Fields as Toxic Dump: Liquid Manure Threatens Wildlife

Oases for animals and nature must be created in the countryside: without hobby hunters and with agriculture in harmony with nature.

Editorial Team Wild beim Wild — 29 April 2021

The cumulative toxic cocktail that conventional farmers dispose of on fields also places an enormous burden on wildlife.

For environmental protection reasons, farmers are not actually permitted to spread liquid manure at will: When the ground is frozen, snow-covered, or saturated with water, this hazardous waste — which can contain traces of antibiotics, hormones, genetically modified feed, pesticides, sprays, herbicides, and more — must not be applied.Yet many farmers do not comply with the liquid manure regulations.

Liquid manure also contains large amounts of heavy metals, as animals in intensive livestock farming are fed feed supplemented with zinc and copper. These heavy metals end up in the excrement, which enters the soil via the liquid manure. They inhibit plant growth and damage valuable microorganisms and important soil-dwelling creatures such as earthworms.

Swiss farmers repeatedly spread their hazardous waste even within the protected 3-metre buffer strips along streams, forests, and hedgerows. It is also prohibited to store silage bales on these strips. Farmers receive direct payments to ensure that these ecologically particularly valuable buffer strips are not covered with slurry, manure, and pesticides, so that wild plants and animals have a natural habitat. In reality, however, many do not comply with the regulations — and are rewarded nonetheless.Of all European countries, Switzerland applies the highest amount of pesticides per hectare.

Slurry from valley locations is also frequently transported to higher mountain regions and spread on the meadows there. Added to this is the fact that these animals typically receive concentrated feed containing systemically active insecticides (neonicotinoids), which were initially intended “merely” to keep insects away from feed plants, but later also lead — via the slurry pathway — to a depletion of insect diversity on alpine meadows, as these substances do not break down easily.

The applicable Swiss regulations regarding the use of farm manures are considerably less strict than those in the surrounding EU countries. This is evident both in the shortest minimum distances of 3 m to bodies of water during application (compared, for example, to Austria with a minimum distance of 10–20 m), and in the application techniques, where Swiss regulations contain no specific requirements regarding the method of application. Unlike other countries, Switzerland has no clearly defined winter period during which slurry spreading is prohibited. In Austria, for instance, the winter spreading ban runs from mid-November (on grassland) or mid-October (on arable land) until mid-February, and in Germany from mid-November until mid-January.

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Non-ruminant livestock excrete undigested the phytate they consume with their feed. This is the reason why slurry from pigs and other livestock contains high levels of phosphate, which is considered the main source of phosphate pollution and eutrophication of water bodies caused by agriculture.

Slurry also brings pathogens onto the fields. The suspicion is grave: dairy cows, breeding pigs or horses, but also wild animals such as roe deer, wild boar or hares may have been contracting highly infectious bacteria for years.Due to the heavy use of antibiotics in livestock farming, slurry also frequently contains dangerous antibiotic-resistant pathogens.Slurry contaminated with antibiotics can, after being spread on fields, disrupt bacterial communities in the soil and contribute to an increase in the frequency and transmissibility of antibiotic resistance.

Among wild animals too, cancer diagnoses caused by environmental toxins are accumulating at an alarming rate — including over-fertilization, the accumulation of heavy metals in soils, pesticides, elevated phosphorus levels in water bodies, and the contamination of water with nitrates, pesticide residues in drinking water, and so on.

Around 30 different herbicides are poisoning the alpine pastures. Critics are clear about who bears responsibility: decades of mismanagement and a grave decision by the federal government, among other factors. The herbicides recommended by the federal government include asulam, which is banned in the EU. Treating plants that are toxic to animals with such herbicides and then, out of ignorance, often leaving them lying around is irresponsible. Livestock and wildlife no longer recognize them as poisonous plants — and eat them.

According to Roger Bisig, President of Pro Natura Schwyz, this is an underestimated problem: «Plants treated with herbicide taste salty, which makes them attractive to wildlife.» As a game warden, he sometimes found dead roe deer that had presumably died from herbicides. «The cause of death could never be determined. Such investigations are expensive, so they were abandoned..»

An increasing number of studies are proving the negative effects of pesticides on human health: cancers, birth defects, damage to the reproductive system, neurological disorders, Parkinson's disease, autism, and more. The scientific community agrees that the population must be protected from pesticides.

From an ecological perspective, pesticides have long been considered responsible for the decline in biodiversity. Insecticides kill bees, butterflies, and numerous other beneficial insects. Herbicides decimate wildflowers, which in turn are essential food sources for many of the pollinators our crops depend on. This natural biodiversity is the legacy of millions of years of evolution on this planet.

