Pesticides are destroying the land we depend on. So why are we bailing out these companies with billions of pounds?

The climate column: Pesticides are like heroin. They give an initial blissful boost to production, but the underlying price is decimation of the living world, writes Donnachadh McCarthy

Key to this destruction has been the decades-long drenching of our agricultural land and gardens with toxic pesticides and herbicides (Getty)

The Bank of England may not spring to mind as one of the main players when it comes to the destruction of our climate and what is left of nature. But it, and the Treasury, as part of their Covid-19 economic recovery plan, are pouring billions of our pounds into the industries which are destroying the future of the global economy. So much for a green recovery.

One of the huge positives that many people spoke about during the lockdown was the pleasure they got from being able to hear bird-song again.

The endless destructive drone of millions of unnecessary car journeys and the constant overhead roar of planes that destroy the quality of life for people living in cities all over the UK gave way to a blissful historic silence. But the UK’s dawn chorus, as birds welcome the new day, one of the wonders of the natural world, has become weaker and weaker, as agricultural industrialisation decimates our wildlife. Britain’s dawn chorus is down a staggering 40m birds from what it was 50 years ago.

Key to this destruction has been the decades-long drenching of our agricultural land and gardens with toxic pesticides and herbicides.

This is wreaking havoc on our bee and insect life, and on the birds and mammals who depend on them for food. Researchers state that globally we are losing a terrifying 2.5 per cent of all insect populations every year.

These chemicals are also killing off the living soils, on which humanity depends for sustenance. Destroying the tree of life destroys the economy. Living organic healthy soils are teeming with live bacteria, worms and fungi, that give it its fertility. A single teaspoon (1 gram) of rich soil can hold up to one billion bacteria, several yards of fungal filaments, several thousand protozoa, and scores of nematodes. Pouring toxic poisons on them decade after decade is turning our living soils into sterile and infertile sand, losing billions of tons of stored soil carbon in the process.

So why on earth is the Bank of England bailing out the world’s largest pesticide corporations? In the list of Covid-19 bailouts published by the Bank of England last week, the single largest loan was a whopping £1bn to pesticide manufacturer BASF. Bayer-Monsanto got another £600m. They are the second and third largest pesticide corporations in the world respectively. Despite this damage to soil and nature, which threatens the very future of humanity, the pesticide industry is planning huge growth over the coming decade, projecting a 25 per cent rise in the use of their chemical poisons on agricultural land across the globe. This will happen as our remaining forests are cleared and converted to industrial farming to feed the planet’s exploding population and rising meat consumption.

Brazil has overtaken the US in using the greatest amount of agricultural poisons, as it brutally clears its precious rain-forests and continues the genocide of indigenous people for livestock grazing and producing soya cattle feed for export to Europe and the US.

Brazil’s switch to GM crops, produced by the same pesticide corporations, was matched by a doubling of their pesticide usage over just five years between 2006 and 2011.

And what is heartbreaking is that this destruction is unnecessary. A report by the UN stated that the optimum way to feed humanity sustainably was by small scale, organic mixed farming.

Pesticides are like heroin. They give an initial blissful boost to production, but the underlying price is decimation of the living world that sustains us. This column approached BASF and Bayer/Monsanto to ask to why they needed the bailout. Both claimed weirdly that it was just part of their normal sales of commercial paper. BASF confirmed that no conditions were attached.

British taxpayers will be outraged that BASF plan a £3.4bn dividend payment to shareholders, despite the £1bn bailout from the Bank of England and Bayer-Monsanto plan a £2.5bn dividend, despite getting £600m.

We cannot let the toxic Bank of England fund the destruction of the health of our economy and the natural world. Andrew Bailey, its new governor, should stop writing articles about how crucial it is that we protect the climate and instead stop the toxic loans being poured into the fossil fuel, aviation, car and pesticide industries.

So, what can we do? We ourselves can stop using chemical poisons on our gardens and farms. Buy organic food to support farmers doing the right thing. Write to your council demanding they stop spraying our kids’ streets with Bayer-Monsanto’s glyphosate. Write to the chancellor and the governor of the Bank of England demanding a genuinely green Covid-19 stimulus that, as well as creating a zero-carbon economy, would prioritise the protection and restoration of our devastated eco-systems.

They need to fund the transition from industrial to organic farming and create a national taskforce to replant and restore millions of acres of our native forests and peatlands. Rachel Carson’s prophetic 1962 book Silent Spring, which predicted the potential death of nature from the use of agricultural poisons, should be guiding the Bank’s response to the Covid-19 economic crisis.

Our kids have a right to inherit a world that is not accompanied by the deathly silence of an obliterated dawn chorus. Covid-19 has shown us a new dawn is possible. Let us ensure that dawn includes a restored magnificent dawn chorus from nature.