One of the new elements in the Garnaut Review’s final report is an analysis of “Transforming rural land use” in chapter 22. It’s a tour of some of the ways in which agricultural and forestry practices might change to increase the amount of carbon sequestered in our forests, woodlands, and our soil. It’s one of the most positive chapters in the entire report; changing the way Australia uses its land offers some enormous opportunities to absorb carbon at relatively low cost.
There’s a lot of possibilities in there; I’ll just pick one. As our vegetarian friends regularly remind us – Andrew Bartlett has pointed the issue out again – one of Australia’s biggest contributors to our greenhouse emissions is the methane-laden burping of our cattle and sheep. One solution would be to join Bartlett and make a mass switch to vegetarianism, or at the very least eat less meat. Or figure out how to stop ruminants producing methane, which is a nice idea but has proved to be rather difficult in practice (and may well involve genetic engineering). Alternatively, we could switch to pork or chicken, the production of which releases far less CO2. But for the truly committed carnivore, nothing replaces the taste of a nice red steak. So, if we can’t stop cows burping, farting, and poohing methane, what do we do?
Garnaut points to an interesting study by Edwards and Wilson (which, unfortunately, not only is not freely available, my university doesn’t have a full-text subscription) which looks at the idea of turning large parts of Australia back to kangaroo country. Kangaroo, when well prepared, is a rather tasty red meat, and, unlike ruminants, kangaroos don’t burp large amounts of methane every couple of days. So, in a nutshell, the study suggests that if carbon prices rise to the predicted levels, that we could profitably replace much of our beef and lamb production with roo.
But would people eat roo?
Well, Garnaut goes to the standard economist’s toolbox and looks to the power of price signals to change people’s diets. Here’s a chart of the real retail price of a number of different meat types , from 1960 until 2008:
Note that poultry prices have plummeted, pork has dropped a little, beef has stayed roughly steady, and lamb has risen (particularly recently).
If you’re a believer in the power of price signals, you’d expect chicken consumption to rise, and sheep meat consumption to drop, right? Well, here’s the data:
Of course, correlation is not causation, and there are a number of other possibilities you could imagine for the changes in consumption. But the pattern is striking. And, frankly, switching from beef to kangaroo meat isn’t a great gastronomic sacrifice much of the time; roo tacos taste pretty much the same as beef ones, for instance.
There are a lot of barriers to overcome to bring back kangaroos; not least of which is that kangaroos aren’t amenable to traditional Western agricultural practices of small private farms with animals fenced in, selectively bred, trucked from place to place while still alive, and so on. But stranger things have happened. Bring on the roo commons and save the planet.
UPDATE: Here’s the paper. Thanks to the reader who mailed me the link.
yum, i love roo.
time for someone to make ‘the coat of arms’: roo and emu pie
How about protein-charged Roo Smoothies?
We could all be doing the Skippy Skippy Shake Shake.
Amanda, you took the words right out of my mouth!
Robert Merkel wrote:
The northern queensland beef operations don’t look anything like this: think helicopter mustering, wide ranges and seeing your cattle once a year.
Farmers around places like Charleville have been successfully harvesting feral goats for years (especially when sheep don’t thrive during droughts). The real problem is that the rest of the infrastructure required just doesn’t exist – you can’t transport ‘roo without injuring the animals (they aren’t domesticated, duh) so they have to be killed on-site which brings in a whole host of health issues.
Fixing the domesticated animals would be a far better idea – and it’s being actively worked on. These things take time though, and research dollars. Trying to domesticate ‘roos enough so they can be handled by trucks and yards suited to cattle and sheep would be futile.
Amanda & Tim, a couple of skippy cornballs.
They’re great stirfried.
There’s reasonable availability of roo fillets and mince at my local coles – but apart from barbecueing the fillets I don’t know how to treat it. Can I just substitute roo mince for beef mince, in a ragu, for example? Or in rissoles? Any advice, hints, recipes?
I believe you can (as in, mince in ragus, etc.)
But it’s not that simple. the major problem as I see it is an inability to slaughter them humanely. At the moment it’s done by shooting and very hit and miss (literally) with many animals winged and dying slowly. Then there’s the problem of joeys in pouches.
We need an australian Temple Grandin to come up with a genuinely efficient and relatively humane method tailored specifically to the roo and its habits and habitat, then I’d be happy to eat it.
wilful, in my experience ‘roo meat can suffer a lot from Boar Taint (typically described as making the meat “gamey”, like your grandparents favourite mutton cuts).
Some of this can be mitigated by preparing the meat in “povvo” style dishes that use a lot of seasoning to mask the smell/flavour (think southern mediterranean, north african, or any asian cooking typically involving pork) and involve lots of strong tasting vegetables like onions.
