10 GREEN Reasons To Buy Organic Meat

[OfOneEarth]

Okay, perhaps I have drifted off topic.

But lets deal with your later link. Copied straight from it:

Cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution. [how?]

Energy intensive inputs to farming would fall, with fertilizer inputs cut by 95% and sprays by 98%. [fair enough, what about the drop in output though?]

More wildlife supported. [most spurious suggestion yet]

Jobs in the countryside would increase, including a 73% increase in farm employment. [there is no shortage of jobs in the countryside, I assure you, there is a shortage of people looking for the jobs though]

As organic fruit and vegetable yields compare favourably with conventional agriculture, organic farming could, with some adjustment, supply similar volumes as at present, or even increase output if necessary. [rubbish, as I have outlined before, the chance of crop loss or rejction due to lack of quality is always higher in organic systems]

Due to the need to abolish intensive pig and poultry systems in organic agriculture, chicken, egg and pig meat production would fall to roughly a quarter of current levels, making large quantities of grain available for human consumption. [you can't live on grain alone, where is the protein going to come from?! How much land are you going to dedicate to outdoor pigs and poultry production!]

Dairy production would fall by around 30%-40%, unless herds were to be re-established and dairies were to re-open in parts of the country which have lost them. [already ready have a massive lack of milk supply in the UK, in fact we have not met quota for years, we are importing milk and dairy products, how environmentally friendly is that!]

While the amount of wheat and barley produced would drop by around 30% [try 50%] due to lower yields, because far less grain would be fed to animals there could be as much wheat and barley available for human consumption under an organic system as there is at present. [you can't live solely on grain!]

A wholly organic agriculture could actually produce more beef and lamb than at present, with beef production rising by 68% and lamb by 55%. [rubbish- beef and lamb production in this country is curtailed by the lack of animals in the system and poor returns on the end product, there is no lack of land for them, and there is scant difference between extensive conventional beef or lambd and the organic version of the same]

[OfOneEarth]

The recent drop in the price of food is not going to last according to the latest report from the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Written by leading food expert Alex Evans the report argues that the effect of the recent drop in energy prices will soon be overwhelmed by climate change, resource scarcity and water availability. Only a second Green Revolution based on sustainability, resilience and equitability will meet the needs of a world of 9.2 billion people.

Much has been made of the growing population globally indeed most estimations seen indicated that we will to reach 9.2 billion in 2050, although the rate of growth has been slowing down slowly since the 1960s and is predicted to stabilise at around 10 billion in 2200. The GM industry uses the population growth, along with tougher growing conditions caused by climate change to push the adoption of their products on developing, and developed, countries. Ok, so this is really an anti GM rant then?

However as the report shows clearly the world already produces enough crops to feed itself, but that their location, use and allocation is not inline with demand. The fact that the number of people going hungry in the world, around one billion, roughly equates with the number of people overweight highlights this fact. Not true, the reason people are starving is because they cannot afford to buy the food or grow there own, not because it does not exist.

Demand for food, much hailed by the neo-Malthusians and the GMO industry another attack on a fledgling industry which has done nothing as yet however is but one factor effecting the global food supply there are a number of powerful factors that also have a major impact on food security and price:

Climate change, according to the IPCC climate change will lead to an increase of between 30 and 170 million undernourished people. The negative effects of climate change on agriculture will primarily effect countries in lower latitudes, where most developing countries are located. Sever weather conditions and water scarcity caused by climate change will also hit these countries hard, one of the reasons being their lack of resources to deal with these terrible twins.

Energy Security. The drop in energy prices are, the report argues, temporary, lack on investment in new exploration, dwindling stock, and the increasing use of crops for bio-fuels (The single largest factor in the price increase in 2008) absolute lie- biofuels had NOTHING to do with price rises, in fact biofuels were killed off by them, speculators in the commodity markets caused the price increases, as they removed their cash from the stock markets, biofuels were only coming online because of LOW prices all mean that once the present recession is over e can fully expect energy prices to rise again. Food prices, for which fertilisers, on-farm energy use and transport make up a large part, will be pulled up fast by this.

Water Scarcity. Nearly half a billion people live in countries that suffer from chronic shortages of water, by 2050 this could rise to 4 billion. Some of this is a direct effect of climate change but unsustainable water extraction and usage caused both by population growth and water intense agricultural methods is by far the biggest factor. Agriculture uses 70% of the worlds water supply. true, even organic farming can't do without the water needed


Competition for land. Increased yields from existing agricultural land will not in itself be enough to meet increased demand. New land will need to be brought into food production. not in my name it won't! You're not felling the rainforest or ploughing up grassland wilderness to feed anyone, ammonium nitrate will feed us However there is many demands on land, from biofuels production, expanding urban areas, that tend to take over some of this most productive agricultural land, timber, carbon sequestration and forest conservation all compete with food for land use. Equally importantly is the unsustainable nature diesel use, ploughing, recreational tillage, all of which is carried out by organic farmers too of existing agricultural techniques which is leading to the deterioration of existing land stock and there for lowering yields.

