, community, cultural and biological diversity, and long term sustainability. Opposing them is control of the food system by corporate agribusiness. Agribusiness domination leads invariably to dependence, uniformity, poisoning and ecological degradation, inequality, land grabbing, and, not so far off, to climate chaos.

One is a vision, the other is a nightmare: in every single case where industrial agriculture is implemented it leaves landscapes progressively emptier of life. Eventually, because it vaporises the carbon, the soil turns either into mud that washes into the rivers or into dust that blows away on the wind. Industrial agriculture has no long term future; it is ecological suicide. But for obvious reasons those who profit from it cannot allow all this to become broadly understood.  That is why the food scarcity lie is so fundamental to them. They absolutely depend on it, since it alone can camouflage the underlying issues.

That is the conclusion of two recent reports on global food supplies.

The first is a comprehensive new study, relying on data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), that encompassed more than 50 crops and over 150 countries (accounting for 98% of the world’s population) during the period from 1961-2009.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), it confirms and thoroughly documents for the first time what experts have long suspected: over the last five decades, human diets around the world have grown ever more similar – by a global average of 36% – and the trend shows no signs of slowing, with major consequences for human nutrition and global food security.

“More people are consuming more calories, protein and fat, and they rely increasingly on a short list of major food crops, like wheat, maize and soybean, along with meat and dairy products, for most of their food,” said lead author Colin Khoury, a scientist at the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), which is a member of the CGIAR Consortium – an international organisation focused on food security.

“These foods are critical for combating world hunger, but relying on a global diet of such limited diversity obligates us to bolster the nutritional quality of the major crops, as consumption of other nutritious grains and vegetables declines.”

Although the study shies away from such details, ‘bolstering’ crops relies on fertilisers, which can over time have devastating impacts on soil health and the nutritional quality of our foods, and most recently has encompassed genetic modification, which promises, but has so far failed to deliver – enhanced nutrition.

The new study suggests that this dietary monoculture may also accelerate the worldwide rise in obesity, heart disease and diabetes, which are strongly affected by dietary change and have become major health problems, “even within countries still grappling with significant constraints in food availability.”

It calls for urgent efforts to better inform consumers about diet-related diseases and to promote healthier, more diverse food alternatives.

A few key crops

The research reveals that the crops now predominant in diets around the world include several that were already quite important a half-century ago – such as wheat, rice, maize and potato.

But the emerging “standard global food supply” described by the study also consists of energy-dense foods that have risen to global fame more recently, like soybean, sunflower oil and palm oil. Wheat is a major staple in 97.4% of countries and rice in 90.8%; soybean has become significant to 74.3% of countries.

In contrast, many crops of considerable regional importance – including cereals like sorghum, millets and rye, as well as root crops such as sweet potato, cassava and yam – have lost ground.

Diversity is declining

Many other locally significant grain and vegetable crops – for which globally comparable data are not available – have suffered the same fate.

For example, a nutritious tuber crop known as Oca, once grown widely in the Andean highlands, has declined significantly in this region both in cultivation and consumption.

“Another danger of a more homogeneous global food basket is that it makes agriculture more vulnerable to major threats like drought, insect pests and diseases, which are likely to become worse in many parts of the world as a result of climate change,” said Luigi Guarino, a study co-author and senior scientist at the Global Crop Diversity Trust, headquartered in Germany (see also Harvard School of Public Health’s web primer on Biodiversity for more).

“As the global population rises and the pressure increases on our global food system, so does our dependence on the global crops and production systems that feed us. The price of failure of any of these crops will become very high.”

Resistance is fading

As the authors probed current trends in food consumption, they documented a curious paradox: as the human diet has become less diverse at the global level over the last 50 years, many countries, particularly in Africa and Asia, have actually widened their menu of major staple crops, while changing to more globalised diets.

“In East and Southeast Asia, several major foods, like wheat and potato, have gained importance alongside longstanding staples, like rice,” Khoury noted. “But this expansion of major staple foods has come at the expense of the many diverse minor foods that used to figure importantly in people’s diets.”