The problem is that the meat just isn’t consistent – so you’ve really got to give it the sniff test (if you can) before deciding what exactly you’re going to do with it. Occasionally you’ll get really nice, sweet bit of ‘roo suitable for cooking like a steak, but a really nasty bit doesn’t even make nice sausages. I’d avoid the mince altogether but that’s just me.
“Kangaroo, when well prepared, is a rather tasty red meat, and, unlike ruminants, kangaroos don’t burp large amounts of methane every couple of days.”
Yes, but after you eat roo you are very likely to pass quite a bit of extra methane yourself.
Been there – done that!
Wilful – yes to substituting roo mince, but not where fat is required. Rissoles can be a tad dry.
Contrary to popular belief, roo stew need notbe dry and stringy either. You just need to be ultra-vigilant about keeping the temperature down. My former housemate made a kick-arse rendang, and a kind of biryani with roo and eggplant that I still wake up weeping for since he shacked up with his boyfriend.
Andrew Bartlett repeats the FAO claim that “direct emissions from meat production account for about 18% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions”, but maybe it doesn’t. Perhaps there’s one less thing to feel guilty about.
As Helen said, we need to find more humane ways of killing roos. But, of course our ways of slaughtering other animals aren’t very humane either.
Sorry, forgot the link
Another potential drawback.
During my undergraduate days, one of our visiting lecturers proposed the same question. The most troublesome issue was the high level of gut fauna (i.e. tapeworms etc) in wild kangaroos. In fact, he specifically said the composition of the roo’s gut fauna precludes them from use as a food source. Consequently, the costs associated with “eatin’ roos” would have to include those incurred by isolating them from wild populations (i.e. fencing etc).
Still, they’re bloody tasty!
Ute man is squeamish about gamey meat? WTF?
I know what you mean though. There’s a distinctly sulphurous smell to some steaks (though I’ve never noticed it in the proper fillets) that has on occasion forced a re-think of the evening menu chez FDB.
The local Woolies does little rolled roo meat roasts which are fab. They take only 30 mins to roast in a hot oven then 10 mins to rest (very important) and taste pretty much like beef. One roast feeds two adults and costs about $4-$5. Good value and tasty too.
and the problem with that is what, exactly?
Besides, all you have to do is dose the cattle with roo gut fauna. They’ll have upset stomachs for a couple of weeks and then they’ll be fine.
I thought you Australians were squeamish about roo. I say hand me a rifle and let’s go into business.
Let’s hop to it, people!
Helen: do you have some evidence to back that up?
Kangaroo culls by professional shooters are supported by, for instance, the RSPCA.
rpg: I don’t have a problem with GE. Other people do.
On your second point, as I understand it, stopping cows burping methane isn’t nearly as easy as you described.
FDB wrote:
Pathetic isn’t it, but it’s more ute man’s missus and the tin lids who would raise the first objection.
I think a little boar taint can actually be used to advantage in the right meal (see the suggestions) but it has no place in a meat and 3 veg western style dish. If you buy one of those slow cooker things and make something like a Mussaman curry though, you have to have pretty strong flavours to survive all the coconut milk etc., so a gamey and stringy meat is the best choice (beef ends up too sweet I reckon and chicken just basically turns into tasteless glop).
Then again, I still think the biggest objection to trying to make a paradigm shift away from domesticated cattle and sheep are the handling problems, not the flavour, which aren’t going away in a hurry.
Oh, another point I’ve posted here before courtesy of my employer:
Don’t call me Mr Methane
Cows are big and slow and literally covered in meat. Kangaroos aren’t.
David Rubie: one might suggest that if cattle were removed, the kangaroo population might increase.
With a bit of knowledge of production beef farms and abattoirs, I reckon the ‘roos get a better deal of it than the cows. The accuracy and lethality of professional shooters is really extraordinarily good – but I accept that they will inevitably be a bit hit and miss.
People who don’t like kangaroo shooting have this to say about kangaroo meat diseases: http://www.awpc.org.au/kangaroos/book_files/diseases.htm
Sounds like a beat up, not much risk there.
Might try a massaman roo curry.
No doubt the kangaroo population would increase Robert, but the implied logistics of handling and killing 10x the number of animals currently handled might be a tad problematic. They aren’t chickens.
Yeah, but most people eat more meat than they need to anyway. Wouldn’t hurt to cut back as well as switch to alternative sources.
Marinate, my friends (too long listening to McCain), marinate.
You can use milk to get rid of the gamey taste if you have a prob.
I favour a barbeque sauce of some kind.
Cous cous works well underneath the meat.
We eat too much of everything Julie – getting people to cut back on meat is probably a good idea as we approach 60% population obesity (making the Mussaman curry suggestion pretty suspect), however I expect the increasing prices of mitigating global warming will help solve that too
Robert, there’s actually quite a bit of work on this. It’s early days yet, but It might be possible. A quick google led me to this, from which I found the name Athol Klieve. You can search Pubmed with ‘Klieve AV’ to find out more.