Another factor placing stress on the food chain, and health services around the world, is the changing nature of demand in developing countries, with the increased wealth particularly in Asian markets local diets are becoming more “Westernised” and meat orientated with an emphasis on highly processed rich foods.

World Bank estimates that demand for food will rise 50% by 2030, with the demand for meat rising 85%. This disproportionate rise in meat will add further stresses to the water supply. It takes 500 litres of water to grow a kilo of potatoes, 1,900 for a kilo of rice, 3,500 for a kilo of chicken and 15,000 for a kilo of beef. evidence?

[OfOneEarth]

All of these things together leads the author to conclude that the world could be rapidly heading towards a “food crunch” just as hard as the present financial one. The most hard hit will be the poor and those countries that rely heavily on imported food. one reason the price of food needs to go up, to curtail waste and excess consumption in developed countries

To deal with the wide range of threats to the world’s food supply, and feed a growing population the report calls for a second Green Revolution.

The first Green Revolution in the 1960 and 70’s transformed large parts of the world’s agriculture, it has fed the world through a period that saw the population doubling. At ist heart was a research lead approach to farming. Four key drivers powered the Revolutions:

Seed development, by producing hybrid dwarf grain seeds that pushed more of the plants energy into producing gains and not long stalks.

Irrigation. Massively increasing the water available to the fields.

Fertilisers, use of non-organic agrichemicals exploded in the 1960s, massively increasing yields.

Mechanisation- much wider spread of machinery. all true, Borlaug saved millions of lives and got a Nobel prize for it

While these four drivers lead to huge increases in total production they also have created huge legacy issues, the first is that it was usually the most productive land that was used, marginal land was ignored, it benefited large land owners who had the scale and resources to make full use of the innovations not the smaller poorer farmers. The carbon foot print of the food chain has risen, now accounting for 32% (This also includes the transport emissions), and with as much as 70% of fertilisers not being used by plants has lead to large scale water pollution.

The report calls for three major themes to under pin the 2nd Green Revolution, resilience, sustainability and equitability.

Resilience in that the coming years food production will face a series of shocks, from extreme weather conditions, adapting to climate change, energy price instability, as well as slower onset stresses such as soil degradation and prices inflation, as well as policy decisions such as protectionism and import taxes, as well as human attacks on infrastructure by terrorism and civil insurrection.

Sustainability, food production is both an active element in and victim of climate change, through on farm energy use, transportation, deforestation, poor husbandry, over ploughing over-grazing, and ineffective use of resources, water, fertilisers or energy. Many of these issues are a direct product of the first Green Revolution and need to be addressed to ensure a future productive and on-going food supply.

Equitable, as has been stated earlier, the fact that one billion people suffer from malnourishment is not that there is not enough food in the world but that the world’s poorest do not have access it to or for that matter an entitlement to food. they cannot afford it! Don't blame the green revolution for this! While the first Green Revolution benefited the large land owners at the cost to the smaller ones so the second has to address the key issues of providing food at an affordable cost amongst and world’s poorest both rural (75%) and urban (25%).

The report poises two paradigms of agricultural innovation. The first is that favoured by the large “life science” companies the GMO route, where the next generation of GMOs will produce seeds capable of dealing with abiotic stresses such as poor water supply, poor soil. sounds good So far the GMO industry ahs specialised in biotic issues, mainly by producing seeds capable of dealing with heavy doses of herbicide and pesticides, so called ‘Roundup Ready’ seeds. However despite their poor record on actually delivering products that address developing country needs the next generation R&D is showing signs that plants can be designed to allow their roots to absorb more nitrogen this allowing for a 50% plus reduction in fertiliser. I thought all GMOs were dangerous etc etc, now some aren't?

