I decided to write another blog on the topic to further clarify my position on a few issues and to adopt a more conciliatory tone. Too many people are worried about being wrong, they say nothing or refuse to change their position no matter how untenable. Reading the comments and debating with some of the people has been enriching and quite interesting. I have learnt a few things about the vegan lifestyle as well as some disturbing things about the very industry my family are a small part of. A sick imbalance in the world exists where the 700 million hungry are out-numbered by the 1 billion overweight. Global obesity and global hunger are part of the same processes (see Raj Patel’s book Stuffed and Starved for an enlightening view of many products from plate to production). I think all people should be aware of and make conscious decisions about their food — where it comes from and what is involved in its production?
My overall stance on meat will not change anytime soon. I like to eat meat and do not feel that sheep are or should be treated as equal to humans as some people seem to suggest. I am tempted to make a remark about their poor arts and sciences and that their overall use of logic is woolly at best but do not wish to be flippant. What I would like is for those who oppose the meat industry to go beyond YouTube and use the internet to look at academic and government documents instead of vegan websites that cite other vegan websites. I would also suggest that you visit a farm and talk to people about their opinions and what their farming practices are. If you simply oppose the killing of other creatures that is fine as well, but be fair in your representations of the meat Industry and those involved in it.
If I wrote anything that was inflammatory or derogatory towards anyone that was never my intention. I do get annoyed when labels such as “evil” are applied to all farmers and farms and the meat industry is treated as a monolith. That results in a more terse writing than I perhaps would normally adopt. I do also get annoyed when there is a misrepresentation of facts and truisms that I know to be false. I do not mean to set up vegans as “straw men” by representing them as caricatures even as some of the responses were clichéd. I hope that some of the readers do the same and read widely and delve into the topic of food as we all depend on it.
One thing I have read up on and engaged with is the use of growth hormones in beef production in Canada and South Africa. I know many farms do not use growth hormones and I know the figures are overblown and inflated by those opposed to the meat industry on ideological grounds — the 80% figure is grossly inflated — but as I said above I have learnt a few things through this debate. In Canada there are a number of growth hormones that are approved for use in cattle. It can raise the efficiency of growing meat by 10-25%, meaning less grain per cow is needed. Much of the science says there is no harm to those consuming the meat and many of these hormones would be destroyed in the digestive tract, but there is also science that says there are potential health risks that are not fully known. So I will no longer eat beef that is known to contain hormones. Why run the risk when the industry can function without them?
That brings me to perhaps my biggest bone of contention with the use of growth hormones — we as consumers have so little choice in the matter. Many producers do not use them but hormone-free beef is sold alongside all the other beef so there is no way to tell them apart in the shops unless one buys organic. Where I currently live there is no organic beef for sale in the shops. So this brings me back to my stance on buy local. I will now source my beef directly from a farmer who does not use growth hormones and buy a whole cow. There are some logistical barriers that will need to be overcome due to slaughtering and transport and the need for a larger freezer, but until then I will only purchase organic beef. I am of course in a financial position to purchase the more expensive organic meat and I will always forgive someone in different circumstances if they do not. Until these options are more widespread the cost factor will be a large barrier to overcome. I hope that demand can help fuel supply and allow more farms to become organic. There is an issue with labelling that needs to be addressed and I know meat can be traced from shop to the farm through the tagging systems used, but that information is not available to the consumer.
And this leads me to reiterate my stance on meat farming. It can be done ethically and humanely. We all should oppose cruel and unnecessary practices. Globally farms are linked through supply chains that encircle and abuse all of us. A few companies control the distribution of our entire food supply. We sell our lamb at 20% of the price the consumer sees in the stores. Both the producer and consumer are getting screwed in the process and the middle-man is benefiting. Small farms like ours survive due to external sources of income and because my father refuses to quit. As these farms disappear from lack of support then the cost of our meat will rise and we will be forced to buy from afar to supply the demand for meat. While this demand may be one of the reasons used to decry the industry it again shifts the focus away from the particular. I would like to see small-scale farms given the support they need to survive as well as delinking them from the large corporations that control all our food. If not, local producers will be pushed out and the meat will be sourced from the Amazon. This of course is not unique to meat. Plants and plant products are also sold through the same large corporations and small farms are destroyed and producers suffer from unemployment and poverty and the consumer suffers from higher costs. In Africa the higher costs feed into cycles of malnutrition where families live on processed maize meal and in richer countries the poor eat unhealthy ready meals from a box as a cheaper option than cooking from scratch. So the poor are often the hungry and the fat; both are victims of limited options or an array of false ones. More than 40% of children in sub-Saharan Africa have stunted growth from malnutrition, especially from protein deficiency. I do not think that an all-vegetable diet would help them as the vegan diet is quite complicated to follow if it is to be done right and many vegans take supplements that would not be available for the poor. An all-vegetable diet among the poor often means maize meal or rice and a handful of beans a day would not suffice for required protein. Other sources such as nuts, seeds, grains and legumes need to be taken as well. I know that due to my activity level my recommended amount of protein is more than 100g per day — a difficult amount to obtain via a vegan diet. Pregnant women also require more than 70g to 100g a day according to my doctor.
