[Scpg] how animals (will) save the planet By Joanie Blaxter Edible Ojai Winter 2011 The issue of Meat

Tue Mar 20 16:13:37 PDT 2012

Edible Ojai & Ventura 2011 The issue of Meat
http://www.ediblecommunities.com/ojai/winter-2012/winter-2012.htm

http://www.ediblecommunities.com/ojai/winter-2012/how-animals-will-save-the-planet.htm 

how animals (will) save the planet

Emacs!

By Joanie Blaxter
photos by Carole Topalian

Industrialized humans have become so disconnected 
from the act of producing what we consume, we not 
only have no practical idea about how to do it, 
we have no understanding about who and how many 
must die so we may eateven a vegan diet.

Anyone who has gardened or farmed organically 
knows it inevitably comes down to the same 
choice. Manure and mulch can nurture your soil 
only to a limited degree. Ultimately either you 
must supplement with (vegetarian) artificial 
fertilizers, in which case you are also forced to 
use pesticides because otherwise your (unhealthy) 
plants will be consumed by insects or
 you must 
nourish your soil with animal byproducts (blood, 
bone, etc). Why? For a simple reason: Such a 
cycle is what most closely mimics how enrichment happens in nature.

Realistically, how can one nonviolently feed 
starving soil? Let predators do the killing for 
you and then steal their food to put on the 
garden? When the slugs and gophers take all your 
produce before you can get to it, does it become 
OK to kill them? If your organic produce is 
purchased in the store, does that mean no animals 
died to produce it or were spread on the soil to 
enrich it? Dying happensall the time, all around 
us, invisibly. Dying must happen in order for our 
life, all life, to be supported. The most we can 
claim is we didn’t put an animal (one we could see) in our mouth and chew.

In 2006 the UN Food and Agriculture Organization 
released a now well-publicized report stating 
that 18% of the world’s manmade greenhouse gas 
emissions were attributable to livestock 
production. Shockingly, that is more than the 
total produced by all forms of transportation 
combined and has recently led to a call from the 
UN for a global reduction in meat consumption. 
There is one major problem with this data, 
however. These figures represent the effects only 
of large-scale feedlot operations, not livestock 
living naturally on grass. Animals living healthy 
lives on local, small, diversified farms are not included in these figures.

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 
clarifies: “Much of the carbon footprint of beef 
comes from growing grain to feed animals, which 
requires fossil-fuel-based fertilizers, pesticides and transportation.”

Eliot Coleman, author of The New Organic Grower 
and host of the TV series “Gardening Naturally,” 
hits the carbon emissions ball away from 
livestock and squarely back at the petrochemical 
industry. “The culprit is not meat eating but 
rather the excesses of the corporate/industrial 
agriculture. The UN report shows either great 
ignorance or possibly the influence of the fossil 
fuel lobby with the intent of confusing the 
public.” And he adds, “If I butcher a steer for 
my food, and that steer has been raised on grass 
on my farm, I am not responsible for any 
increased CO2
A vegetarian eating tofu made in a 
factory from soybeans grown in Brazil is 
responsible for a lot more CO2 than I am.”

Joel Salatin, farmer/rancher and author of seven 
books on sustainable pasture practices and animal 
husbandry, goes a step further. Since plants 
remove carbon from the air and fix it in the 
earth, he argues that animals living on pasture 
improve soil quality with their manure, thereby 
actually reducing carbon emissions.

Thomas Harttung operates the world’s largest 
community supported agriculture (CSA) program 
through his Aarstiderne farm in Denmark, where he 
grazes 150 head of cattle. “With proper 
management, pastoralists, ranchers and farmers 
could achieve a 2% increase in soil-carbon levels 
on existing agricultural, grazing and desert 
lands over the next two decades.” This is an 
astounding claim when some experts estimate that 
only a 1% increase in soilcarbon is necessary in 
order to capture the total equivalent of all the 
world’s greenhouse-gas emissions.

If Harttung’s figures are correct, then proper 
management of livestock grazing is a powerful 
tool for reducing carbon emissions globally. 
Furthermore, it means the consumption of locally 
produced, pastured meat, dairy and eggs actually 
improves our environment by fixing more carbon 
into the soil than is emitted in the process of producing these foods.