Against this potential advance the report notes that during the first Green Revolution by 1993 over 700 bests, 200 pathogens and 30 weeds have developed a resistance to the powerful agrichemicals at the Revolution’s heart. The green revolution was about breeding, not agchem use, Borlaugs research was entirely on crop breeding and countering the effect of fertiliser use

Against this technology based approach, whereby farmers become clients, and therefore dependent on the GM seed providers I have ALWAYS been dependant on seed suppliers, chemical suppliers, machinery suppliers, and christknows who else, I don't have the resources to carry out intensive R&D- these organisations DO the report poises a knowledge based approach based on working on whole systems rather than single products. Integrated pest management, introducing predators and parasites that feed on pests, Integrated Soil Fertility Management, which uses a combination of inorganic fertilisers with organic techniques to increase yield, retain moisture and the same develop soil structure, ‘minimum tillage’ approaches I have already practiced min-till and direct drilling, and the estate has been doing it in excess of 20 years. It is a system organic farmers simply cannot use which reduces energy inputs, prevents soil erosion, and traps carbon in the soil all show huge potential to enable both large farms and more importantly the 85% of world farms that are beneath 2 hectares.

Drip feed watering can reduce water requirements by 50% as opposed to the predominant flood or furrow systems. this is nothing new, but the cost of these systems is way higher than the older more inefficient type

All these areas require much more research into how they can work with local conditions, crops, and people.

These approaches are a radical break from the Green Revolution which centred on material input, to a massive knowledge development and transfer, combining R&D, science, innovation and local experience and know how.

They equally are just as efficient on a small farm as a large one, and can make a material impact on more marginal land, help halt and reverse erosion and cam help reclaim land already stressed by climate change or intensive chemical based farming techniques.

The report, coming from such a institutional think tank, is a superb recommendation of whole systems solutions, and a series of ways to develop an international food framework that both reduces the carbon food print of agriculture and creates an innovative agricultural knowledge based approach which is sustainable and adaptable to local conditions. It also provides a detailed rebuttal to those who argue that growing demand can only be met with GM crops. GM crops are a side issue and really have nothing to do with this!

[OfOneEarth]

In a roundabout way then, I have already dealt with the main points in my first couple of posts.

I am at a loss to understand why apparently one cannot be in favour of green or sustainable policies without having unexplainably devout views toward:

Organic farming, even though by their own admission people on the whole know very little about it in practice, certainly a whole lot less than conventional farming per se, and in my experience the public know very little about this anyway.

Biofuels: all apparently the work of the devil and responsible for food price rises and who knows what else.

GM crops: a tiny issue yet it is made out to be a massive and wholly detrimental enterprise, any idea why the appeal of roundup-ready corn is so strong? Or why industry is so keen on cotton that is genetically modified to produce blue fibre instead of white? Or why farmers in the US are so keen to grow crops modified to be resistant to corn borer or cotton boll worm?

[NaturalChoices]

Hold on mate, have a job to do as well as this.

Will come back to you but probably not till the end of the weekend, got 25 bird watchers to feed tonight, 60 or more hunters to do an appero for tomorrow, and 10 friends comming over on Sunday to fix the roof of my solar power shed that got blown off in the storms.
Why all three events landed on the same weekend I have no idea.

But to give you the response you deserve require more time than I have now.

All the best, have a good weekend

Pete

[NaturalChoices]

One question though as you seem to in a very fertile farrow today. Optimal population- just how would you half the world's population?

[OfOneEarth]

Draconian birth controls.

And the way I see it, I suppose this will be more ethical than:

-Some kind of 'cull' or whatever you wish to call it, I don't think we're quite at the stage where we need to go all 'logans run' :D

It will also be a lot easier and cheaper to implement than massive carbon reductions, you shalt not eat more than one egg/steak a year etc etc.

Passive measures have already been tried, and lowering birth rates is already happening in the developed world anyway. Tax breaks for single child families, altering the social care system and so on. None of this is particularly blue sky thinking; it doesn't need to be based on fanciful thinking or as yet undeveloped technology.

I abhor the idea that mankind seems to believe it is possible to overcome the problems caused by technology (fossil fuels, internal combustion engines, pollution from industry and waste from rampant consumerism) by trying to further develop and refine that technology. It makes absolutely no sense to me.

The way I see it, mankind needs to reduce its numbers, reduce the consumerist rubbish we insist on making and buying (capitalism largely out the window then) and look to the land to once again, feed, shelter and clothe us. I'm not saying we need to go back to living in caves and living by firelight, but we need a drastic and total rethink about how we go about living. I'm not saying you can't have a car either, or have people in offices working computers, but something needs to change.

If anything the drastic shift from fossil fuels to biofuels will drastically reduce the food supply and the cost of living will rise. The biggest problem facing alternative or sustainable or green lifestyle choices is that fossil fuels, (even with oil at $200/ barrel) are too cheap.

[NaturalChoices]

Interesting article from New Scientist

DOOM-MONGERS have got it wrong - there is enough space in the world to produce the extra food needed to feed a growing population. And contrary to expectation, most of it can be grown in Africa, say two international reports published this week.