Someone asked “what does this blog have to do with Africa?” Everything, because Africa has the potential to be a food exporter and also suffers the worst in terms of world hunger. Famine and hunger in Africa is due to poor politics, not poor production. But when they sell their produce on the world market they compete with the other poor farmers of the world at the behest and to the benefit of the few large corporations engaged in the world food trade and production. Food prices reflect global trends, these corporations can ignore local contexts and local production costs because they control the entire process. South Africa has more than enough ability to grow its own food supply. There is no turning back to happy peasant agriculture as the current land-reform process would do because it carves up successful farms into small plots of subsistence agriculture. I would like to see a radical push for more food sovereignty for all people and would encourage people to fight for by-laws that will allow them to keep chickens in the cities and for everyone to grow some vegetables instead of just flowers (if you mix them it’s pretty and tasty). When I lived in Durban I found the soil quality was poor but easily enriched with compost made from leaves from the garden. A three-metre square garden produced a month’s worth of carrots, masses of tomatoes and a variety of other vegetables. Though hardly a mass saving it was a start and what we did could have been taken much further and made even more productive with slightly more effort and care (and less dogs digging). Much of Africa is suited for cattle and animal husbandry but not for other types of food production and poultry can be produced simply and cheaply to augment food security and develop a small livelihood.
I do not buy the arguments that the meat industry contributes up to 18% of human-caused climate change. I think that it does contribute only slightly more than food production of other crops. A large factor is the transport of food around the globe, yet another argument for buying local that would reduce the carbon footprint. Farming is not inherently bad for the environment as I see humans as part of that environment. We need to treat our farms as ecosystems with a cycle of life and death, renewal and recycling. Matter must be returned to the system at the rate it is removed. The sun obviously helps with its contribution to the system via the plants and the sheep do their part with their manure spread out across the fields. Our little farm needs no artificial fertilisers and by the way the worst users of fertilisers are urban lawns and golf courses, not farms. A lawn is a terribly wasteful aspect of the property in terms of labour and inputs. Form your garden around food and trees and bring back the wonderful birds and butterflies so often missing from city landscapes. We do add to the carbon footprint of our lamb through the use of diesel to run the tractor that brings them hay as well as water heaters that run off of electricity to keep their water ice-free in winter. In terms of inputs, I will use more fuel to drive to work each year than what we spend on diesel for the tractors (we have two for different purposes). Yet half of our land has been returned to forest and we have successfully fought the county from removing the beaver damn and draining the wetland on our farm and by default from upstream. My parents were even proudly labelled beaver-loving tree-huggers. Both the forest and the wetland are large carbon sinks that help offset our carbon footprint. Wetlands are said to be the largest source of methane in the atmosphere but the amount of algae and plant life associated with it acts as a carbon sink. Though I am arguing here from anecdote and local experience (I am an anthropologist after all) there are many little farms trying to do the same and they need local support. If we are serious about feeding the world then we need to think out of the box and if we think in smaller boxes we can help the world’s poor by keeping food production in the control of the people and keep the prices low. We also then know what went into our food and where it came from.
So in conclusion there have been some good points raised and I have found out more about food production and alternative diets and lifestyles. Some of the premises we fight from are actually the same: organic is best, agribusiness and corporate control over our food supply is a bad thing, food security is vital, gluttony and greed of any kind are bad, over-consumption needs to be curtailed, global warming needs to be addressed as do the causes, and so on. So perhaps some common ground can be created so that a fight for control over our food supply through buy local, buy organic, and for the creation of greener alternatives. None of the alternatives from go vegan to organic are panaceas for problems in world food production and distribution or for global warming. Everybody needs to do their part and seek alternatives to create a better world.
I watched a lecture by Daniel Dennett this weekend. He outlined an interesting fact, one which highlights the problem of animal husbandry:
10 000 years ago man and his domesticated animals accounted for 1% of the animal biomass on the planet. Today man and his domesticated animals account for – wait for it – a staggering 98% of the animal biomass on the planet – the majority of which is bovine.
You do the math for the justification of the above fact.
@Michael Francis
This is certainly a more conciliatory and balanced article. Thank you.
I believe you need to learn a lot more about food sovereignty and go further into Raj Patel’s work. You are writing through the eyes of a middle class Canadian.
You say “There is no turning back to happy peasant agriculture as the current land-reform process would do because it carves up successful farms into small plots of subsistence agriculture”.
