Climate & the animal debate – toward common ground

Contents

• THE PROBLEMS WITH MODERN ANIMAL CULTURE.
• ANIMAL SUFFERING..
• ANIMALS AS A PART OF HEALTHY LANDSCAPES.
• WHAT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE AND ANIMAL AGRICULTURE?.
• LAND USE PER UNIT OF FOOD PRODUCTION..
• DIET.
• SO HOW MUCH MEAT CAN WE PRODUCE REGENERATIVELY?.
• AGREEMENTS BETWEEN THE VEGAN CRITIQUE AND THE ECOLOGICAL CRITIQUE TO THE FOOD SYSTEM…

Once again, “Vegan vs. ecological farming” debates are confusing the climate change debate. I am taking time to lay out some of the core arguments. At no point, I am not arguing against a plant-based diet. I am aware that vegans cover a wide  spectrum of opinions – including ethical vegans in the Buddhist tradition, pragmatic vegans who just don’t have access to ethically raised meat, all the way to dogmatic people who believe animals should be left to nature and there’s no role of animals in agricultural and landscape management whatsoever. I am taking position against a few flawed arguments and societal imperatives that are supported by vocal dogmatic vegans, targeted at dominating the animal discourse and imposing their opinion on society through policies or flawed social conformity.

My arguments are evolving, as I am learning myself. I hope that ecological farmers and those opposed to animal suffering can find common ground and overcome dogmatism – there is a strong common basis indeed, if we let go of some of our ideological biases. At the end of this article, I list common ground and some aspects that we should be able to clarify!

THE PROBLEMS WITH MODERN ANIMAL AGRICULTURE

While I will present some arguments against “political” veganism, I want to clearly distance myself from industrial animal production. The science is clear: the impacts of modern animal agriculture on our world are negative at unprecedented scale. Business as usual is not an option.

Some core aspect of industrial production are the spatial separation between feed production and animal feeding, the neglect of environmental externalities when managing all aspects of the animal life cycle, and the regular change of ownership throughout an animals lifetime. In the US, corn and other feed crops is grown in one place of the country, while feedlots are on the other side where manure accumulates. Most modern animal producers are highly specialized on narrow periods of the life cycle; for example, industrial beef production now has “cow-calf operations”, yearling “backgrounders” that feed grain on degraded pastures, and feedlot operators. Pork is produced in a similar cascade, as are chicken and other poultry. It becomes almost impossible to track impacts in such a system.

Scientific studies show that this dominant system of animal agriculture has many negative outcomes:

• Grazing management – concern for good pasture rotations, pasture plant diversity, and even pasture productivity – is often low. It’s so easy to just buy some supplement feed! The result: most pastures in North America are far below their productive potential, often due to overgrazing with continuous animal access.
• Animal manure – once a valuable source of fertility – is mostly treated as waste. Feedlots have reached such grand scales that there simply is not enough land in their vicinity to absorb all these feces. And transport of manure is too expensive – so the valuable nutrients are dumped in excessive amounts, pollute ground and surface waters, and stink to high heavens.
• Animals welfare – As animals are moved around, their social relationships are disrupted. Most animals are highly traumatized and devoid of their instincts – what we see as “content cows chewing their cut” is often the last self preservation function that remains to them.
• Feed –  Environmental impacts of feed production are also incredible: most agricultural crops are actually produced for animal feed. Dominant cropping systems degrade soils, release soil carbon, and simplify landscapes. Fertilizer and agrochemicals pollute our air and water. Natural habitat is lost, as is biodiversity.
• Use of pharmaceuticals – Antibiotic use is necessary due to the dense concentration of large animal numbers in confined spaces. The wide and preemptive use of antibiotics (also as growth enhancers) has mainstreamed the forming of microbial resistances.

Because this degenerative form of livestock production dominates our food system, environmental groups justifiably warn against this destructive management practice of animal farming.  Ecological advocates argue that “It’s not the cow, it’s the how.” The arguments of environmentalists refer to the dominant or “average” form of production – it’s not the only form of animal agriculture that is viable though. Indigenous communities have integrated animals into their landscape management for millennia, in combination with “cultural burning practices”. Many ecological farmers are experimenting with ways how farm animals can mimic the landscape functions that once herds of wild bison, caribou and other ruminants have played. In Western Countries, selling of animal products is currently the only way to receive payment for these landscaping services.

