doing to the natural world. and yet we all need to eat. mm hm. and thanks to farming, almost all of us can sustain ourselves with decent amounts of food. why do you see this as such a problem? well, this is the great dilemma we face. i mean, it s notjust a question of seeing it as a problem, there is a huge weight of empirical evidence showing that farming is by far the greatest cause of habitat destruction, of wildlife loss, of extinction, of land use, which is perhaps the most important environmental metric of all, of soil degradation, of freshwater use, and one of the greatest causes of climate breakdown, of water pollution and of air pollution. so it s notjust a matter of opinion, this is the industry which comes top of the list of all damaging human activities. now, of course, we. stephen chuckles yes, except what you haven t mentioned there is that over that millennia, we humans have
showing that farming is by far the greatest cause of habitat destruction, of wildlife loss, of extinction, of land use, which is perhaps the most important environmental metric of all, of soil degradation, of freshwater use, and one of the greatest causes of climate breakdown, of water pollution and of air pollution. so it s notjust a matter of opinion, this is the industry which comes top of the list of all damaging human activities. now, of course, we. stephen chuckles yes, except what you haven t mentioned there is that over that millennia, we humans have figured out ways to feed, successfully feed, more and more and more people. mm, yeah. food production is a success story. absolutely. it s been an astonishing success. in fact, almost too much of a success. we produce roughly twice as many calories as we need, but a huge amount of that is wasted by being channelled through livestock, which is a very inefficient use of calories, or biofuels. and then some of it is just wasted. so we
showing that farming is by far the greatest cause of habitat destruction, of wildlife loss, of extinction, of land use, which is perhaps the most important environmental metric of all, of soil degradation, of freshwater use, and one of the greatest causes of climate breakdown, of water pollution and of air pollution. so it s notjust a matter of opinion, this is the industry which comes top of the list of all damaging human activities. now, of course, we. stephen chuckles yes, except what you haven t mentioned there is that over that millennia, we humans have figured out ways to feed, successfully feed, more and more and more people. mm, yeah. food production is a success story. absolutely. it s been an astonishing success. in fact, almost too much of a success. we produce roughly twice as many calories as we need, but a huge amount of that is wasted by being channelled through livestock, which is a very inefficient use of calories, or biofuels. and then some
of freshwater use, and one of the greatest causes of climate breakdown, of water pollution and of air pollution. so it s notjust a matter of opinion, this is the industry which comes top of the list of all damaging human activities. now, of course, we. stephen chuckles yes, except what you haven t mentioned there is that over that millennia, we humans have figured out ways to feed, successfully feed, more and more and more people. mm, yeah. food production is a success story. absolutely. it s been an astonishing success. in fact, almost too much of a success. we produce roughly twice as many calories as we need, but a huge amount of that is wasted by being channelled through livestock, which is a very inefficient use of calories, or biofuels. and then some of it is just wasted. so we ve got this tremendously productive system, but it deeply threatens earth systems on which we also depend entirely for our survival, and which itself depends upon. agriculture depends
the greatest cause of habitat destruction, of wildlife loss, of extinction, of land use, which is perhaps the most important environmental metric of all. of soil degradation of freshwater use, and one of the greatest causes of climate breakdown, of water pollution and of air pollution. so it s notjust a matter of opinion, this is the industry which comes top of the list of all damaging human activities. now, of course, we. stephen chuckles yes, except what you haven t mentioned there is that over that millennia, we humans have figured out ways to feed, successfully feed, more and more and more people. mm, yeah. food production is a success story. absolutely. it s been an astonishing success. in fact, almost too much of a success. we produce roughly twice as many calories as we need, but a huge amount of that is wasted by being channelled through livestock, which is a very inefficient use of calories, or biofuels. and then some of it is just wasted.