When humans support animals to do what they’re 
designed to doherbivores eating grass, chickens 
eating bugs, pigs rooting in open fields, farm 
animals basically living healthy, protected lives 
on open pastureit appears this may very well 
have a more positive ecological impact than not 
just factory farming, but also than eliminating animal products from the diet.

This perspective comes as no surprise to 
indigenous peoples. The native tribes of this 
country, for example, have always seen killing 
for food as a necessary part of their stewardship 
of Mother Earth. In fact, there are no reports of 
any indigenous peoples ever voluntarily eating 
only a plant-based diet, only tribes that were forced into starvation mode.

That the death of one being leads to the birth of 
another is seen as sacred beyond words and to be 
welcomed, not resisted. Martin Prechtel describes 
this perspective through the Mayan concept of 
kas-limaal, which he translates as “mutual 
indebtedness, mutual insparkedness” in his book 
Long Life, Honey in the Heart. A Mayan elder in 
Guatemala explains to him, “The knowledge that 
every animal, plant, person, wind and season is 
indebted to the fruit of everything else is an 
adult knowledge. To get out of debt means you 
don’t want to be part of life, and you don’t want to grow into an adult.”

In other words, in this culture in particular, we 
need to revive the tradition of honoring every 
blessing we receive with the recognition that we 
then become indebted to the giver. You cannot 
step out of the cycle of life and death in order to avoid this indebtedness.

To believe that you can is the essence of 
immaturity. All you can do is embrace it with humility by honoring your debts.

Someone recently said to me that she had just 
acquired two chickens as layers and, through 
observing them, she feels she could never eat 
them. I wonder if her hens are free to roam? 
Because if so then surely she must have observed her own chickens eating bugs.

Biologically related to vultures, chickens are 
carnivorous. They eat anything that moves. Or 
anything that doesn’t. If they get the chance to 
feed on a kill, any kill, they will. You can 
always tell if a hen has been force-fed a 
strictly vegetarian diet. Her yolks are a pale 
yellow, not the robust orange of an egg rich in 
omegas, and her whites (the protein) are flat, not full.

And then there’s the matter of the two roosters 
that were born alongside those two hens. Chickens 
breed in a 50/50 ratio. For every hen acquired 
for laying, a rooster somewhere has been killed. 
And what about when her layers die of old age? If 
the owner won’t eat them, her remaining chickens 
would love it if she gave the old girls to them. 
The chickens would be healthier for the feast, as would be their eggs.

To believe that you are able to stand outside 
killing is to attempt to “not be indebted,” as 
the Maya would say, to refuse to grow into an 
adult. Beyond asking if what I put in my mouth 
“has a face,” the deeper question is “What are 
the broadest consequences of all my eating 
choices?” And for that we must look at the 
long-term effects on the whole ecological system 
and sentient being that is Gaia.

The quick answer isthe 10,000 years that 
humanity has been raising crops has wreaked more 
ecological destruction than the previous 10 
million. Why? Because whenever a plow is put to 
the ground, the soil is degraded. Plowing exposes 
the earth to sun, rain and wind and allows 
precious topsoil to wash into the sea. There are, 
of course, various parts of the globe where wise 
farmers have learned to imitate the cycles of 
nature rather than work against them. However, 
not enough. Desertification directly due to 100 
centuries of unsustainable agriculture now 
blankets large areas of the globe
 and continues 
to grow. As always, the earth provides the 
direction we need. The key lies in looking at how 
life has successfully evolved over millennia. 
That picture has always included humans, animals 
and plants in a mutual stewardship of our home 
which puts more fertility back into the earth 
than is removed in the harvest. To presume to be 
able to somehow remove one’s self from that 
natural order could be described as the height of 
arrogance or ignorance. But isn’t that exactly 
what westernized humans have been (disastrously) 
attempting to do for centuries now?

As much as you can, grow your food. There is no 
more humbling nor exacting education. It will change you, forever.

Joanie Blaxter is the co-leader of the Ventura 
chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation and 
member of the Ventura Ag Futures Alliance. After 
raising her daughter by herself in a small town 
in Vermont, she moved to Ojai where she daily 
enjoys a year-round growing season and snow-free 
driveway. She gratefully acknowledges The 
Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith and highly 
recommends reading it as a way to get the inside 
of your head scrubbed out and re-arranged. To 
learn more about thriving through eating 
sustainably and the worldwide similarities of the 
diets of healthy indigenous peoples please see 
westonaprice.org. Contact Joanie at joanieblaxter@ gmail.com.

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