In a Viewpoint article on the BBC website, Graham Harvey outlines how conventional farming methods make no sense at all. On the pasture formerly occupied by grazing cattle, grain is grown and subsequently fed to the cattle who would've simply fed on the pasture the farm replaced. Healthy animals feeding from a diverse mix of grasses, clovers, flowers, and herbs--their natural diet--have been replaced by sickly, hormone and antibiotic injected, grain-fed commodities. Both the quality of meat and the quality of the environment suffer dramatically. "Research has shown that, in contrast to most supermarket meat, this beef contains more anti-oxidants including vitamin E, more iron and other minerals, more omega-3 fatty acids and more of the powerful anti-cancer compound known as conjugated linoleic acid."
Rationally, there should be no argument over which farming method to use. Grass-fed beef is being shown in studies to be much healthier. The pastures don't even require input energy. The grasses of the Great Plains in the US supported 50 million bison. Today the grasslands are now farmlands pumped full of chemicals and fertilizers to grow grain and soy to feed similar numbers of cattle. It used to make sense and it still makes sense, so what happened to traditional farming?
"It has been destroyed by political measures to promote worldwide grain production. For more than 30 years, governments in the US and the EU have poured subsidies into the production of wheat and other grains. They have maintained a permanent global grain surplus that has made the production of healthy, grass-fed beef uneconomic."
Harvey points out current government subsidies on biofuels are raising grain prices. Conventional farming methods can only out-compete traditional methods with cheap, subsidized grain, which means there may be a return to pasture grazing in the near future. If farming were "to return to its roots," ceteris paribus, both public health and the environment would profit.
No comments:
Post a Comment