Can sustainable farming feed the world?
Posted by Yankee on March 21, 2006 - 3:44pm
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: farming, organic, sustainability [list all tags]
Philpott writes:
To an extent, the problem is one of semantics, centering on the definition of "sustainable." To many green types, places like Whole Foods and Wild Oats teem with "sustainably produced" stuff -- everything from T-shirts to apples, chicken and eggs, even versions of Twizzlers and TV dinners. But the great bulk of it falls under the rubric of industrial-organic -- like the wares on offer at Wal-Mart, only a little less so, these goods depend on a culture of cheap and plentiful crude oil and labor.The cheap-oil problem has certainly gained traction among greens. Blogs devoted to "peak oil" abound; this very blog seems like one at times. Most of these discussions, though, devolve into sniping about biofuels and hybrids. It's important to wonder how we'd get around in an era of super-high oil prices.
But I don't understand why more people aren't worried about what we'd eat.
For the time being, the violations that these big-box organics producers seem to be committing have to do with some of the additives that they put in their foods, or how many cows are crammed into a single feedlot. But I see another concern, more related to peak oil. The real benefit of small organic outfits is that they're not big enough to distribute to large companies like Wal-Mart, so they end up focusing on more local markets. This solves two problems: (1) the food is produced without petroleum fertilizer, and (2) the food doesn't have to travel very far. (As we reported a long time ago, given the choice between local and organic, local often makes more sense.) As long as we continue to encourage centralized and mass-produced organics, we can be sure that they're going to be traveling thousands of miles to get to our kitchens.
So what do we do? It's sort of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if -you-don't scenario: while we should relish the fact that consumer desires appear to be forcing big agribusiness to apply organic principles, we are opening the door to a watering down of the standards by companies that don't exactly have stellar environmental and ethical pasts. Says Jason Mark of the SF Chronicle:
Critics also question whether the agribusiness model can harmonize with the organic ethic: A 100-acre monocrop planted with a single variety of vegetable and picked by migrant workers hardly fits with the organic vision of ecologically sustainable and socially responsible farming. The challenge is how to reconcile organic agriculture's emphasis on biodiversity and small- scale production with corporations' emphasis on uniformity and mass-marketing.Update [2006-3-21 16:48:31 by Yankee]: The organic vs. local issue has come up again recently at Slate. (via Treehugger.) Here's another issue to analyze:So what's a consumer to do? If you value foods free of pesticides and genetically modified organisms, by all means look for the USDA organic label and let your dollar be an expression of your values. At the same time, remain vigilant about efforts to water down the organic standards and work to ensure the integrity of the organic name.
But the best guarantee that your food will be produced according to environmental and social principles is to meet the people who grow it. Support your local farmers' market and become friendly with the vendors there. Or get a subscription with a Community Support Agriculture program, in which you get weekly food deliveries from a specific farm. Those outlets represent the original ethic of the organic food movement: That by knowing your farmers, you will truly get to know your food.
It's likely that neither Wal-Mart nor Whole Foods will do much to encourage local agriculture or small farming, but in an odd twist, Wal-Mart, with its simple "More for Less" credo, might do far more to democratize the nation's food supply than Whole Foods. The organic-food movement is in danger of exacerbating the growing gap between rich and poor in this country by contributing to a two-tiered national food supply, with healthy food for the rich. Could Wal-Mart's populist strategy prove to be more "sustainable" than Whole Foods? Stranger things have happened.
The catch is that a lot more of us are going to have to be farmers. Maybe almost all of us.
I agree folks with any available land will start to take advantage of it. I'd love to see more composting and roof gardens in urban areas. At least if we can start to grow some of our own veggies.
The real issue will be that every mile that someone drives for pleasure or natural gas used to power air conditioners will ultimately be a theft of food from the poor. Imagine the political battle over food vs. fuel...it won't be pretty.
I think the best first move is to reduce meat consumption by 50%. Then all that grain we produce can feed more people instead of animals.