But, following on from Andrew Bartlett’s advice, a major cut back in the animal protein in our diets would greatly reduce the amount of meat – cattle, roo or otherwise – required to feed us.
I’ve just been getting through Tim Flannery’s The Future Eaters. Even in 1994, the good doctor was chastising us for not adapting our culture to the limits of what our land could sustainably provide. For the purposes of this discussion, you can read eating habits for culture.
Another advantage in reducing cattle (and sheep for that matter) numbers would be the possibility of increased carbon-sequestering forest.
A mild whiff of boar taint is fine by me for the benefits of reducing cattle numbers.
Taste is similar to venison and similar recipes apply, for rissoles I use half roo mince and half pork for a good balance as roo is very lean.
Centralised processing is unlikely to be viable so that leaves mobile abb’s or the return of small regional ones.
Robert Merkel @ 24: The kangaroo population has actually increased artifically as cattle/sheep production increased, IIRC. All three species favour grasslands and ‘improved pasture’ over the natural cover. Hence the recurrent need for culls in some locations, and the hate-on some farmers have for roos, which they claim compete with the domesticated animals for fodder and water.
If all you’re cooking is tacos, use lentils instead. Can be substituted for anything that uses mince.
Laura: I don’t mind the occasional lentil, but I think meat – even minced meat – tastes nicer, and I don’t think I’m Robinson Crusoe there.
Not saying others don’t have different opinions, of course. Taste is a subjective matter
I freaking adore lentils, but variety, spice, etc.
We use tinned red beans instead of mince in tacos if it’s veggie taco night. Lentils are for dirty hippies or kindergarten “make your own instrument” day (no, not the butt flute).
Longer me: you will have a hard time convincing people (say, me) to go vegetarian on the basis that it won’t adversely affect the pleasure, or at least number of pleasures, they get from eating. Unless you dislike meat, or genuinely can’t tell it from pulses (due to absence from mouth, sinus and throat of all sensation).
<em.If all you’re cooking is tacos, use lentils instead. Can be substituted for anything that uses mince.
rubbish.
David, a good chile needs both meat and beans.
I’ve only had one dud curry out of scores when using roo meat i started with a commercially available Madras curry and have since substituted roo for beef in several red meat curries in the Charmaine Soloman books like the dry meat curry and her red curry.
when making a ragu or a bolognase, i make the tomato base first and mix the meat in this works well with roo. most of my friends fry the meat with onions and what not, and then add the passata etc, this des not work with roo as there is not enough fat.
i have not had a good roo sausage, again not enough fat, bu tthere is a great roo salami available at the south Melboure Markets, or was last time i looked, two years ago.
re steaks and fillets etc, i agree with those above that mention the variability of the product, roo steaks, they must be rare, generally i ask for them still stunned in the headlights, can be great, my fav condiments so far have been hot english mustard and cranberry sause.
Wilful, having now corrupted the thread into a Jamie Oliver style cook-off, I reckon the commercial taco kits are perfectly edible with a big tin of red beans instead of mince as long as you’re generous with the other stuff (capsicum, onions, tomatoes). Sure, beans and mince together are good, but the beans by themselves are fine’n'dandy. The amount of meat vs. beans in actual mexican food seemed pretty low to me when I’ve eaten it (and actual mexican food is delicious).
Lentils, on the other hand, always just taste like somebody snuck in a handful of dirt or did the cooking under the house.
Now, I also reckon that the relatively mild spices of a commercial taco kit will not kill the occasionally irksome flavour of kangaroo – you’d need something stronger.
“If all you’re cooking is tacos, use lentils instead. Can be substituted for anything that uses mince.”
Or frijoles refritos, if we’re talking about tacos, enchiladas, pupusas etc. I think that works with the other flavours better than, say, lentils. Having recently become vegetarian, I don’t really miss the beef or chicken in Mexican/Central American dishes. Although I do miss chicharron in my pupusas a little bit.
David, have you seen how much salt there is in a commercial spice mix? I make my own – lots of cumin, paprika, oregano, bay leaf, some stock powder, ground coriander, you’re there.
Anyway, to steer back towards the basics of the thread, as part of my attempts to reduce my emissions, chez wilful is going to try and remove beef mince from the menu, and substitute kangaroo, even though it’s a fair bit more expensive. I think this is better for our rangelands as well (noting that the IUCN listed species included lots of rangeland ones).
After that, the only two big opportunities for me to reduce emissions are dairy products and flights (though I’m not that bad an offender, we do plan on going to Europe next year).