Conventional agriculture uses such large quantities of pesticides that it is impossible to protect the surrounding population and the immediate environment from them. Even without wind, pesticides drift onto neighbouring land and poison people, natural areas, waterways, and organically farmed plots.

175 pesticides that were once approved had their authorisation withdrawn between 2005 and 2020, primarily due to harm to health and the environment. Pesticides are therefore not safe and harmless even after approval!

Additionally, according to the Federal Office for the Environment, air pollutants from animal excrement enter the atmosphere. These include ammonia, which leads to over-fertilization of sensitive ecosystems and forms respirable fine particulate matter (PM10), as well as the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide.Swiss farmers are also, incidentally, the biggest fine particulate matter offenders — responsible for 37 percent of all fine dust emissions. Each year, fine particulate matter claims 3,700 lives and causes health costs of 4.2 billion francs in Switzerland. (Source: FOEN).

The film «Can the Bees Still Be Saved?» documents that systemic agents used against parasites, injected into cattle in the Swiss Alps, re-enter the meadows through their dung. Anyone who knows that in nature a dung pat from an unmedicated animal is broken down with the help of numerous insects, beetles, and soil organisms can imagine that these principles do not function when insecticides are involved — decomposition takes considerably longer and the number of insects declines.

How many wild animals are contaminated?

Farmer: Views fields as a disposal site — Farmers treat fields as disposal sites

In addition to slurry, the Swiss farmer carelessly sprays pesticides into a fragile system. Swiss pesticide consumption amounts to around 2,200 tonnes per year — with an ever-increasing tendency. Many farmers also obtain illegal pesticides from abroad. Pesticide residues are suspected, according to numerous studies, of disrupting cell division and altering genetic material. According to a study by Pro Natura and Friends of the Earth, over forty percent of Europeans have the toxin glyphosate — a so-called total herbicide — in their bodies.

More than two thirds of Switzerland's agricultural land consists of meadows and pastures. This means that the majority of pesticides sold are used on arable, fruit, and wine-growing land.

Emilie Bréthaut, a veterinarian at the COR, recently put it succinctly during the rescue of a red kite: «When you see something like this, it really makes you think about the fruit and vegetables we consume«, said the veterinarian. She brought dirt and green matter to light with a probe from the red kite's stomach, which smelled strongly of chemical substances.

Veterinäre retten vergifteten Rotmilan

Something must change in the countryside!

While our cities are becoming oases of biodiversity, many plant and animal species that were once commonplace have become rare or even completely disappeared from rural areas. Around half of all Central European species are considered endangered, and the red list grows longer with each passing year.

Enemy of biodiversity No. 1 is industrial agriculture, according to Prof. Dr. Josef H. Reichholf in his book “The Future of Species”: Over-fertilization, loss of structural diversity, and monocultures are species killers. The industrialization and intensification of agriculture has continuously robbed countless wild animals and plants of habitat and food sources over recent decades: through land consolidation schemes involving the draining of bogs and floodplains, the straightening of waterways, and the clearing of hedgerows; through the triumph of agrochemicals with excessive use of artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides; through over-fertilization with vast quantities of liquid manure that suffocate soil life and eradicate wild plants that depend on nutrient-poor soils; and through monocultures that have created agricultural steppes. There is a lack of habitats such as hedgerows, bodies of water, and areas free from intensive agricultural use. Our forests, too, have become timber plantations designed to maximize yield and profit: intensive forestry has transformed many forests into little more than pole-wood fields offering almost no refuge for wildlife.

After industrial agriculture, hunting is enemy of biodiversity No. 2: in the countryside, hunting takes place everywhere — in forests and fields alike — throughout the entire year. Prof. Dr. Reichholf is convinced that for most of the larger species, the future hangs on the gun barrels of hobby hunters. Hunting artificially creates wariness in animals and thereby severely restricts the living conditions of the hunted species. «Anyone can observe this directly in the far lower wariness of animals living in cities compared to those in the open countryside,» says Reichholf. Compared to hunting, the harm caused by construction and settlement activity, industry, and traffic is relatively minor.

As much as we can rejoice that biodiversity in cities is growing ever greater and that oases for wildlife have emerged — as much as we can rejoice that animals have lost their unnatural fear of humans and are once again becoming part of our lived experience — it becomes all the more clear that something must change in the countryside. If we want to preserve nature and the animals living within it, a rethinking of agriculture is long overdue. Also long overdue is a different view of animals: wild animals are not the enemies of agriculture, but belong to our natural world. Ultimately, by destroying the habitats of more and more animals and plants, we humans are destroying our own habitat — and threatening our survival on planet Earth.

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