This little fellow is a bruchid beetle. He and ten billion on his closest chums got into my bean crop and make a right mess of it. They drill little holes in each bean (also just visible in the picture). This means the crop is no good for human consumption, and is downgraded to animal feed. We sprayed insecticide to kill them early in the season, but the hot weather meant an enormous late flush - hence the damage. This one on my kitchen table was one of the late arrivals, and somehow survived the combine, the trailer and being bagged up for week or two, and so by the time I started cleaning up a sample of beans for germination and 'thousand grain weight' testing, he was probably feeling a bit groggy. Still, most of his chums will have perished in the field.
Don't mean to get into the same debate we've already had, but so far your tally seems restricted to insects. Have you found any evidence for mammals, birds or reptiles as yet? I am currently reading a new study that attempts to quantify the extent to which animals are killed in crop farming. I'll let you know what they come up with.
ReplyDeleteJust a quick update. Fischer and Lamey 2018 (Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture) have reviewed the evidence and conclude that there isn't much real info to go on. They've come up with an estimate that on average, just one animal (excluding insects) is killed per hectare per year in cropping. For the UK, that would mean perhaps 6 million animals killed as a direct result of plant farming activities. My own feeling is that their conclusion is somewhat conservative (ie I think it is probably more than one) Still, that's what they came up with. Make of it what you will I suppose...
ReplyDelete'Excluding insects'. How frightfully convenient.
ReplyDeleteThank you for confirming to everyone concerned who might happen across this blog that, according to a farmer who desperately wanted to turn the argument back on vegans by accumulating evidence of all the animals killed during a season's growth of wheat for their bread on his farm, only insects were killed. No hares, no rabbits, not even rats, apart from insects were killed during the course of production of wheat in one year. Seems to me you've landed an own goal, Charlie. Well done.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank YOU for confirming that vegetarians are quite content to kill insects. Seems highly hypocritical for a movement that dines out on the lack of deaths in its chosen diet, but there we go. (And you obviously missed the post about the rats). Anyway, best wishes, Charlie.
ReplyDeleteI can’t speak for vegetarians about what they think about the deaths of insects, but both you and I know very well that your intention wasn’t to highlight the deaths of insects anyway; it was to produce evidence of the deaths of field animals such as hares, voles, mice and other mammals that are killed during the production of a vegetarian protestor’s bread. You said you were going to take some of them to a vet to get all the “gory post-mortem details” to include in your blog here, ostensibly to say, “Look, your food kills animals as well.”, so please don’t insult your readers further by pretending that your intention was to highlight the deaths of insects. You’ve failed spectacularly and had to fall back onto insects to make your “argument against those vegans/vegetarians who metaphorically and literally wear the 'meat is murder' T-shirt.” because you were either too lazy or incompetent to do what you set out to do. How did you even hope to turn the argument back on them by falling back onto insects to make your point when insects aren’t even meat? Like I say, I can’t speak for them but I doubt many give a rat’s backside about bugs. It’s the animals you raise and kill for food that they’re referring to when chanting “meat is murder” because they believe those animals hold a right against human beings not to be used as food, clothing or anything else rights holders are protected from. They don’t believe head lice, bed bugs or the creepy crawlies in our fields hold rights against us. You knew that, of course, and when the evidence of all those deaths you promised to supply didn’t materialize you reaped the total embarrassment which you sowed earlier in the year and must surely be feeling that right now at the end of it.
ReplyDeleteHmmm...I'be been re-reading the bit at the top of the blog: the bit where it says 'animals' and 'creatures' that are killed. As far as I know, bugs and insects fall neatly into both categories, and it was always my intention to include them. However, you may be right that veggies and vegans don't give a flying fig about insects and bugs, but that is MY argument: they should be. Their diet involves the killing of animals, so they have no right to chant and protest that meat eaters kill animals, as if they (v/v's) don't. I must say, your claimed insight into my thinking and methodology is remarkable...not least for its utter wrongness. I feel a complete lack of embarrassment, so I'm not quite sure where you get that from. Anyway, it's time for some yummy home produced lamb. Nomnomnom. Best wishes, Charlie.
ReplyDeleteAnd I must say, for someone who starts almost every sentence with 'I can't speak for vegetarians', you spend an awful lot of time talking for vegetarians.
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