Open My Mouth

[greenstorm]

scratchdaddy made an entry on the whole meat/environmental issue, so of course I had to respond:

I really wanna comment on this.

A bunch of people are trying to get backyard chickens ok'd in Vancouver-- currently they're prohibited in a bylaw (here but not in New York City, hah). Factory farms (ironically) and the spca are holding out against it -- poor chickens might be treated cruelly, they say, because people might get in over their heads.

Chickens are a fantastic source of local protein in vancouver, as are eggs, if raised in this way-- chickens convert scrap food that is both uncompostable (meat, bread, cooked things) or veggies &c that you don't feel like composting into eggs and meat. You do have to supplement your scraps in most cases (many people buy a lot of processed food and so don't have a whole lot of leftovers) with a little bought chicken food or grain, but that's not an enormous issue environmentally-- especially when you count the benefits of keeping that mass out of the landfill, and add the potential for some sort of you-give-me-scraps-I-give-you-eggs arrangement with neighbors (laying chickens can give an egg a day per chicken in good conditions, so you get a lot of eggs pretty quickly).

OTOH, factory farming eggs and meat creates a waste issue-- animals kept that densely produce more waste bedding than farms can accept, especially when it's full of antibiotics used to keep animals in such close quarters.

The animals-eat-grain-we-could-feed-starving-people-with bogeyman is just that-- the world produces enough calories of food that everyone could have a comfortable diet if there were no distribution issues but it doesn't pay in our current economic system to feed everyone, and so we don't.

As for more notes on our meat-centric diet being unsustainable, again with the factory farming of anything (pigs, cows) being awful for the environment and so unsustainable, but do look in more depth into rangeland and tundra farming if you have the time -- reindeer herding, cattle ranching, and pig raising that's married to local food-production industry (apple pulp from cider and juice pressing, whey from cheesemaking, etc) uses either land that cannot produce vegetable crops because the ecosystem is too delicate to be ploughed up for agriculture (this happens more as you go north and/or up onto thin soil at altitude) or resources that would become an active waste problem if not 'recycled' into meat animals.

Many of these things, pigs and chickens especially, are easier and more efficient to do locally than raising protein in legume form (except potentially for beans), again especially in limited space or in more northern/high altitude places. And the more local you are, the more oil you save for transportation (and the more you avoid grain-feeding animals, the more oil you save too, as conventional agriculture uses a LOT of oil). So it's a good solution all around.

Having said all that, it is ridiculous to see people eating meat at three meals per day, sometimes doubling up (bacon and egg sandwich for breakfast, meat sandwich for lunch, hamburger with bacon on it for dinner) especially given the amount of veggies they generally eat in the same day.

Sourcing food and looking at local conditions really is important though! Don't support one-size-fits-all answers. :)

Comments

[petter-haggholm.livejournal.com]

This is interesting stuff. I’ve come across arguments before now that there are environments where you can raise livestock for meet but cannot productively farm (I think goats were the animals mentioned in that context, as they are prone to eating…everything), but you’ve given that a much broader spectrum. I’m still curious about the numbers, though—what is the proportion of land (times their potential yield) suitable for growing crops, as compared to land suitable only for raising animals?

Admittedly, my interest is academic. I don’t do food responsibly in any sense. :|

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

Well, our traditional method of growing crops -- tillage, irrigation, etc -- is possible in relatively flat, temperate to tropical areas with moderate rainfall. I couldn't, in the few minutes I looked, find world maps of land under tillage, rangeland, etc. Current rangeland is kinda wonky anyhow, lots of places are overgrazed or under-utilised.

Potential yield is a topic you want to handle carefully. Do you mean petroleum, gm, and pesticide-supported corn in calories per acre? Do you value more agricultural jobs as a side-effect of more intensive and complicated agriculture, or do you consider that if more human effort and less oil goes in for the same number of calories that something is lost? What about useable calories per acre vs calories per acre (we can produce alarming amounts of corn, but we can't eat only corn as humans, and for the most part that corn we produce is turned into sugar syrup and modified corn starch and animal food and recombined-- does the effort and waste of all that recombining change our effective calories per acre number?) If something is grown locally and there is a much lower shipping spoilage value cause it's not going anywhere, do we take that into account? If pigs are fed on whey from cheese that would otherwise be thrown away, are those calories counted in the number of acres that the dairy cows were fed on originally, or are they 'free' calories?)

