Farming

Jeremy Talbot (The Timaru Herald, May 21) suggests banning all artificial fertilisers would result in a 65% reduction in crop production and halving cattle numbers would both have us all naked, starving and sober.

With a population of a little more than 5 million we don’t need much more than about 12% of our agricultural production for our own needs. The rest is exported to pay for a huge range of imports we have come to rely on.

The major changes looming for traditional agriculture will not, however, be imposed from within New Zealand but by international market forces. It is only wealthy nations which can afford to buy our exports and they are rapidly moving to plant-based foods.

We can put a major effort into diversifying some of our agriculture now or wait for the catastrophe to hit.

In a little over 70 years the world’s human population has more than doubled from 2.3 billion to 7.8b. Carbon in the atmosphere has increased from 280 parts per million to 415ppm and original wilderness areas have declined to a remnant 35%. The status quo is clearly not sustainable and a major adjustment in the world’s ecology through climate change is under way.

Tom O’Connor St Andrews