Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
livestock husbandry do 'turn the clock back' in some respects, but the result is in many
ways attractive, and more in line with the public's expectations of what our farms should
be like: a variety of animals, farm horses, healthier stock, pigs you can scratch, tastier food,
people actually working in fields and so on. It comes closer to the Arcadian picture of Eng-
lish farming which is depicted so mendaciously on much of our food packaging precisely
because it is what the public want to see.
There is also the possibility that livestock farmers might be held accountable for any
methane and nitrous oxide emissions significantly over natural and social background
levels. Vegans might, reasonably enough, insist upon some sort of reward for their forbear-
ance, and the obvious one is to give them priority to other extravagant crops, notably en-
ergy. It is fanciful, but not illogical, to imagine a society dependent upon renewable energy,
where vegans are allowed to use biodiesel and biomass fuels to power tractors and private
vehicles, while meat and dairy eaters are restricted to horse or bullock power, or else pub-
lic transport. Well, which would you choose? With such a caste-riven transport system, the
sporting highlight of the year would probably be the Boat Race which, instead of pitting
dark blue against light blue, would see the reds battling it out against the greens. My money
would be on the carnivores, not because of any inherent superiority in their diet, but be-
cause they would be more used to exercise than the vegans.
Ruralization
Reliance on renewable energy raises questions about where we live. Firewood is one
resource that points towards a change in settlement patterns, but it is by no means the only
one.
The sun, the wind and the rain dispense their bounty reasonably equitably across the
whole of the British Isles. The atmosphere envelopes all of us with a homogenous blanket
of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon and other elements. Soil and minerals have been laid down
over the ages less evenly in terms of their usefulness to humanity, but nonetheless, every
place has its geology. The only great gift of nature which some places have access to and
others lack is the ocean.
These are the elements from which we humans must generate all our energy and food,
derive our livelihoods and build our civilizations, if we are not to rely on fossil fuels, nuc-
lear energy or technofix. They are not all concentrated into a few oases (except in deserts),
but spread out around the globe. In order to use these resources we have two options, or
rather there is a spectrum spread out between two opposing strategies. On one hand people
can go out to the resources, which means dispersing our settlements and farming resources
in situ
. Or we can bring these resources to people, which means tapping them at source
and conveying them to concentrated settlements. The first option, or end of the spectrum,
is what we term rural - the other end is urban.