I don't think that's as much of a solution as many think. It's only the last few months that cattle are corn-fed. And they don't have to be.
Animals are a good way to store energy, and a good way to make use of food sources humans cannot digest themselves. The land used for cattle is too dry to grow people food. The grain fed to animals is generally much poorer quality than the grain people eat.
I suspect what will happen is people in some areas will eat a lot less meat, while people in others will eat more. If you're living in cattle country, it makes sense to eat beef.
Water needed to produce 1 pound of wheat: 25 gallons
With that same water you could irrigate the "land too dry to grow people food" and grow 10 times as much, calorie wise, in the form of vegetables, fruits and grains.
Animals are pretty much the worst way to "store energy", over 90% of the caloric value is lost as grains are turned into meat.
Irrigation takes a lot of energy. The point of sustainable agriculture is to grow what grows naturally in your area, not to build more oil-powered irrigation systems.
OTOH, you don't have to feed them grain at all. You can't eat grass. The cow can.
I'm just saying is that using meat to feed people is inefficient compared to using the same resources to grow vegetables, grains and fruits.
Whether or not it is possible to convert over all cattle ranching activities into ordinary farms is another question.
I agree. I have a suspecion that the statistics on water use is tainted by groups prompting animal rights or a vegetarian diet.
>OTOH, you don't have to feed them grain at all. You can't eat grass. The cow can
Most of the the feedstock that animals can consume is Legumes which don't require fertializer input like corn and wheat. Currently surplus corn and wheat is feed to animals because its available, and it bulks up the animals quicker.
Percentage of energy return (as food energy per fossil energy expended) of most energy efficient factory farming of meat: 34.5%
Percentage of energy return (as food energy per fossil energy expended) of least energy efficient plant food: 32.8%
Source: Organic Gardening and Sustainable Agriculture Facts and Statistics
Ubik, you're committing a bit of a non-sequitor here...and Leanan is kind of at fault for bringing up a point that is largely orthogonal to your main point (50% reduction in meat production). It's a sad day when two people who agree waste their time arguing.
Your point about consuming more grain directly, rather than via livestock, is a fair one. The same goes for your point that meat consumption should be cut in half. But you are failing to address Leanan's point that livestock can convert largely indigestable stuff (ie. grass, legumes, shrubs, and brush) to human-digestable food (meat). And this can all be done with a bare minimum of labour or fossil fuels as input (see the book above).
My understanding is that 70% of grain produced in the US is fed to livestock (source: Joel Salatin's excellent, but unfortunately named, You Can Farm). This is absurd, especially when you realize that cattle, sheep, and goats are quite inept at digesting grain (but this is not true of pigs, chicken, and several varieties of farmed fish). Cultivating land so that you can feed livestock something that they aren't particularly good at digesting is a type of lunacy that will end with increasing transportation fuel costs. It is my belief that meat production would only fall slightly if land used to grow grain was converted to pasture for ruminant livestock to graze directly. Mr. Logsdon actually makes the argument that this change could bring an increase in per-acre production, and all with much less fuel consumption.
As for water, all the water consumed by a livestock animal is not wasted. With pastured livestock, much of it spread onto pasture as urine. In effect, you get some irrigation for free just by watering your cattle. The same goes for the protein, carbohydrates, and fiber. The pies can either be left for the benefit of the pasture, or used for vegetable production.
Well said.
There is a sustainable way to grow meat animals and vegetables on the same land. This used to be called crop rotation. Vegetable to grains to grass and back to vegetables again over a 5-7 year period. Grazing the cattle on the grass is very efficient and there is that manure to spread on fields that are going into vegetables or grains. You need wonderful design of the farm to allow water and fences to be in the right place as you move the animals around but it used to be common practice.