The argument that “all animals must be removed from farming systems” has analogous flaws in other debates. For example, sexism is not caused by the existence of male gender, but by behavioral norms that too many males have adopted – “Its the type of masculinity, not masculinity itself”. Or that white supremacy is not an inherent quality of Caucasian people, but a behavioral norm that many Europeans have historically embraced (“Everyone has biases – anti-racists are dedicated to overcoming their biases.”) In analogy, feminists call for a change of male behavioral norms – not for the disappearance of males altogether. Anti-racists call for a dismantelling of white supremacist behavior and thought – not for the removal of Caucasian people from the planet. Ecological farmers argue that we need to fundamentally change animal husbandry practices, but not blame the animals for how humans have managed them.

ANIMAL SUFFERING

The suffering of many farm animals is indeed an abhorrent reflection of our food ethics, and of our wilful ignorance. The suffering of animals and farm workers is a worth-while consideration for any person with morals – whether we are vegan or not. What type of suffering does my food create, in animals and also in agricultural workers (the latter I don’t want to address further in this blog)?

Animal suffering has two components: the ability of animals to express natural behaviour and instincts, and the psychological and physical pain from inappropriate conditions of living, transport, and around the act of killing.

Most farm animals are not able to express natural behaviour or instincts – animals are kept in an overly simplified habitat that is optimized for eating and gaining weight. Often, animal safety and sanitation arguments are used to keep animals indoors in confined cages! Animals may not feel pain and seem happy when chewing on whatever they eat – in the same way how an opium addict feels when smoking his opium pipe. A very shallow form of happiness that most humans find unethical!

As an ecological farmer, we ensure that our sheep flock can express as much natural behaviour as feasible. Animals form groups, build hierarchy within their group, build relationships with each other. Mother sheep (ewes) stay with their lambs for the entire season, continuing to nurse – mostly for emotional comfort, the way a toddler nurses. Sheep instinctively learn how to self-medicate, and copy the behaviour of their elders. So at times, we allow our sheep to enter brushes and wild herbs, which they eagerly eat to self-treat their parasites (all wild animals have these parasites!), or cure a cough. Our sheep live a mostly happy life. And yes, mosquito bites or weather conditions sometimes annoy our sheep – imposing permanent bliss on our animals is neither our goal nor within our ability!

Our sheep also get sold, and we lose control over their well-being. We regret that. We had to stop sending our animals to an abattoir that we trust and who could butcher them into retail packages, when our abattoir closed down. The remaining butchers are either booked years in advance or cut with such poor quality that we cannot sell them at a reasonable price – without a good butcher, we stopped marketing directly. Rather, we sell life animals now and simplify our own lives – while losing track of what is happening to our animals. This is not our preferred option. We’d love to have a quality abattoir that kills according to best modern knowledge of animal behaviour – designed to minimize stress and to avoid fear and pain altogether. But such abattoirs are not existing – we’d LOVE help from our community to create such an abattoir and educate quality butchers. This would be a meaningful contribution to animal welfare. Precedents of community abattoirs exist – in Eastern Ontario, in Vermont. Why not in Grey Bruce, where animal agriculture remains the biggest ag sector?

Is the existence of death a reason not to hold sheep? Few humans are arguing that we should prohibit human babies because some end up in poor living conditions, many humans end up dying in a mediocre nursery home, and ALL of us die eventually. Few humans are arguing that the potential for human suffering is a reason to abolish human life altogether – we try to minimize suffering, which is all we can do. Why impose higher morals on animal farmers?

In summary, I learned that humans cannot avoid causing death whenever we eat. Death is just the flipside the coin called life. The opposite of life is not death – it is the absence of the cycle of life & death. In our food choices, humans can however chose how we impact on the cycle of life of death. Relevant questions then are: What abundance of life does a food system foster? What role does that life & death play in the larger biosphere? What type of life & death does it foster? How does it impose suffering on animals? These questions are valuable and every eater should ask them whenever they purchase food.