Wilful wrote:
I honestly have no idea what the food-miles calculation looks like of beef vs. kangaroo, but given that a lot of farmers are actively trying to mitigate their carbon emissions via pasture improvement, the overall difference of carbon footprint of small operators harvesting kangaroo vs. large commercial farming operations might be negligable. It’s a laudable goal though.
Electricity is what makes up a far greater proportion of my families carbon footprint as far as I can tell, not beef or lamb.
“remove beef mince from the menu, and substitute kangaroo, even though it’s a fair bit more expensive”
Where are you shopping? I’m paying $6 or so a kilo at Coles – the only mince cheaper is the cheapest ‘hamburger’ beef mince, which comes in at 30% fat, minimum.
One thing that people might want to consider are the consequences of roo meat switching from a boutique niche product to a mass market staple. Will kangaroos be subjected to the nefarious industrial meat production line? Do we want to go there?
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Vegetarianism is becoming moral in the sense of central to the well-being of the body politic. People will continue to eat meat, but if we’re wise, then we’ll be eating a lot less of it and switching to stuff like roo meat. Chickens kept in line with permaculture techniques provide excellent fertilizer and sources of protein. And chickens are meant to be eaten. Unlike, perhaps, more intelligent animals like pigs who know what’s going on the minute they arrive at the abattoir.
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Still I’ve been eating roo for years: low fat, ran around wild, no antibiotics, no hormones. Soak it in rosemary, red wine and soy sauce for 24 hours. Serve with sweet-potato mash, lots a garlic – Yum!!!
You have not yet discovered the joys of a good dahl baht then, David.
Adrien: as David Rubie has pointed out, one of the biggest barriers to increasing the amount of kangaroo meat is that you can’t farm them conventionally. They don’t take to industrialized, intensive agriculture.
On the upside, this should mean that the potential for unethical practices is limited to the capture and killing, and – as far as I can tell – kangaroos can be shot humanely.
To my mind (admittedly an almost completely ignorant one) there’s a possibility of more and more tender meat if some very simple provisioning happened in lean times too.
“Joy” and “Lentil” do not belong in the same sentence GregM, unless it’s something like “To my joy, lentils were not on the menu”. Sure, Dahl from the local Indian restaurant is tasty. Tasty dirt. To each his own, I suppose.
“On the upside, this should mean that the potential for unethical practices is limited to the capture and killing, and – as far as I can tell – kangaroos can be shot humanely.”
I have a brother in law that is a professional roo shooter. These blokes are subject to strict regulation, do not miss the target and refrigerate immediately.
While I don’t feel it’s imperative that you enjoy lentils, I am sorry you haven’t found a lentil dish that worked for you, DR. I’m a big fan of lentils myself (and was from before I went vegie), although I appreciate they are often poorly prepared, especially by those who are just starting to use them. Once you hit your stride with ‘em, they can be very tasty.
lentils are great, I love ‘em. But a recipe that calls for beef mince cannot successfully have lentils as a substitute.
FDB, Footscray market has beef mince for $4.00 a kilo. but I thought roo was more than that, will have to double check. Cat food roo is more than $6/kilo though I recall.
I’ve given up on trying to cook roo – never been able to get a decent tender dish. Mind you I’ve given up getting decent steak to cook at home too.
I love lentils and chick peas and couscous
Robert – you can’t farm them conventionally. They don’t take to industrialized, intensive agriculture.
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Not now, not as its practiced however innovations could make it possible. Or genetic engineering. Mix a roo with a cow.
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Where’s there’s a
dollarwill there’s a way. Just sayin’..
Klaus – While I don’t feel it’s imperative that you enjoy lentils,
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And you call yourself a pinko.
Well I’ll have you over for dinner, and you won’t even know it’s lentils not ground-up cow in your food.
Adrien, if you think chooks are too stupid to live, I have to wonder if you’ve spent much time with any. They are far more productive of useful things alive than dead, anyhow.
There should be a rule to go with Arthur C. Clarke’s one: any foodstuff sufficiently high in salt and fat is indistinguishable from beef mince.
[In a Ben Lee voice: "and that's the way I like it", etc.]
I enjoy the Sanitarium not-mince: with the help of some vegie ‘beef’ stock, I’ve made a decent not-bolognese with it. I’m not going to claim it tastes the same as a bolognese, but I prefer it, taste-wise, to probably 3/4 of the bolognese I had as a meat eater.
Laura – Adrien, if you think chooks are too stupid to live, I have to wonder if you’ve spent much time with any.
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Yes I have spent time ’round ‘em. Unfortunately.
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They’re not too stupid to live. Most organisms, including most of us, are pretty bloody stupid. But you don’t have to be smart to live. In fact it can be positively disadvantageous. A headless chicken can be kept alive and halfway functional for upwards of a month. They’re level of sentience is lower than animals with more smarts, just a fact. Hence they’re less likely to feel pain, be scared blah blah than a pig.
