The Colossal Mistake of Underestimating the Death Spreading Agriculture and Meat Industry

What a bold statement "Death Spreading Agriculture" for an essential sector that is promoted by its corporations and by states to be life giving and that is trivially understood as such. Nevertheless, if you look beneath the surface, agriculture is very much spreading death on so many crucial subsystems and functions of our one and only life supporting world namely planet earth, its climate and ecosystems. As it is always the case with human kind, the blind greed and hunger for ever more power and resources and the revolving door corruption of monopolistic corporations, states and people give rise to the totally perverted and corrupted delusion that agriculture is life giving and indispensable to feed the world. To which destiny the death spreading agriculture and meat industry together with other human causes are leading us, see this article: The Colossal Mistake of Underestimating Climate Change and the sixth Mass Extinction.

Firstly lets look at the bigger picture. So many important governments subsidising and supporting the important role that the corporate dead soil poisoning chemical monoculture agriculture is playing in abrupt climate change and in the massive decline in biodiveristy is nothing less than ecocide and a crime against humanity. After all this kind of agriculture is:
– poisoning life, earth, the oceans, biodiversity and the human species on an ever larger enormous scale.
– the most important cause of abrupt climate change.

Secondly I'de like to elaborate on the in my view mostly amplifying feedback loops between ecosystem destruction and climate change and on agriculture which is a very strong driver for both of these phenomena:
- Healthy ecosystems stabilize the climate. Therefore the vast destruction of ecosystems by agriculture is also an important cause of abrupt climate change. For example clearing and burning forests releases their carbon above the soil into the atmosphere (the Amazon carbon above the soil is estimated to be equivalent with 20 to 30 years of current emissions) and their continuous carbon sequestring is destroyed. Afterwards the death spreading agriculture practices will also release carbon stored in the soil.
- Abrupt climate change is in its turn also contributing very much to the destruction of ecosystems. In fact almost all previous mass extinctions were accomplished via the earth climate, oceanic and atmospheric systems. The speed of the change is probably a very important driver for the destruction rate of ecosystems. The faster the less nature will be able to keep up by adaptation or migration. And guess what, the speed of adding carbon dioxide by humans is unprecedented in the known natural history. Human kind has the doubtful honour to realise such a rise of carbon dioxide in hundreds of years instead of ten thousands of years earlier in natural history.
In conclusion ecosystem destruction and abrupt climate change are reinforcing eachother very strongly and agriculture is delivering a double whamming (directly and indirectly via the other phenomenon) to both of them. That is why the complete replacement of agriculture by permaculture is an absolute condition for mitigating, if still possible currently, abrupt climate change and the sixth mass extinction as much as possible. Other absolute conditions are in my view:
- An almost complete replacement of burning fossil fuels by renewable energy. Update on 2024-02-08. I replace the previous sentence as follows. Economise and replace the burning of fossil fuels as much as possible with renewable energy at least if this renewable energy is actually decreasing CO2 emission and the latter is truthfully calculated. I make this change because quite clearly the green agenda is a scam, based on lies and in fact is part of an elitarian agenda to take away vehicles from common people and make the common people dependent on a social credit system for among others their transport. For example ev's (electrical vehicles) as an alternative for fossil fuel vehicles are are not feasible, cost a lot more also in cost for the environment. The CO2 emissions for their production, batteries and replacement, electricity and excessive weight are almost never mentioned.
- The replacement of a very resource consuming, spoiled and decadent lifestyle especially in the US, Europe and other "developed" regions with a far more modest lifestyle together with a much better organised society which is no longer capital, money and greed driven but ecologically driven.

Thirdly how agriculture is actually spreading death on so many crucial subsystems and functions of our world and this on the very vaste areas of land it occupies:
- The poisoning and/or tilling monoculture agriculture does not leave any space for integration of other natural elements thus of biodiversity on the very vaste areas of land it occupies. On the contrary it focusses on killing as much biodiversity as possible to eradicate any natural competition. This is one direct way with which agriculture is making a very substantial contribution to the sixth mass extinction.
- Pesticides kill the natural soillife just as tilling does and as such destroy the necessary base of land ecosystems. As a result the soil no longer takes the carbon effectively in and releases already stored carbon adding to the problem of greenhouse gasses and climate change!
- Furthermore dead soil chemical agriculture can't function without its chemical fertilizers which in their turn release nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas far more potent than methane which is far more potent then carbon dioxide.
- Producing some of those fertilizers is a very energy intensive process also adding to the greenhouse gasses.
- Lets not forget those pesticides destroy biodiversity also outside the vaste areas of land agriculture occupies, again adding to the greenhouse, climate change and mass extinction problem.
- The poisoning and/or tilling monoculture agriculture is by itself a very weak system because of its lack of biodiversity. In fact they are totally non viable energy wasting systems that can only exist temporarily and artificially because of consuming large volumes of oil (fertilizers and pesticides). In addition those weak poisonous monocultures give rise to pests and diseases for which pesticides are needed. Still new adapted pests and diseases (superweeds, ...) appear, which the greedy, sociopathic and naturopathic corporations use as an opportunity to sell even more and other poisons spreading more and more sickness and death.

Fourthly there are many more death spreading matters to argue about the destructive agriculture and meat industry:
– Meat production uses easily ten times more natural resources, poisonous pesticides and fertilizer than vegetable food production.
– Clearing forests, thus destroying the forest ecosystems, mainly for meat production, livestock feed or other production, releases their carbon and their carbon sequestring potential is destroyed thus increasing the greenhouse gasses in a recurring manner.
– Methane burbs and farts of the cows.
– Ocean dead zones caused by fertilizer runoff.
– Soil erosion.
– Fresh water depletion.
– … .

So agriculture industry and corrupted states stop spreading your promoted flagrant lies. Permaculture is the real and only way to go. Anyway climate change will destroy agriculture since it is very sensitive to small changes in climate parameters and to extreme weather. Permaculture is far more resistent and durable for that matter!

As argued above the destruction will be colossal and only controllable ecological SRM (solar radiation management) and therefore with mirrors and not geoengineering our atmosphere, can stop AGW and therefore this colossal destruction.

By the way. The permaculture way of producing food instead of the death spreading agriculture would create a lot of intelligent interesting jobs. In fact anybody can start producing food for himself, his family, his neighborhood, … the permaculture way.

On the matter of poisoning see among others the following video's mostly about the roundup cocktail with glyphosate and on gmo roundup-ready crops:

Some other sources:

The article ”The Colossal Mistake of Underestimating the Death Spreading Agriculture and Meat Industry” was written by Paka Small - 2019-08-26.

Appendix A

The vicious cycle of Ecosystem Destruction(X)Climate Change is accelerating severely and drives together with fossil fuel burning a runaway and abrupt sixth mass extinction at a speed as never seen before in natural history. This is a vicious cycle because ecosystem destruction drives climate change and vice versa climate change drives ecosystem destruction. See below for a growing list of video's about large scale phenomena driving this vicious cycle.