I do agree that people need to:

1) pollute less; (personally I would like a lot less acid rain from the mid-west, thank you very much!)

2) use less resources; (How about starting with smaller homes, fewer cars, etc)

3) eat less meat; (smaller portions less frequently in dishes)

4) spread out and not concentrate in the cities; (Cities are like CAFOs – put people out to pasture and they will not impact the land as badly).

5) do things in a sustainable manner. (all sorts of options there)

If we got rid of all the subsidies (farm, oil, auto, steel, housing, etc) then the true costs of things would be better reflected in the market. Simple example: If gasoline cost $10/gallon people would use less. The recent uptick and subsequent drop in use of gas neatly demonstrated that. Same for other things in a free market economy. Price points work.

I do not want to see the government controlling prices or deciding what we should eat or buy. That just creates too much opportunity for corruption, graft and bad bureaucratic responses.

Raising livestock on pasture on small farms is a sustainable use of the land and yes, the meat should cost more. It’s a delicacy, a part of the meal, not a huge hunkin’ haunch to be chowed down.

I am concerned about the evangelizing of veganism and vegetarianism. It is not a diet that works for everyone everywhere and meat is not bad for everyone. We have different evolutionary adaptations. Veganism is not sustainable in most climates including the northern climate for most of the year (we often have six months, or more, of snow). The vegan diet is not a locally sustainable diet. It requires pill popping and long distance transport of veggies for much of the year. Meat, locally, properly and sustainably raised, in moderation is an important part of our diet.

Now on to some numbers: We raise pastured pork. We don’t feed grain. Our pigs thrive on pasture/hay and whey year round. I’ve been calculating the carbon foot-print for our farm. It comes out to negative 46 lbs of carbon per pound of pork. Yes, negative. Our farm is a massive carbon sink. Traditional farms are that way – the extreme opposite of factory farms / CAFOs. So, even if our pigs were farting out methane as generously as cows, which they don’t, our pork would still be -46 / 23 = -2 lbs of carbon per lb of pork. So eating our pork helps your carbon foot-print. In other words, we’re producing green ham! We also produce eggs. How Seussian…

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/
http://HollyGraphicArt.com/
http://NoNAIS.org

fact: cows emit methane, a greenhouse gas.

fact: properly grazed pasture sequesters a lot of carbon dioxide.

fact: no one knows for sure how this balances out. in order to determine whether cattle – in a specific system – aggravate or alleviate global warming, one would have to measure exactly how much methane they – and i mean those particular cows – emit and how much carbon they sequester. i welcome any ideas on how to take these measurements.

A few weeks ago when Joel Salatin spoke at Stanford, I heard him make the sensationalistic statement that if all beef and dairy cows in the world were raised his way, all of the carbon released in the atmosphere since before the dawn of the industrial revolution would be sequestered into the soil. Absurd in many ways and very reckless, Salatin also ridiculed vegetarians and described how he loves to feed their children sausages when they visit the farm.

I think I’ve also seen in these pages that shipping meat is less environmentally costly than shipping grain, a claim I’d like to see more treatment on in Civil Eats.

In any case, thanks again for the post and keep it up.