No Meat Week: Help Stop Global Warming!

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  Abe Connally started this discussion on Oct 19, 2008

  The meat industry gets a lot of heat for their production techniques, and they should, but to say that we should eat veggies instead because of environmental impact is a very dangerous assumption.

  First of all, yes, industrial livestock production is very bad, for all kinds of reasons, but local, grass-fed animal production is GOOD for the environment. This has been proven many times over. Graing animals are a part of the ecosystem and provide important services to the environment. To deny their place is the food web or the environment is a mistake. So, support your local livestock producer and buy HIS meat, instead of the industrial meat.

  Industrial farming is just as bad or worse for the environment than industrial meat production. Farming in the US uses more fossil fuels than transportation and soybean production in Brazil is the leading cause of the destruction of the Amazon rain forests. Industrial farming causes groundwater pollution, severe health issues in humans, desertification and is a major use of water and fossil fuels.

  Humans are the leading producer of methane, not livestock, like some folks say. 6 billion methane farts daily adds up.

  We can produce food in better ways, but to do so, we need to be open minded and informed. We can’t ignore that there are better ways to do just about anything. Industrial processes are rarely good for the environment.

  So, let’s get some better info than just “don’t eat meat”. What we should be saying is “Eat locally produced meat that was produced in a good way.” Sam goes for the veggies. Stop eating soybeans that are not grown in your own yard or somewhere near you.

  Locally produced organic foods are the only real solution to environment-related issues.

  
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  Panther Meadow replied on Dec 17, 2008

  I understand your perspective. I eat vegetarian, but to my meat eating friends who are not ready or are not interested in stopping meat consumption, I totally encourage they buy and eat local, organic, pasture-fed animals if they choose to eat meat.

  You are mistaken though to encourage people that if they stop eating non-local soybeans then this will have have any impact on the rainforest. A friend once sent me a mass email implying that vegetarians are partly responsible for the decimation of the rainforest because they eat tofu. Au contraire. Meat consumption is the driving factor behind rainforest deforestation, not tofu and soymilk lovin’ veg heads! (For the record, I don’t eat tofu or drink soymilk but that’s another story).

  Please read this this quote below from an Autumn 2007 article published by The Nature Conservancy:

  bq.“Fast-food outlets throughout Europe, including McDonald’s, rely heavily on Brazilian soybeans, which are increasingly harvested from fields that used to be Amazon rainforest. The European Union bought 10 million tons of soy from Brazil in 2006 — about 40 percent of Brazil’s soy export crop — soy that is used as animal feed to fatten the cows and chickens that become Big Macs and McNuggets. (Nearly 80 percent of the global soybean harvest is milled into animal feed, according to the Worldwatch Institute.)”

  So almost 80% of the soy grown on deforested rainforest land goes to feed animals, many of whom I presume are later killed for human consumption.

  More from the Nature Conservancy article:

  bq.“While more than 70 percent of deforested area in the Amazon has been cleared to make way for cattle pasture, Brazil’s soy farms are increasingly culpable — from 2001 to 2004, satellites documented that 1.3 million acres of the southern forest were cleared for farmland.”

  —link text

  Your other point besides the soybean thing said that “local, grass-fed animal production is GOOD for the environment.” This is a complex issue that to be accurate would need to be judged on a case-by-case basis as far as each farmer’s/rancher’s practices. For example, if they chopped down rainforest to pasture local, organic-fed, humanely treated cows, this would be an issue.

  In the BIGGER picture, I personally see that even local, organic, pasture animal farming is ultimately NOT sustainable. Small scale, organic animal farming is much better than industrial factory farms, in terms of the environment, compassion and rights of the animals, and the health of the workers & the surrounding community & the consumers who eat the meat.

  But, a plant-based diet will always consume FAR less water, land acreage, resources, and energy than a meat-based one, even a local, organic, pasture-fed meat-based diet.