The dietary changes documented in the study are driven by powerful social and economic forces. Rising incomes in developing countries, for example, have enabled more consumers to include larger quantities of animal products, oils and sugars in their diets.

Diseases of ‘over-abundance’

Moreover, urbanisation in these countries has encouraged greater consumption of processed and fast foods. Related developments, including trade liberalisation, improved commodity transport, multinational food industries, and food safety standardisation have further reinforced these trends.

“Countries experiencing rapid dietary change are also quickly seeing rises in the associated diseases of over-abundance,” said Khoury. “But hopeful trends are also apparent, as in Northern Europe, where evidence suggests that consumers are tending to buy more cereals and vegetables and less meat, oil and sugar.”

Not a lone voice

The international study comes at the same time as a the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, called for the world’s food systems to be radically and democratically redesigned to ensure the human right to adequate food and freedom from hunger.

In his final report to the UN Human Rights Council after an impressive six-year term as Special Rapporteur, De Schutter warned:

“The eradication of hunger and malnutrition is an achievable goal. However, it will not be enough to refine the logic of our food systems – it must instead be reversed,” De Schutter stresses.

Our current food systems, he says, are efficient only from the point of view of maximising agribusiness profits: “At the local, national and international levels, the policy environment must urgently accommodate alternative, democratically-mandated visions.

“Objectives such as supplying diverse, culturally-acceptable foods to communities, supporting smallholders, sustaining soil and water resources, and raising food security within particularly vulnerable areas, must not be crowded out by the one-dimensional quest to produce more food.”

Why should we care?

Amidst the ‘plenty’ that many of us see in our supermarkets, the notion that there might come a time when there isn’t ‘enough’ can be difficult to grasp. And yet every aspect of our food system is currently geared towards increasing food poverty – a problem that will affect the health, wealth and wellbeing of most vulnerable in the world first.

For example, our supermarkets love to put pictures of small farmers on food packets to make us believe that we are ‘helping at a distance’. This may be true up to a point.

But it is also true that by pressing small farmers into growing monoculture crops like maize, soya and rice for the global market, we prevent them from growing locally nutritious foods which will sustain them better and for much longer than the often slim profits they make from being part of the global ‘system’ (for more on this see Action Aid’s report Fertile Ground, here).

Indeed at a recent agricultural summit in London it was observed that small scale farmers are both “invisible and irrelevant” to the future development of the global food system as envisaged by banks and big agricultural firms.

And then there’s GMOs

Likewise when proponents of GMOs, for example, say that planting more GM crops will feed the world, they singularly fail to take into account the fact that there are only four main GM crops currently authorised for sale: maize, soya, canola (rapeseed) and cotton. Even if we wanted to we could not feed the world with these crops – and that is before we even get into the argument that eating them may be toxic anyway.

They fail to admit that most other GM crops are experimental at best. The GM Golden Rice is a good case in point. No child has starved for want of it – it is not authorised for sale or consumption anywhere in the world. Indeed the GM process that has created it, and the potential safety or otherwise of eating it is so poorly researched that no regulator knows how to regulate it (click here for more on GM Golden Rice).

What all this means is that it is simply not enough to ‘feel sorry’ for people who are hungry or to feel so overwhelmed by the problem that you acquiesce to the first ‘solution’ – however faulty – that comes along. In fact, anyone offering a simple solution to future food security, such as GMOs, clearly hasn’t grasped the full scale of the problem.

Think local

Even if you don’t consider yourself an activist, you must accept that every decision we take, collectively and individually, regarding food can take us closer to or further away from food security.

Taking radical action doesn’t always mean taking to the streets with a placard and a megaphone. It can simply mean refusing to buy into the global monoculture.

We have written previously on this site about the need for dietary diversity from a health perspective. But agricultural diversity also ensures greater food security on a global scale. Taking this concept to heart, and consciously acting on it, may be the most radical thing any of us can do.

