Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
erating in Cheddar where 'the whole village are cowkeepers' and 'before the vil-
lage is a large green, or common, a piece of ground in which the whole herd of the
cows, belonging to the town, do feed'. Milk not consumed at home was turned into
a single huge cheese at the co-operative dairy (another operation where economies
of scale are a great advantage); but families were paid, when they had contributed
enough gallons, with a huge cheese weighing up to a hundredweight, which it was
their responsibility to sell: 'Thus every man has equal justice, and though he should
have but one cow, he shall, in time, have one whole cheese'. Unfortunately Defoe
doesn't tell us what happened to the whey.
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• Livestock production would become more localized resulting in a high level of biod-
iversity amongst breeds, bred to adapt to local conditions.
• Being predominately grass fed in the case of ruminants, and somewhat so in the case
of monogastrics, the quality of meat, milk and eggs would be superior in taste and
nutrition, and higher in Omega 3 oils. The fat content, colour and consistency of
milk would be less predictable, but this would be of less concern in a non-industrial
market.
• Livestock, kept outside and on grass for longer, would become hardier and less de-
pendent on antibiotics. Diseases associated with factory farm conditions would dis-
appear, and when diseases did occur they would endanger far fewer animals. The
days of mass slaughter for classical swine fever or foot and mouth would be over.
With meat being of higher value than now, and with more farmworkers per beast,
animal welfare would be improved.
• Although there would be some risk if cross-country droving were permitted, animal
epidemics would spread slower, making their control easier and allowing some
relaxation of livestock regulations. Animal movement regulations which, for ex-
ample, currently make it illegal for a farmer to graze his cow in a neighbour's field
and bring it back to milk in the evening, could be abolished.
This may be the point at which some readers, if they have persisted this far, will finally
throw this topic away in disgust exclaiming that the author is off with the fairies. There is
a certain kind of person for whom anything that smacks of Luddism is on the same level of
acceptability as Stalinism or paedophilia. The concept of 'progress' is so deeply engraved
upon their psyche that the idea that some of the activities which humans carried out for
thousands of years and then stopped doing about fifty years ago might actually have been
quite sensible is beyond their comprehension.
In fact, all the activities described above are carried on somewhere in the world at this
present time, and mostly they are carried on in countries whose per capita carbon emissions
are much less than ours, by people who are not necessarily any less content or any less
secure than the average British farmer. The measures imposed by a policy of low-carbon
