[From the diaries by susanhu, who applauds Egarwaen and Knoxville Progressive for bringing forth the real ways — every day — that we can truly make a difference! It’s not enough to point fingers. We each have to do all we can (and that includes me who sometimes doesn’t. For example, I’ve always thrown old batteries away in the garbage. Now we’re collecting them in an old coffee can for proper recycling).]
This is another diary in the continuing “New Environmentalism” series. In this series, we’re going to be looking at ways to change the way we live and work – sometimes significantly – in order to live in harmony with our environment.
Goals of the New Environmentalism: devise a practical, realistic vision for a sustainable future and a plan for moving from our modern society to a sustainable society. In this society, we claim that the proper goal of economic activity is not growth but, rather, human happiness.
Knoxville Progressive and I encourage you to contact either of us by email if you’d like to be a contributor to this series (post a diary / host a discussion).
Previous diaries have included an overview of the series and a discussion of short-range (local, personal) transportation issues and an examination of how we can “fit into” our environment. Future diaries will deal with more issues and solutions in the fields of ecosystem management, transportation, city planning, manufacturing, and energy generation. This time, I’m going to give a high-level overview of something that should be near and dear to the heart of every human being: agriculture. Keep in mind that I haven’t studied this in anywhere near as much detail as energy generation or transportation, so I very well could get things wrong. If I do, please correct me in comments.
History and the Modern Day
The face of agriculture has changed substantially many times over the course of human history. At the start, pretty much everyone was engaged in subsistence farming, or on just growing enough food for themselves, their family, and their community. As we got better at growing things, trade developed, and people started looking for ways to grow much more food than they used. Farms got bigger, and more interesting ways of managing them were devised. This is very much a simplified picture, but I think it gets the basic ideas across.
Historically, the owners of land have tried to escape the full cost of working it. This has often manifested itself in the form of large, slave-operated farms. Without these “escape routes”, large farms have generally not been viable. A perfect example of this is the American South after the Civil War. Deprived of cheap labour in the form of slaves, the plantations quickly collapsed, bringing the economy of the region down with them. (Though war damage, no doubt, did not help.)
Outside of the South, the trend was towards smaller “family farms”. These were typically run by an extended family plus hired help, and covered just as much land as they could farm with the tools available to them. Most produced significant excess food, which was used to feed the town- and city-dwellers that didn’t grow their own crop. To the best of my knowledge, this started to change during the Great Depression. A drastic dip in the price of most foods, combined with a drought in the midwest and predatory banking practices, forced many off their lands.
I’m not sure when exactly the transition occurred (and, not being a historian, it would take me a very long time to find out), but the family farm gradually gave way to the factory farm. Large corporations moved in and gave economically battered family farmers offers they couldn’t refuse. The factory farmers, or so it seemed, could make use of the land more cheaply. Their “modern” practices allowed them to slash labour costs, allowing one organization to handle significantly more land. But are they really better?
The Problems with Factory Farming
The answer, it seems, is a great big “NO!” I’m going to be drawing heavily on information from The So-Called Green Revolution in this section, so I’ll just link it up front and be done with it.
Factory farmers are, as has always been the case for big farms, relying on creative accounting to obscure the real costs of their practices and rake in a hefty profit. The most obvious cost is mechanization: factory farming depends heavily on combustion engine-based vehicles and industrial processing facilities. These consume significant amounts of fossil fuels to do their work, and so their supposed efficiency comes from the same under-accounting of the true cost of fossil fuel use that we saw in the transportation sector.
Even worse, the factory farms make heavy use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, genetically engineered high-yield seeds, and animal rearing processes that are best called “inhumane”. Traditional methods like crop rotation have been thrown out the window. If you can’t do it with industrial chemicals, it doesn’t exist. Everyone’s heard about the side-effects of these methods, even if they weren’t aware of the causes behind them. Run-off from chemical fertilizers and pesticides are one of the major causes of water pollution. Soil depletion from poor farming practices directly leads to slash-and-burn agriculture. Modern animal rearing methods lead to meat that is laced with harmful chemicals (both from stress and hormone treatments), and to the spread of diseases like avian flu and BSE – better known as mad cow disease.
Surely, the thinking individual must ask, these methods are more efficient? After all, why would they be used if they’re so harmful and less efficient? Ah, that’s the rub. They are more efficient… In terms of labour. In terms of yield per acre or sustainability, they’re significantly less efficient. And guess what? The only reason labour’s more costly is because of those same hidden costs. Hello, circular economics!
