When Science Media Abandon Science

Imagine a future where no farmer in the world can grow a crop without paying exorbitant royalties to a multinational corporation. Discover magazine doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong with that future. Like other science media that seem to embrace genetic engineering as “real scientific breakthrough” and view those opposing it as scientific neanderthals, Discover is in fact ignoring the facts and the science around this technology.

After recently reading an article on GMOs in the magazine it was obvious to me how delicately the author danced around the science on GMO crops, cherry-picking the information he wanted to convey and doing his best to paint European anti-GMO activists as science deniers. Like most media I see supporting biotechnology, there is a concerted effort to misdirect the argument towards the scientific and away from the political. In fact, they try hard to make the point that the political is trumping the scientific. But sometimes the political is more important than the scientific because there are real issues at stake.

Discover says that “As transgenic crops have spread around the world without the apocalyptic consequences activists initially foretold, objections to the technology have shifted away from science.” In other words they couldn't stop GMOs with a scientific argument, so now they are resorting to simple politics. But why this would happen is never fully explained or justified. That maybe these activists are different from the ones who initially brought up the health and safety concerns about GMOs (a very real statistical possibility) is never explored. Maybe this issue has always been part of the case against transgenic crops, or maybe early activists could not have envisioned the greater designs of biotech companies (control of the world's food systems) when they began their fight against GM crops with real fears about the unknown.

 

Meat: A Benign Extravagance

As a follow up to the previous essay I wrote on livestock I have some new statistics of note to mention that come from the book Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlie, which I have finally been able to get a copy of.   I feel like the title of the book is misleading because it doesn't seem to be endorsing meat or a meat diet at all.  I think maybe the title was chosen to provoke.  In the end Fairlie seems to say that we will have to dramatically reduce the animal products in our diet to make it more sustainable, but it does advocate keeping livestock as a part of a sustainable food system.

Of major note in the book are the estimates of land use required for production of different food products. There is a lot of information Simon Fairlie gives to support that a straight comparison of meat to vegetables or grain is not as simple as propaganda would lead us to believe. Taking into account that livestock can be grazed directly on pasture (that may not be suitable for grain or vegetable crops) instead of being fed grain or hay, the impact of meat production on human land use for food production in an ideal production system could be far less than the 10:1 ratio often given by vegetarians and vegans as the reason not to eat meat. Grain-fed beef is the least efficient meat in terms of land use, fitting the 10:1 ratio commonly stated as the ratio of land required for amount of food value offered for all meat. Taking into account the ability of pigs to live entirely off food waste and by-products (and the fact that they do in many parts of the world), the potential ratio for pork production is comparable or even lower than that for most vegetable and grain crops. Food waste cannot, in the same way, be fed directly to grain or vegetable crops to produce more food. Statistics are given in the book that estimate that were it legal in the UK to feed food waste to hogs, the waste would be able to supply pork amounting to one sixth of the country's entire meat consumption. Another interesting point is that meat is a more nutritious form of food, so the straight ratio of weight or volume of food cannot be compared directly, a fact most anti-meat advocates ignore. In other words, one must eat more grain and legumes to supply as much nutrients as offered by a comparable amount of meat (of course this varies depending on the meat and type of grain or legume).

Heritage Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs foraging in an apple orchard

 

Another enlightening statistic is the amount of land required for production of vegetable oils, which is about the same as that required for beef in terms of m2 per kilo produced. The amount of land required for butter production is half what is required for vegetable oil and lard is possibly even lower, since pork takes a third of the land to produce that beef does.

In analysis and comparison of different food systems the vegan organic permaculture system is the most efficient in terms of land use and sustainability, using nearly half the land of the livestock permaculture system. They both end up using an equal amount of arable land, but the livestock system uses additional marginal land that would not be suitable for crops.  And whereas the vegan system uses a tractor and biofuel, the livestock system uses draft animals for farm power.  These systems are more efficient than either organic vegan or an organic system with livestock (which is the least efficient), which are not integrated systems set up to recycle all waste and maximize sustainability. Though less efficient than other systems, the organic livestock system is still more sustainable than the chemical vegan or livestock systems. Conventional agriculture is able to feed about twice as many people on a comparable amount of land, but given that it isn't sustainable in the long term, it should not be considered a viable option. Fairlie refers to the Global Opponents of Organic Farming (GOOFs), who advocate the conventional route over the organic, claiming organic agriculture won't be able to feed the ever-growing human population because it uses too much land.

Keeping livestock for a more sustainable food system

Have you ever traveled through the farm fields of the Midwest and wondered why there is nothing but corn and soybeans as far as the eye can see? I'm sure it's not a question many Americans ask themselves because, by and large, we've lost our ability and our need to make connections between our food and the earth it comes from. All those fields of corn and soybeans are part of the huge portion of the United States that's devoted to producing the meat and dairy products that dominate our diet.

But not all Americans eat so much meat and dairy. Many vegans and vegetarians are opposed to the eating of animal products for environmental and/or animal rights reasons. From the perspective of the animal rights activist, animal production is inhumane, while to the environmentalist it is an inefficient use of land. Eating lower on the food chain is thought to have much less impact on the planet because, given the amount of plant matter required to feed animals, it would be more efficient to eat the plants ourselves.

It's easy to see how anyone could come up with many arguments as to why in the 21^st century the industrial production of meat and other animal products could be considered cruel and unsustainable. It's estimated that livestock worldwide account for 20 percent of the total terrestrial animal biomass, a number that clearly illustrates our impact on life on the planet. Vast acreage is devoted to growing grain to feed livestock that are raised in inhumane conditions in factory farms and feedlots, all to provide a meat-based diet for those in affluent countries. As well, a UN report found that livestock are currently responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. Those consuming meat and animal products have little awareness of the lack of sustainability of and cruelty inherent to their food system.

Unfortunately, in arguments against animal agriculture often no distinction is made between the production of animals in factory farms and the more humane, small-scale keeping of livestock that has been the human norm for thousands of years. It is true that a vegetarian diet can require less land for a given population size, however, in terms of sustainability, there is evidence to support that making use of livestock in our food production system will be more sustainable over the long term. Livestock were raised sustainably for thousands of years before modern times, so it's obvious that livestock are not the problem; the number of them and the practices we use to raise them today are the problem. In the coming decades we will all have to find alternatives to fossil fuel if we are to survive. By doing away with livestock production we would be tossing out one of humanity's simplest and most valuable alternatives to fossil fuel and a vital means of lessening our impact on the planet.