It can mean growing your own whenever and wherever possible. It can mean buying locally on a regular basis instead of buying into the supermarket trap. It can mean trading your reliance on pre-prepared foods for foods you make yourself, food whose ingredients you know and understand.

It can mean supporting organic farming – which has at its heart a respect for the biodiversity of the soil and the wider environment and, because of its emphasis on seasonality, contributes to making our diets more diverse as well.

These steps lead to others as well as to a more profound understanding of the food system. If we all took them together we could put our feet on the road to greater food security and bring some of the world’s most vulnerable people along on the journey.

It’s the idea that we need to start accounting for all the additional costs and benefits associated with food production and farming that we don’t pay for when we buy our food.

Our industrialised food system is dining out on the earth’s finite resources, damaging planetary ecosystems and impacting public health. Placing a clear monetary value on the benefits and impacts of different food-production systems, would enable the introduction of policy mechanisms to discourage damaging practices and encourage sustainable food systems that deliver positive environmental and public-health outcomes.

There is an urgent need to start – and maintain the momentum of – a conversation about where out food system is going and how it needs to change. In particular, raising public awareness of the need for true-cost accounting in our food system is of critical importance.

In December a major conference, True-Cost Accounting in Food and Farming , organised by the Sustainable Food Trust, will bring to the fore significant research on the subject, debate its methods, and outline the policy shifts needed to create a more equitable economic environment for the production of sustainable food.

The conference brings together an impressive roster of speakers including Mike Clarke, chief executive of the RSPB;  Ellen Gustafson, co-founder of Food Tank; Dr. Pavan Sukhdev, CEO of GIST Advisory; and Radio 4’s John Humphrys, to discuss the development of a new economic model for a sustainable future (for details and a chance to win tickets see below).

Unstable in the face of change

Our present system of food production and distribution is built on a range of practices that are unsustainable, especially as we are nearing the tipping points of climate change, ecosystem collapse and health issues such as rising obesity levels and type-II diabetes. It privileges these unsustainable practices by redistributing the costs of their damaging impacts from the private sector to the public sector.

But why do we as consumers need to understand true cost accounting in our food? We’ve all become accustomed to paying less for our food and the cost of food has increasingly become a smaller portion of the household budget.

There is a misconception that if we ensure the true cost of our food production is paid for the price of food will rise. However, the cost of food is rising anyway, and the UN has predicted a 40% rise in the cost of food over the next decade. We, as the consumer, have the power to help make a change. Most importantly we need to remember that the choices we make do make difference and can have a huge impact in our global food system.

With the pressure on food production increasing against the backdrop of climate change and the rising cost of fossil fuels, it is important to push for changes in our food system that will prevent prices rising as much as they might otherwise do.

Making sustainable food affordable

Ensuring our food systems are sustainable could help mitigate the rising cost of food by localising food production, encouraging regional diets, and eliminating the onerous cost of fossil fuel based fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides that many industrial farmers are dependent upon.

In a rebalancing of costs through true-cost accounting, we are simply moving costs that we already pay, from the public sector, back to where they belong in the private sector. This will level the economic playing field and bring down the price of sustainably produced food.

Making sustainable food more affordable will bring long term benefits by preserving our natural capital and eco-system services, and increasing healthy eating. Isn’t this a truly 21^st century solution?

COMPETITION

The True Cost Accounting in Food and Farming conference takes place  on Friday 6^th December 2013.

As a special offer to NYR Natural News readers (in the UK only) Sustainable Food Trust have 2 tickets to give away .

To win, email info@naturalhealthnews.uk including the words ‘SUSTAINABLE FOOD’ in the subject line and be sure to include your name and contact details in the email.

Entries must be received before 5pm Friday 29th November. The winner will be drawn at random after that date and notified no later than the morning of December 2nd.

Recently the Soil Association has been speaking out over proposed EU laws which, amongst other things, could have meant small growers and people with allotments or gardeners couldn’t swap their home saved seeds. The proposed regulations caused public outcry across Europe but luckily, last minute changes to the directive look like good news for growers and small seed companies.

