Climate change favours weeds, but in fact it helps them thrive
By Chris Rowley
The weed that causes the most problem in UK fields
I grow more weeds than I know what to do with. It’s not that I hate them – in fact I want them – but I simply don’t have time to deal with them. I spend my day in search of a weed which, when I put my hands down, grows right next to me and bites at my finger every morning.
This simple fact, along with growing many other weeds, has left me feeling a bit out of place at my university. It’s not that I’m not a useful weed at work; it’s that I am a useless one.
When it comes to tackling weeds in fields, it’s not really about the weed at all. Rather, it’s about reducing the environmental impact – both of me and the ground.
In many ways, we are in such an awkward spot today that it’s difficult to even think of looking beyond this. We are becoming increasingly dependent on chemicals that cause all sorts of problems – from the pesticides we use to the waste produced by our farms to the pollution we all consume. The use of industrial chemicals to manage the growth and flowering of our crops – even for our children – is a matter of national shame, and I don’t believe that the food industry has the right to dictate how and where we eat.
In 2009, a government study in Europe found that as many as three-quarters of European farmers were failing to make good use of soil resources. It also found that many farms were using agricultural chemicals – pesticides, fertilisers and fertilisers with the ability to kil일산안마l insects – which were often not properly labelled, in some cases resulting in farmers using these poisons on crops that might otherwiSM 카지노se be unaffected.
“We still have not solved the problem세종출장안마, just not in the right way,” says Dr Eileen Haddon-Jones, the Environment Agency’s chief scientist for land use.
In the UK, at least, we’re currently using chemicals on fewer of our croplands. What is more, we’re failing to use what should be our best and last choice: seeds that are grown from non-toxic, long-term soils to protect them from the damage the chemical industry has inflicted. Soil is becoming so stressed by modern farming, which, says Haddon-Jones, is leading to an “unhealthy situation” where we eat less of what we should eat, and more o
