My last blog post was a bit too hippy so I’ve got to flip back to the opposite side for a bit… or do I? I’ve been wanting to look into this for a long while, because all I have really had to go on is gut feeling before finding time to read about some of the issues.
I just read this article from the Independent. It’s quite old now I suppose, but I thought it was interesting. I’ve always been suspicious of organic farming, because it feels like a backwards step, rather than fixing the problems with the technology we’ve created, we decide to throw our hands up in the air and say we should have left it to nature all along, and live like the Amish. Who, by the way, you can insult on the internet as often as you like.
Basically organic farming varies wildly in whether it is better or worse for the environment, depending upon what is being farmed (and where, and when). I’ll pull out some stats from the article, but it doesn’t have any “good” ones so you’ll have to put up with only one side of the argument I’m afraid.
- Organic tomatoes grown in heated greenhouses in Britain generate one hundred times the amount of CO2 per kilogram produced by tomatoes in unheated greenhouses in southern Spain.
- Organic milk requires 80 per cent more land to produce per unit than conventional milk.
- The depletion of natural resources is measured at 99 for organic birds compared to 29 for battery or barn hens.
I don’t really want an animal welfare discussion but my basic view on this is that the free range specification is good enough for chickens. Nor do I want arguments against GM foods — that’s a separate and (mostly)unrelated argument. Really I’m interested in what is good about organic farming for humans, especially from people who are keen to save the environment (I agree it’s important to try to maintain a human-habitable environment). We couldn’t actually feed the population of the world if all food were organically grown. Sometimes it produces more greenhouse gases or uses more energy. Sometimes the by-products are worse for soil and water courses. The taste and nutritional value can be worse than conventional production.
So, the question is, do you investigate every kind of food and buy the most efficient version? Do you make a sweeping generalisation one way or the other? What is most important in the growing of food: space, biodiversity, CO2 emissions, energy input, feeding everyone, treating the animals as nicely as possible, taste, price? Here’s my personal list of priorities:
- Feeding everyone — I don’t think the solution to overpopulation is to provide less food to humans in general. I don’t think we’ve solved it yet, but making less food isn’t going to help.
- less space — forests are good, they eat CO2 and provide biodiverse habitats. They also eat space, so we should minimise space use for other things.
- less CO2 emissions — Most of the human effects on climate change that we have a chance to reduce come from CO2 emissions.
- less energy input — whilst our energy is produced mostly from fossil fuels, this is as relevant as the point above.
- more biodiversity — Benefits listed on the wikipedia page especially disease resistance.
- better animal care — I don’t like when we engineer or selectively breed animals such that they are too fat to breed normally or move at all. I would happily pay a bit more for a better cared for animal, up to a point. This point in my list, in fact.
- better taste — You should actually want to eat the food, I don’t want some sort of communist gruel serving going on. But, if that’s the only way to affordably feed everyone whilst saving the planet, then… maybe.
- lower price — this matters, but not a lot, it only has to be affordable for the poorest people. This can be a tall order for some things, actually. I don’t really know where to put this one, because I would happily pay more money for any of the above, but presumably something that satisfies all of the above will price the poorest out of the market. Free market economics is tricky that way.
With that, it’s pretty obvious that I shouldn’t be buying organic veg out of season, or chicken and milk at any time. It is in fact my feeling that people who buy organic chicken are effectively putting the welfare of chickens above the welfare of the entire planet. If it’s not chicken or milk or out-of-season veg, I’ll consider it, probably by trying to find out relative values from the list I’ve just made. Buying food shouldn’t be this complicated. I’m hungry. I’m off to make lunch.
PS: if you’re reading this on Facebook, please comment on my actual blog at blog.nowebsite.co.uk or I may not notice.
Statto | 08-Apr-08 at 2:53 pm | Permalink
I wanted to write a Plane Truth-like guide to food consumption, but I rapidly realised that this is a sociological, nutritional, ecological kettle of fish which is just too big to tackle. In fact, the daunting complexity of deciding upon farming methods which both make enough to go round and environmentally sound made me decide that perhaps the only way to tackle climate change is international carbon trading and letting a market-like system do it for you—but that’s another story.
I think you’re right to emphasise that organic ≠ ethical. Some people think they’re doing the ‘right’ thing by only eating organic food, but they’re probably not. Ethically, it’s a bit difficult to pull apart what exactly they are doing.