THE PROBLEMS WITH MODERN ANIMAL AGRICULTURE

While I am arguing against ideological veganism, I want to clearly distance myself from industrial animal production. The heart of this industrial production is the spatial separation between feed production and animal feeding. Corn is grown in one place of the country, while feedlots are on the other side. Animal producers also specialize; industrial beef production now has “cow-calf operations”, yearling “backgrounders” that feed grain on degraded pastures, and feedlots. Pork is produced in a similar cascade, as are chicken and other poultry.

The separation of feed and feeding, as well as life stages, has many negative outcomes:

• Grazing management – concern for good pasture rotations, pasture plant diversity, and even pasture productivity – is often low. It’s so easy to just buy some supplement feed! The result: most pastures in North America are far below their productive potential, often due to overgrazing with continuous animal access.
• Animal manure – once a valuable source of fertility – is mostly treated as waste. Feedlots have reached such grand scales that there simply is not enough land in their vicinity to absorb all these feces. And transport of manure is too expensive – so the valuable nutrients are dumped in excessive amounts, pollute ground and surface waters, and stink to high heavens.
• Animals are moved around in ways that disrupt all their social relationships. Most animals are highly traumatized and devoid of their instincts – what we see as “content cows chewing their cut” is often the last self preservation function that remains to them.

Environmental impacts of this system are also incredible: most agricultural crops are actually produced for animal feed. Cropping systems degrade soils, release soil carbon, and simplify landscapes. Fertilizer and agrochemicals pollute our air and water. Natural habitat is lost, as is biodiversity. Because this degenerative form of livestock production dominates our food, environmental groups justifiably warn against this destructive management practice of animal farming. However, it is important to remember that it is only the dominant form of production – it’s not the only form that is viable. “It’s not the cow, it’s the how.”

ANIMALS AS A PART OF HEALTHY LANDSCAPES

Ecologically healthy landscapes cannot exist without animals. When understanding the role of animals in ecosystems, it is important to distinguish their different role (dry) grasslands and (moist) temperate mosaic landscapes:

• Grasslands are formed when large roaming herds that regularly prune grasses and digest biomass that would otherwise accumulate at the surface – grasslands tend to be in dry climates where microbial decomposition does not occur. Without grazing, grassland plants age and eventually die, while no new seedlings can emerge – the grassland desertifies due to lack of disturbance. Ruminant herds are essential for maintaining grassland health! But herds are not enough – if there are no predators keeping the herds bunched together, then ruminants will spread out and deplete plants by eating the young re-growth of their favorites – grasslands also desertify due to overgrazing. Only grasslands that combine large ruminant herds (for grass pruning, soil disturbance, and biomass digestion) and pack predators (for herding in ways that ensure grass recovery) created the diverse and productive grassland ecosystems of our planet, with healthy grassland soils full of carbon.
• Temperate zones, which have more moisture and cooler climate, will not express open areas if left undisturbed. Without disturbance, temperate ecosystems develop into closed-canopy “climax” forests. Many environmentalists believe that this climax forest is the most desirable state in temperate ecosystems. However, ecologists continue to point out that climax forest is not a “natural”,  biodiverse and productive state of temperate regions. Instead, the temperate region that spans from Southern Ontario all the way to New York State used to be a “mosaic landscape”. Mosaic landscapes are characterized by multiple succession stages of ecosystems – dense old forests, open old forests, young forests, open areas with bushes and grasses, and more transitions than we can think of. Like in grasslands, it is disturbances that continue to disrupt the succession climax. Once, disturbing factors were once mammoths and other prehistoric mega fauna, later it was indigenous societies who stewarded the land. After every disturbance, an area is supposed to recover – creating a mosaic of diverse habitat that is home to far higher biodiversity than any climax forest.

Am I arguing against close-canopy forests? I am certainly not – I presented an argument against ONLY close-canopy forests. Healthy, biodiverse temperate ecosystems have it all: open grasslands and savannas, bushes and shrubs, trees and hedgerows, open forests, and dense old-growth forests.

Animals play a major role in sustaining dry grasslands and temperate mosaic landscapes – and farm animals can be used to mimic the functions once taken by prehistoric megafauna and the large herds that once roamed the plains, always on the move to escape pack predators. Undisturbed, “protected” areas are entirely artificial ecosystems – especially in drylands, such “protected” conservation lands are doomed to desertify. Instead, ecologists argue that animals need to be managed in ways that manage landscapes proactively, by mimicking the natural interactions of ecosystems. In the way that indigenous societies have done for millennia. Today, this is a difficult task that requires that humans take up a new responsibility. They need to build new knowledge, awareness, skills, and – last but not least – depend on public support.

