Discussion Board

Polyculture is being touted as the answer to feeding the world's population with the smallest ecological footprint. Cornell is the latest to come out in support of this. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct07/diets.ag.footprint.sl.html

I was disappointed to read in Barbara Kingsolver's new book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" vehement arguments against veganism. It deosn't help that her daughter is learning the standard nutritional misinformation about the necessity of animal products in the diet.

I find it sad that NONE of these local food proponents and polyculture studies take into account the environmental costs from a health perspective of a diet that includes even a small amount of meat and dairy. Medical treatment is expensive and toxic, wreaking a very high cost to the environment. Research into new "cures" uses a ton of resources and in some cases, such as genetic research, is downright scary in their potential to really mess things up.

I've tried having calm discussions with some of these folks and they are absolutely close-minded about the subject. They argue that one HAS to use animals to get maximum use out of non-arable lands. Um, how about just not trying to use the non-arable land for food production?! Leave it for wildlife. Or use it for your home or workshop or grain mill.

Thank you for letting me vent about this.

I could just about go off like a pressure cooker about this! First of all, the 1.9 acres for meat eaters' footprint is way low, if I am remembering correctly from some of the organic gardening literature I've read over the years--seems like it should be more like 5 or 6 acres. Or maybe 10? anyway, it is much higher than they are saying here (sorry, no linkies today).

Secondly, the Kingsolver book was a big disappointment to me, too. Her argument that meat is okay because you can grow it on non-arable land is facile and weak. Okay, if you live in the mountains of Pakistan and raise goats and a couple times a year have a little goat stew, FINE. But her audience lives here and they're just looking for an excuse to be okay with eating meat 3 times a day. Almost nobody in this country (okay, perhaps a couple growers in Kingsolver's neighborhood, but otherwise who??) is growing meat animals on non-arable land. If you want to bring up cattle raising in the West on land too dry to farm, BRING IT ON--the land out there is being utterly destroyed by the cattle. Books and books have been written about this--sorry, no linkies right now...

Ahhh, so good to vent! But now my computer monitor is all covered with steam...

--Anna

The article seems to say that the low-fat vegetarian diet that was used for comparison purposes contained dairy. That would certainly change the apparent contrast with diets containing varying amounts of meat! It looks misleading to me.

landed over here as this was a discussion about polyculture, polyculture is much better than monoCulture i guess

The slow food people drive me nuts for the same reason-- the emphasis on meats and dairy.

If you get a chance, Chile, could you give a quick summary of Kingsolver's dismissal of veganism? I haven't read the book and don't really plan to, but I'm interested to know what she has to say on this matter.

Great points. I was thinking the same thing. They are cutting down rain forests for that very reason.

I totally agree. I listen to a lot of so called progressive radio and absolutely nobody talks about the tremendous ecological cost of raising farm animals versus going vegan, especially low fat vegan.
Every time I hear a discussion about the water crisis in California the so called experts never say anything about the fact that most of the fresh water is being used to raise farm animals. If we got rid of some of the subsidies for raising farm animals the cost of meat would go way up and we would no longer have a water crisis, and the health crisis would also start to fad away.
I just finished creating a website called MeditationsOn.com. In it I have 10 free ½ hour meditations on how to reverse the degenerative illnesses with a vegan diet. I am hoping that I can get some vegans to send a link to anybody they know who has heart disease, diabetes or cancer.
It is difficult to convince friends and family to go vegan for humanitarian reasons, but when a person has to take medication everyday for the rest of their life for a degenerative illness, than maybe they will consider going vegan.
I am always surprised at how many people I meet who meditate daily, but they know nothing about the health or environmental benefits of a low fat vegan diet.

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