To make things even worse, many of these factory farms rely heavily on government subsidies in order to be viable.
Sustainable Agriculture
The alternative I’m proposing should, by this point, be obvious. Smaller, “family” farms, taking more advantage of human labour (we’ve got them anyway, we might as well use them) and using traditional techniques rather than relying on chemicals. Not only do they make better use of the land, they’re more environmentally friendly and the food they produce is healthier. This also means growing crops appropriate to local conditions for local consumption, rather than focusing on high-cash export crops.
Oh, and get rid of the cows. They’re inefficient beasts, and their meat isn’t even particularly healthy.
This also requires some infrastructure changes, but these are more than do-able. Something similar to the model used on the Canadian prairies would probably be a good idea: central depots on the railway line that the farms around them feed into.
I’ll be the first to admit that this goal is either going to require a very left-wing government or a rather long time. The modern trend towards “organic” foods and farmer’s markets will definitely help, though, provided that factory farms can be prevented from suborning them.
Sustainable Agriculture Techniques
Fortunately, there’s already a lot of people working on sustainable, organic agriculture, and the techniques they’re using are fascinating. Knoxville sent a link to The Rodale Institute. While their site is excellent, I think I’ll spend a little while discussing the techniques they use. They’re an excellent advertisement for the movement. Not only are they more productive than their non-organic neighbours, but they make more money.
First off, they really do use 100% organic agriculture. According to their site, they don’t use any artificial pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers. So how do they manage this? One thing that fascinated me, and which we’re probably going to see a lot of, is an elimination of separation of concerns. The most basic is yea olde crop rotation. Rather than having fields dedicated to certain kinds of crops, they rotate different crops through the fields. And not just the traditional three, either. They seem to have been varying their practices as part of their research efforts, but it looks like they may be up as high as five crops. They even plant “unproductive” cover crops alongside their production crops.
Across the entire farm, they also produce a total of 20 different crops, though it’s unclear whether or not this includes the many different kinds of herbs and flowers they grow. Quite different from those massive single-crop plantations, isn’t it? Of course, it requires more involvement on the part of the owner. You need to know your land, your crops, and your markets. But the end result works much, much better.
They also used raised bed agriculture, which gives them a few extra days of growing time, and makes their plants easier to work with. Instead of fertilizer, they use lots and lots of compost. They’ve made an agreement with their local municipal government to get the leaves and grass clippings that get swept up every year. I’d imagine that a municipal compost program like Halifax has, where residents are required to separate out compost-able organics from other garbage, would increase the compost yield significantly!
Their pest control methods are positively ingenious. Rather than using expensive pesticides, they’ve produced some artificial swampy terrain near the centre of their property and encouraged frogs and toads to move in. As every first-grader knows, these amphibian marvels love snacking on insects of all kinds. Crop rotation also helps here, as it prevents populations of bugs hostile to a particular crop from building up in an area of soil. Their weed control measures are just as brilliant. They employ native plants to help keep weeds away and fight them back when they do encroach. And these plants don’t just keep weeds away, they (and the flower gardens) attract beneficial local wildlife, like birds and spiders.
Higher yield, cheaper processes, healthier environment, and better produce. What’s not to love?
Developing Agriculture
There was some interest in previous diaries about applicability to the developing world. keres will be happy to note that this diary’s very directly relevant. Slash-and-burn agriculture is one of the worst environmental mistakes of the modern age, and is responsible for devouring rainforest at a prodigious pace. Not only that, but the land damaged by this practice is often used for growing “cash crops” for export, leaving the locals in a poor economic state, as they must import food! Sustainable Harvest International is one group that’s working to reverse this trend. (Thanks to philinmaine for the link!)
Their techniques page is especially fascinating. They provide an impressive variety of techniques for replacing expensive chemical methods with simple local methods. Again, in the rice paddies example, we see natural methods being used for pest control – in this case, fish. They also make use of waste products in innovative ways. Methane from a “biogas digester” is used to fuel the family stove, instead of firewood, saving both local trees and the health of the family.
All of these techniques are viable without significant oil-powered vehicles.
