Vegetarian dilemma?

[bigdave60dog]

Originally Posted by Paul mabbott

Fine - cattle, sheep &c are products of human development - unnatural, would not survive without humans - but they have taken over vast swathes of the world eliminating much wildlife .... anyone interested in wildlife and the health of the Earth would want to minimise the numbers of these .... greatly ....

Not at all. Just the means by which they are managed. It could be argued that arable crops are much more environmentally unfriendly and use much more energy than do livestock, but there again it is the management that is at fault, not the crops.
Dave

[Paul mabbott]

Originally Posted by bigdave60dog

Not at all. Just the means by which they are managed. It could be argued that arable crops are much more environmentally unfriendly and use much more energy than do livestock, but there again it is the management that is at fault, not the crops.
Dave

Only in part. For sure, intensive cattle-rearing is more damaging to the environmrnt, more polluting than an extensive system with stock moved in small numbers over large areas; similarly, intensive cropping of monocultures will be more damaging than organic agriculture with small patches of a wide variety of plant species.
However comparing like systems with like, cultivation of staple crops will generally be a far more efficient use of land area and natural resources than rearing livestock. Think about natural trophic webs: the most efficient capture of resources occurs at the plant level, every step up the trophic web involves an amount of waste - up to 90%, I recall.
Take the extreme example of real-life practice today: in USA and its colonies, maize and other cereals are intensively grown over large hectarages and then fed to cattle in factory sheds. If the x amount of fodder is adequate to feed the n amount of cattle that will contribute to the food of y humans then it will be more than sufficient to feed the humans - the waste of bovine digestion and other side-effects is eliminated.
There would be problems of growing in purely arable systems which is why I would like to see an organic mixed system but with much lower meat (especially cattle) production/consumption.

[Johnny Redgate]

Originally Posted by Paul mabbott

There would be problems of growing in purely arable systems which is why I would like to see an organic mixed system but with much lower meat (especially cattle) production/consumption.

Which more or less brings us back to where we started with most of us meat-eaters advocating a place for non-intensive livestock production in the national and global farming economy and a lower consumption of meat overall. It is an individual decision whether to eat meat or not.

Anyway, by coincidence I've just received a copy of Simon Fairlie's book "Meat - a benign extravagance" for Christmas. It looks very interesting. Whilst reading it, I shall try not to just look for justifications of my own current stance on the issue.

[bigdave60dog]

Nuff said really. "Natural Trophic webs depend on an interaction between Plants, Animals, Fungi, Bacteria etc living in a delicate symbiosis.
Man is among the animals in this but we have somehow stepped out if our niche.
We can never go back to living in harmony with our environment so we have to do our best.
Dave

[Cotham Marble]

Originally Posted by Johnny Redgate

Which more or less brings us back to where we started with most of us meat-eaters advocating a place for non-intensive livestock production in the national and global farming economy and a lower consumption of meat overall. It is an individual decision whether to eat meat or not.

Certainly personal choice is a key issue, however there are questions both about the basis on which choice is made, the information that supports thatchoice, and about wider societal and economic influences (which is after all the point from which this thread started).

There is a fundamental problem with matching diminished intensity of production in the face of increased demand, with pressure to resolve the inequalities in global farm economics caused by subsidy regimes and with the pressures on subsidy resulting from challenges to national government finance following the banking crisis. 2011 will likely have seen a modest rise in UK farm incomes, but that will still leave two thirds of UK farms with income of less than £20,000 p.a of which more than half comes from public subsidy. And that is in a year when global food prices stayed at near record highs.

How less intensive meat production could be met without increased subsidy is no academic problem - we've already seen UK supermarkets turn to US producers for cheaper products in response to modest gains in UK meat prices. If consumer choice is to keep eating meat, and also to only buy meat below a certain price ceiling, then low intensity UK production must involve a commitment to increased subsidy for supply of niche product for consumers whose household budgets are not constrained by low income. Or pu another way general taxation is to be used to underwrite the production cost of a luxury product available only to those that can afford it.