An ancient tradition

For thousands of years farmers have been identifying the best plants in their crop and saving their seeds for the following year. This annual cycle of growth and regrowth within a closed system mostly led to a gradual improvement of yield and health.

In much of the world this continues to be the way seed is produced, often supplemented by local exchange with neighbours. Even in the developed world there are still (mostly small scale) growers and farmers who saved their own seed, usually of only one or two “easy” varieties like beans or tomatoes.

On the plus side this gives growers access to cheap seed and control (within the bounds of nature and weather) over their choice of locally adapted variety. However this system also has limitations; growers must keep seed each year to sow again and in drought years this might mean starvation, while very wet years might produce either diseased or no viable seed of certain crops.

This risk led to the development of specialised skilled commercial seed producers. In more recent years we have seen a polarisation of seed production in areas of the world where reliability is guaranteed – mostly warmer and drier countries.

The road to monoculture

By focusing on fewer varieties in more favourable conditions, seed companies have been able to produce seed cheaply enough to persuade farmers that growing their own seed is more trouble than it is worth. This approach, combined with the increasing industrialisation of farming and associated threat from pests and disease in monocultural crops, has led to seed companies being the only people that can keep ahead of the game, so we see new blight strains evolving as fast as resistant varieties are bred.

The first seed laws were introduced to the UK in 1869 to protect farmers from unscrupulous seed merchants selling either cheaper seed or even dust and sand. The first seed laboratory was set up in Germany in the same year.

Parallel to this professionalisation and regulation of the seed industry ran an increased understanding of genetics and advances in breeding techniques.

The rise of hybrids

There are several different types of seeds. Open pollinated is the term given to varieties that can produce seed of the same variety. Until the early 20^th century all crops were open pollinated. All of what are commonly termed Heritage varieties are open pollinated, though there continues to be some breeding and development of these types of varieties.

About a century ago we developed hybridisation  to create vigorous and uniform varieties.  They have gained popularity with many farmers as they often have higher yields, and for specialised growers supplying larger markets, they are more likely to be ready to harvest at the same time. This can be a disadvantage for smaller scale growers who need a staggered harvest to supply a range of outlets, or for the home grower wanting a steady harvest for the family.

F1s can also be bred to be resistant to specific disease or pest threats. However since they do not produce seed that will grow into the same variety growers are unable to save seed from them, and thus must return to the seed merchant each year for more seed.

In horticulture there is now such a drive to find new improved varieties that just as a grower has come to love and understand a particular lettuce, for example, it will have been removed from the catalogue and a new one put in its place.

Plant breeders’ rights

Further genetic manipulation and breeding techniques led to the economic drive for seed businesses to patent their varieties in order to protect the investment made to develop it.

This has never been in the interest of the farmer, and often directly against it.

There should of course be a balance. Plant Breeders’ Rights (PBR) exist in many parts of the world and can give breeders a window of up to 25 years to recoup investment and continue to breed new varieties.

Anyone could take a variety protected by PBR and use that to breed a new variety, but crucially under the more recent patent laws that exist in America, the EU and Australia, breeders are prevented from using the patented variety to breed new varieties thus it effectively gives the patent holders control over an ever increasing genetic bank.

The original creation of the EU national lists of registered varieties and the subsequent ban on anyone selling seeds that were not on that list has been damaging to the availability of vegetable seed particularly. However it does appear that the latest directive has redressed that balance a little with exemptions on registering and selling varieties for smaller businesses of fewer than 10 employees or a (Euro) €2 million  turnover.

We hope this will make it easier for those maintaining heritage seed varieties and current open pollinated crops, but there remains a high burden of red tape and fees for new varieties that are likely to increase cost of seed and further polarised the gap between the amateur or small scale professional seed producer and the ever growing global seed businesses.

Years ago when the issue of genetically modified plants was first raised, biotech companies proposed what was called a ‘terminator’ seed. A plant that produced sterile seeds. This too was for the benefit and protection of business and in 2001 the proposed us of terminator seeds was abandoned.

