Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
sumption to match) and the reverence in which they are held will ensure that, if there is
any economic or ergonomic profit to be had in employing them for the tasks for which they
were originally bred, there will be no shortage of ploughmen and waggoners keen to take
on that challenge.
But if pressure upon energy resources and land is so great that we have to dig deep for
solutions, then there is no reason why we shouldn't turn to oxen. Many of our traditional
breeds - Jerseys, Herefords, Welsh Black - are suitable stock for breeding working oxen.
One of the factors that may help to give oxen a competitive edge over horses is the fact that
we have less compunction about eating them. One exciting change will be that once again
our cattle will be allowed to keep their horns. A horned ox is easier to handle and it has a
reverse gear.
Veg Miles
One of the initial concerns which prompted me to write this topic, but which now seems
marginal, is the worry that a wealthy vegan agricultural economy might prove to be more
energy intensive than a meat economy in respect of food transport. For a number of years,
I lived in a rural community, with a fairly well developed subsistence economy, as well as
a number of small commercial agricultural enterprises - which for convenience, and out of
politeness I will call Happy Valley. The community, of a dozen or so adults plus a handful
of children, included carnivores, vegans, and almost everything in between: lactovegetari-
ans, piscovegetarians, lactophobes and triticophobes.
I was a stock-keeper there, looking after dairy cows, pigs and the horse. The dairy
produce was consumed by over half the residents, and that subsistence consumption was
invaluable in helping to make the cows viable, particularly after Environmental Health
banned us from selling our cheese at market because it was made in our kitchen. But the pig
products - pork, bacon, sausages and lard - were difficult to shift within the community.
Since everybody at Happy Valley ate together, and took turns with the cooking, even the
few who might have wanted to cook with lard or bacon were unable to. Communal food
tends to be limited to the highest common factor of collective taste, and in this context, that
meant veggie.
Although the pork could be sold elsewhere, this meant that the pigs and the cows were al-
ways regarded as separate enterprises, whereas the vegetables were communally managed.
Yet the pigs were performing a community service, by disposing of waste in the most eco-
nomical way possible, as indeed were the cows by grazing uncultivated land and providing
manure. About 40 per cent of the pigs' feed came from waste produced on site, includ-
ing whey from the dairy, the scrap food from the kitchen, apple pomace, chat potatoes and
waste vegetables from the gardens. When there were no pigs, the whey was thrown away,
and the food scraps, which had they been put on the compost heap would have attracted