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That doesn’t mean they don’t tho’. They do. I’ve seen them slaughtered and others to boot. I don’t get kicks out of it, but it’s weakness and hypocrisy to shield yourself from the truth of meat. Would you agree?
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Pigs are quite sentient and resemble us in many other ways too. (Obviously). In fact there’s a certain argument that the halal/kosher prohibition against pork etc originated as an humane taboo. When pigs scream they sound human. Sets off our empathy response.
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They are far more productive of useful things alive than dead, anyhow.
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Which goes for just about everything living except pussycats and Big Brother housemates. Cats are aproductive. They could be productive they just choose not to be. Like any aristocracy. BB housemates are a shocking waste of resources. They’re hoarding protoplasm that’d make a perfectly decent virus.
Robert @ 20: Note I’m in favour of eating roo meat, but colour me sceptical about the RSPCA as an arbiter of animal welfare. Some independent Kanga-obudsman (not from PETA) would be an advantage. RSPCA has shown itself all too willing to cave when faced with actual profits, e.g. the egg industry. They were quite good on Jumps racing recently but caved abominably in a local case of horse cruelty which I was following in 2003. So I’m not going to take their word alone in conjunction with the Kangaroo meat industry reps – I’d like an independent arbiter.
As I said, we need our own equivalent of Temple Grandin (who Sophie Cunningham mentioned recently in her AGE article about animals and our relation to them), with lateral thinking.
a local case of horse cruelty
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How can you be cruel to a horse? Horses are beautiful spiritually and physically. Seagulls? Sure.
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They have it coming.
A couple of short observations:
- Kangaroos don’t pay attention to fences.
- Kangaroos love to eat crops.
As a result, no one (least of all George Wilson) is seriously proposing a shift to kangaroos in the farming lands, only in rangeland country. It should be noted that ruminants on rangeland produce disproportionately large quantities of methane per unit of meat, so this is where the bang for the GHG buck is anyway.
And yes, overall kangaroo numbers have gone up in the rangelands since we put in water points; but if we left the water there & took the cattle and sheep out then kangaroo populations would rise further.
The economics of keeping a processing infrastructure going when the underlying resource is subject to boom-and-bust fluctuations might be a show-stopper, though. Just ask the people from Sunrice…
it’s weakness and hypocrisy to shield yourself from the truth of meat. Would you agree?
I think it’s weak to eat meat, actually. Weak as piss.
Perhaps Laura, you’d like to explain exactly how we can replace the protein in meat without a gargantuan explosion in the use of fertiliser? Show your work.
One aspect of cattle production beyond their farting that hasn’t been mentioned so far is the fairly large proportion of feedlot cattle that are fed grain rather than simply grazed on rangelands.
Because of the extra GHGs involved in the production & transport of the grain, its the consumption of these beasts that really tips the co2 scales.
I’m not sure what the proportion of beef produced this way is in Australia. It permits more intensive production, thus its popularity for fast-food producers, so I suspect its rising.
Any figures, anyone?
You’d think feedlot roos would be a bit too much of a stretch…
Further to my previous @ 65, ‘Supermarkets are currently drawing 40-50% of their meat supplies from feedlots’ (full report here) so I guess the overall figure is more like 30% Australia-wide.
I’d reckon pulling back on this method of cattle production might be just as effective a GHG reducer as turning over existing cattle rangeland to roos.
btw, I’m quite happy with joy and lentils in the same sentence, but I’d also put in chick peas, which beat lentils 9 times out of 10 for me….
David, lentils and other pulse crops don’t require nitrogen fertilisers.
Yes they do Laura if you want to grow them in commercial quantities, especially in our poor soil. All the big commercial producers of pulse crops use Nitrogen based fertiliser (read: natural gas) in large quantities to increase the yield. Even the massive numbers of vegetarians in India that rely on lentils for protein have food-mile / carbon footprint problems.
David that is not what I have read. Oh well, you must be correct. Do you work for the meat and livestock association, or did I misunderstand your reference to your employer earlier?
I am sorry if I offended you by suggesting that clinging to meat eating just because it tastes nice is for weak little babies. I didn’t realise.
David R, I think you’ll find that its phosphorus that lentils & legumes require.
Both types of crops will fix atmospheric nitrogen into the soil via a symbiotic relationship with a soil bacteria (Frankia from memory) that anaerobically converts N2 into nitrates. Takes time and requires adequate soil phosphorus levels (of which many Australian soils are rather deficient).
Pshaw to ‘roo meat. It’s vile, as is (ptooie) venison. Give me good old methane producing beef and sheep any old day. He of Questionable Taste in our household likes both, but then he also thinks offal and shellfish make a damn fine feed and Melbourne Bitter’s a grand quaff! I rest my case m’lud.
laura wrote:
Wrong on every level. Getting snarky being caught out wrong, *that’s* for weak little babies.
