Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Nonetheless, if the outlying land is uncultivable heath, inaccessible without livestock, the
four course livestock farmer might reasonably claim that his system, with its extra mutton,
is more productive than the stockfree system
Be that as it may, it would be foolish to pretend that feeding nutrients to animals could
ever be as efficient as eating the nutrients ourselves. Moreover the performance of any
farming system is reliant upon the skill of the farmer to reach a high level of efficiency -
and the mixed farmer, dealing with both livestock and crops, needs to be at least twice as
skilled as the arable farmer. What these whole farm assessments show is that the differ-
ence in productivity between organic livestock farming and organic stockfree farming is
nowhere near as great as is often made out. Bandying around figures such as a 10:1 ratio is
therefore, in cases where good organic husbandry is practised, a wild exaggeration.
To some extent, the stance which the thoughtful person takes in respect of animals in
agriculture must be related to the stance they take on the use of artificial fertilizers. In a
world where chemical fertilizers were banned or unobtainable, the advantage of a vegan
diet would be slim indeed. If arable crop and meat production took place on organic mixed
farms where the whole rotation operated at less than 1.5:1 conversion rate, then the produce
of those farms, added to the meat provided by beef and pork fed entirely on pastureland
and crop residues would probably produce at least as much food as could be obtained from
universal organic vegan production.
Put another way, the superior efficiency of a universal vegan diet can perhaps only result
in a significant increase of food production if it is 'subsidized' by petrochemical inputs
which a livestock-based system can do without.
Can Organic Farming Feed the World?
The matter also carries worrying implications for advocates of organic farming. If the
world went over to an organic farming system many of the potential gains which might be
made from reducing meat consumption in wealthy countries, or even eliminating it com-
pletely, could not be obtained because much of the land upon which the livestock had been
supported would be required either to supply some grain to replace the meat foregone, or
else to provide fertility.
Placed under stress, a global organic farming system might find itself in a parallel situ-
ation to that experienced in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries where, in order to feed
increasing numbers of people, meat consumption goes down, the proportion of arable crops
increase, and the 'grain frontier' makes increasing progress into grass territory - resulting
in less meat in people's diet and a decline in yields because of a shortage of animal and
green manure. The short term solution to this problem, we should not forget, was the elim-
ination of about a third of the population in the Black Death - an event that the modern
historian might consider to be not so much fortuitous as 'Gaian'.