Some members of the vegan movement are undermining the public support of ecosystem regeneration with farm animals. Rather than condemning animal agriculture, eaters should ask: What role are the animals that we eat playing in our landscapes? Are they regenerating landscape diversity, protecting biodiversity, and keeping our planet within its boundaries? I am dedicated to fight ideological veganism that denies all roles of animal agriculture in landscape regeneration – it is a flawed and dangerous ideology that can undermine the health of our planet and society.

WHAT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE AND ANIMAL AGRICULTURE?

Animal agriculture creates emissions. Most notably the following sources and sinks are relevant:

• Carbon dioxide sources in feed production: Most animal products rely feed plants (most grains and oil seeds are not grown for food but for biofuels and animal feed!). These emissions stem from fossil fuels to run tractors, land use change to clear land for feed production, soil degradation from tillage and use of chemicals, and – especially relevant – the use of nitrogen fertilizer that creates the potent greenhouse gas Nitrous Oxide (N2O).
• Carbon sinks: Historically, humans have still emitted more carbon from degrading soils and deforesting landscapes, than we have emitted from fossil fuels. Some call this agriculture’s carbon debt to the planet. Many desertified areas of the world were once fertile – the middle east, Southern Europe, the Sahel, Australia. All of these areas were degraded by the axe, the plough, and increasingly by agrochemicals.
  Numerous innovators have demonstrated that agriculture can reverse this degradation and regenerate soil carbon. Practices must always respond to contextual ecological factors, but the use of animals as tools seem to be a common threat for regenerative throughout the world. Animal dung not only provides nutrients: animals also disperse seeds coated in moist biomass, animals bring back microbial diversity to soil, animals physically disturb capped areas and create space for renewal. Animals are necessary strategy for storing atmospheric carbon in the soil, where it belongs. Especially successful here are systems that combine trees with grazing – leaders like White Oak Pastures show that the carbon that farm animals can sequester outweigh livestock emissions (even if not considering methane sinks!).

• Methane sources: Ruminants emit methane. This is inevitable from the anaerobic digestive process that breaks up cellulose. Cellulose is a great feed source because it can be produced anywhere on marginal land, and is not suitable for human food. But its digestion creates methane. Ruminants are a source of atmospheric methane.
  Many researchers try to minimize the emissions of methane. Pharmaceuticals, see weed, and other additives can influence the methane production in the rumen. Also, high-protein feed, breeding and pharmaceuticals (e.g. growth hormons) can increase the speed growth and reduce the time to slaguther – a shorter life = less methane emissions. These are “source-side” measures to reduce ruminant methane emissions.

• Methane sinks: On average, atmospheric methane remains in the atmosphere for about 12 years. It is then broken down to CO2, and its GHG potential is dramatically reduced.
  There are two main pathways of methane breakdown. The first is hydroxyl radicals formed in the higher atmosphere by hard solar radiation. This is the dominant pathways that degrades methane from natural gas and petroleum mining, and the emissions from animal feedlots. The second is also based on hydroxyl radicals that are created by vegetation. Healthy vegetation exudes organic molucles including terpenes and isoprenes. These terpenes and isoprenes are part of a complicated photochemical cycle that maintains hydroxyl radicals around vegetation at all times. These “biogenic” radicals also neutralize ruminant methane – as long as ruminants are kept close to healthy vegetation, e.g. on pasture or in a silvopasture.

LAND USE PER UNIT OF FOOD PRODUCTION

A common argument against animal agriculture cites that meat requires far more units of land than plants to produce the same number of calories, or even the same amount of protein.

This argument is not wrong, but it misses the point. What is better – growing 1 unit of food on 1 acre while degrading that acre, or producing 1 unit of food on 5 degraded, marginal acres that are regenerating while food is being produced?

The “calories” argument reduces land use to “calorie production”, or the production of other units of fiber, timber, protein, biomass, or oil. Scientists call these products “provisioning ecosystem services” – it’s what the land provides to us. Since the chemical revolution after WWII, farmers have dramatically increased the efficiency of agriculture, if only assessing these “providing” ecosystem services.