The first, projecting 10 years into the future from last year's food crisis, which saw the price of food soar, says that there is plenty of unused, fertile land available to grow more crops.

"Some 1.6 billion hectares could be added to the current 1.4 billion hectares of crop land [in the world], and over half of the additionally available land is found in Africa and Latin America," concludes the report, compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

If further evidence were needed, it comes in a second report, launched jointly by the FAO and the World Bank. It concludes that 400 million hectares, straddling 25 African countries, are suitable for farming.

Models for producing new crop land already exist in Thailand, where land originally deemed agriculturally unpromising, due to irrigation problems and infertile soil, has been transformed into a cornucopia by smallholder farmers.

As in Thailand, future success will come by using agriculture to lift Africa's smallholder farmers out of poverty, aided by strong government measures to guarantee their rights to land, say both reports.

Proof, as if it were needed, that the chaos of producing for markets dominated by foreign-based multinational capital is the root of the continent's food crisis.

[OfOneEarth]

I certainly don't disagree with any of that. Africa certainly has some land which would be put to use. Certainly there is a lot of land in the FSU and eastern europe that is just sat idle and waiting for the expertise and more importantly capital to make us of it. No capital, no large scale machinery to grow the stuff or lend you money to pay for any of it.

Africa is also highly corrupt and unstable. One would find it difficult in the extreme to set up a large and efficient agribusiness there. No wonder foreign investment is not forthcoming.

Friends of the earth and co will bemoan the dumping of commodities on Africa and the third world, and complain that farmers in the third world don't have a chance to compete and sell on the world market because of tarriffs and trade barriers and subsidies.

Maybe that is partially true. But I know for a fact few UK farmers can compete on the world market. How is an African farmer going to do any better?

In places like Australia and the US, a relative handful of people sow, cultivate and harvest thousands upon thousands of hectares. All in air conditioned comfort, using machines that cost north of $400,000 dollars. Labour costs per tonne are minimal. Only seed, fertiliser and machinery form the bulk of the costs.

FOE and co want African farmers to be able to grow things and get out of poverty. A worthy and notable cause. But a wholly impractical one. For a start, the climate in Africa is not favourable for growing anything with relaibility unless you have the technology to do it. African farmers might have hundreds of people availible to them, armed with hand hoes, who already spend their lives toiling on pan handle plots to grow scant yields of cash crops or subsistence foodstuffs for themselves. They already struggle to achieve even this. How on earth are they supposed to compete with their American counterparts?

It is foolish in the extreme for FOE and the like to advocate the development of a country by growing and supplying greedy westerners with commodities. It is in fact cruel to advocate a policy that ties them to the land. Only by getting their populations OFF the farms and into factories can a country develop- less than 2% of the UK work in production agriculture. This figure is even lower in the states. If Africa is to develop they must follow the example of parts of Asia. They first establish a sensible and secure food supply, whether by imports or investment and development of their existing agricultural production base. Once their population can be sustained without having most of their people tied to a hand hoe, they can have foreign investment in and educate their people, moving from a primary indsutry to a secondary one. Thailand is an interesting example- they produce Volkswagens over there now, and have lower labour costs than much of the west. People work in the tourism and manufacturing industries, they earn much more than they ever could working as rural peasants.

Africa will never have a future in the volatile commodity markets. And the same is true of many third world countries. Half of Russia and the Ukraine is poised to drastically expand their agricultural industries, after which, the supply will become so massive, I can't see how even european farmers will have a chance at competing in commodity production unless they are protected by protectionist EU policy or subsidies.

Thinking about it, the only way one could hope to increase demand for grains in the world is to implement biofuels using them as a feedstock. Ironic then, since so many pressure groups seem content to condemn biofuels on account of how they will starve thousands in the third world.

It is also important for the investment and finance industry to be regulated regarding speculating in commodity markets. Recent price rises in oil and grains have been caused by mass market speculation, and given over 100% increases in price, despite relatively modest changes in demand or supply. This clearly corrupt and immoral practice should be heavily legislated for the good of citizens worldwide.

[Phil]

Start living with a vegetarian girlfriend... that'll get you off the meat :-) I hardly ever eat meat now, and that's simply because I'm the cook in the house, and I can't be bothered to cook two meals at once.

I do think it's rather funny though that my friends who are not in anyway against vegetarianism, MUST have some bit of meat in every meal. Where I cook pasta + sauce, they'll shove in some choritso, where I make a cheese roll, they have to stick a bit of ham in it.