[Greenbuilding] food choices

[sanjay jain]

Hi John,

I fully agree with you about local agriculture and soil degradation. My wife and I recently gave up coffee and chocolate due to it's carbon footprint (and social justice issues). We try to buy local organic whenever possible, including from farmers markets. Our biggest challenge is choosing between local conventional and distant organic, when those are the only choices available.

But I don't understand why you are mixing up the issues? The issues are:

Plant Agriculture Vs Animal Agriculture
Local Vs Distant

Organic Vs Conventional
Mono-cropping Vs Diverse


Local, organic, diverse plant agriculture is ideal. The simple fact is animals eat plants and therefore plant agriculture has a lower footprint. There are very few places that can only be used for animal grazing. Lentils are very low impact, there are lots of varieties, can be grown in diverse places and fix nitrogen in the soil, but they aren't the only plant crops, there are multitudes of grains, beans, fruits and vegetables too. The Chinese have been growing rice on mountains for thousands of years. I'm not suggesting we do the same, but the argument that some land is only suitable for grazing is disingenuous, how about growing hemp, apples, grapes or forestry? We could even consider letting some land return to the wild!

By some estimates, up to 70% of farming land and resources go to producing animals for food, think of how much land and resources would be freed up on a plant based diet. Given the land requirements for animal agriculture, the likelihood of a typical city can be fully supplied at current demand by local grass fed beef is zero, but would more easily be fully supplied with local organic plants based foods.


To say that local grass fed is sustainable, is akin to saying that it's ok to drive a hummer because I run it on locally produced bio-diesel. Sure a few can do it, but it's can't be done on a global scale, therefore it's not sustainable. Yes we can argue about population control, but hey, if you can't give up meat, why do you expect to others to give up children?btw - I don't have children or consume meat, I'm just pointing out the arguments...

Finally there is some research to indicate that grass-fed beef is not all that great anyway, see: http://news.discovery.com/earth/grass-fed-beef-grain.html

Animals produce a hell of a lot of Methane and Nitrous Oxide, 72 and 289 times! worse than Carbon Dioxide over a 25 year period. 


~sanjay




________________________________
From: JOHN SALMEN <terrain at shaw.ca>
To: 'Green Building' <greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2011 2:20 PM
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] food choices


I would agree – carbon footprint is about how food is produced and can vary dramatically depending how it is produced, harvested and marketed. Locally raised beef on native grassland I am sure would have less end harm than mono-cropped machine harvested lentils 1000’s of miles away.
 
The single biggest concern for food production is really soil and nutrient loss and Wes Jackson of the land institute  long ago asserted that traditional grazing of cattle on perennial grassland resulted in less soil loss than the best of amish farming practices. 
 
For food to continue I think we have no choice but to support local food/farming initiatives and rather than demanding what type of food we want we need to consume what is available locally and for most farms that would include livestock of some sort or other.  For example the use of a biodiesel tractor or draft horses consumes roughly ¼ of a farms cropland. The tractor however is dependent on a successful fuel crop where the horse has a more varied diet and returns unutilized carbon to the soil as manure rather than exhaust.  A tractor may be more efficient but that efficiency doesn’t translate into more food production as there is a relationship between its efficiency and the cropland it consumes.
 
Making a farm work is a complex task and if we (as consumers) simply demand lentils then a farmer will be forced to crop from land (sloped or prone to runoff) that is more suitable for grazing (if we are looking at conserving soil) and the end result is the destruction of the soil base. If we support local farms then we have to support and encourage diversity.
 
John
 
JOHN SALMEN ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
station design & millwork
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