Neither farmers nor our society at large are concerned with two other groups of ecosystem services: regulating and supporting services. “Regulating” services refer to ecosystem functions that control nutrient flows, water cycles that cool regionally, and the world’s carbon balance that determines our global climate. All of these cycles are dramatically degraded globally, with the main driver being modern agriculture. “Supporting” services provide the infrastructure necessary to offer all other ecosystem services: soil health (and soil carbon) and biodiversity (microbial, animals, plants). While industrial agriculture has become impressively efficient in delivering “providing” services, our industrial farm landscapes are undermining our planet’s ability to self-regulate, and we have degraded its ecological infrastructure. Our modern gains of “efficiency” break down once considering the ecosystem services of land in their entirety.

Rather than praising agricultural production systems that are narrowly successful in providing food and other products, agriculture can be assessed for their broader impact on ecosystem functions and ecosystem services. Once taking this broader perspective, regenerative animal-based systems are highly efficient in regenerating the ecosystem functions of entire landscapes, WHILE providing food. Whereas a continuation of industrial production systems, which are efficient only from a very narrow perspective of yields, will continue to decline of ecosystems and lead to the collapse of our planet’s ecology.

Industrial livestock practices are not regenerative. However, industrial plant production is neither. At the same time, agroecological farms throughout the world exemplify that regenerating ecosystem functions and the natural infrastructure is possible – the infrastructure that our biosphere so much depends on. Especially in developing countries, agroecological production is more widely adopted – but under permanent threat from our political and corporate interventions.

DIET

Diet is one of the most personal topics in Western society. It is difficult to talk about dietary preferences – people are full of guilt. Guilt for not having cooking skills, guilt for eating the wrong ingredients, guilt for not giving cooking enough time, guilt for being lazy. This makes diet a fascinating and complex topic.

Meat has been vilified in many ways – red meat supposedly creates cancer as much as smoking cigarettes. Animal fat was blamed for the obesity epidemic and many other human ails. Should we not just get over meat because it would be healthier?

Most studies that put blame on individual ingredients – such as sugar, fat, meat, eggs, or milk – are not standing scientifically rigorous analysis. Michael Pollan still offers the shortest summary of how we should eat: “Eat [real] food, not too much, mostly plants.” Pollan does not negate our need to eat animal products – he just warns against excesses, and more importantly against processed foods. I would add that only food should be sold that is not destroying our biosphere. From a health perspective, we can immediately dismiss the need for “zero-anything” diets. From purely a health perspective, this also includes veganism – at least for most people.

In fact, many people fair much better with animal proteins. Some age groups (especially children and elders) benefit more from animal proteins, and certain activities (especially long physical labour, or work in a cold environment) also requires the dense nutrition of animal foods. Humans especially benefit from small quantities of meat and other animal proteins. Especially in developing countries where expensive nutrition supplements are either not available or not affordable, animal proteins are an important component for a healthy diet.

My arguments do not defend or justify high-meat diets. I suspect that, in most parts of the world, a healthy diet from a small land base would include lots of potatoes, lots of seasonal fruits and vegetables, some grains and nuts, and a balance of plant-based proteins and animal proteins from regenerative grazing and other integrated farm cycles. This diet would be affordable, healthy, ethically and regenerative for our landscapes, and supporting a local food economy. Some people may chose a high-meat diet out of cultural reasons (e.g. those living in the high North), and other people have particular health conditions that require more meat (e.g. those allergic to pulses like peanuts or chickpeas). These are special dietary restrictions that need to be respected. Whereas most moderately affluent Westerners would be healthier with far lower intake of meat and especially processed meats. Still, my children and I prefer bean soup if it has a few pieces of bacon from regeneratively grown pigs!

SO HOW MUCH MEAT CAN WE PRODUCE REGENERATIVELY?

My answer to this question: I have never seen these numbers, I really don’t know. Certainly regenerative farmers could produce much more than the general public can imagine based on our niche market position. And we’d probably produce less than some carnivores amongst us feel privileged to.