No-one that I know believes that. Present land reform falls short in that it needs to go hand in hand with training, infrastructure, access to finance and markets.
Why not explore the benefits of putting
500 000 commercial small scale organic farmers on the land in South Africa? That is not ‘happy peasant’ agriculture but would provide 500 000 families with food, jobs, income, livelyhoods, and potential export opportunities for SA.
Research shows that small farms are more productive per hectare than large farms.
However on the subject of subistance agriculture, there is plenty of unused (underutilised) land in South Africa. Which is better, a self sustaining subsistance farmer (happy peasant), or someone living in crime and squallor in a squatter settlement?
*Some 45,000 farmers in Guatemala and Honduras have used regenerative technologies to triple maize yields to some 2-2.5 tons/ha and diversify their upland farms, which has led to local economic growth that has in turn encouraged re-migration back from the cities. (Jules Pretty – Genetics Forum, ‘SPLICE’)
@Michael: This is an excellent post
I might continue to disagree with you on animal rights as well as some other important points (for instance, I will reiterate that the meat industry contributes 18-51% of ACC, using not self-referential pro-vegan websites but relatively neutral studies by the FAO, etc. to support my claims), but it is heartening that you agree on many of the issues: food sovereignty for all people is worth fighting for, corporate control of our food is a bad thing, organic is the way to go, home food gardens are a good idea (YES!) and so on.
Most importantly, I concur that there is no one magical panacea; given the stakes, however, we need to be all inclusive in our approach and try whatever we can, no matter how uncomfortable or alien it might seem at first and, most importantly, no matter how much it is derided by people who are often simply defending their own acculturated beliefs and habits instead of engaging in a fair and honest discussion about where we are, where we’re headed and how we can change direction.
I posted this today on Michael’s Ethical Farming 2, but the grass does not grow under Mike’s feet, so here it is posted again on part 3:
Al Gore Speaks Out On Animal Agriculture
“Al Gore has finally admitted that meat and animal products are significant contributors to global warming. He now says he has cut back considerably on his meat consumption – his new healthier appearance could be a reflection of his improved diet. In his new book, “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis,” he includes a two page photo of a feedlot operation with hundreds of cows. Gore states, “Most of the methane from agricultural operations comes from livestock and livestock waste.” He goes on to say that, “it takes more than seven pounds of plant protein to produce one pound of beef, and more than 6,000 gallons of water.”
A World Watch study we told you about a few weeks ago concluded that animal agriculture is the source of more than half of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. If you haven’t reviewed that report yet, we highly recommend it.”
I beleve it is very important to make the distinctin between food security and food sovereignty. Basically refugees living in a refugee camp have food security if they have a guarenteed supply of food, however they do not have food sovereignty.
Monsanto are claiming their patented GM seeds offer food security (dubious claim), but they can never offer food sovereignty.
Food sovereignty will free the poor from the bondage of starvation and hunger. It is critical to a more just and fair world.
See what Wikipedia say about food sovereignty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_sovereignty
I would like to know from Aragorn Eloff how do vegans deal with pests and vermin in their properties and how do they react to the incidental killing of animals(bear in mind that insects, microbes,fish and birds are all animals too).
Everyone that’s concerned with fighting hunger and promoting vegetarianism seem powerless to stop people from converting millions of hectares of corn and other useful vgetable matter into fuel instead of feeding people with it. I would also like to read mr. Eloff’s take on this.
@Michael Francis
Thanks for following through with this debate.
I think you need to realise that much of the information does come from fairly reputable sources and not just Youtube downloads. Most vegans and vegetarians are well informed intelligent people.
On the subject of growth hormones, you can buy your meat from someone who does not use them, but what protection do the millions of people who do not even know about artificial growth hormones have?
It is not people who have an ideological axe to grind with the meat industry who oppose growth hormones, it is health conscious meat eaters. They cannot rely on industry safety studies on growth hormones (fox guarding the hen house), which unfortunately governments and the World Health Organisation often do. Until independent science can verify they are safe they should be banned. EU consumers are not stupid.
rBST is used in the South African dairy industry, not widely, but is it OK to kill just a few people?
Prostrate, breast, bone, colon cancer, what a way to go. If it is not used widely it should be that much easier to ban it outright. You should read up on the corrupt corporate science behind rBST:
http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/rBGHinDairyProducts/index.cfm
(Scroll down and note the paragraph – Bribes, Fired Scientists and Corporate Hijacking of the FDA and Health Canada – you can be proud Health Canada is not as bad as the FDA)
Part 2
I cannot argue that a vegan diet will be an easy way to combat protein deficiency in Africa, I do know that there are some crops such as cow peas grown in Africa that are high in protein and are legumes so improve the soil when grown.
Maybe Aragorn can enlighten us on an easy to follow protein rich diet for peasant farmers and poor people.