Micro-Agriculture
While they can’t replace real sustainable organic agriculture, I find the potential of “backyard garden” micro-agriculture to be fascinating. Rooftop gardens, windowsill planters, and backyard gardens. Not only are they a good way to bring some green space into heavily urban areas, they can help supplement the food supplies of the community with fresh produce during the growing season. They can be managed effectively by a few people, and the food harvested from them is consumed near where it’s grown. You can even garden inside your home, though this requires slightly more expensive equipment.
It also helps deal with garbage. Rather than haul compostable organics away to some central store, then haul the soil off to farms, the community can do their own composting and use some or all of the soil themselves.
Organic Authority has some excellent, if short, articles on this. At the very least, you can grow your own herbs and seasonings, providing a welcome break (for your taste buds and your wallet) from store-bought dried herbs.
Square Foot Gardening also has some good resources on making use of space. The techniques described there seem to be similar in a lot of ways to the raised bed techniques Rodale uses. The time investment seems to be fairly low, and the yield quite impressive.
Biodiversity
Industrial agriculture has another significant problem: biodiversity. As we covered above, growing the same plants in the same ground year after year is an excellent recipe for disaster. This encourages bugs and diseases harmful to those plants to move in, and depletes the nutrients these plants rely on, which requires ever-increasing amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Genetically engineered crops are causing even more havoc here. As reported by Third World Network, these plants are leading to a severe reduction in genetic diversity. Not only are they forcing out many useful local breeds of these plants, the seeds themselves are more genetically uniform because of the techniques used to create them. This makes them significantly more vulnerable to disease, and eliminates any useful, unique properties the original breeds may have had. An example of the consequences can be seen in bananas, where a few lines of a plant species already lacking in genetic diversity have been over-grown, and are now extremely vulnerable to fungal infections.
It’s not just plants, either. Industrial farming is having the same effects on domesticated animal species. These factory farm species are designed to maximize food output, but can only survive in very, very limited conditions. This means that regional species, adapted for survival in different climates, are being lost. It also places these animals at greater risk from diseases like the much-hyped avian influenza. Packed together in climate-controlled housing, pumped full of antibiotics even when not sick, they’re a virologist’s worst nightmare. Even worse, they’re often fed the rendered remains of other animals grown in similar conditions – a proven disease vector!
Again, sustainable agriculture has the cure. Animals and plants grown the old-fashioned way. While they might produce slightly less by volume, and require slightly more labour, they’re healthier and more viable in the long-term. And who knows what strange compounds and genes we might discover in them?
Global Warming
Growing plants is generally seen as a good way to halt global warming, by reversing the greenhouse effect. Our activities over the past two centuries have released a lot of “ancient” carbon into the atmosphere from coal and oil. Many kinds of plants are net carbon consumers over their life-cycle, if tended properly. They take carbon from the atmosphere and, eventually, fix it in the soil, where other plants can use it to grow.
Reversing global warming isn’t quite as simple as “plant lots of forests”, though. While deforestation has definitely not helped, reversing the effect requires more careful consideration. Healthy forests at northern latitudes tend to have significantly reduced albedo during the winter than bare snow-covered ground, meaning that they reflect much less energy back into space. So growing trees can help, especially in tropical areas. (This is why the rain forest was so vital)
In more northern latitudes, it looks like organic agriculture could be a good compromise solution. A lot of cover crops are, if memory serves (I’ve been unable to find a citation on this. Most carbon fixing resources I’ve found focus on trees), net carbon sinks. This means that a good crop rotation system could be used to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, especially since the albedo of the land occupied by the crop doesn’t change during the winter.
Even forests have a role to play. Research into soil near the Amazon has shown that Carbon is key. Mixing charcoal into otherwise-marginal soil can make it very fertile indeed. And this isn’t a short-term thing. According to another article by the same author, composed-based soil can last for years, while charcoal-based can last for centuries. It’s also possible that some cover crops could be net hydrogen producers. While I consider it unlikely that these will ever produce enough hydrogen to completely replace gasoline, they could well produce enough to power autonomous vehicles for more efficient farming.
That’s A Wrap!
While sustainable, organic farming requires more “high-level” effort than other things we’ve discussed so far, the implications of it are far-reaching and encouraging. It won’t slash productivity, nor does it seem significantly more vulnerable to disease or pests. And you can do some things to support it. Buy organic produce whenever you can, support compost efforts, and start your own backyard/windowsill/rooftop garden!
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But, hey!
