Eat Less Meat and Save the Planet

[Raúl Ilargi Meijer]

Salvador Dali Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder 1933     Ilargi: It’s been quite a while since we last heard fro
[See the full post at: Eat Less Meat and Save the Planet]

[John Day]

I’m a vegetarian and I more or less approve of this message.
Grass fed livestock is not the problem. The problem is the vast corn-fed economy based upon fossil fuels and fossil water, soon to be much less available.
Let me put in a plug for Kerrygold Irish Butter and Dubliner (Cheddar type) Cheese, from grass fed cows, which have the omega-3 fats we require, and do not get in the American diet.

[hugho]

Thank you Ilargi for this post from Dr D.!I Ialso run a small diversified farm with pigs, chickens, sheep and Jersey milk cows.Dr D is on target. I have in the past 30 years turned our glacial rocky alluvial soil into productive soil using only manure, I was dismayed at the Lancet article as well and by other voices who say we must end all consumption of meat and dairy. They must be educated. In one sense they are right. The industrial agriculture system as practiced should be abandoned for reasons Dr D gave but he failed to mention the most egregious reason. Huge grain inputs are used for just one purpose:to increase yields of dairy and meat. The important fact is that except in unusual circumstances supplementary grain inputs are not needed and are frequently harmful to the animal. Our livestock can exist solely on grass and weeds and grain straw ALONE. Just like the elk and venison our family consumes. These animals have digestive systems designed solely for grasses and grasses which have no nutrient value to human beings but these animals can take indigestible useless cellulose and turn it into lean meat and milk. Yes yields are less but cows don’t need ANY grain to produce milk or meat. On just grass our jersey cow will make 3-4 gallons a day but if stuffed with corn this could be doubled as is done in industrial dairies. Feeding them only grass these cows can have a useful life of 15 years. Crammed with grain they last only 4 or 5 years before they are discarded, worn out and sick. I consider this practice of grain feeding a crime against not only the animals, but the soil and the entire planet. I wont even get into the crime of raising grain for buiofuels.

[zerosum]

HOLLY COW!!

cattle are the primary reason for deforestation, (That is good if you want to farm the land and not spend all your energy fighting the growth of the jungle)

if cows were good and worked before, maybe the problem lies not with the meat or the cow,

the manure farmers have used for 5,000 years

one source: cattle.

CAN eat meat, but you are REQUIRED to. …As did a thousand generations of your ancestors, back to the very first day of man, slashing and clearing a field so the deer would come.

(Deer do not eat the same thing as cows. Also, if there are too many predators, wolf, there will not be enough for men to eat)

[ezlxa1949]

And because we feed — in effect, force-feed — grain to cows whose digestive systems are not designed for it, the animals sicken and suffer and develop illnesses. Clever ag & livestock scientists have found that antibiotics will keep the animals alive long enough to get to the abattoirs and turn a profit.

These antibiotics do not just disappear. They linger in the meat and are a major cause of the rise of antibiotic resistance in the general population. With some bacteria there is no longer any antibiotic that is effective against them. We are squandering our antibiotics, and it may be only a matter of time before an unstoppable epidemic or plague breaks out. But no matter: science and technology will always save us. Business may continue as usual.

Vaccines and antibiotics have become the standard response to unhealthy animal husbandry practices. I know someone who raises pigs for a living but does so along organic, sustainable lines. At pig expos she discusses techniques with the experts and other producers. A producer may say that his pigs are suffering from such-and-such a condition. “Oh, we’ve got a vaccine for that,” is the usual response.

[Ken Barrows]

I am a vegetarian and agree with John Day’s comments. You are describing a system, though, that cannot support 7.5 billion people. How many? Depends on your locality–what’s your bioregion? In the next world, we eat what we can, we need the calories. In the world where you eat from your bioregion, it will be difficult for people in most regions to be vegetarian, much less vegan.

To get to your system, don’t be too hard on the vegetarians. The industrial system is making your future cow-based one more difficult by the day. The ultimate human state may be hunter gatherer in bioregions throughout the world if the industrial system doesn’t destroy everything first. And when all is said and done, meat consumption per capita will probably be less for most developed countries’ inhabitants than it is today and there won’t be many vegetarians.

[V. Arnold]

Very interesting and thought provoking article.
While not a vegetarian, I eat meat (chicken and a little pork) only a few of times a month.
We grow a good deal of the fruit we eat; manure, compost and legumes (grown around the various fruit trees) for our only fertilizer.
We western humans have bought a one way ticket to our self generated demise. Whether or not it’s extinction (doubtful) or just a drastic reduction remains to be seen.

