Industrial farming puts ecosystems at risk of collapse, warns Prince Charles | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Industrial farming puts ecosystems at risk of collapse, warns Prince Charles | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Industrial farming puts ecosystems at risk of collapse, warns Prince CharlesFarming methods must be low-impact, organic and low-carbon to protect natural resources for the long term. Prince Charles has warned that the world's ecosystems face collapse because of a dangerous over-reliance on industrial farming systems that work against nature rather than with it.

In a speech to launch a new sustainable farming project with the supermarket chain Morrisons, the Prince of Wales said farming needed to shift quickly to low-impact, organic and low-carbon methods to survive into the long term. The prince directly attacked farms that "treat animals like machines by using industrial rearing systems". Although he did not mention it directly, his criticisms echo fears about the UK's first diary "super farm" planned for Lincolnshire, where 8,000 cows will produce milk 24 hours a day and will be housed in four open-sided barns. He also criticised the increasing use of "green" labelling and award schemes which failed to protect natural resources in the long term and which "contributes to the failure of the entire system upon which it depends."

He said experts predicted that demand for food will rise by 50% by 2030, while humanity will also need 30% more water and 45% more energy. Fresh water supplies were finite and oil close to its peak. For every nine barrels of oil used today, only one barrel of readily exploitable oil was being found. "The mathematics do not exactly add up," he said. "We have to come up with a better way of producing our food that maintains the health of the earth's natural systems so that we work much more closely with them rather than so carelessly to spite them. And because we will have to do so in a commercial environment hounded by the spiralling cost of the diminishing oil supply it would pay us perhaps to do so quickly, now rather than later when it may be too late." He added: "So far we have enjoyed the considerable luxury of ignoring these things. We've tended to believe many of nature's services are free."