I’ve started reading Sepp Holzer’s new book Desert or Paradise. Early in the book I found this:
“Intensive overgrazing is another example where damage is caused to trees. Spain and Portugal have a long tradition of extensive grazing, but it was mostly done with pigs in the past and they actually helped the ground. Bonus payments by the EU and the desire to make more money seduced a lot of farmers to start intensive animal husbandry. Nowadays they mostly keep sheep, goats and cattle.
This is too much for the ground and leads to loss of biodiversity and plant life …”
I believe many (if not most) of the EU payments to farmers and peasants in Romania achieve (by design!) a similar result. I recently mentioned this in the context of bees as well. Seeing that Sepp Holzer has similar views makes me think that maybe I am not so crazy … or maybe I am of a right crazy!