Animals in Agroecosystems - Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems - page 284

C HALLENGING S PECIALIZATION IN A GRICULTURE

Not so long ago, the concept of specialization was
unknown to farmers. Integration and enterprise diversifi-
cation were the underlying principles of farm operation.
As we lost this approach to food production, our commu-
nities lost their local food distribution systems and most
of their family farms, and consumers lost the organic
connection with both the people who produced their food
and the animals from which it much of it came. Today,
with livestock animals sequestered into CAFOs, fed with
grains produced half a continent away, and their carcasses,
eggs, and milk transported hundreds and thousands of
miles to market, its not surprising that the typical con-
sumer gives no thought to what it took to get the steak to
his table.
As we have seen elsewhere in this topic, specialization
in agriculture is ill designed to meet the multiple needs of
society for abundant, healthy food, produced in ecologi-
cally sound ways that provide sustainable livelihoods.
Reintegration of livestock and crops helps reverse the
trend toward specialization and economic concentration
in agriculture, pointing the way toward more local food
distribution networks, viability for smaller-scale, family-
run farms, and more self-contained, closed-loop agroeco-
systems that don't rely so strongly on purchased inputs.
Reintegrating livestock and crop production really
strikes at the heart of what's not sustainable in conven-
tional agriculture. For this reason, supporting the integra-
tion of livestock and crops — in the marketplace, at
research institutions, in the public policy arena — can go
a long way toward making change happen. Such advocacy
underlines the need for integration while increasing aware-
ness of the huge social and environmental costs of
specialization and concentration.

FIGURE 19.12 Locally produced eggs being sold by the
grower at a farmer's market in Santa Cruz, California. Eggs
are among the most energy-efficient of all animal products, so
the consumer buying them at a farmers' market is supporting a
more sustainable food system in a variety of ways.

Distribution

In the present food system, food commodities are typi-
cally transported long distances before they are finally
consumed, using large amounts of fossil fuels and ensur-
ing that most of each consumer dollar goes to processors,
distributors, brokers, wholesalers and other “middle-
men” instead of to the farmer. For alternatives to this
distribution system — more localized food networks —
to become stronger and more prevalent, there must be
tighter geographic and economic connections between
the producers of animal products and the consumers of
those products.
Production of livestock on integrated farms is well
suited to this transformation. Such production is necessarily
smaller scale than production in CAFOs. High-volume,
centralized CAFO production goes hand-in-hand with a
high-volume, centralized processing and distribution sys-
tem designed to distribute eggs and meat and dairy prod-
ucts to a national and even global market. Correspond-
ingly, the low-volume, geographically dispersed
production from individual integrated farms fits best with
a more local processing and distribution system.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

1. What changes would consumers need to make

in their diets in order to promote the reintegra-
tion of animals into farming systems?

2. Can vegetarianism and integrated live-

stock-crop production systems be combined?

3. What are some of the primary indicators of

sustainability most appropriate for the analysis
of integrated farming systems?

4. How can we reconcile production needs with

the ethical treatment of animals?

INTERNET RESOURCES

Alan Savory Center for Holistic Management
www.holisticmanagement.org