[chettt]

What an excellent piece of work. Thank you Dr D

[sumac.carol]

Very valuable article. I would add another option for improving soil fertility which we are using in our young permaculture orchard. nitrogen-fixing plants and hardwood shrubs and trees from which young growth is chopped and dropped (it is called ramial wood). Deep rooted plants (such as comfrey) are added to the mix to mine nutrients at greater soil depths. We use a chipper to create most of our ramial wood chips although this could be done manually on a smaller scale.

[Dr. D]

Thank you so much people.

Sadly I can’t cover everything as I wander too much anyway, but certainly I expect meat use would decline somewhat also as the middle ages, and there are still problems of (unnecessary) deforestation for cattle in zones/soils they are not suited for. –Certainly different production would be astonishing in a 3-crop-per-year tropic though. Can the world feed 7B? They are now under a terrible and inefficient system, so I expect a more efficient and responsible system would be at least as good. Food production can rise 10-fold if you add one human per acre in attention and work. That leads to food distribution issues, as population by now may not be where food production is, but I can’t solve everything. Following 1890 Paris Market Growers (Coleman probably has a book on this) would show how astonishing production can become if intelligence is applied. They basically could supply a city of a million within the 10-mile urban ring, and this was using only horses and window glass — nothing of the deep opportunities we have with central heat, row tunnels, aquaponics, LED lighting and the like.

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-farming.html
http://hipcrime.blogspot.com/2011/12/french-market-gardens-la-culture.html
Mushrooms, manure, and the secret of French food

As I sometimes mention, the other, or main point is what we NEED to make those 7B people for “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed.” If they all lived like Japan, or further, like a civilization of Zen monks — or even a civilization of Choctaw — we would not yet have STARTED to tap the resources. You could probably re-forest the whole Northeast. As it is, probably half U.S. oil consumption is spent because we don’t live 5 miles closer to work and exhaust ourselves driving the kids to soccer who only 40 years ago used to walk (safely). That’s a choice, so, so easily undone. That’s an incredible, astonishing liberation of BTU’s that could who knows, terrace North Dakota into year-round production like Machu Picchu or farm the rooftops of Manhattan.

Any one of these would cut profits, though, and re-route the profits away from Bezos and ADM and to small householders. As they trade with each other and economize without buying, GDP falls, and so does tax revenue. The system cannot tolerate or sustain that. So we must NOT turn off our lights when we leave the room like they did in 1930, we MUST buy a new $15 LED light, and tie it into an always-on, always-connected home surveillance wiretap that has a monthly subscription and can turn our lights on for us when we’re not home (and therefore would never need to). Can we support 7B with a system that insane? Probably, but let’s not. First of all, nobody likes it. We nostalgize and go glamping because we FEEL BETTER in the green, looking at sheep and watching chickens tear into bread crusts we feel good we didn’t have to throw away. It makes us all happy. And when we’re happy, we also tend to stop attacking each other and become safe.

They’ve gotten so insane, they’re making robotic trees that sequester CO2. They are now so anti-life they will happily tax-subsidize robotic non-trees at 10,000x the cost rather than JUST PLANT A REAL TREE. One that kids and grandchildren will play in, that birds will eat and creates new trees, new soil, new life. Why? Money. GDP. Power. Control. Say no and break them by going out and planting that real tree that will take the power from them by de-centralizing, by feeding 70 years of children, where no money, no taxes, no upkeep, no inputs are involved. Do that everywhere, green the world, and what’s the risk? What could they hold over us then? And that’s precisely WHY they hate life so vehemently: life by nature is bigger than them, it’s beyond their control. And not having absolute, insurmountable, totalitarian control is the one thing they can’t stand.

Throw out some dandelion seeds and watch. It’s hilarious. When that dies down, cook some up and watch the panic and hilarity begin all over again.

[graffiti]

As an Australian who has enjoyed the easy life’western civilisation’ has provided for 55 years, I see our next major problem being the billions of up and coming Chinese and Indians who would also like our lifestyle. We have feasted on the Earths resources like no humans before and have consumed a large portion of them. As the populations of China and India rapidly grow richer they are going to find we haven’t left anything for them or even our own future generations. This could surely lead to wars as we fight over what’s left. Those that survive will have no choice but to return to a medieval farming model along the lines of Dr D’s ideas in his essay.

[Hotrod]

I am a farmer and really appreciate this article Dr. D. I would only add that our modern, industrialized version of agriculture runs not only on fossil fuel, but massive amounts of unpayable debt. I would estimate that 50% of the milk, meat, and grain produced in this country is produced by concerns that are technically insolvent. And, when faced with bankruptcy they follow the old prescription: “When more of the same hasn’t worked, try more of the same.” In other words, borrow more money, put on more fertilizer, and buy more expensive seeds and chemicals from Monsanto. A recipe for disaster.

[Author]

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