I do know that eggs from a few chickens and milk from a cow turned into maas can make a huge difference to a largley vegetable and grain diet.
Soy beans are also high in protein and add nitrogen to soil when grown, a soy expert friend of mine is trying to introduce the Edamame soy bean into South Africa in city vegetable gardens, it is eaten as a green vegetable. He does not eat meat at all. He says as soon as the Japanese and other far Eastern nations moved towards meat eating on a large scale they started to develop Western diseases as well.
Peasant agriculture will not supply the country with food, but there should be room for large scale farms, small scale farms and tribal land for peasant agriculture, for the millions of people who cannot or do not want to fit into the 21st century.
Part 3
The main criteria is all agriculture must be environmentally and economically sustainable. It is no good having large commercial farms poisoning land and water with chemicals, small scale commercial or subsistance peasant farmers damageing the land with overgrazing or poor agriclutural practices.
One of the most inspirational links I know is the ICIPE in Kenya “African Organic Success Stories”:
http://www.push-pull.net/PDF%20files/orgnaicsuccess.PDF
It is a compulsory read!!
Farmers Not Invited to Food Summit?
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/16-5
AND: — Hunger’s Solution Might Not Be Found at the FAO World Summit on Food Security
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/16-4
@A. Sevillano
Thank you for raising the topic of biofuels. Agri-busines corporations are more powerful than govenments, and manage to lobby them/persuade them to promote biofuels made from food crops.
I would like to see Michael Francis do a blog on biofuels at some stage. Some biofuels are beneficial, some disasterous.
Good biofules vs Bad biofuels?
Good biofuels:
1) Biogas China http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BiogasChina.php
2) Green Algae for Carbon Capture and Biodiesel
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GAFCCAB.php
3) How to be Fuel and Food Rich Under Climate Change
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/HTBFAFRUCC.php?printing=yes
Bad biofuels:
1) Biofuels: Biodevastation, Hunger & False Carbon Credits (a good general article)
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BiofuelsBiodevastationHunger.php
2) Biofuels Republic Brazil http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BiofuelRepublicBrazil.php
3) Biofuels for Oil Addicts http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BFOA.php
4) The New Biofuel Republics http://www.i-sis.org.uk/NBR.php
5) Ethanol from Cellulose Biomass not Sustainable nor Environmentally Benign
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/EFCBNSNEB.php
6) South East Asian Palm Oil, a Climate, Social and Ecological Catastrophe
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/background6.php
7) Biofuelwatch; several good reports and case studies in Southern Africa, Brazil and South East Asia : http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/background.php
This may also be of interest:
Which Energy?: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/which_energy.php
@A.Sevillano
There are good biofuels and bad biofuels. The reason we cannot stop food being used for biofuels is global agri-business corporations are currently more poweful than governments and lobby very stongly for the bad biofuel industry so they can sell their products.
However, all things come to pass, slavery in the USA, womans disenfranchisment, so too will food crops for biofuels, while biogas from sewerage or farm manure, biofuel from green algae etc. should be promoted.
There is plenty of information on good biofuels as well as bad biofuels on http://www.i-sis.org.uk
There is also another site called Biofuelwatch, just Google it.
I would like to see Michael Francis tackle biofuels on this blog at some stage.
A World Bank report concluded 70% of our current food inflation is due to converting food crops to biofuels. Not good for the poor and starving.
Michael
I think the yappy vegans (and their friends, the yappy vegetarians, like me) appreciate the obvious effort and passion that has gone into your blogging. It’s obviously an emotive and important subject to you.
Globally, urbanisation continues, with Sub Saharan Africa experiencing the highest rate in the world.
The new millennium will see a 300 million increase in urban population in Sub Saharan Africa by 2020 (equal to the entire population of the U.S.) with the net urbanisation rate expected to further accelerate. It is of academic interest if this is due to ‘push’ or ‘pull’ factors, as government policies have been unable to exert any significant influence over either
Between 70% and 80% of this growth will be by way of poorly planned or unplanned informal settlements, yet urban populations will still account for the major share of GDP, at around 85% in South Africa.
It is against this backdrop that public policy formulation relating to food production must be considered. If it is to fulfill the need, it will be for that of a progressively urbanised population.
Global trends have seen a progressive rise in gross agricultural output, accompanied by a reduction in proportion of populations involved in farming, and an increase in the proportion of food produced by large scale ‘industrial’ means.
A move toward small scale will necessitate an increase in the supply of technical skills in an environment experiencing a progressive skills shortage, besides introducing increased logistical problems with packaging, transport, distribution and food safety compliance.
Advocates of small scale being additionally ‘organic’ might consider that globally, the Haber-Bosch process produces fixed nitrogen equaling the total amount of available nitrogen introduced annually by all natural sources combined.