The first problem is: we are not putting our collective hive mind towards finding out what truly regenerative farming could achieve – we continue to maximize degenerative production of meat per land unit, without deeper considerations to the biosphere or ecosystem functions. The second problem is: We are not building the skills, knowledge and experience that would be necessary to produce regenerative meat at scale. Land ownership, and our land rental practices, all favour very large degenerative farming practices. We are not directing our policies toward how we manage landscapes – we chose the simpler route, and rather vilify animals as culprits of climate change. It’s the cow’s fault, and the sheep’s!

The great plains of the US were once home to 100 Million ruminants – bison, antelopes and sheep, deer and mammoths. Not counting the 10 billion passenger pigeons that nested around the Great Lakes when European settlers landed! There were more ruminants then than live in the US today. Similarly, Sibiria was once a step teeming with ruminant life; some estimate the Pleistocene step populated by the equivalent of 25 bison on each square kilometer. The Sahara was another large grassland that was stabilized by grazing herds. Around 5,000 years ago, this unstable grassland system collapsed and turned into our modern sand desert when humans disrupted the balance of grazing herds and predators[i]. Today, the Serengeti remains the last reminder of grassland ecology that gives us a hint of grassland abundance.

What would happen if most people only eat regenerative meat? Initially, there would be little meat in our diets. Second, farmers could invest into building the knowledge of regenerating with animals. This knowledge would greatly proliferate humankind’s ability to grow regenerative meat. Thirdly, humans would start to regenerate the 40% of our terrestrial land that humankind has already lost to desertification within the last centuries and millennia. We could likely double our agriculturally useful land area – and produce more food than we can imagine today, especially animal products on land not suitable for cropping. I am not predicting the Earth’s capacity to produce regenerative animal products – but I am certain that every human could regularly eat some meat of decent quality that is ethically defensible.

AGREEMENTS BETWEEN THE VEGAN AND THE ECOLOGICAL CRITIQUE TO THE FOOD SYSTEM

There are many common positions between the vegan movement and the ecological farming:

• The critique to the industrial animal production system, in particular:
  • The inability of animals to express natural instincts and behaviour and other animal welfare aspects;
  • Its tremendous environmental externalities of feed production;
  • The separation of feed and feeding that leaves manure as a waste product.
• The disgust with animal suffering and the commodification of living and sentient beings;
• The urgent need to regenerate ecosystem functions in our landscapes, whether through rewilding, human stewardship, or ecological farming for landscape regeneration;

I see several positions where we should build tolerance and understanding for each other:

• The corporate critique of the small-scale agroecological movement. Big Agriculture – and especially the input sector and the processed food sector – have gained power over the food system with political and legal means. Especially patents on food and food safety regulations are biased toward large-scale production systems. Many vegan solutions, e.g. the mega-processed “plant based meats” like the Impossible Burger or the Beyond Meat Burger, are fully controlled by dozens of corporate patents. They are designed to exclude independent and smaller farming.
• Supporting small-scale ecological food production that rely on natural ecological balances for pest management, rather than on chemical pest control or even systemic pesticides that leave entire landscapes devoid of live.
• The vegan disgust with meat excesses is justified not only by the dominant industrial animal production system. In a hypothetical regenerative food world, only few people could afford a high-meat diet, which raises several equity questions. A fair sharing of our fertile land base would require that most Westerners reduce their overall meat consumption and instead increase their reliance on plant-based proteins (beans, chickpeas, tofu and other soy products, and others).
• A dismissal of reductionist lines of arguments and an adoption of a holistic view on food. Too often, food is only seen through the “Water use lens”, the “land efficiency lens”, or now the “carbon lens”. Food is all of these and so much more – its culture, identity, history, ethics, values, and food touches all aspects of the planet’s biosphere.
• A promotion of plant-based foods does not require veganism. Many recipes that use plant-based proteins (e.g. a chilly or humus) can be seasoned with animal products (e.g. bacon, parmesan), such that eaters still rely on plants for a significant part of their protein intake while also satisfying longings for meat. Plant-based and animal-based proteins are not alternatives – chefs can experiment how to combine both for and ethically sound feast.
• Ethical vegans should extend their compassion beyond their plate and also consider the animal suffering that is associated with pest management within the production of their food.

[i] The wobbles of the Earth’s orbit around the sun determines the basic physics and create an instability of the grasslands; while grassland ecology can carry a green Sahara far beyond it’s physical “stable” state.  Search  “Milankovitch cycles” for more on the Earth’s wobbles.