As for what to eat instead, tricky one. You use the example of chicken…but should we be eating meat, or indeed fish, at all? Lamb is arguably the most ethical meat, because you can raise lambs on land entirely unsuitable for crops…but most other meat subtracts more than its own nutritional value in crop land space. We’re absolutely decimating marine biodiversity through our fish obsession.
There are also very few bits of sound dietary advice to recommend specific combinations of foodstuffs for a happy, healthy population. Beyond ‘get more fresh fruit and veg’, there is almost nothing you can say with certainty. Do we ‘need’ meat? Presumably the nutritionally optimal diet would not be scalable to six billion people, so what compromise do we adopt?
Maybe I should put pen to paper and finish this train of thought on my website…though the bottom line is either ‘we need more studies’, or ’screw it, make environmental destruction costly, and let the market work it out’.
Eskoala | 08-Apr-08 at 4:35 pm | Permalink
Statto:
Interesting point about not eating meat, there. I’m certainly appalled by what’s happening to fishing, I like fish, to eat, and yet it’s obvious that we’re going to make several species extinct by the way we’re currently catching them. I’d happily give up fish to avoid this, and indeed try (not quite hard enough) not to eat cod and other endangered/overfished species. Biodiversity is especially important in the sea because of how little of it we’ve yet explored that could potentially be useful.
I deliberately left out the “don’t eat this particular food option” mostly because I wanted to stick to the organic vs. conventional polarisation to start with. But you’re right, there are many better uses for land than farming animals at all, nevermind doing it in a way that’s nice to the animals. At least fish don’t cause that problem… Indeed, people who don’t buy chicken at all are better for the environment, but if no-one buys chicken (or eggs) then it doesn’t look good for chickens! Maybe meat should be viewed more as a luxury food, with small farms producing really expensive kinds instead of the mass production we get today. Aside from doing that we’re still going to need dairy farms, though, and egg farms, so it doesn’t solve much of the problem.
Your last paragraph sums it up really. Nicely put. I’d like to hear more of your thoughts on food ethics — do write about it if you find the time.
The Pacifist | 08-Apr-08 at 4:40 pm | Permalink
Well, for the tomatoes I’d argue that if you want to be ecologically “efficient” you should only eat them when they’re in season in your country….
Apparently chillies flown in from Kenya only generate about 15% more CO2 than growing them here, and you’re helping third world farmers, so it might be in your interest to do that instead.
Regarding the depletion of “natual resources” for hens - is that because free range outdoor hens eat grass but battery hens don’t? What do they mean by “natural resources”?
Did you know that Ecover isn’t organic? Apparently the crops they use to produce the oils for the products are GM. Tsch, eh?
Biodiversity? I tried some red bananas last week. Made a change from Cavendish…
Communist gruel? The Falcon books are set in a world where meat is rare and most of the population live on a type of funghi grown in huge vats. And yes, this predates Quorn.
What did you have for lunch then?
Rory | 08-Apr-08 at 10:47 pm | Permalink
Skyfarms are the future!
http://nymag.com/news/features/30020/
That and sustainable, local food sources. Don’t leave home without one!
Strokeyadam | 09-Apr-08 at 7:54 am | Permalink
I had a bottle of organic lager last night and it wasn’t very nice so I’ll be sticking to non-organic from now on.
Eskoala | 09-Apr-08 at 3:19 pm | Permalink
Pacifist: yes indeed, it’d be best if you only ate things that were in season. Unfortunately especially with things like tomatoes they are in so many dishes that it would feel restrictive to have to avoid them during the whole of winter. One possible solution is to use tinned tomatoes during the winter, which is good provided they were grown and canned in the uk.
If we can grow chillies here, why are we importing them? Shouldn’t third world farmers be growing more fundamental foodstuffs for all those starving people who live near them?
Depletion of natural resources is a pretty vague term that sometimes means simply land that could be used for other things, and sometimes means forests etc. It’s basically a point about land use, I think.
I had… Veg soup with lentils for lunch. From a Heinz tin. I have no idea whether it’s ethical, but it certainly wasn’t organic.
Rory: cool idea for farms, I like it.
Strokey: Maybe you should drink some real beer. I quite liked Stinger, which is made organically with nettles, but I think I may be in a minority.
Jimmy | 10-Apr-08 at 1:53 am | Permalink
You just need to investigate the ethics of organic Salad Cream, cheddar cheese, and bread. That covers your entire diet, neh?