Nice
@A. Sevillano: Vegans are reasonable in accepting that some incidental killing is bound to take place no matter how hard you try. Even walking down the road is going to result in a few squashed bugs. Veganism is thus simply a commitment to live in a manner consistent with the philosophy of harm reduction and, when applied properly, results in drastic diminishing of one’s impact. Vegans are also usually ‘sentientists’; erring on the side of caution they afford moral status to other living beings based on their likely degree of sentience – a squashed ant is therefore less problematic than a slaughtered cow.
As for biofuel (unless it’s from waste or algae), I agree that this is an utterly foolish, destructive use of land and food.
@Muddy Dog: Developing a realistically accessible protein ‘rich’ diet for poor people is a noble aim; I would caution that the focus on protein alone is problematic though – complete protein is easily available from many plant sources and the Standard Western Diet actually gives us too much. Perhaps the focus should be on a generally balanced plant-based diet?
It is also worth noting that a vegan diet suited to local conditions is in fact, due to necessity, how many poor people already eat (e.g. rural China – the subject of the famous Cornell-China Study – and rural India).
Moong (mung) beans and basmati rice eaten together give all 23 amino acids needed. A beef steak only gives you 13 amino acids. There are millions if not billions of Hindus and Bhudists that have lived long happy healthy lives as vegans and vegetarians for generations. Why all the fuss? Ask the experts how they cope with their protein needs and a non-animal diet.
@Perry Curling-Hope
Cut the waffle my good friend.
Change In Farming Can Feed World – Report
by John Vidal
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/16/8327
Food for thought. I quote from Richard Dawkins in his collection of essays: ‘A Devil’s Chaplain’ from the essay entitled ‘Gaps in the Mind’. ‘The worth of an animal’s life is just it’s replacement cost to it’s owner…”But tie in the label Homo sapiens even to a tiny piece of insensible, embryonic tissue, and it’s life suddenly leaps to infinite, uncomputatable value. This way of thinking characterizes what I want to call the discontinuous mind’. Further on: ‘..at present, society’s moral attitudes rest almost entirely on the discontinuous, speciesist imperative’
You need to prove to me, besides personal preferences or religious beliefs i.e. some sort of logical argument, that it’s ok to kill animals but not ok to kill humans.
To the lay person (that’s me), it seems clear that the more money we have, the more choices we can make. Education usually partners income, so those people should be making far wiser choices and eating a more varied diet, less structured around meat.
If, however, you are existing on other people’s offerings, you have no choices. Yet people in this category are very likely to kill their own beasts when they have no other option. Perhaps they only keep those animals for food. Once fueled by the generosity of aid agencies, very little meat would come their way, anyway.
Most interesting to me, is the fact that in Africa, we seem to be wasting a huge amount of time, money and effort trying to convince first-world countries to remove barriers and reduce local food subsidies when our natural market lies on the continent. Africa is hungry. Africa has food. Why don’t we do more to sell food regionally instead of targeting countries beyond? South Africa has sold a vast amount of maize to Kenya, this year. That’s the right way, I should imagine, to go. As far as small-scale farming is concerned, it is historically a cultural lifestyle on the continent. Surely establishing co-operative farming would be useful? People in rural areas would have more choices, be able to share implements and irrigation and become mutually beneficial to each other; ubunthu at best.
Mr Perry Curling-Hope
Don’t you ever offer progressive clear cut solutions? Rather just go on with business as usual, failed industrial agriculture. Its failed, under the current system 800 million people are starving, why carry on with it?
If urbanisation can be reversed in Guatamala and Honduras by introducing sustainable small scale farming why can it not be reversed in the rest of the world?
Henry Ford started by manufacturing one motor car, now look how many people drive Fords. Henry Ford also said, “Don’t find fault, find a remedy”
Whether we like it or not, peak oil is going to be the biggest turning point for our world as we know it and it effects agriculture in a huge way. The best book on the subject I know is Richard Heinberg’s “The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies”
Another book I very recently read which I think is important is Robert Reich’s ““Supercapitalism; The Battle for Democracy in an Age of Big Business”
One pet peeve of mine is whenever people talk of rural development they only talk of agriculture. Fair enough the past few blogs have been about agriculture, but rural spaces can be much more than that. I work at a distant education University that is located in a small town and I am able to work anywhere in the province. I lived in a small town in England a few years ago where a tour operator was located that sent people on holidays around the world. We need to open our minds up a little more and use technology to our benefit. Much of the urban jobs could be located elsewhere at a lower cost and with a better lifestyle.