Oh, and get rid of the cows. They’re inefficient beasts, and their meat isn’t even particularly healthy.
You put this in just to get me going, didn’t you? Look, I need my milk every day and once a week my body craves a massive dose of protein in the form of red meat. The problem isn’t in the product when it is organically and humanely produced; it’s the grain-fed, feeder-lot, factory production method that causes disease and revulsion.
Also, the factory breeders have convinced the American public that they must eat meat every day while once or twice a week is sufficient.
Grass-fed cows, living in sunshine as Goddess intended, don’t need doses of antibiotics and hormones to produce an outstanding food that is high in Vitamin D. Grass-fed cattle without growth hormone injections produce lean meat that is low in cholesterol.
And let’s not forget the value of manure in replenishing soil. In an ideal crop rotation, one field is rested with a planting of rye grass or similar ground cover. Toward the end of that season, cows are put to pasture to mow the grass, followed by sheep who crop it even shorter, followed my chickens who eat the seeds scattered by the ruminants, gobble down grubs and bugs, followed by pigs who snuffle up the roots and essentially plow the field. All these castings of manure and animal tillings prepare the field for a food crop.
(I’ve got to go out now so I’ll check back later.)
I don’t have a problem with beef as such, but I think we need to keep in mind that big business beef raising is not practiced in an ecologically sustainable manner.
If beef were raised in the manner you describe, where it fits in as a healthy part of a healthy farming landscape, the price of beef will rise to the place where we’re back to where most of humanity has lived throughout history – where “to kill the fatted calf” is something that you do on rare occasions, like a wedding or the return of the prodigal son. (Or if not that pricey, at least maybe triple the price of beef currently – What is the price difference between organically raised beef versus the usual?) This is a specific example of one of the points I’m always harping on – the need to fold environmental “externalities” back into the cost of the product, so that it’s market price is based on it’s true cost to the planet.
The problem arises when the wealthy nations of the world want to eat like it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas every day, and the planet cannot sustain that level of sustenance, never mind extending that lifestyle to the rest of mankind. Not to mention that we’re not constructed in a manner that we can eat such prodigious amounts of plenty on a steady basis without falling victim to a range of obesity-related diseases.
Having evolved as a species coping with scarcity, we’re hard wired to take advantage of food whenever available, and the good stuff when we can get it (sweet, fatty, meaty). The majority of people will not give up their steaks voluntarily – we’ll need to be very careful how we tread the path to sustainability so as to not keep creating social backlashes of the type we saw in the Reagan years, and that we’re living in now. Unfortunately, it’s the only path we have, as the alternative is Jared Diamond’s “Collapse.” Or as someone wittier than I put it, LOL:
Since the (8) comments so far seem to be centering aound protein consumption, perhaps I should put in a plug for next week’s diary, when I’ll be talking about production of seafood and the associated issues there…
Hey Knoxville Progressive, do you know about these folks over at Wholesome Harvest?
We got a very nice holiday gift this year that was purchased from them so we currently have a freezer full of organic meat. So far it’s been pretty tasty, although the chicken is a little tougher due to having less fat. I’m getting good mileage out of it, though, since I can usually get 3 days of dinner (just for me) out of 1 pound of ground beef — that costs about $2.20 per meal — and 2 days of dinner + 1 lunch (for two people) out of 1 whole chicken.
They are a collective of family farms, and they practice no confinement, no feedlot, and no factory farming of any species. They use no antibiotics, no hormones, no nitrates or preservatives, no GMO seed or feed, and no pesticides. They use 100% vegetarian organic feed with no animal by-products. Their products are pricier than grocery store stuff, of course, but not so much as to be cost-prohibitive, if one’s mindful of the budget and plans a well-balanced diet that isn’t overly reliant on meat consumption.
Actually, their prices aren’t bad at all… About $8.00/lb for beef is… Hm. Between two and three times the price at the grocery store.
They’re so getting bookmarked, especially since they make sausages and hot dogs I can eat! Thanks for the link!
Maybe we should make the cost of organic beef the new question to replace: “Candidate so-and-so, can you prove you’re a ‘man of the people’ by telling us the price of a gallon of milk?”
…Or maybe we should just stick to “Candidate so-and-so, can you tell us what you gave ADM and Monsanto in exchange for that fat campaign contribution?”
is best stewed or slow-cooked. Put the thawed whole bird in a big pot, cover with water, add some seasoning like chopped celery, parsley or dill. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer for a couple of hours. You get meat that is so tasty and tender it falls off the bone and chicken broth for soups, too!
