Can the smashing pumpkin open our eyes to modern farming?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/05/pumpkin-farming-halloween

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Giant globes of orange scattered on the East Anglian soil resemble extraterrestrial eggs, glowing in the autumn sunshine.

Related: From pumpkins to policies: engaging in sustainable food behaviour

There are more pumpkin fields than ever this year because Halloween is now a bigger deal than bonfire night. More than 10m are grown in the UK, a wonderful illustration of Britain’s fertile soil, superb climate and the triumph of industrial farming.

Indeed, British farmers have twice this year broken the record for the world’s highest-yielding wheat crop. In August, a Lincolnshire farmer beat the New Zealand record. In September, a farmer in Northumberland, surpassed both feats. The numbers – 16.52t/ha – don’t mean much to me but they would astonish farmers in the 1970s, or 1870s.

During the 19th-century agricultural depression, we prioritised cheap food (foreign grain) over domestic production. Britain has never again regarded itself as a great farming nation. We now grow only 60% – and falling – of the food we consume.

Farmers complain about a society that doesn’t value farmland and would rather use it for golf, novelty crops (such as pumpkins), solar farms or, perhaps most damagingly, biofuels.

Perhaps we need to celebrate our fertility and better debate how we exploit it. Dave Goulson, professor of biology and bumblebee expert, last week tweeted a Defra graph showing pesticide applications to oilseed rape crops. These have risen from an average of four each year in 1994 to nearly 12 in 2014. (The record-breaking wheat crop required four “main” fungicide sprays.)

Few of us are paying attention to this hidden revolution in our fields. Some farmers prove it is possible to grow bountiful crops and not poison wildlife, but for that to happen more widely, we must pay more for our food.

We might also try to have a better understanding of modern farming in all its magic and scariness.

Annual farm visits for every school child perhaps, and why not revive the harvest festival? Maybe, via the bright glowing pumpkins, its message could be sneaked into all-conquering Halloween?

A shoot-to-thrill policy

One popular use for the countryside is to fill it with pheasants. I walked through Northamptonshire recently and they spilled from virtually every copse like drunk revellers being kicked out at closing time. The party stopped on 1 October, when the shooting season started. Many pheasant chicks are reared in cages in France before being shipped to Britain: Brittany Ferries has vowed not to transport them after the League Against Cruel Sports published a video showing the cruel battery conditions. At Conservative party conference this week, there’s a “shooting simulator” where Tories can blast game birds out of the sky. A thought occurs. If they enjoy that so much, why not make it the statutory alternative to the real thing.

Plastic is not really my bag

Here at last; the English 5p plastic bag! It isn’t going to save the world but it’s an example of sensible regulations nudging us to do the right thing. Ireland taxed plastic bags in 2002; what else will future generations scold us for? Diesel cars, surely. For as well as killing people, particulate pollution is the chief suspect in the disappearance of sparrows in the capital, as Mike McCarthy reveals in his brilliant book, The Moth Snowstorm. I’m one of many who bought diesel thinking it the least-worst kind of car. Will it take as long to wean England off diesel as it has with plastic bags?