The self-destructing terminator gene could have answered some of the concerns about armers spreading GM crops by planting saved seeds. Though since farmers are not able to save their own F1 or GM seed anyway the power it placed in the hands of the seed company may not have been substantially different to what is is today.

Seeds are our future

What does all legal wrangling have to do with the average consumer? The loss of biodiversity of our seed supply eventually leads to a lack of diversity on our farms and in our food supply, as food shortages become more prevalent and global weather less predictable this is a serious concern.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) estimates that “Since the 1900s, some 75 percent of plant genetic diversity has been lost as farmers worldwide have left their multiple local varieties and landraces for genetically uniform, high-yielding varieties.

While even some open pollinated varieties still available are not always properly maintained by proper selection and breeding, as a result we have been getting reports of varieties not performing as well as they previously have The proposed EU regulation might slow that decline but ultimately we need to remove patent control from all global seed regulations.

There is now sufficient consumer protection legislation that did not exist when seed regulations were first dreamt up. And with electronic communications being so quick and immediate, seed companies not providing decent seed of good varieties will soon go out of business.

For growers, our increasingly erratic climate means that uniform F1s or GM crops will make them more vulnerable. A drought resistant variety is no good if you can’t predict whether you will be flooded or parched and even the global seed companies require constant new stock of genetic material from which to breed.

The new NIAB wheat variety bred from ancient seed that may give up to 30% increase in yield is a classic recent example. While Martin Wolfe in Suffolk has been doing long-term experiments with wheat populations that show good resilience to seasonal variation.

Ultimately we all rely on as wide a genetic diversity as possible to provide long-term food security in the face of increasingly difficult growing conditions.

• On May 25th there is a global March Against Monsanto taking place in cities across the world. One of the important issues for protesters is the biotech companies’ continued efforts to control our global seed supply. If you’d like to join the march see our home page for details.

The evidence behind the warning is summed up in the second volume of CMO’s annual report comes as the UK  prepares to launch a new Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy and Action Plan, reflecting the need for a clear change in our understanding of and response to antimicrobial resistance by the public, NHS and government.

The knighted professor urged Britain to raise the issue at a G8 foreign ministers’ meeting in London next month.

“We need to work with everyone to ensure the apocalyptic scenario of widespread antimicrobial resistance does not become a reality. This threat is arguably as important as climate change for the world, Davies said.

She added: “Antimicrobial resistance poses a catastrophic threat. If we don’t act now, any one of us could go into hospital in 20 years for minor surgery and die because of an ordinary infection that can’t be treated by antibiotics.

An economic burden

According to a report in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), also published this week, current estimates suggest that in comparison to other problems antibiotic resistance is not a costly problem for the NHS. But such estimates do not take account of the fact that antimicrobial medicines are integral to modern healthcare. For example, antibiotics are given as standard to patients undergoing surgery, to women delivering by caesarean section, and to those having cancer treatment.

Although it is difficult to forecast the likely economic burden of resistance, they believe that even the highest current cost estimates “provide false reassurance” and this may mean that inadequate attention and resources are devoted to resolving the problem.

The authors conclude that a change in culture and action is needed to plan for a future with more antibiotic resistance: “Waiting for the burden to become substantial before taking action may mean waiting until it is too late. Rather than see expenditure on antimicrobial policies as a cost, we should think of it as an insurance policy against a catastrophe; albeit one which we hope will never happen.”

A global problem

The UK’s five year plan has yet to be published but in an accompanying editorial, Professors Anthony Kessel and Mike Sharland say it “represents an important step in both recognising and responding to this significant threat.”

The problems are global and the terminology complex, but the importance is clear, they write. “A fundamental standard of the NHS should include basic high quality routine infection control and clinical care, as noted by the Francis inquiry. These standards of care are crucial to the prevention and control of all healthcare associated infections, including multi-drug resistant Gram negative bacteria.”