Great! Will you be writing about fresh-water or salt-water seafood? Believe me, there is a hell of a difference! That is one thing about living in MI that keeps me here–the Great Lakes–I have swum/fished in every Great Lake!
Hey, I like to fish! And cleaning fish doesn’t bother me–dad taught me when I was 10! And when I fish, I fish for food! Still remember when I was growing up (grandparents had property in Canada) there were so many times that I would wake up, and catch breakfast–nothing better than freshly caught fish for breakfast! Memories…
I was mainly thinking salt water, but if space allows including fresh water is a good idea.
One thing to emphasize might be that reducing meat and significantly reducing beef doesn’t mean going vegetarian. There’s lots of other alternatives for meat that can be just as good, can be used in similar ways, and can be raised in volume much more economically. Fish, chicken, pork, lamb, assorted other fowl… I actually prefer most of the above to beef, except for fish. (I’m not a fish person.) But often, the choice gets presented as “beef or vegetarian”, and most people go for “beef”.
Have been a vegetarian for over a year–had an ulcer and was in total agony. Remembered when I was bumming around the UP, (MI’s upper peninsula), ate nothing but whitefish, walleye, veggies, venison a couple of times, and felt great!! So, I went on an organic/vegetarian diet–ulcer was gone w/in a month!
Asked my doctor if ulcer could be due to all the crap (preservatices, additives, stabilizers, pesticides and all) that is now put in the foods. Admitted that he didn’t know (that is a good doctor!), but said it wasn’t his specific field, but it sounded logical and suggested that I ask my gynocolgist (who does not bitch at a pregnant woman who is a vegetarian). Told gynocologist that I was now a vegetarian, and asked him if ulcer could be due to crap in all the foods. His answer: “Many people believe that and it wouldn’t suprise me–if being a vegetarian works for you great! I’ve seen it work for others.” (This is an extremely abbreviated discussion of the subject.)
Although I consider myself a vegetarian, I do eat fish and sometimes chicken, although I prefer venison (but, sad to say it is not always available.) I know the cruelty arguments, but, IMO, hunting for food is cool–trophy hunting is NOT!!
I completely agree with you. People who eat meat three times a day — bacon w/ breakfast, hamburger for lunch, steak or pork for dinner — are literally killing themselves and supporting an abuse of animals on a massive scale. I don’t support that.
Come share your meatless recipes at Eat 4 Today, Katiebird’s emerging premiere firebrand diet and health issues blog!
Is there a particular thread? I’ve got some really good ones. Especially a low-cal Spagetti Squash Marinara…
Alright now, you’ve made me hungry for a salad. 😉
How about starting a weekly recipe diary here? As someone with severe food allergies, I’m always on the lookout for new recipes that I can adapt to my diet. And starting from ones that people have actually found edible is miles better than trying to sift through a cookbook and separate the good stuff from the padding.
Do you think there’d be interest?
After you register at Eat4Today, you can post articles. When you write an article, you assign what you write to a category. There is a Recipe category that has several sub-categories.
As soon as I get my password, or maybe in the morning after I get my password, I’ll start with my Hot Salad Method for those days when it’s just too cold to eat an ordinary salad.
I love cooking vegetables as much as I enjoy growing them. Actually, maybe more.
If you don’t get your password very shortly, email me. A couple people who have signed up didn’t receive theirs (we think they might have been caught by spam filters).
And welcome to the site!
bulk mail box, or if you don’t have yahoo, whatever the equivalent is, because sometimes any automatically generated mails will go there.
Click site administration, then write. On the right side you will see the categories, you have to scroll a little bit to see the recipe categories. Click recipe, then main dishes, or whatever you want to categorize it as, put the title where it says title and post the rest of it in the big window. Click more to divide it where you want it divided, like the extended entry thing on here, that works for almost everybody. Then when you are done typing click publish.
I think it’s a cultural thing. I remember some discussion on a sci-fi fandom mailing list I used to subscribe to (Lois McMaster Bujold’s) about how culinary patterns had changed during the industrial revolution and, especially, after the Great Depression. If the sources of the people involved were good, the changes were really drastic. One of the things that I think popped up was one of the potential sources for our current unhealthy excess of necessities – things like salt and meat that our bodies need in reasonable quantities.
