Video: Joel and Daniel Salatin of Polyface Farm
Click to viewThose who read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" will recognise those names. Basically, Pollan's book is really about whether eating animal products can be healthy for us and the planet. He goes and visits cageless chicken farms, he talks to monoculture corn farmers in the Midwest, he buys a feedlot steer and goes to visit him. He also spends six weeks at Polyface Farm, essentially as an unpaid intern, just helping with the work.
Polyface Farm is one example of "beyond organic," where rather than simply avoiding the inorganic inputs but otherwise conforming to the assumptions of 20th century industrialized agriculture, they try really hard to mimic nature, and to raise meat sustainably and humanely. There are several farms in WA that are doing similar things.
I think this is relevant to lesson 2 because most of the ecological footprint calculators I've found simply ask the user if they do or don't eat meat and dairy, and how often. The assumption by the calculator makers is obviously that all meat comes from Tyson or Hormel, is all grown in some kind of hellish shed in another time zone and trucked a long way. While it's certainly true that most of the meat on the market is grown under these conditions, and if your criterion when shopping for groceries is simply to get the most meat for your dollar that is what you will be buying, I dispute the implication that the only way for us to be responsible stewards of the earth is to take up a vegetarian diet.
The text is taken from a post I just wrote to my Env150 online course message board.
This entry was originally posted at http://wendolen.dreamwidth.org/586803.html. Please comment there using OpenID.