Ignoring stealth antibiotics in livestock

If it all sounds scary that’s because it is. And yet the CMO’s report and the screeds of media coverage and accompanying related reports in medical journals all fail to mention one of the biggest influences on the problem: the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock production as stealth growth promoters.

Will the ‘five year plan’ pay any attention to this important issue?

Currently more than half of all global antibiotic use is in farm animals, most commonly in the pig, poultry and dairy sectors, where they are used as to promote growth and to fight the infections endemic in the unacceptably crowded, stressful and unhygienic factory farm conditions in which commercial livestock is reared.

In the US the figure is even more shocking: 80% of the antibiotics sold there go to chicken, pigs, cows and other animals destined for the food chain. Yet producers are not required to report on which drugs they use, what types of animals are receiving them and in what quantities.

Much like the EU the US government has dragged its feet for 30 years on this issue. And yet last year figures released by the federal government showed that the problem of resistant bacteria in meat is growing, in some cases by as much as tenfold.

These antibiotics enter our food chain, our soil and our water supply and find their way into our bodies. It’s an issue we consider very important and one we’ve covered in some depth on this site (see links opposite),

We must look at the bigger picture

In 2011 three environment and animal welfare groups, The Soil Association, Sustain and Compassion in World Farming, announced they had formed the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics – a campaign that calls for:

• a legally binding timetable for the phased ending of all routine preventative, non-therapeutic use of antibiotics
• a ban on the use of modern cephalosporins in poultry, pigs and for dry-cow therapy in cattle. Off-label use of these antibiotics should also be banned
• a ban on the use of fluoroquinolones in poultry
• new legislation aimed at ensuring that farm animals are kept in healthier, less intensive conditions, wherever possible with access to the outdoors
• support for farmers to shift to higher-welfare systems that depend less on antibiotic use, by using money budgeted under the Common Agricultural Policy to back investment, spread best practice and fund the most relevant research
• improved surveillance of antibiotic use and antibiotic-resistant bacteria in farm animals.

At its launch the Alliance also produced a report Case Study of a Health Crisis that threw a spotlight on the link between excessive antibiotic use on farms and the rise in antibiotic resistance and incidence of superbugs – such as E. coli and MRSA – in humans.

As the CMO released her statement this week, the Alliance also released a new report Antibiotic resistance – the impact of intensive farming on human health that shows the Government is still not facing up to the issue of excessive use of antibiotics on farms.

The EU recognises the antibiotic/livestock threat

The 2011 launch of the Alliance came as the European Commission launched a 12-point plan to tackle antibiotic resistance and called for farmers play a key role. So it’s not as if this issue is floating around somewhere beneath the radar of our politicians and policy-makers.

It’s an interesting to ponder the question, then, of why the Chief Medical Officer, concerned as she is about our health, did not acknowledge this important facet of the problem.

Instead of pointing the finger of blame at a simplistic nexus of anxious patients and overworked doctors, as the CMO was happy to do in most of her interviews this week, when the G8 ministers meet in London next month we would urge them to put political point scoring and media grandstanding aside and broaden their view to include placing rational and long-overdue restrictions on the frivolous use of antibiotics in farming.

In the documentary Pig Business, eco-campaigner Tracy Worcester discovers the true price of cheap imported pork from intensive farms that cause misery among the animals, threaten human health with toxic waste and antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs’, and destroy rural communities by forcing traditional farmers out of business.

Robert Kennedy Jnr explains that these are ‘externalised’ costs not paid by the intensive farm companies, but borne by suffering animals, sickness of local residents, pollution of the environment and destruction of rural communities. If these costs were paid by the intensive producers their meat wouldn’t be ‘cheap’ and higher welfare farms would out-compete them.

The UK welfare laws are among the highest in Europe, and yet meat continues to be imported from farms in Europe that use methods that are illegal in the UK. British farmers cannot compete; 50% of the UK pig herd has been lost in the past 12 years, farmers have lost their livelihoods and communities have been destroyed.