During the Depression, our parents and grand-parents often couldn’t afford their old diets, or simply couldn’t find the food even if they could afford it. So they wound up replacing them with new diets based on what they could afford. In a situation like this, eating a bit of meat with every meal made a lot of sense. Of course, when things picked up again and it came time for them to educate their kids, this turned into “you must have protein with every meal”.
I know my parents are absolutely obsessive about “getting enough protein”. To me, this means eating a meat-centric dish at most once a day. To them, it means that you have to have some kind of meat with absolutely every meal. The fact that I refuse to have more than a little meat with breakfast and lunch causes them quite a lot of consternation.
In terms of energy efficiency, cows are, if memory serves, the absolute worst of all our domesticated animals. Chickens are the best, followed by pigs and sheep. But you’re right that we shouldn’t get rid of them entirely, but we do need to cut back on our reliance on them drastically and change the way we use them. I think dairy cows are significantly more efficient than meat cows.
There’s also other sources of dairy. Well, I won’t recommend goat products, as I find that they smell and taste awful. But there are some nifty things that can be done with soy.
Unless you’re allergic to soy, like me. 😀 Great diary on the issue, as always, Egarwaen.
Curse you! Foiled again!
Good point, though. Soy’s not a good “miracle solution” because it’s at least as allergenic as milk, if not more so.
Up the road, someone has a small flock of Nubians and I must say they look cute. He swears that the females don’t smell and that the taste of their milk depends on what they are fed. He says grass-fed goats who also consume weeds produce putrid milk. But, feeding them oats, sorghum and hay produces a milk so sweet and rich in butterfats that cow’s milk tastes bitter by comparison. Supplying that feed sounds like a mighty expensive way to get dairy…
Beef cattle are not an efficient use of land if cropland is used to graze them. Joel Salatin rightly points out that over-cultivation has deplenished most of the agricultural land on the East Coast. It has reduced the top soil to only 3″ deep, to the point where the only thing it will grow is grass. He is encouraging the owners of such farmland to raise organic pastured poultry and “salad bar” beef.
It’d be interesting to see if there was a cheap, natural feed solution to get the same kind of milk. Perhaps simply a carefully-weeded pasture would do?
Indeed. We can, I should note, replenish that soil over time… But it requires following careful organic farming practices, and accepting a slight dip in short-term production in exchange for an increase in long-term production. The charcoal solution looks interesting, as do some of the crop rotation methods.
I need my milk every day
Try organic soy milk–you won’t know the difference!
Well, maybe not immediately. But when it hits my digestive system, the nausea, cramping, gas and diarrhea are catastrophic. Like IndyLib, I’m allergic to soy. No tofu for me. My DiL once made the mistake of feeding me tofu masquerading as beef stroganoff. Hours later the echoes of my moaning and groaning in the bathroom could be heard thru the house. She apologized for days.
Didn’t realize the severity of soy allergies, sorry. Now do you want to hear something odd?: Noticed that since I’ve been sick, I’ve been feeling a lot better right after I eat tofu/soy or fish. Haven’t figured that one out yet…
Excellent diary, Egarwaen. Please don’t get rid of the cows, I need my daily milk too. Could we just stop raising them for meat, and change the diet away from it? Hundreds of millions of people could be fed if we stopped using the land for grazing. The cows give us milk, the chickens eggs – can’t we find a way to live without killing them?
Why is slaughter considered a part of agriculture? Now the USDA wants to listen to lobbyists, ignore Congress and continue the slaughter of wild horses for export.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to hijack, but the idea ‘you are what you eat’ gets me going. So many of us are eating cruelty, fear and horror without bothering to think about it.
It’s more the massive over-reliance on factory-produced cows that I was thinking of. The current way we raise them is just stupid, especially since we feed them a lot of grain and other things that could be made into food for humans.
Well, we have traditionally raised animals for meat… But the way we do things now just isn’t right.
I doubt that we have that many food animals grazing anymore, at least not beyond a very short period of life for beef, after which they live in feed lots.
When I lived in Iowa,I was horrified to see that almost all of the gorgeous corn and soybean fields were serving huge factory farms where large numbers of cattle and hogs (and turkeys and chickens) were penned up into a very small area.