@Clean air – I have written elsewhere on TL about the failure of land reform and rural development. My point about turning back the clock is that taking a large productive farm and carving it up into subsistence plots is ridiculous and there are regions with good farm land laying fallow under threat from land claims. Nobody wins in that situation. You said I should delve deeper in Patel’s work as I view things from the eyes of a middle class Canadian. We all view things from certain perspectives, my own is shaped by years of long-term participatory fieldwork in rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal. I found many people did not wish to be farmers. Their cynicism was understandable considering the poverty they associated with small-hold farming. There is so much that could be said about this topic so maybe watch for it here as I may try and write a full piece in time. I do have a series of other articles that I am writing first that I will push through and I don’t wish to do it half-assed as it is a huge and important topic.
@MLH – I worry about the notion that collective farming is inherent in Africa. I have seen collective projects fail many times in rural areas due to local power struggles and elites within communities that scupper projects – I even volunteered and worked on rebuilding failed projects in Ndumo (northern KZN).
Often these communities have internal fractures and rifts that see the poor competing against the poor and a farming project can turn ugly quickly as some benefit and others do not.
I will leave for now as it is also worthy of a topic on why development fails and some ideas for solutions.
These last few blogs and the debate has been great for discussion and thought for me and I can see future blogs and avenues of research I hope to pursue.
Thanks for everyone who participated and I hope to see your comments on future blogs of mine.
I used to eat meat and defend eating meat until I learned to meditate. 20 minutes twice a day everyday. Then I gradually started to eat less meat, then only fish and chicken, then after about 18 months even my favorite Portugese peri peri chicken was no longer apetising. My body no longer wanted meat. I realised my higher self was telling me intuitively to give meat up.
No logic, compassion or religion could ever have convinced me, but learning to meditate, to improve my health, intelligence, health, relationships, overall well being etc. naturally lead me away from meat eating. In the same way as I clean my teeth twice everyday, I meditate. The benefits are amazing. To me a side benefit is giving up meat eating, my opposition to killing animals only dawned after my body told me it did not enjoy meat.
@MLH
I think it is a misconception that poor people mostly keep animals to kill for food. Hunter gatherer societies like the San (Bushmen) and Inuits (Eskimos) are very heavy meat eaters due to circumstances but most agricultural peasant societies rely substantially on what they can grow from the ground. Fruit, veg, grain, nuts etc for food. Their few animals provide milk, wool, eggs, mohair, status in society, a store of weath to be traded, used as dowry, used for transport and as draft animals. It was only royalty that used to feast on the fatted lamb everyday.
If a peasant killed and ate his/her animals they would be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Even in our modern western society is is much cheaper for poor people to live on a good vegetarian or vegan diet that a meat based diet.
@Michael Francis
I will look for your article on land reform. I come across land claims, false land claims, government beaurocracy and inefficiency, and government renaging on contracts to purchase claimed land all the time, its a nightmare.
Taking a sophisticated productive farm and expecting untrained people to run it is crazy. But land reform has to take place to address the imbalances of the past. Unfortunately its currently not done smartly.
According to one source, in one case a large poultry farm was purchased and all the employees given shares, one person who had more entrepreneurial skills than the rest eventually bought the rest of them out. Under capitalism, good for him, but for those people who had had their land taken away over a period of 300 years and had to put up with Verwoerd’s Bantu education, they never had a chance running a sophisticated factory farm. Now they are no better off than before land reform.
I am still a firm believer in exploring the concept of 500 000 small scale organic commercial farmers as a project. Properly done it will provide skills training, jobs and livelyhoods for so many people. Small farms with properly trained farmers are more productive per hectare than large farms. How to get past internal stife community stife I don’t know.
Moving urban jobs into rural areas. Great concept, hopefully it will gain momentum.
@Michael Francis – Part 2
“One pet peeve of mine is whenever people talk of rural development they only talk of agriculture.”
Good point. However land is an emotional issue and many of us are very conscious at this very moment millions of people are being dispossessed of their land and only livelyhood which is agricultural.
Huge corporate land grabs are taking plcae in Africa right now.
Landgrab resource page http://www.grain.org/landgrab/
Also see Via Campesina which “describes itself as “an international movement which coordinates peasant organizations of small and middle-scale producers, agricultural workers, rural women, and indigenous communities from Asia, Africa, America, and Europe”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Campesina
The loss of small farms and sustainable livelyhoods in South America to make way for gaint GM soy plantations to put meat on the tables of Europeans is a crime against humanity.
Apologies if I’m telling you what you already know.
USA vs Cuba:
USA in 2009:
“More than one in seven (US) American households struggled to put enough food on the table in 2008, the highest rate since the Agriculture Department began tracking food security levels in 1995.
That’s about 49 million people, or 14.6 percent of U.S. households. The numbers are a significant increase from 2007, when 11.1 percent of U.S. households suffered from what USDA classifies as “food insecurity” — not having enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091116/ap_on_bi_ge/us_hunger_report
CUBA in 2001:
While the World Health Organization recommends an intake of 2,700 calories per day, the caloric intake in Cuba reached its low point of 1,863 calories per capita in 1994.
