Climate Change – Bad Agriculture Is More Guilty Than Bad Forestry!

It’s the perspective, folks. With Covid-19, you are mistaking the cause of the disease with the disease itself!

From Indonesia, Rizki Fachriansyah writes “Scientists Call For Integrated One Health Approach To Climate, Disease Mitigation[1]” (09 December 2020, climatechange.searca.org):

Recent studies show that the increased transmission of zoonotic diseases – diseases that spread from animals to humans – is largely caused by man-made disturbances to natural ecosystems, including human encroachment of the natural habitats of wild animals.

No Sir! The perspective is erroneous– the coronavirus that spreads from some wild thing to humans is not the disease; rather, with favorable conditions obtaining, the virus causes the Covid-19 disease to develop within the human body.

Note: It is the prior health condition of your body that enables or disables the virus to cause the disease. When it comes to human health, it is not the health of the forest that it is dependent on.

And upon what is your health condition dependent? Largely upon the food that you eat, which essentially comes from the farm, not the forest.

Ergo: Your health depends on the environment of your food source, not the environment of the deforested mountain in your city or locality.

Ergo: You must practice healthy agriculture. No man-made, un-natural foods for your crops or livestock. No inorganic fertilizers, no weedicides, no insecticides, no fungicides, no antibiotics, no growth hormones.

Mr Fachriansyah says:

Environmental health scientists are calling for an integrated approach to prevent future outbreaks of disease as well as to mitigate the climate crisis.

Integrated Approach. Okay, let us talk about environmental health. We must consider both environments: the forest and the farm.

In the Philippines alone, there are 13.4 million hectares of farm[2] (Statista.com), and 5.7 million hectares of forest[3] (FAO.org). In terms of climate change, do you know what that means? I don’t think so, because I am the only one thinking like this:

From the cultivated farms come nitrous oxide and methane; from those farms go back by reflection the most heat to the atmosphere. We have to mind the deforested mountains too, but the fact is that it is the active farms that cause much of climate change, not mountains that lack forests!

So, if we want to resolve the occurrence of pandemics – and the climate crisis – we have to convert our farming methods from unnatural to natural.

Conservation biology professor Jatna Supriatna of the University of Indonesia claim that “the virus that causes COVID-19 – Zika and avian flu (are) examples of zoonotic outbreaks that had direct links to deforestation.”

“Direct links to deforestation” – 45 years ago, I started working as Chief Information Officer (not the title) of the Forest Research Institute, FORI, and in FORI we knew that the deforestation in the Philippines was already heavy. Yet, there was no outbreak of “zoonotic disease.” And in villages surrounding deforested hillsides, no “zoonotic disease” outbreaks have been reported since.

Climate change gases nitrous oxide and methane mostly come from farms using nitrogenous fertilizers for crops. Natural is better. Nature knows best!@517

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[1]https://climatechange.searca.org/news/harvested/indonesia/scientists-call-for-integrated-one-health-approach-to-climate-disease-mitigation?fbclid=IwAR2Gim-eVBu8J2xzKZC7PQLJcsEOOrvnWNrGRCp8lZLfkT29_U6OpeCP2Q4

[2]https://www.statista.com/statistics/1045556/land-area-used-for-agricultural-crop-cultivation-philippines/#:~:text=In%202018%2C%20the%20total%20land,was%20around%2013.5%20million%20hectares.

[3]http://www.fao.org/3/w7730e/w7730e0b.htm#:~:text=The%20forest%20area%20of%20the,very%20steep%20and%20inaccessible%20areas).