The processing plants could not hire enough local folks to work in them (our secretary worked at one for 6 months, and quit when her revulsion finally topped her need for an income). So, they have brought in workers from Mexico and other Central American countries. If you want to see servitude that approaches slave labor conditions, that was it. Very dangerous, repetitive jobs, marginal benefits at best, and massive cultural disconnects. But of course, cheaper! And more acquiescent that U.S. labor. If someone complains, they are easily fired, U.S. labor protections, such as they are, didn’t seem to apply.
The runoff from the farms was bad. Lots of atrazine used to control weeds, lots of ammonia for fertilization, into the water. In our university town, virtually every M.D. that we knew had his or her family drinking bottled water – and we quickly arranged to filter our water too. As Berke Breathed said during the years he lived in our town, “The water tastes like Spic and Span”.
And it wasn’t just the pools of animal waste, and the chemicals in the water. When we drove past the Turkey farm on the way to our rented farmhouse, we prayed that the prevailing winds would have shifted as we rounded the corner. If not, the air was so think with concentrated order of bird doo that it took your breath away.
It took years before we ate turkey after that!
It’s disgusting, isn’t it? All that good food being force-fed to animals kept in disgusting, unsanitary conditions… Meanwhile, massive pastures that could be used to raise the same animals more efficiently and humanely lie empty. But the factory farms keep going, because they look better on the accountant’s bottom line.
No, they don’t. A lot of tech companies discovered this during the dot-com boom. Despite the regulations supposedly controlling such things, they could hire developers from 3rd world countries under the H1B program, treat them like shit, and fire them if they thought to complain. Oh, H1Bs did have theoretical rights – they could, for example, theoretically quit their job and have a grace period to find a new one. But the employer would often put out a warning about any H1B employees that tried that, or get them ejected for some other bizarre violation of labour laws. Net effect? Companies had people working 60 to 80 hour work weeks for 50-75% of the prevailing rate for domestic employees, with no benefits or labour protections.
Fun stuff, eh?
“So many of us are eating cruelty, fear and horror without bothering to think about it.”
I think you’ve hit on the key in the last six words. Food has become too quick, easy, and remote for us in the cities and suburbs to remember what’s involved in getting the meat to our table.
Twenty years ago right out of school, I was working for the Kansas City MO water department, and one of my periodic duties was going around the city collecting water samples from the distribution system for testing. We had a pre-set route, and one time I ended up at a slaughterhouse / meat packing plant to collect a water sample. It was an unpleasant experience, but one I think should be required for all high school seniors before graduation. No one can claim to be an educated adult and responsible citizen without knowing something as basic as where and how their food is produced. I suspect the experience might reduce meat consumption at least a little… A kind of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” experience.
I can think of several experiences along those lines, that we all should be required to experience (homeless shelter or soup kitchen, animal shelter, jail, courtroom, mine, sewage treatment plant, etc.), but that’s fodder for another diary sometime…
And so we circle back around to cheap oil, which is cheap in part because of government policies, including going to war for it. If the predictions of peak oil forecasters are correct, then as oil becomes scarcer and more expensive not only transportation but also mega-scale farming will take the hit. Also pesticides and fertilizers dependent on oil for their production. Which will lead to a decrease in the price difference between “pink spheroid” tomatoes from some far-off place and local, organically-produced food. Given the choice between the two, I expect people to follow their stomachs and choose the better-tasting organic stuff once the price differential disappears.
This will also lead to increased labor demand on farms, as small-scale farming will be cost-competitive again. More jobs, higher wages. The key task being how to make the jobs not-so-backbreaking. America in the pre-depression years was full of inventions to save on farm labor, so we need not start down this path from ground zero – we just need to identify, adopt, and improve on the appropriate technologies for the new world we’ll be living in.
I don’t expect the “wonders of the free marketplace” to solve all our problems as oil runs out, but this may be one of those infrequent cases where it’s working on our side.
The rub comes if we don’t find ways to keep production in balance with the population as we work down the far side of the population explosion. If there’s a sudden oil crunch in the near term before we (re-)develop and disseminate sustainable means of production that can be widely adopted, we’re in for a rough landing, a la “Collapse.” But the work of folks like the Rodale Institute, the Bioneers, and many others doing research into sustainable agriculture offer hope that we may be able to wind our way through the maze successfully if we are clever and lucky. Since the alternative prominently features warlords, clubs, plagues and catapults we have ample incentive to follow the right path.
