Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
10
Keen, David (1995), 'The Benefits of Famine',
The Ecologist
, 25:6 Nov/Dec 1995.
11
The enclosure of English common fields for sheep in the 14th to 17th centuries displaced agricultural peasants to
make way for an inefficient animal based industry, but it can hardly be said to have caused a famine. The great famine
of 1888-1892, which affected virtually all of Ethiopia but was most severe in the north, was largely caused by the ex-
ceptionally rapid spread of the disease Rinderpest amongst cows. It was the loss of oxen for ploughing that triggered the
famine and added to the very slow recovery. Spiess, H (1994),
Report on Draught Animals under Drought Conditions in
Central, Eastern and Southern Zones of Region 1 (Tigray)
, United Nations Development Programme, Emergencies Unit
for Ethiopia,
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/eue_web/Oxen94.htm
12
Dando, W A (1980),
The Geography of Famine
, Arnold.
13
Rapaport, Roy A (1967),
Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People
, Yale University
Press.
14
Harris, Marvin (1974),
Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches
, Vintage Books.
15
Vayda, A P
et al
(1961), 'The Place of Pigs in Melanesian Subsistence',
Proceedings of the 1961 Annual Spring
Meeting of the American Ethnological Society
, ed. V E Garfield, pp 69-77; cited in Rapaport (1967), op cit. 13, p 64.
16
This is assuming the sustainable meat-eaters start the cycle from a lower human population base than the vegans,
because pigs take up some of their land. Since the pig population is stable, the sustainable meat-eaters have the same
amount of land to multiply into as the vegans, at the same rate of population growth; and since the sustainable meat-eaters
start from a lower population base, this will take more time.
17
Vegan Organic Network (n.d.),
Vegan Food: Six Reasons Why
, Vohan News International, 1.
18
Motavalli, Jim (n.d.),
So You're an Environmentalist; Why are You Still Eating Meat?
www.Emagazine.com
,
cited
in
Growing Green International
, 9.
19
De Haan. C
et al
(1997),
Livestock and the Environment: Finding a Balance
, FAO.
20
Lomborg, Bjorn (2001),
The Sceptical Environmentalist
, Cambridge, 2001.
21
Motavalli,
op cit
.18.
22
Earth Policy Institute, 2006,
EcoEconomy Indicators
(USDA data)
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Grain/
23
Stuart, Tristram (2009),
Waste: Uncovering the Global food Scandal
, Penguin, 2009.
24
Pollan, Michael (2006),
The Omnivore's Dilemma
, Bloomsbury, p 100, citing W J Rorabaugh,
The Alcohol Repub-
lic: An American Tradition
, 1979, which includes the Cobbett quote on p 59.
25
These figures are derived from Murphy, Jerry D (2007),
Biomass, Biofuels, Biogas and Beverages, Presentation
to the Institute of Brewing and Distilling
, 23 Feb 2007, and are based partly on results obtained from a plant in Sweden.
These figures are broadly in accord with Richards, I R (2000),
Energy Balances in the Growth of Oilseed Rape for Bi-
odiesel and Rape for Bioethanol
, Levington Agricultural Ltd, the British Association of Biofuels; however, Richards
has higher energy costs for processing of around 75 per cent. A DTI study gives lower energy costs for processing than
Murphy, see Elsayed
et al
(2003),
Carbon and Energy Balance for a Range of Biofuel Options
, Sheffield Hallam for the
DTI Sustainable Energy Programme; while David Pimentel and Tad Patzek have concluded that ethanol production from
corn requires 129 per cent as much energy as the fuel produced, see Pimentel, D and Patzek, T (2005), 'Ethanol Pro-
duction Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood; Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and sunflower',
Natural Resources
Research
, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2005.