With the overall annual farm subsidy in the UK currently around £1.7 billion and net economic benefit from agriculture amounting only to around £4.5 billion, it's clear that current levels of subsidy are unsustainable, quite apart from the perverse impact that they have upon a supposed free market. If the UK is to keep producing meat then it will either do so in a mix of an intensive (likely highly intensive) commercially competive sector and low intensity niche production, or in a monolithic wholly intensive sector. The current UK animal welfare rules are not commercially sustainable in the face of international competition and this too will begin to impact upon the UK market as consumers make choice on price not quality or assured origin of product. If the subsidy regime is to stay as it currently is, then UK meat production will become increasingly dependent upon year on year increases in subsidy, merely to keep it as a top end product in UK super markets.

The reality is that with a growing global population, and a growing expectation of lifestyle quality within that growing population, all systems of agriculture are under massive pressue to intensify, with failure being met with removal of investment. UK farmland prices have been out of synchronisation with production yields for over four decades, the return on the capital investment in UK farming simply would not be tolerated in any other area of business. For the last forty years the position has been sustained because farm land ownership has been primarily a specualtive investment, with food production an incidental management activity. The 2008 banking crisis is likely to have been the pivotal point at which the future profit yield from increases in land value reduced critically relative to the potential return from food production, that is food production using the maximal advantages of intensification.

The UK can not remain immune from global changes in a market that is global. Eating free range, organic, non antibiotic boosted, non GM, UK produced meat may satisfy certain sensibilities - however it is a irrelevance to the bulk of UK agriculture and consumers which are both inextricably part of the global food market. Giving up, or reducing meat consumption is a globally relevant action which anyone concerned about the global environment should consider very seriously.

CM

[Johnny Redgate]

Originally Posted by Cotham Marble

The UK can not remain immune from global changes in a market that is global. Eating free range, organic, non antibiotic boosted, non GM, UK produced meat may satisfy certain sensibilities - however it is a irrelevance to the bulk of UK agriculture and consumers which are both inextricably part of the global food market. Giving up, or reducing meat consumption is a globally relevant action which anyone concerned about the global environment should consider very seriously.

CM

I think I follow your argument here but I'm not (as yet) entirely convinced of the conclusion. Whilst the global market in agricultural products is no doubt important, it seems to me that in the UK (and EU) we seek to manipulate it in all directions (subsidising our own production so it can compete with imports to which we do not insist the same stringent animal health/welfare, food safety and environmnetal rules apply). For example, if we did not take imports from non foot and mouth free countries we would still be able to feed swill to pigs thereby saving greatly on the use of crops that we could eat ouselves in pig feed. We can and do raise sheep and cattle in this country substantially on grass, and could probably do more so if we opted for slaughtering slightly more mature animals. Large areas of the UK grow grass very well indeed now that the trees have been cut down. I am not a great believer in organic cattle and sheep production where the (non-organic) animals are outdoor reared mainly on grass (or heath, moor, saltmarsh etc).

I have difficulty with the argument that we should stop eating home produced meat because meat production elsewhere (and especially in feedlots in the USA) is so wasteful of grain. It is the figures from these feedlots that badly skew efficiency statistics for livestock farming. I know we use concentrate feeds in the UK (principally fed to pregnant animals) but these are manufactured using poorer quality grains and byproducts such as pressed oil seed cake and sugar beet pulp.

There are also other issues around food miles and food security. We have been told for years that it is important to keep food miles to a minimum so the more UK produced food we eat the better. Getting human digestible food from the grass growing areas of the UK would seem important in this. Meat adds important variety (and nutrients) to a diet, even in small quantities. We should weigh any potential global environmental damage caused by eating UK produced meat against a vegan alternative, which might easily include a range of grains, pulses, roots, leaves etc produced overseas with, as I said, potential issues of food miles, cash crop versus staple food production, and environmental degradation (irrigation problems?) in the country of origin together with food security issues (if it should come to it) in the UK.

If only things were simple. To tell the truth, as I alluded to in a previous post, I fear for the future of small-medium scale livestock farms here (and abroad) and the progress towards ever more intensive systems you outlined is real enough and supported bt the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. We could help ourselves by insisting that imported food meets the same regulations as home produced food.

I spend a lot of time raising a relatively small number of lambs on a small farm for the meat and breeding sheep trade and make a small income which needs to be supplemented from elsewhere. I am not ready to give up just yet but that's not because I'm addicted to meat (thanks, Paul M) nor because I have avoided thinking about the issues. Sorry for the ramble