The link between nitrogen fertiliser and pulses is trivially found via google i.e. here.
Yes it depends a bit on soil type but the basics from that article are 100kg of nitrogen fertiliser per 2 tonnes of lentils. That’s not a trivial amount. It’s definitely not for babies either because it’s expensive.
David , from your source
QED, surely?
If you measure the climate forcing of impact in the way Prof Barry Brook argues, the impact of livestock is actually far greater than the already significant amount that is commonly asserted – around 72 times more potent than CO2, rather than 25 times.
The positive side of that is there are even bigger gains to be made if people do signficantly reduce their consumption of meat dairy and other produtcs from livestock. As methane breaks down much more quickly than CO2, the gains from reducing emissions of it can be realised much sooner, buying us a bit more time while we try to figure out ways to seriously reduce emmissions in other sectors.
Feral Abacus, read the very next sentence, or even better read the whole page. You can expect the yield per hectare to increase from 800kg to 2 tonnes with “the right agronomic package” which includes 100Kg of Nitrogen fertiliser per hectare. The green revolution is currently feeding the world, not ill informed opinions or finger in the wind guesses.
I don’t mean to bash you with a clue stick, but “effectively nodulated” in that context you can read as mature/approaching harvest. Before that, you need fertiliser. After that, more fertiliser doesn’t improve the yield (unlike things like corn).
Andrew what does methane (CH4) break down to? I would have thought that CH4 plus 5xO2 equals CO2 plus 4xH2O. That leaves a lot of CO2 as a residue. And a lot of water, which is a greenhouse gas in its own right.
Sorry, no you don’t nitrogen-rich fertiliser for legumes to be effectively nodulated. ‘Effectively nodulated’ means that the nitrogen-fixing bacteria have created the air-tight nodules on the roots within which they convert atmospheric N2 into plant-available nitrogen-rich compounds.
No difference Feral Abacus – all they are referring to is the timing of the fertiliser, not whether it needs it or not (which it does, absolutely).
Oops got that wrong. CH4 plus 3 x O2 equals CO2 plus 2x H2O. I’m a bit rusty on my valancy tables. Still that’s a lot of carbon dioxide and a lot of water hanging around after the methane has degraded.
David Rubie, rather than pursue a rather pedantic & peripheral debate on this, I’ll leave you to consider how it might be that native legumes manage to nodulate and fix atmospheric nitrogen in the absence of nitrogenous fertilisers.
Gee, I dunno Abacus, maybe available nitrogen in the soil from organic matter? Or it might be a sky pixie, I can’t decide.
Laura, I suggest that even though you advocate vegetarianism, the majority of people are omnivores and that won’t change in the near future. So it still makes a lot of sense to support and promote roo as a more environmentally friendly alternative to beef, even if you personally believe we shouldn’t eat meat at all.
I have a pertinent question about cuts of meat: is it eye fillet or hamburger mince that drives our demand for beef? (I would suspect the latter but I don’t actually know)
Finally, I have been a gastronomically satisfied roo consumer for several years (apart from sausages, which I find a bit too dry) and can’t resist throwing in a cooking suggestion. Marinate your roo steaks in sweet chilli sauce and fresh coriantder, then BBQ or pan fry. Delicious.
What you’re really saying, Alison, is that Laura should cease advocating the alternatives that you feel are unacceptable and knuckle down to make the best of the status quo like everybody else. I have long appreciated her contributions along these lines, so I must respectfully object to you suggesting she remain quiet on the question of vegetarianism. It’s comments like yours that draw me towards evangelising a little for going vegie myself, but I’ll settle for advocating the legitimacy of others doing so.
Kangaroo stew with damper dumplings is the bomb. As I congratulated the chef after first encountering this dish, I mused about what the broth would taste like on its own with just a shot of vodka.
Five minutes later he brought out chilled Kangaroo broth in shotglasses spiked with vodka and a bit of paprika or some such. Rooshots!
FDB [11] …. and David Rubie [9] too:
Ah yes but low-fat kangaroo meat would go very well in that good old South African style sausage. boerwors. It’s fairly dry and needs a slightly different way of cooking …. but great. Flavour depends entirely on how the boerwors [or any other home-style sausage] is made, how it is cooked and with what it is cooked – and if none of that suits you then reach for the sauce bottle.
Nabakov [84]:
Now there’s an idea …..
Graham Bell: boerwors, dry? Have you ever had the real deal? You can see great lumps of fat in it, raw. Cook it under a grill and it sends great exploding geysers of fat spurting into the element, from whence smoke issues to set off the fire alarm.