However, the caloric intake in Cuba has since climbed 40%. [2608 calories by 2001]
“Cuba’s countryside has changed dramatically over the past five years,” added Sinclair. “Farmers markets are filled with produce and bustling with vendors. Few other countries have been able to
restructure their agricultural economy and still leave small farmers in a better position.”
Cuba has a unique model for agriculture, with land reform laws limiting the size of private landholdings and the government mixing
market mechanisms with state controls.
http://78.47.137.204/gentech/2001/Aug/msg00073.html
If that was 2001 I would love to see where Cuba is at right now in 2009.
Communal farming ventures are extremely difficult unless there is strong leadership and sufficient support. Problems arise such as who does what work, who sits around doing nothing, who gets what reward etc.
Woman can play a big role in food security, home gardens and communal gardens work well. Communities can come together to buy seed and inputs etc. but then work their own plots in a communal garden. Organic farming is very effective in that it gives better quality food and inputs are cheaper though it is labour intensive. Home gardens and communal gardens can sell excess to the market if they have it, and small scale producers can develop from starting as a gardener.
Supplying the the market works best with individually owned plots.
One of South Africa’s huge downfalls is the lack of research and extension in agriculture, insufficient money is being set aside for this.
Thanks Michael Francis for stimulating this debate and I look forward to future blogs. I think we have all learned a lot.
Beanie,
Regarding urbanization trends;
Honduras
Urban population: 48% of total (2008)
Rate of urbanization: +2.9% annual rate of change (2005-10)
Guatemala
Urban population: 49% of total (2008)
Rate of urbanization: +3.4% annual rate of change (2005-10)
Sources: Nationmaster, World Factbook
This contrasts with the global average of +1.8%, and scarcely represents success in ‘reversing’ rural migration.
Proposing the eschewing of industrial processes which produce fully half the entire fixed nitrogen available to the planet on the grounds that such is ‘not sustainable’ is not a ‘progressive solution’ to anything.
Everybody knows, or at least some of us know that our entire fossil energy based industrial civilization is not ultimately sustainable.
Is ‘sustainability’ the only criterion by which human action is to be assessed?
The ‘failure’ of the current system focuses upon the 800million, who are primarily victims of regional conflicts and geopolitics (not farming methods), and ignores the 6 billion who are successfully fed. (and often overfed to obesity)
There is no turning the tide as long as an increasing number desire the perceived benefits and trappings of our industrial civilization over an agrarian existence.
Eventually they may no longer have this choice.
@Perry Curling-Hope
Guatamala and Honduras showed that by using sustainable agriculture 45 000 people moved from the cities back to farming, they could make a better living there, See – Feeding the World? by Jules Pretty http://ngin.tripod.com/article2.htm
There must also be other non-agrucltural ways to reverse the trends of massive urbanisation and the squalor and suffering that go with it. In addition the above article contains other ‘sustainable farming successes’. The future is not what it used to be, we have to be creative.
Do you mean CO2 instead of nitrogen?
See ‘Organics can save the world from climate chaos’:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_19229.cfm
Blaming mainly regional conflicts and geopolitics is a very limited lens to look at the 800 million starving people in the world. See 2500 page report titled International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development [IAASTD] by 400 experts. It is also the way food is traded, how the environment is devastated, which will only get worse with climate change etc.
If the agricultural system relies on huge subsidies to survive in America and Europe and pumps huge amounts of chemicals into the environment it has failed. There are better agricultural systems.
http://www.ru.org/ecology-and-environment/towards-a-sustainable-agriculture.html
Any civilisation that ignores sustainablity of its environment, economy, health systems etc. will dissappear.
@Perry Curling-Hope
Thought this and other facts may interest you:
“Most of the world’s food is not produced by industrial megafarms. 75 percent of the world’s food is produced by 1.5 billion small farmers.”
For more interesting stuff plus information from the People’s Food Sovereignty Now! Declaration, November 2009
http://organicconsumers.org/transitions/index.cfm
A good read: Climate Change and the Population ‘Bomb’: A Debate Not to Shy Away From
http://sacsis.org.za/site/News/detail.asp?iChannel=1&nChannel=News&iCat=1434&iData=386
Hi Beanie,
Do I mean CO2 instead of nitrogen?
No, I mean Nitrogen (N2)
Carbon Dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere, currently 0.0004 of the total, whereas nitrogen is abundant, constituting about 4/5ths.
Plants use CO2 (the ‘carbo’) and water (the ‘hydrate’) as feed stocks; and solar plus chemical energy (nitrous compounds) to photosynthesize carbohydrates, which is chemical energy we call ‘food’ (no CO2 = no food!)
