2 Replies to “Agriculture good for nature after all”

  1. Oh, come on. Is smoking good for you because it is not as bad as glue-sniffing?

    Betelnuts: very nice that the birds go to these plantations. A betelnut plantations surely is better for forest bird species than an rice field. No big surprise there. But are they as good as the forest? Could many of these species even survive there without the forest? Not likely.

    Satoyama: Certainly the “carefully managed border region between arable land and the mountains” would be more interesting for biodiversity than factories. But what kind of comparison is that? It certainly does not mean that agriculture is good for nature. It means there are worse things.

    Cows: Extensive agriculture is not as bad as intensive agriculture (but beware of scale effects if this means that you use more land for agriculture). And yes, re-introducing large grazers (extinct thanks to agriculture and hunting) can help. But it is the retreat of intensive agriculture that has helped.

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