Easily. Especially since it creates local employment and is healthier.
Here in Halifax, there’s a sort-of-alternative grocery store called “Pete’s Fruitique”. While a lot of his stuff is the usual factory-grown crap, he has a really good selection of organic foods and organic food products. There’s also an organic food speciality store near the town I grew up in (Eos Foods, in downtown Wolfville) that has an utterly amazing selection of organic foods. I’m always lost when I walk in there, because there’s so much good stuff. I usually wind up being in a hurry and walk out again with only a handful of things, unfortunately.
Right. The key is using our existing technologies and knowledge intelligently. Thinking back to our discussions on biodiesel, hydrogen, etc. from the first couple diaries, I think farms have a big advantage here. While a lot of these fuels aren’t feasible for commuter transport, due to problems with extraction, shipping, and scale, they’re probably wonderful for operating farm equipment. They can be produced locally, and many of them are produced from “waste products”. And they’re non-polluting, to boot!
It’s more like an invisible fist. But seriously, I think it’s not so much a matter of the free market solving the problem as giving us the leverage we need to overturn the accountants and economists.
A person hasn’t lived until he/she has had organic coffee!
Yes, I agree on the organic coffee!
about life after oil and imagine that life will be much better than it is now. It’s the transition that scares me. There are too many fat, greedy people who will resist giving up their suburban, gasaholic lifestyles. They will blame others for their misfortunes and rally behind dictators who promise them that they, too, can be millionaires and never pay taxes. They already have.
That’s what started this diary series, actually. I started thinking about how a post-oil civilization could work, assuming that it was possible for it to work. After thinking about it for a couple days, I decided that I’d take it over modern civilization any day. Not even because of the utopian tendencies of my imagination, but because of the changes that would have to be made.
This might be of interest; just ran across it:
Nifty. On to the feed list they go!
http://idealbite.com/ This little newsletter has daily tips that I find interesting ..all to do with ecology and it has everything from organic shampoos one day to recycling batteries the next to paperless fax machines.
You can sign up for their daily tips and get an email every day from them…they all have good links each day to the daily tip. Just kinda of fun and informative email to receive and also it’s short and doesn’t require more than a minute or two to read.
Great diary, any diary on environmental issues is always welcome..so many aspects to this issue that you could write for years and years and barely scratch the surface.
I hope so! It’s fascinating to me because my discipline (computer science) seems to be moving more and more towards dealing with massive, complex, interconnected, heterogenous systems. At least on the practical end of things. And the environment’s the biggest such system out there.
When I finished grad school at Texas, Bill Moyers was our commencement speaker. He held up an ordinary loaf of bread, and talked about all of the connections and activities and people that went into making this loaf accessible to people all over our country.
He wasn’t glorifying the likes of Archer Daniels Midland, nor was he making a plea for locally produced organic products. Rather, he wanted us to be more aware of our interdependence, and how the was a cost to that ease of access, and necessary respect for the differences of all the people who provided our food. Finally, he stressed how important it was to know a little more about how those things we take so easily are produced.
It was a great talk, (I love Bill Moyers), a great foundation for understanding both the good aspects of commercial cooperation, and the bad aspects of it. And I admired his forthrightness in talking about this to so many Texans of different values.
If you want to read something really interesting please try “Cannabis: an environmentally and economically viable method for climate change mitigation.” by Marc Deeley at HempConspiracy.net. It is amazing stuff. Hemp also makes an excellent rotation crop as it suppresses weeds. Yea, I know y’all want to make some pot jokes, but please don’t. This is an important topic.
If memory serves, there’s all sorts of interesting things one can do with cannabis other than smoking it. Of course, legalization supporters tend to make some rather outrageous claims, but it’s definitely a very convenient plant.
Yes, the “Hemp Will Save the Planet” crowd does get to be a little much after a while, but there are a lot of good things to be found out there, too. About a third of Google’s top 20 hemp hits have some decent information and links to other good stuff.
Hemp, it’s what good for you..or I should say for growing and the economy, good for the soil. I only know a very little about the whole hemp issue but what I do know is that it was grown here in the colonies and also during WW11 the government was asking farmers, even paying them to grow hemp. It’s all political and I think it was the big timber barons and their payola money that got hemp outlawed by Congress.
Fascinating subject and once again proves how big money is not out for the best interests of the country or the environment.