David & the Feral Abacus appear to be talking at cross purposes because they’re not distinguishing normal growth from intense cultivation. I’m not a farmer, but I know a bit about the energetics of nitrogen fization: no plant would do it unless it had to, and you’d probably get a much better yield if you gave it the choice not to.
nabs, please share the recipe if you have it.
Laura, provided we pay for all the externalities associated with meat (which I agree we currently don’t), and the animals in question are treated humanely (again, not always the case) then why should we not eat meat “just because it tastes nice”?
After all, foods generally taste nice because natural selection has determined that such foods are nutritious – though of course that can backfire in the modern world where many foods are much more readily available. Eating meat for many of us is part of what makes life worth living, and providing we properly pay up-front for all the costs involved (including health costs from eating too much), meat consumption should have a net positive effect on human existence.
Klaus (and Laura)
Actually, I think advocating vegetarianism is very worthy! And of course, if you are a vegetarian because you believe that killing animals to eat them is wrong, I understand and respect not wanting to advocate roo over beef.
But from the environmental viewpoint, I think it can be detrimental to present the issue of eating meat as an either/or dichotomy. A lot of people, when they contemplate the extreme position of going vegetarian, find the change so daunting that they write it off completely and do nothing.
I think a middle ground suggestion of eating less meat, or switching from beef to roo, is more palatable for a lot of people. They think “OK, I can give that a try”, they take an important first step (towards vegetarianism?) of reflecting on what they are consuming, and they make an environmentally positive change to their eating habits.
Vegetarianism is a lifestyle choice – it is not our natural state, whatever arguments you might like to put forward. I have yet to hear of a baby or toddler who refused meat when given it for the first time; most children eat meat in preference to anything else apart from lollies and chips. It’s only when people get older and develop an ideological objection to meat that they stop eating it.
From dentation to digestion, the human body is clearly designed to eat meat and vegies (and fruits/grains/pulses etc). AND YES, MEAT DOES TASTE GOOD – that’s part of the reason people continue to eat it, and always will.
Right, got that off my chest.
I make kangaroo mince lasagne – my children love it and it’s better for them than the normal variety (I also use low fat milk and cheese in the bechamel). They also love kanga bangers, kanga kebabs and kanga roasts.
Chinda63 I know two such children, one of them is my son who has to be convinced to eat any meat not processed into a sausage roll or chicken nugget and his classmate who from birth vomited at the sight of meat. Her mum couldn’t even take her past the meat counter at the local supermarket without her losing everything she’d eaten. So she has been completely vego since birth. Only two, but they do exist.
I have to admit our 3 yo needs far more cajoling to eat meat than, say, fruit (incl. tomatos & avocado), pasta and cheese.
But less cajoling than he needs to eat, say, lettuce or carrots.
Perhaps this might be because modern vegetables bear less resemblance to the foods that sustained the first few hundred thousand years of our existence than do many fruits and meat? I can’t explain cheese however.
Anyway, by all means encourage people to eat less meat, even none at all. But take some sort moral high ground and you’re not going to convince or convert anyone.
Since this thread has devolved into a pro/anti-vegetarianism debate,I’d just like to point out that this issue is essentially a moral debate, and I’m unaware of any blog threads where peoples deep moral positions have ever been changed.
In other words, your values suck!
(Oh and my little boy’s a happy omnivore, likes both his meat and vegies.)
When Tim Flannery is talking apparently seriously bout throwing sulphur into the atmosphere to create a shroud around the planet, I think that it’s time to start looking critically at all kinds of lifestyle choices that are destroying the planet. Under the current circumstances I have no compunction at all about suggesting that meat farming is a luxury and one we can’t afford if we want to avoid disaster. I think it is obnoxious for other reasons as well, but it’s becoming clear that it’s selfish in exactly the same way as driving a needlessly huge gas guzzling car is selfish and self-indulgent.
The softly-softly approach does nothing to get it through to people that they need to think about the consequences of what they’re doing.
I do think it’s weak to whiningly go on about how one’s taste buds matter more to one than cutting methane emissions, and I don’t see anything at all wrong with saying so.
Well if the darkest predictions of Flannery turn out to be true, then cutting emissions now won’t make too much difference in the overall scheme of things. Looking at things in this context, to me, legislating to stop people eating meat, or legislating to make the price of energy from carbon emissions massively higher, seems to be punitive, not preventive: it’s not meant to stop global warming so much as punish people for causing it in the first place.
Raising the cost of a commodity is not the same as punishing someone for buying it in the past.
Laura wrote:
It’s a pretty naive assumption that switching straight from meat to lupines/cereals is going to create less greenhouse emissions. Like I said Laura, show your work. It isn’t anywhere near as simple as you think. People need protein in specific combinations, you can’t just eat lentils and think you’re getting everything you need, they need to be combined with cereals which are very problemetic when you start working out just how much (good, productive) acreage is required to replace livestock that can subsist on pasture. Let alone the extra demands for fertiliser and fuel.