I can't find the link, but there was a Smithsonian magazine article a few years ago about intensive rotation where a small farm (less than 150 acres?) had cattle, pigs, chickens, grains, grass and vegetables all in a complex cycle one following the other. I remember the chickens followed the cattle and picked apart the pies looking for seeds and grubs. The chickens were modified free range using large movable pens (12 x 12 feet cages on wheels) that concentrated them over recently grazed land. Everybody got moved daily. Feed efficiency was very high and I think the only fertilizer was phosphorous in low doses.
High intensive grazing is making a comeback see Texas link here and Wisconsin link here. Clearly if this can work in these two extremes the rest of the country could adopt.
The down side to all these approaches is they can only be scaled so far. One operator can't raise 5000 head of cattle plus chickens and rotate crops, etc. You need multiple farms/operations to do that large of production. In a climate where everything is based on margin and volume this approach loses every time. Hence the consolidation to very large specialized crop or animal production in recent decades.
If you want to do that sustainable you need fertilizer too, or you'll end up exhausting the ground in a few years. That fertilizer would either be made by the famous Haber-Bosch process or come from animal dung.
Not All crops deplete the soil. Legume plants self fertilize, These include alfalfa, peas, soybean, and may others. Unfortunately the majority of crops planted (grains, corn, etc) require fertializer inputs. Prior to the use of chemical fertilizers, farmers rotated fields, where one or two fields might contain a harvestable crop and the remained where planted with grasses to revitailize the field. However, this is less productive because it requires about 4 times the land for same amount of crops produced. With the Green revolution (chemical fertializers) the same farmer could produce crops on all of his land.
Now the problem is reversing that process is going to be very difficult. In order to go back to the old system, farmers will need to aquired 150% more land than they currently own, or we need to shrink the population by 75%.
Although I suspect that we would not need to go all the way back if we plant a mix of Legumes and grains on the same fields (at the same time) and scale back fertilizer use. Perhaps we can get by with only increasing the farm land use by 30% to 50% (guestimate) and by curbing wasted food.
The numbers quoted so often about the cow's wter per pound of beef. Hides a big truth, Life takes water.
It hides another truth, Most cows are totally consumed by the industrial processes of the World we live in. Not just the beef we get at the grocery.
Meat cattle can be totally grown off of grasses, and they do not have to be forced into feed lots. We do that because we want to supply money for the stock holders( pardon the pun) in a profitable business.
Sustainable Meat and Dairy are possible. Getting all your protein requirements from veggies is very hard if you have to grow everything yourself. Sure you can get a lot of proteins from wheat, oats and other grains, but Look at European Protein consumetion before Beans were added to their diet and you will see that it was pretty poor.
A full blending of our food stuffs is what is most sustainable. Goats, Sheep, Cows, for land that can not be used for farming. If you don't over tax the natural sytems to grow your food, you can get a lot more out of the land you do have. We have a lot technology that we can use to increase our food production. Someone on another thread, stated that they had Food fish, in a hottub in their back yard.
We can live SUSTAINABLE!! We just have to think out of the box we have been living in for so long. And there will be a population reduction, how that happens I don't know, but it will happen. We don't like looking at that because we see our loved ones in the cross hairs, But if you take the massive use of Fossil imputs out of the mix, The population of 6,500,000,000 people is just to large. We see the taxing of the whole system as it is.
Again, I do not know, who lives and who dies, but 6.5 billion can not for much longer be the world's population.
I agree that all those grassy plains not good for wheat or corn would be good food for cattle, but isn't all that exactly the same stuff that people want to use for cellulosic ethanol?
But in general my red meat consumption has been nearly ZERO for the past two weeks. mainly because I am moving and need to eat down my food stocks. Which is largely tied up in dried beans and grains.
Lactose (as in "lactose intolerance") is a sugar, not a protein. AFAIK it doesn't get denatured by heat.
Chris
http://www.pcrm.org/health/veginfo/protein.html
A mountain of nutrional science reveals the health benefits of a very low animal product diet. Unfortunately, the power of agribusiness and the junk food industries use their immense resources to progagandize the public into thinking meat and dairy are necessary (totally untrue - even the USDAs position paper on vegetarian diets admits this).
