The Diet Crisis

I love food. Who doesn't? Yet, as a child I was a picky eater, preferring raw veggies to cooked ones, salmon to pork, and candy over everything else. My parents hoped that as I aged, I would outgrow my stubborn refusal of foods, and that my food preferences would diversify. They really just wanted me to be healthy and make good food choices. I am happy to say that now, almost twenty years later, at least one of their wishes has come true.

Today I am a proud vegetarian. That means that I consume no beef, pork, poultry, limited amounts of eggs, almost no dairy, and fish only on special occasions. (Okay, if you are calling me a hypocrite and a pescetarian, I suppose you would be right. I only eat very limited fish and shellfish products; as I said before, salmon is one of my favorite foods). I adamantly try to eat healthy greens and lots of plant matter, although I have become more picky about what I ingest overall (sorry Mom and Dad). 

When I tell people about my limited animal product intake, I always get asked why. "Why no meat? Is it for animal welfare reasons? Health? Cost? Environmental reasons?" To these questions, I always answer yes. Yes to all of the above. However, my first and foremost reason for not eating the American standard diet heavy in animal products is the Environment, which is what I am going to discuss here today.

To explain one of the environmental reasons why I limit my animal product/biproduct intake, let me tell you a true story, originally presented to me in my Human & Natural Systems class by Dr. Stonich and Dr. Lopez-Carr: The American beef industry is a large and prominent part of the US food system. Yet, to keep the well oiled industrial feed-lot machine running, there must be massive inputs of feed for the animals to be fattened on. For most US cows, this feed originates thousands of miles away in Central America, in places like the Sierra de Lacandón National Park (SLNP) in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala. The SLNP is one of the most biodiverse rainforests in an area world-renowned for its biodiveristy. It is here in these beautiful and fragile ecosystems that the local peoples are struggling to survive the way they once did. Farmers are attempting to make ends meet using traditional and entirely destructive methods like "slash and burn" on a much greater scale to grow crops that they can then export to wealthy nations, like the US, who feed them to cows to expand the ever growing quest for meat. Of course, cows are not evolutionarily designed to eat beans or corn, but I will save that tangent for another post.

Satellite imagery of deforestation between 1975 and 2007.

To give you a very brief introduction to rainforest ecology, much of which I learned in the field over my summer research in Malaysia, rainforests generally have very thin, nutrient poor soil. This lack of nutrients is mainly due to the fact that the rainforest sits on the equator where the sun is always directly overhead, and so it is hot year round. This means that there is more rain due to global air cells and local climate. All of these factors that lead to increased rain also lead to increased leaching of nutrients from the soil. While this makes the rainforest a pretty poor choice for major agriculture, natives were able to grow crops through small-scale slash and burn efforts. Burning the forest not only makes room for agriculture, but it also returns nutrients from the vegetation to the soil via ash. However, farmers may only get a few years out of each plot before the nutrients vanish and they have to move on to burn more forest. The method of slash and burn agriculture may have been self-sustaining on a very limited scale. However, as more and more farmers try to compete in the modern world, deforestation is taking a serious turn for the worst. Guatemala has lost 17% of its forest between 1990 and 2005, mostly due to agriculture. To quote Dr. Lopez-Carr, "the number one way to stop the destruction of the rainforest in Central America is to stop eating meat". If we stop eating meat, we do not support the feed farmers who are causing this deforestation.

Slash and burn forest clearing.

While it may seem cruel to stop supporting the poor farmers of a developing country in their only livelihood, I would rather see the natives return to whatever source of income they relied on before then watch animals and the health of my family, friends, and the global climate suffer.

One must also take into account the environmental effects of cows and other live stock on the environment. In order to make maximum profit, the American factory "farms" must put as many animals on as small of an area as is possible. This high density of large mammals results in large amounts of animal excrement, which is usually moved offsite to pits known as manure lagoons. To put a very detailed issue into a brief explanation, the manure can and does infiltrate ground or surface water supplies due to improper sealing of the pit or excessive rain. The manure in surface water sources such as lakes, rivers, ponds, bays, gulfs, etc. is a rich source of inorganic nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. In freshwater bodies, aquatic algae and plants like duckweed take advantage of the nutrient influx and reproduce quickly. Once a limiting resource is imposed, like light or nutrients, whichever comes first, the duckweed will begin to die and float to the bottom of the body. Bacteria in the water feed off of this decaying plant matter and concurrently use most of the available dissolved oxygen. Once the oxygen level has been severely decreased, the body of water (now known as a "dead zone") can no longer support the aquatic life that depends on dissolved oxygen, like fish. In this way, manure runoff results in massive fish-kills through the process of eutrophication. This is just one example of the environmental issues related to factory farming, but I assure you that countless others abound.

Massive fish kill in the Gulf of Mexico related to the dissolved-oxygen deprived dead zone.

Another more global example has to do with the increased demand for meat world wide. As developing countries like China and India become more developed, they are demanding a high standard of living, which often involves such western luxuries as a diet heavy in animal products. Major increases in factory farming around the globe are seriously adding to methane production, from animal flatulence and excrement alike, which in comparable quantities is twenty times as insulating as carbon dioxide.

But what if you want to have your meat and eat it too? Well, luckily there are better options than supporting industrial factory farms. As described by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma, a variety of meat and vegetables can be grown very sustainably on small scale operations that use the example set forth by nature of ensuring that nothing goes to waste. For example, Polyface Farms is able to regulate the cycles of nature so much that their farm is basically indefinitely sustainable. Their herd of cattle eat a different patch of grass each week, thus never allowing the grass to be trampled into oblivion or to grow too tough to be appealing. The cows then spread their manure evenly around the field to provide fertilization for the grasses. Chickens are brought in after the cows to consume the worms that develop in the dung, thus lowering pests and spreading the fertilizer further. These animals are bred and used for food, yet they are given a substantially happier and more environmentally friendly existence in their time on earth.

Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms with his happy, free range cows.

In conclusion, please think before you buy and especially before you eat. Your health, the environment's health, animal welfare, and our future all hang in the balance.