Ruth | 10-Apr-08 at 10:24 am | Permalink
As I said yesterday, this blog post brought me out in all kinds of anger.
I don’t have time for a full on rant, but I will say this about chicken:
You expressed the view that free range chicken is better for the environment than organic.
Free range chickens are likely to be raised in a shed with access to a poky little strip of earth. Because chickens have a strong grubbing instinct, they will likely root up any plants growing there, including grass (this is what my dad’s chickens did). This is almost certainly not good from a ‘we like forests’ perspective. Also, although I don’t really expect you to care about this, they will probably not go outside all that much because chickens are, like you, fond of forests. They are related to the Pheasant and directly descended from Junglefowl. Trees are what they like.
Organic standards require 4 square metres of shelter on the outside area per 500 birds. This is most cheaply implemented by having trees. The land is also rotated and rested, so that ground-based vegetation is maintained.
Even if you don’t care about the chickens pecking each other to death or only being kept alive through scary levels of antibiotics, organic chicken is better for the land.
Eskoala | 10-Apr-08 at 12:21 pm | Permalink
Ruth: I still reckon that 4 metres of trees per 500 birds is going to be less than the land saved by having a much smaller free range space requirement (but I haven’t actually done the maths). And I don’t think grass is going to save us much CO2.
In fact, the free range requirements stipulate that there must be vegetative cover, so I’m not sure where your data is coming from. Chicken Out(A campaign for better welfare for Britain’s Chickens headed up by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall) says:
“For chicken meat to be called ‘free-range’, it must be produced to standards laid down by EU law. The chickens must be provided with access to open-air runs that are mainly covered with vegetation. They have more space to move around than ’standard’ birds and live for at least 56 days.”
and
“All organic chickens are fed on a diet rich in organic cereals, which haven’t been produced using pesticides and which are free of genetically-modified ingredients. They are not given routine doses of antibiotics, and live for at least 81 days.”
I think you’re scaremongering a little here. Most free range farms keep their chickens at a standard well above the minimum requirements, and are not certified organic only because they can’t meet some of the more stringent organic requirements, including that all of the land they are on must be organic and all the feed must be grown without pesticides and without any GM content. You omit points raised in the article about water courses, natural resource depletion, and importantly, the CO2 emissions per bird.
Whilst we can’t even give all humans enough food to survive, let alone have a pain and stress-free existence, and whilst the threat of climate change leaves us trying to do whatever we can to slow it down or alter its course, I’m afraid making chickens lead happy little lives is not high on my list of priorities. It’s just about high enough that I won’t buy intensively farmed chicken or battery eggs.
I think if the free range requirements aren’t enough for you, and you care about the environment too, then you shouldn’t buy chicken at all. Which I’m pretty sure you hardly ever do anyway, Ruth. All I’m saying is that of all the ways of buying chicken, organic is worst for the environment. A completely valid option to saving the environment through your chicken buying habits is to stop buying chicken.
—–A small rant—–
It annoys me that I can say “I buy free range chicken” and have someone say “but think of the chickens!!!”. I buy it *because* I have ethics and I look into things, just the same as most people buying organic (the ones who aren’t blindly jumping on the bandwagon, anyway). Yet I am treated with the same disdain usually reserved for people who buy the cheapest version and don’t care how it became so cheap. Organic to me is unethical, and that’s why I don’t buy it, not because I’ve reached some sort of limit of caring vs. price.
—–rant ends——-
Eskoala | 10-Apr-08 at 12:22 pm | Permalink
Jimmy: you forgot Reggae Reggae Sauce…
Statto | 15-Apr-08 at 7:18 pm | Permalink
George Monbiot wrote an interesting article about this today.
Eskoala | 16-Apr-08 at 3:37 pm | Permalink
Thanks, that was an interesting read. I agree the biofuel law is horrendously flawed, and that most people should cut down on their meat intake, especially for the larger animals. Personally I think 1kg a week is a huge amount, but if that’s uncooked weight I suppose it’s possible. I generally eat meat once a day at most, and if so it’s usually chicken. I could probably live without meat as long as I could eat lots of milk and eggs. By the time we’re farming dairy cows, though, what are we supposed to do with all the useless bullocks born? We could cull them, if that’s better than rearing them to eat, I suppose. Or we could ensure through IVF that mostly female embryos are implanted into breeding cows. Or we could go back to eating veal…