There's a map of reindeer herds in wikipedia under range. Most of those herds can produce some meat for human consumption. That's a lotta land.

You should also look up 'chicken tractors'

Why don't you?

herding vs tilling

[koppermoon.livejournal.com]

You don't even have to go as far north as 60 to look for examples: the Chilcotin springs to mind. I much prefer grass-fed meat to that "finished" on grain, and feed lots are an abomination.

[petter-haggholm.livejournal.com]

Most of what you say, I’ll just stick in the back of my brain to percolate. Part of me is still going But…but, numbers!, but clearly I haven’t thought out what numbers I’m looking for.

Last bit—Why don’t you?—I presume is in response to my saying that I don’t do food responsibly in any sense.

My biggest problem is motivation. Making food for myself is a chore; I have a problematic tendency to default to throwing my hands up and going out to eat, which is irresponsible in every sense, including the fiscal… When I do manage to make myself cook, I have trouble coming up with ideas; I have to persuade myself it’s worth the time and effort; and ultimately, I’m not a good cook yet have disproportionately poor confidence in my abilities. So most of my efforts in the culinary area have to do with manipulating myself into thinking the difficulties aren’t insurmountable…

I should be more responsible. I should eat less meat; I should eat a healthier diet; ethically, I ought to at least consider what I eat and where it comes from. But I don’t, because half the time it’s a struggle to get around to it at all, and the other half is when I’ve failed the struggle.

Re: herding vs tilling

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

You absolutely don't have to go that far north, but because a good agricultural system is so intensely suited to local conditions, and because those change so much from place to place, it's hard to name a large quantity of land that people are familiar with to support this argument. Instead there are a lot of little-ish pieces, which by their sheer numbers amount to a very large total acreage.

It was relatively normal for cattle to 'finish' themselves on grain when fall came along and seeds ripened in their range-- they would selectively pick off seedheads to eat, and thus fatten themselves on a higher-calorie source of food to help get through the winter. It's kind of funny to think of us coming along, doing tons of work even where it's possible (tilling, planting every year, weeding, fertilising) in order to then go to the work of harvesting the grain, and worrying about disposing of vats of cow manure ( http://www.straight.com/article/betting-the-farm )... anyhow, I'm getting sidetracked. I totally agree. I lived in Kelowna for a little while, and that drive up through Meritt and Pemberton and all that top-of-the-world rangeland was so beautiful and those thin rocky soils were so unsuited for anything other than cattle or horses.

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

The problem with any statistics is that, set within language, they are easy to massage. It's easy to say 'we produce more food per acre with conventional agriculture' if you want to say that -- no large-scale intensive farming has been tried in north america to the best of my knowledge, and certainly not in the heavy-yielding grain belts. But we also rely on more oil and waste more food, so if we're trying to get at 'what is the best food system' we have to think hard about what we want.

Where do you shop? The very first step in good cooking should be buying food that excites you to cook with.

[petter-haggholm.livejournal.com]

Safeway, usually, or Save-on, after the gym…once at that market on Commercial around 6th or 7th… I don’t know what sort of food would excite me. My allergies present a double problem—I can no longer eat a lot of the things I want to eat (beans, peas, chicken, ordinary button/portobello/criminy mushrooms, for fuck’s sake); and I tend to exacerbate that by focusing on the negatives. Also, I prefer to make things that refridgerate and microwave gracefully so I can bring them as work lunches (or re-heat for dinner when I come home late and hungry after the gym). That rules out steak, alas…

…I’ve conquered this pessimistic trait in some walks of life, but not in cooking, as of yet.

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

I see that.