Plants pull nitrous compounds out of the soil to go about their business, and when harvested, there is a net loss which must be replenished if cultivation is to continue
Atmospheric nitrogen (N2) is virtually inert, and is not ‘available’ to plants.
It needs to be ‘fixed’ to hydrogen in the form of ammonia (NH4) which is used to ‘fertilize’ i.e. ‘energize’ the ‘soil’ which in turn is a convenient substrate for plant energy exchanges to occur, or more commonly compounded to a nitrate radical (NH4.NO3, ammonium nitrate)
If you doubt that nitrogen compounds have anything to do with ‘energy’ a combination of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane was used by Timothy McVeigh to demolish the federal building in Oklahoma City, and ‘Nitro’ compounds are ubiquitous in ultra high performance motor racing.
Half the available nitrogen today results from ‘organic’ bacteriological processes, and was always the yield limiting factor in all pre industrial agriculture.
The other half is synthesized via the Haber Bosch process, based on fossil energy, and accounts for the doubling of the agricultural potential of our planet.
@Perry Curling-Hope
1) Oil is thankfully running out, read up on peak oil, end of nitrogen fertilizer from oil, thats a fact.
2) A study published in the August 28 Science ’09 found that nitrous oxide (N2O), also known as laughing gas, and a by-product of agricultural fertilizer and a number of other industrial processes is now the biggest ozone-depleting gas in the air. Destruction of the ozone layer exposes us to dangerous ultraviolet radiation and boosts the risk of skin cancer.
3) Another scientific fact, farmers can produce similar yields from building up the fertility of the soil through modern scientific organic methods (including N2 content) so they don’t need oil based nitrogen fertilizer, and the whole process is better for human health and the environment. Nitrogen fertilizer (oil based) in our ground water is harmful.
Unfortunately your arguments do not stand up to scientific scrutiny or real world conditions. I have seen you have the same argument before on Though Leader. On that occasion you were rebutted you with the same facts.
Hope you read them this time.
Beanie,
Most know (me included
that our industrial civilization is not ultimately sustainable due to eventual depletion of the fossil energy base which supports it.
Whether ‘we’ are to be thankful for this eventuality or not depends upon one’s viewpoint.
The billions who aspire to broaden the mind and see the world (through increased leisure time and international air travel), enjoy the freedom of personal (auto) mobility, cell phones, computers, flat screen TVs, poly cotton clothes, pantyhose, acrylic and enamel paints, piped water and sewerage, domestic space heating, cheap hygienic food packaging and millions of other products and a myriad of life choices offered by our industrial civilization, and above all, freedom from the necessity of toil and physical labour may not share your enthusiasm.
Pol Pot had visions of an agrarian pre industrial idyllic society!
I do follow suggested links to claims of ‘higher’ yields from exclusively ‘organic’ inputs; the reports (most) either lack specific detail from which an energy assessment can be objectively determined, or it is evident that incidental and indirect inputs have not been accounted in the claims.
Excess fixed nitrogen runoff is harmful regardless of source; there is no such thing as ‘natural’ vs. ‘artificial’, it is just that inappropriate application is more likely due to high energy density of commercial ‘fertilisers’ (actually energy inputs; e.g. 600kg ‘commercial’ = 150 metric tones of ‘manure’, nitrogen wise) through misguided attempts by end users lacking knowledge and expertise to increase yield.
Beanie again,
Incidentally nitrous oxides are very highly reactive ( which is why they are applied in extreme drag racing )
Those which are released by human agriculture, not only ‘artificial’ agriculture, as if humans are not animals and are alien to ‘the environment’!
, are released near the ground, and have zip chance of rising into the upper atmosphere where the ozone layer is found, they will react with something pretty fast first.
Most of the upper atmosphere nitrogen oxides are produced by lightning, which also produces copious quantities of ozone!
This accounts for the ultra clean bleach like smell after a thunderstorm.
Link to a report on this phenomenon can be found here:
http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/earth_sciences/report-17245.html
@Perry Curling-Hope
No problem. I will inform Science magazine on your behalf that they are wrong. If they need someone to consult with when editing their articles maybe you can assist.
Michael, very good articles. thank you.
I too await your blog on land reform, a complex and vital subject. I spent 7 years in Zimbabwe, and am at a loss to understand how taking productive farms away from white farmers, and giving them to peasant farmers is ‘redressing a social wrong’.
Just as you quick correctly say about ‘rural development’ and most people speaking only about agriculture, so too the idea of social redress cannot be linked to carving up and re-distributing the land. As you wrote in parts 1,2,3, land has different uses…and those in the southern part of Zimbabwe who are, in vain, trying to grow maize on land suited for raising cattle. and so forth.
Anyway, awaiting the blog on Land Reform. loads of interesting books on the subject, some of which written in SA.
cheers
Why I am a vegetarian.
http://www.sprword.com/videos/earthlings/