This can be changed if we don’t import, or buy, intensively produced pork. Before he became prime Minister, David Cameron said at the Oxford Farming Conference in 2008, ‘Just as we don’t accept cars that aren’t meeting our emission standards, so we shouldn’t accept food that doesn’t meet our welfare standards.’

Now that he is in power, his government has done nothing but bow to the needs of big business.

Law breakers

Factory pig companies save money by breaking welfare laws. Compassion in World Farming found that in five European countries over 70% of farms visited were failing to obey the  EU Pig Welfare Directive, which requires that from 2003 all pigs have straw or similar material in their pens, and are not tail docked.

In January 2013 the long awaited ban on sow stalls will come into force, although it is not a complete ban – factory farms will be allowed to confine pregnant sows in narrow metal cages for around two months a year, and in farrowing crates in which they cannot turn around for a further two months. This is a dreadfully cruel confinement for such sensitive animals.

‘Gestatation crates’ are cruel and uncomfortable for pregnant sows [Image: Wikimedia Commons

The silence of the labels

Across the EU there is no information on package labels that tells consumers whether pork was raised on a factory farm or not. As consumers become increasingly horrified by the cruelty that animals endure in factory farms, they need proper labelling to avoid buying low welfare products.

The best that the previous and present UK governments have come up with is a voluntary code for country of origin labelling. UK consumers who want to avoid pork from factory farms in the UK or abroad should look for Outdoor Reared, Outdoor Bred, Free Range or organic labels.

Consumers want compassionately reared meat

There are good reasons not to buy factory farmed pork:

• Overcrowding causes illness in pigs, treated with antibiotics that increase antibiotic resistant ‘superbugs’.
• Meat from free-range pigs has more healthy 0mega-3 fats, more iron and more vitamin E than meat from intensively raised pigs.
• Buying organic or free-range pork supports healthy and humane British farms.
• Factory farmed pigs are fed with genetically modified soy or corn, often from cleared rainforests in South America.
• The waste from factory farms pollutes the water and sickens nearby residents.

In the UK, consumers have taken this message on board and are already leading the move towards high welfare products, typically from smaller UK farms. Sales of RSPCA certified Freedom Food pork, sausages, bacon and cooked ham increased by 64% in 2010, reflecting increasing concern for animal welfare among consumers, now aware of the horrifying realities of factory pig farming.

The most recent Freedom Food Impact Report shows that in the last 5 years in response to consumer demand,, the number of pigs reared under Freedom Food has grown nearly 84 % – from 1.4m in 2006 to 2.7m in 2011 – about 28 per cent of all UK pig production.

Antibiotic resistance

The EU system relies on the routine use of antibiotics to keep the animals alive in the contagious overcrowded barns. This has been a major cause of increasing numbers of diseases becoming resistant to antibiotics and passing from pigs to humans. The system also led to the emergence of the H1N1 (Swine Flu) virus.

A 2012 report published in the Netherlands found that 38% of factory farmed pigs were carrying the pig strain of MRSA that can pass from pigs to humans. For pigs raised on organic, high welfare farms the figure was only 3%. INni another study MRSA was found in 11% of fresh pork sampled in Dutch supermarkets.

Not just in the EU

This is not just a UK or European problem. There is growing concern that the routine use of antibiotics in factory farms is leading to the proliferation of antibiotic resistant bacteria which threaten human health. In the EU the use of antibiotics and growth promoters was banned in 2006 but many farmers find ways around the law by using antibiotics for ‘health’ reasons and their use is still routine in America.

The US the Pew Commission Report on Industrial Farm Animal Production is a comprehensive indictment of the system, backed by extensive science and research.

The factory farm system relies on the routine use of antibiotics. To accelerate growth, piglets are weaned before their immune system has had a chance to develop, and without antibiotics many would die.

It’s estimated that around  50% of antibiotics used in the UK, and 64%  of antibiotics used on farms, are given to pigs. These are the same as, or closely related to, medically important antibiotics used in human medicine and are becoming ineffective as more disease-causing bacteria become resistant.