  I know that not everyone is going to go vegan overnight or ever in this life time. I myself am not vegan though I totally admire this choice. Likewise, not everyone will stop eating meat, but everyone can be more aware of the impact their choices make and strive to make better choices more and more. It’s up to each individual to figure out what that means to oneself.

  I haven’t read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma yet, but I’ve heard the perspective that Pollan’s model of sustainable, small scale meat production is ultimately not sustainable. It’s a numbers thing that could be crunched in many different scenarios.

  I LOVE Pollan’s response on Disc 2 of the highly recommended documentary The Future of Food, where he amazingly addresses the myth that organic food is too expensive. But even organic meat may be too expensive for the planet.

  There simply isn’t enough land and water to feed the world all local, organic meat instead of industrial meat, especially if we’re factoring cows, which consume more food, land, water, etc. than smaller animals. A couple backyard chickens for eggs and meat have less impact than a couple cows for milk and meat.

  So IF the world is to keep eating meat , but ONLY local, organic, pastured meat, THEN the world is going to have to have A LOT more vegetarians and vegans to match meat demand with available supply.

  Some people even intelligently predict that in the near future, even a large-scale, industrial farmed vegetarian or vegan diet will not be sustainable or possible. This perspective takes into consideration the effects of climate change (drought, food shortages, transportation, cost, etc.) as well as the realities of agriculture on topsoil.

  The only real solution to environment-related issues is much more than locally produced organic foods. It’s a total shift in how society is structured and how we eat food. Industrial, large scale, tractor farming is not sustainable. Even “small” organic farms are industrial in that they use fossil fuels to power their tractors, use row cropping, disturb soil with tractor tilling, and are addicted to these and other practices that deplete topsoil and compromise the ecosystem.

  I see the solution as returning to a personal connection to one’s own food by growing one’s own garden. International best-selling Russian author Vladimir Megre of link text has proposed a scientifically sound and visionary model of a truly sustainable food system. In his books, The Ringing Cedars Series, you can read about this simple and brilliant solution. I’ll summarize it:

  Each family is granted ownership of 2.5 acres, to build one’s home and grow a garden of truly sustainable food, that will be passed down for all future generations in one’s family. In this space of love surrounded by a community of other families’ 2.5 acres, each family could grow all that is needed in addition to exchanging goods and services with other community members.

  It’s not necessary or sustainable or healthiest to grow food with tractors and transport it to the consumer, even a consumer within 100 miles of the farm. Check out books on home-scale permaculture, natural and no-till farming, indigenous food production, and biointensive mini-farming. I also encourage people to explore vegetarian, vegan, and raw plant-based diets more!

  And please check out the 2.5 acre model in the Ringing Cedars books. link text

  These books, translated into English from Russian, are a MUST READ for your health and the planet. Thanks!

  
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  Abe Connally replied on Dec 18, 2008

  How can you say “that even local, organic, pasture animal farming is ultimately NOT sustainable”? Where is there evidence to support this view? The planet supported large numbers of herbivores on pasture for millions of years. I would say that it is the ONLY sustainable means of livestock production.

  The fact of the matter is that vegetable production consumes more fossil fuels than animal production and is just as destructive to the environment. There is a lot of evidence that shows healthy pastures with animals maintaining them can help sequester large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. Vegetable farms are not able to do this because the land is plowed and the organic content of the soil is destroyed, ultimately releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere.

  But to say that livestock production is not sustainable is nonsense. Livestock on pasture has been shown to help combat desertification, which brings large amounts of land that was destroyed with farming plants into production once again. Large groups of animals grazing grasslands is as natural as it gets. Large mono-crops of corn and soybeans is NOT, no matter how you look at it. The amount of chemicals required to maintain those levels of production are destroying everything around them.

  There IS enough land and water to feed the meat of the world, nature has shown us that. There were once large herds of very large herbivores on almost every continent, and the number of individuals exceeds what we have in captivity.

