What problems are there with intensive farming?
After the second World War we had food shortages, and the farming in this country became increasingly intensive. What happened was rotations which were the basis of an organic farm -- Rotation is when you grow a crop and you grow different crops in order, not growing just one crop all the time. And so, for example, you would have a field of potatoes which generally are quite hungry. They take up quite a lot of nutrients, and then you have got clover or grass, which actually puts nitrogen back into the soil. If you balance them out, then you maintain a consistent level of nutrients in your soil.But what happened was they devised nitrogen - it was used in the explosive industry, and so after the second World War they realized that actually this meant that if you apply it in plants it actually makes them grow quicker.They used this a lot in farming, and they got rid of the old system of using crop rotation. They just poured loads of chemicals onto the land, and plants grew very quickly. But what this meant was that the actual fertility of the soil was being driven down. It also meant that hedges were ripped out. They started using pesticides rather than using natural methods of pest control. This had a really, really dramatic effect on our countryside. We have lost hedgerows. Bird species have declined. Lots of species have now become endangered. Rivers have become polluted. We've had massive problems of farming disasters like BSE and foot-and-mouth which are a result of intensive farm practices.
