I also think it’s a very solvable problem. But there are a lot of complex moving parts in our food production system. I’m thinking of this in the context of the current highly industrialized state of agriculture and the current demands of consumers and how do you make a shift toward sustainable agriculture while also reducing meat production and animal exploitation.
So for me, the way it’s being grown now isn’t actually an option. 5000 acres of feed corn on dead soil that’s continually pumped with synthetic fertilizers is a thoroughly bad idea and turning those acres into corn (or anything) for humans is every bit as bad.
Believe it or not, it’s actually rather hard to get quality manure inputs for many farms. Depends on where you are of course. But the stuff weighs a lot, is never where you want it and the largest quantities are from CAFOs which are decidedly NOT high quality and require a lot more work to be useable in a sustainable context. That manure is sold, sure, and ends up in food production, but not to the exclusion of synthetic inputs. If you eliminate CAFOs then there’s even more demand for manure such that sustainable operations which require high quality compost because they don’t use synthetic fertilizers are going to have a hard time getting enough fertility.
So it’s easy to generalize and say there is excess manure from so much animal production, but the reality is that much if not most of that manure is not where you need it. I think a lot of folks don’t realize that sustainable meat production that isn’t integrated with sustainable vegetable production adds a lot of complexity, and yet that’s where we are at right now. The integrated food systems (e.g. rotational grazing etc) of times gone by were much more efficient but are relatively uncommon today, mainly because of market forces.
Hopefully this is a better summary of the point I was trying to make yesterday.
I also think it’s a very solvable problem. But there are a lot of complex moving parts in our food production system. I’m thinking of this in the context of the current highly industrialized state of agriculture and the current demands of consumers and how do you make a shift toward sustainable agriculture while also reducing meat production and animal exploitation.
So for me, the way it’s being grown now isn’t actually an option. 5000 acres of feed corn on dead soil that’s continually pumped with synthetic fertilizers is a thoroughly bad idea and turning those acres into corn (or anything) for humans is every bit as bad.
Believe it or not, it’s actually rather hard to get quality manure inputs for many farms. Depends on where you are of course. But the stuff weighs a lot, is never where you want it and the largest quantities are from CAFOs which are decidedly NOT high quality and require a lot more work to be useable in a sustainable context. That manure is sold, sure, and ends up in food production, but not to the exclusion of synthetic inputs. If you eliminate CAFOs then there’s even more demand for manure such that sustainable operations which require high quality compost because they don’t use synthetic fertilizers are going to have a hard time getting enough fertility.
So it’s easy to generalize and say there is excess manure from so much animal production, but the reality is that much if not most of that manure is not where you need it. I think a lot of folks don’t realize that sustainable meat production that isn’t integrated with sustainable vegetable production adds a lot of complexity, and yet that’s where we are at right now. The integrated food systems (e.g. rotational grazing etc) of times gone by were much more efficient but are relatively uncommon today, mainly because of market forces.
Hopefully this is a better summary of the point I was trying to make yesterday.