Frankly, meeting nutrional needs is a simple thing, as evinced by studies showing populations in robust health despite consuming a diet of 90% or more of a single plant protein source (corn in the case of the legendary Tamahara Indians). There is no such thing as protein-deficiency with a diet made of real food (i.e., scientists who want to study it have to create a frankenstein diet devoid of protein to see deficiency symptoms). The term used is protein-calorie malnutrition, which happens not because of a lack of protein, but because of a lack of food. Most plant foods have more than WHO recommended % of calories of protein. Of course for best results many whole plant foods should be eaten, but that's obvious.
As it stands, naturally skinny people (with inefficient digestive tracts or metabolisms) are envied. But come a famine or simple extreme cost food, they will envy people like me with a metabolism that puts a hybrid moped to shame. Guess who'll live longer? The person that seemingly gets 100 miles per calorie! Meat will get really expensive, becuse meat production is so inefficient. The most efficient diet is veganism, which is sure to be a shocker to nearly every American, who is used to artery-clogging red meat.
A calorie of meat takes feeding the animal killed, at the 10 calories of petroleum per calorie of animal feed. Since the animal uses up many more calories than is yielded on slaughter, the problem becomes obvious. Bye, bye Outback Steakhouse! That is some food for thought for Americans!
I do not think that the poor will be reduced to eating veggies alone.
But you are right, few folks know how to cook, If they can't read the boxes directions. I buy in dry and in bulk whenever possible or practical. My neighbors don't blink if they see me bend over and grab some plant and eat it out of my front or back yard, even if to them it is just a weed.
Early cave paintings don't show prehistoric man planting maize or wheat, they show hunters killing animals to eat. When food was scarce they grazed on veggies. Only upon the discovery of agriculture did humans begin to congregate in large enough numbers to damage the enviornment. Our closest primate relative, the chimp is omniverous. Furthermore we have enzymes in our pancreas to break down meats. Deer and cattle do not. The have complex digestive systems which contain bacteria to convert cellulose to absorbable carbohydrates. I have had many freinds who were vegans and none of them looked healthy. Their hair did not shine and their complexions were poor. I would be interested to see a large study of blood chemistries of Vegans, Couch potatoe cardiac time bombs, and those with a healthy balanced diet. I think the smart money is on #3.
Furthermore, humans, like some other primates require an external source of vitamin C. Tomatoes, and citrus fill the bill. The discovery of using two sticks to make fire (making sure one is a match) and tomatoes allowed early humans to leave the tropical forests. The invention of Fire is what started us off on becoming the automotive ape. Using exosomatic energy gave us our niche - to use up all the fossil fuel and put the carbon back into circulation. Ice ages started becuse carbon sequestration went a little too far, reducing the greenhouse gas.
"I don't claim that in the future everyone is going to have to be a farmer. Only those who want to eat will be farmers."
After much prodding by myself and my local councilwoman, the Community Board will probably approve two locations on 82nd Street for New Greenmarkets on Saturdays and Sunday. One will be in a schoolyard and the other in a church parking lot. Starting in July, I will finally be able to walk to a greenmarket!
I highly recommend that people start getting more involved in their local community governments.
We may not be able to feed the country or the world with local organic agriculture, but if more people demanded it, we would at least have more of it (i.e. more people might go back into agriculture and it might actually become profitable). Wouldn't this be better than not advocating local organics at all?
It also looks like Sus. Ag. practices not only used less fossil fuels, but improved carbon sequestration.
I've been watching the very same thing in almost any suggestion from die-hard environmentalists - whether it is organic farming feeding the whole world, windmills powering each car or relocalizing billions of citizens back to farms. It all looks exactly the same to me - the last thing people talking about these things care about is whether they can possibly work or what will be the price of them.
It is the "green sound of it" that matters, nothing else. But what does green mean? For example, nobody gives a second thought on the fact that Mesopotamian civilizations ruined their topsoil and collapsed even though they were using strictly organic farming.