  But the important point here is that meat production on pasture helps to maintain the environment. The grasslands evolved around animals grazing them. Without it, they start turning to desert, which there is much evidence on every continent. There are several groups that use grazing animals to recover this land, and with time, they are able to make it lush again, without irrigation.

  But there is a big point here that we always here from the vegetarians: it is more efficient to eat vegetables than meat because of land availability. At first, it seems logical, but when you look at what a cow or rabbit eats, you soon figure out that no, it is not more efficient to plow under the natural ecosystems and plant artificial ones. First of all, I don’t eat grass, and neither do you, but cows and rabbits and all sorts of grazing animals can, and they turn it into food for us. So, in all those areas where we can’t farm, we could have animals, like in national forests, on the sides of the highways, on slopes, etc. These animals are converting otherwise unusable land into food for people.

  Another point along these lines is that animals can eat food that is not fit for humans. Like the byproducts of ethanol production, which contain a lot of nutrients. Or corn stalks. Or cotton-sead meal, or any number of the vast amount of agricultural wastes that go to landfills or are burned.

  The bottom line is that animals play a part in every ecosystem, and there are less large herbivores now than ever before. So, we need to start building our ecosystems that we have left and including large herbivores that we can manage in a responsible and sustainable way. Cutting down rainforest to feed them soybeans is not the way, but letting them graze the local park (or golf course) might just be!

  
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  Abe Connally replied on Dec 18, 2008

  How can you say “that even local, organic, pasture animal farming is ultimately NOT sustainable”? Where is there evidence to support this view? The planet supported large numbers of herbivores on pasture for millions of years. I would say that it is the ONLY sustainable means of livestock production.

  The fact of the matter is that vegetable production consumes more fossil fuels than animal production and is just as destructive to the environment. There is a lot of evidence that shows healthy pastures with animals maintaining them can help sequester large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. Vegetable farms are not able to do this because the land is plowed and the organic content of the soil is destroyed, ultimately releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere.

  But to say that livestock production is not sustainable is nonsense. Livestock on pasture has been shown to help combat desertification, which brings large amounts of land that was destroyed with farming plants into production once again. Large groups of animals grazing grasslands is as natural as it gets. Large mono-crops of corn and soybeans is NOT, no matter how you look at it. The amount of chemicals required to maintain those levels of production are destroying everything around them.

  There IS enough land and water to feed the meat of the world, nature has shown us that. There were once large herds of very large herbivores on almost every continent, and the number of individuals exceeds what we have in captivity.

  But the important point here is that meat production on pasture helps to maintain the environment. The grasslands evolved around animals grazing them. Without it, they start turning to desert, which there is much evidence on every continent. There are several groups that use grazing animals to recover this land, and with time, they are able to make it lush again, without irrigation.

  But there is a big point here that we always here from the vegetarians: it is more efficient to eat vegetables than meat because of land availability. At first, it seems logical, but when you look at what a cow or rabbit eats, you soon figure out that no, it is not more efficient to plow under the natural ecosystems and plant artificial ones. First of all, I don’t eat grass, and neither do you, but cows and rabbits and all sorts of grazing animals can, and they turn it into food for us. So, in all those areas where we can’t farm, we could have animals, like in national forests, on the sides of the highways, on slopes, etc. These animals are converting otherwise unusable land into food for people.

  Another point along these lines is that animals can eat food that is not fit for humans. Like the byproducts of ethanol production, which contain a lot of nutrients. Or corn stalks. Or cotton-sead meal, or any number of the vast amount of agricultural wastes that go to landfills or are burned.

  The bottom line is that animals play a part in every ecosystem, and there are less large herbivores now than ever before. So, we need to start building our ecosystems that we have left and including large herbivores that we can manage in a responsible and sustainable way. Cutting down rainforest to feed them soybeans is not the way, but letting them graze the local park (or golf course) might just be!