The environmental impact of organic eating
Rebecca Lazarenko
Issue date: 3/6/07 Section: Focus
Animal rights activists have long assured that you cannot be an environmentalist and eat meat. It is only recently that the rest of the world is recognizing the validity of that assertion.
In Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, activist, author and researcher Erik Marcus states that the production of animal products uses staggering amount of resources - resources that could easily be used to feed people.
"In the United States, for example, this amounts to about 135 million tons per year of grain, of a total production of 312 million tons per year, sufficient to feed a population of 400 million of a vegetarian diet," wrote Marcus, of an ecological study conducted by professors David Pimentel and Paul Ehrlich to determine the number of people the earth can actually support.
"If humans, especially in developed countries, moved toward more vegetable protein diets rather than their present diets, which are high in animal protein foods, a substantial amount of grain would become available for direct human consumption."
Apart for the ethical argument to eliminate meat from one's diet, the environmental impact of factory farming has all but devastated the environment and its natural resources. The unnatural influence of hormone injection, multiple breeding and complete disregard for the animals' quality of life have left not only these animals to suffer but the earth's resources to be nearly depleted in the attempt to produce more.
Even if one is adamantly against altering their diet, a change in the companies they choose to deal with and buy from could reduce not only the strain on the land but that on the human body. Organic meat farming allows the animals to at least live somewhat naturally before they are used in food production. Hormone injection and forced breeding is eliminated, less range is ravaged and the compromising of the earth is less, though still significant.
Apart from adopting a vegetarian, if not vegan diet, to ultimately leave as small a footprint as possible, one should invest in organic farming overall. In addition to leaving the earth, waterways and surrounding air untouched by harsh chemicals, organic crops perform up to 100 per cent better in drought and flood years as well as producing better return for the farmers.
Organic farming, however popular it has become, is still a relatively small business on the world scale. In order to reduce prices and increase production it is necessary for consumers to invest in organics and create an increasing demand for the future of food.
In Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, activist, author and researcher Erik Marcus states that the production of animal products uses staggering amount of resources - resources that could easily be used to feed people.
"In the United States, for example, this amounts to about 135 million tons per year of grain, of a total production of 312 million tons per year, sufficient to feed a population of 400 million of a vegetarian diet," wrote Marcus, of an ecological study conducted by professors David Pimentel and Paul Ehrlich to determine the number of people the earth can actually support.
"If humans, especially in developed countries, moved toward more vegetable protein diets rather than their present diets, which are high in animal protein foods, a substantial amount of grain would become available for direct human consumption."
Apart for the ethical argument to eliminate meat from one's diet, the environmental impact of factory farming has all but devastated the environment and its natural resources. The unnatural influence of hormone injection, multiple breeding and complete disregard for the animals' quality of life have left not only these animals to suffer but the earth's resources to be nearly depleted in the attempt to produce more.
Even if one is adamantly against altering their diet, a change in the companies they choose to deal with and buy from could reduce not only the strain on the land but that on the human body. Organic meat farming allows the animals to at least live somewhat naturally before they are used in food production. Hormone injection and forced breeding is eliminated, less range is ravaged and the compromising of the earth is less, though still significant.
Apart from adopting a vegetarian, if not vegan diet, to ultimately leave as small a footprint as possible, one should invest in organic farming overall. In addition to leaving the earth, waterways and surrounding air untouched by harsh chemicals, organic crops perform up to 100 per cent better in drought and flood years as well as producing better return for the farmers.
Organic farming, however popular it has become, is still a relatively small business on the world scale. In order to reduce prices and increase production it is necessary for consumers to invest in organics and create an increasing demand for the future of food.
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dave
posted 9/08/08 @ 1:54 PM EST
wow, what a presumptive and predictable article. Lets not be so proscriptive based on so little evidence shall we
I come from "the land down under" Aus
where less than 6% of the land mass is suitable to agriculture and irrigation (for organic or otherwise production) uses over 60% of the nations total water supply, producing a mass of agricultural produce of which over 85% is exported supplying less than 4% of GDP
Australia is a land where
a) The vast majority of the content is only suitable for at the most nomadic farming due to lack of soil nutrient and water availability
b) with our modern non-nomadic population base, auto-nomadic agriculture can be achieved by low intensity broad acreage cattle farming. (Continued…)
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