STUDY: GREENWASHING & HIGH TECH - Faking it: (un-)sustainable solutions for agriculture
Download STUDY: GREENWASHING & HIGH TECH - Faking it: (un-)sustainable solutions for agriculture
The climate crisis and species extinction are the biggest challenges for agriculture at present. Every study and international report correctly says: agriculture is both, perpetrator and victim. The vast majority of international and European scientists agree that the manner in which we farm has to change fundamentally. It is uncontested that intensive animal agriculture and intensive nitrogen fertilisation are harming the climate and that monocultures and high pesticide use contribute significantly to species extinction.
The obvious solution would be to promote agricultural systems which, by definition, rear animals less intensively and use far less synthetic nitrogen and fewer pesticides and thereby are proven to allow for more biodiversity as well as lower nitrogen levelsin water courses – systems such as organic agriculture.
But instead something strange happens: new, supposedly innovative techniques keep cropping up and find their way into political policy papers even though they have nowhere near the same synergetic potential for positive effects on the agroecosystem.
On the contrary: what has been proven to be correct, sometimes for years and is relatively obvious even for most interested lay people: techniques such as no-till agriculture, precision agriculture, biomass use, indoor farming or genetic engineering positively impact only a fraction, if any, of the underlying problems.
At times, negative impacts have been documented or are considered probable. Really astonishing is the fact that these techniques are regarded as THE innovative solutions even though their negative impact has been widely documented.
As critical questions and negative consequences very often will not be discussed outside of expert circles, I am really excited about this study. The author, Andrea Beste, takes a closer look at several of the current, hotly discussed “sustainability solutions”and comes to the conclusion: “this is fake sustainability”.
Download der deutschen Version: Studie „Greenwashing & viel Technik! Vermeintlich nachhaltige Lösungen für die Landwirtschaft“