A threat to human health

The European Food Safety Authority has published a review that shows that for certain bacteria such as salmonella and campylobacter, most antibiotic resistance in human infections comes from farm-animal antibiotic use. In 2010 Smithfield shareholders  expressed their concern about routine antibiotic use in a Shareholder Resolution noting that “Scientific studies confirm that non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals contributes to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections in humans.”

A report published in 2011 in the USA confirms that MRSA and other antibiotic resistant bacteria can be spread from animals to humans by flies and cockroaches. The research showed that strains found in the intestines of pigs were the same as were found on flies which can fly several kilometres and can spread the bacteria each time they land on food.

Just this week a joint study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Dutch Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) and UV University Medical Center in Amsterdam concluded that living near livestock increases the risk of acquiring methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The bacterium lodges in the nasal passages and from there is easily spread to other humans. They further note that because of the density and scale of pig farming in the US such findings have significant implication for the health of US citizens.

GMOs rear their ugly head – again

The feed given to intensively reared pigs is also causing significant long term problems. In April 2011 Ib Borup Pedersen, a Danish farmer concerned with the ill health and deformities of his indoor, intensive herd of pigs, replaced the GM soya he had been using as feed with non-GM soy.

Within two days diarrhoea, which had been killing up to 30% of his piglets, cleared up and the piglets became sturdier. Sow deaths from bloat and ulcers stopped completely, and during the year following the conversion to non-GM feed his use of antibiotics dropped by half. The savings in his vet and medicine bills far outweighed the extra cost of non-GM feed.

Mr Pedersen believes that the high rate of dead and deformed piglets on farms using GM soya is caused by residues of glyphosate in the feed. The soya is genetically modified to be immune to the glyphosate based herbicide Roundup, which is sprayed several times on the soy crop to kill weeds. Reports indicate that the glyphosate residues change the microflora and allow Clostridia bacterium to grow in the animals’ gut causing fatal bloat and diarrhoea.

Weeds are now becoming resistant to Roundup so the spraying has to be increased leading to more residues on the crop, a vicious cycle that can only be broken by returning to non-GM crops and using natural herbicides.

Pig Business is everyone’s business

Pig Business is now being made in country-specific versions where existing campaigns can use the film as a tool in their efforts to ban new factory farms, or close existing factory farms.

In Hungary the film shows how local residents prevented the building of two huge foreign owned farms by refusing to allow the waste to be spread on their land.

In Romania, the film was widely shown and the sales of the biggest factory pork producer dropped by 50%.

Pig Business will be filming this winter in the Perote valley in Mexico where there is a huge concentration of factory farms jointly owned by Smithfield Foods of America and which was the epicentre of the swine flu pandemic of 2010. Locals are still being affected by flies that spread disease from rotting pig carcasses, and by the contaminated water.

In Chile, where Pig Business will be filming in January, the government has ordered the closure of one of the world’s biggest factory pig farms after the local residents, sickened by toxic waste in the air and water, prevented feed lorries from approaching the site. Local activists asked Pig Business to film the events to reach a worldwide audience.

Say no to pig mega-farms in the UK

In the UK there are plans to build a 25,000 pig mega- farm in Foston in Derbyshire which would be less than 100 metres from residential buildings.  There have been over 20,000 objections so far, locals are up in arms and the District Council unanimously voted in opposition to the plans. The decision is now with the County Council.

We urge everyone in the UK to sign our petition to keep up the pressure and stop the rise of factory farming in the UK.

All over the world people are taking action against a system that degrades the environment and shames us all. Taking back power from the industrial farming system is really a matter of choice, and Pig Business encourages us to buy high welfare pork and support small scale, healthy and humane farming that has been providing wholesome food for generations, preserving landscapes and keeping alive the traditions of the countryside.

• Pig Business is a film and campaign that supports people across the world whore campaigning against factory pig farming, a system that abuses animals, threatens our health by overusing antibiotics, destroys rural communities, and pollutes the air and water. You can watch the trailer for the film here