David, with respect, the vegetarians do have a point on methane. Until you can stop ruminants burping the stuff, beef is environmentally problematic.
Alison @ 89:
Thanks for your reasonable and measured response. My earlier comment may have been unnecessary, in hindsight.
Punishment can take many forms, from corporal to psychological. I think raising the price of a commodity through legislative/political means could be a punishment in certain contexts.
A politician can’t send a person to bed without bread and water, but denying people access to certain goods and services through legislative means is possible.
Robert Merkel wrote:
No question about that Robert, but is the proferred solution potentially worse?
It reminds me a lot of the incredibly wasteful practice of turning corn into automotive fuel. Look how that turned out.
TimT, if things are as bad as they probably are, your point about punishments is entirely irrelevant.
Any ‘punishments’ that will limit our consumption of certain kinds of meat will be mindlessly trivial compared to the punishments that nature will inflict on our neglect and selfishness and greed, if we do nothing substantial.
“It reminds me a lot of the incredibly wasteful practice of turning corn into automotive fuel. Look how that turned out.”
I don’t know how far this comparison can be sustained, though. I guess I’d like to know more about the particulars.
People need protein in specific combinations, you can’t just eat lentils and think you’re getting everything you need, they need to be combined with cereals
no, you can’t just eat lentils and think you’re getting everything you need, lol. But now it’s your turn to show your work. The idea that pulses need to be combined with certain other foods in order for their protein content to be unlocked is a discredited fad of the 1970s David.
David R,
I think actually it’s you it’s incumbent on to do the work. A cursory google will tell you that for eg, the vast majority of grain grown in the USA is fed to animals, which are then alsmote exclusively used for excessive meat production. To say this is ‘inefficient’ would be the understatement of the century. The USA could grow a significantly smaller grain and legume crop, feed its people with it and have plenty to export, and still not use the same amount of land, water and other resources it currently does entirely centred on growing grain for meat livestock.
When you say silly things like ‘prove the world can grow enough legumes to feed itself’ I have to wonder if you realise that the vast majority of the world is actually basically vegetarian, precisely because eating huge amounts of meat is an extraordinarilty wasteful exercise which limits it to the purview of the wealthy.
The ability to eat meat and wealth are so intrinsically linked that one of the best measures of middle class growth is increases in meat consumption – just look at China to see a very good example of this.
the argument about whether vegetarianism is ‘biological’ or not is a complete irrelevancy on both sides of the argument. Evolution programs us all to crave protein, sugars, fat. It’s how we survived, usually by gorging on abundance when it occured too. To say that small children like meat = we can’t change our diet is stupid. small children love to eat pure sugar too because their body is programmed to respond that way, yet we’ve learnt to moderate our sugar intake.
Evolution explains, but doesn’t excuse. We have valid choices to make. What we eat is a very fundamental, almost primal thing for many of us, which is why I expect many people will resist vegetarianism for a long time. But if those of us in the developed world in particular reduced our meat intake by 20 or 30%, it would have a significant impact not just in terms of global warming, but in terms of animal welfare, reducing environmental degradation, reducing water consumption, and freeing up massive amounts of grain that is currently, stupidly, fed to cattle and sheep.
Laura wrote:
Wrong, Again.
You didn’t read it David. They say ‘do not need to be eaten in the same meal as once thought.’
“For the most benefit from complimentary protein foods, plant sources of protein such as legumes, seeds and whole grains should be eaten in combination and during the same day, but do not necessarily need to be eaten during the same meal as once thought.”
From your link, DR – this suggests that both Laura and yourself are correct. They do need to be eaten in combination, but not at the same time. Personally, I’ve never eaten lentils by themselves.
Indeed, the implication that those who advocate eating legumes are doing so at the exclusion of a wide variety of other foods (including, in my case, dairy and eggs) is preposterous. Rather, what is being proposed is that legumes be eaten instead of meat in certain dishes. Presumably other alternatives to meat can be found where legumes are not suitable.
“Indeed, the implication that those who advocate eating legumes are doing so at the exclusion of a wide variety of other foods (including, in my case, dairy and eggs) is preposterous.”
Would substituting “to” for “at” rescue this sentence?
Exactly so, Klaus. If David just means that vegos need to get their proteins from more than one kind of food, well, yeah, we’ve thought of that.
Where exactly did I say the same meal? I said “combined” – overall diet.
One thing here that’s been heavily overlooked is that the agriculture industry is the single and only one that has managed to reduce it’s greenhouse emissions over the last 20 years. The only one. Pasture improvements and feed efficiency of animals being the greatest contributors. If you’d like to take your blinkers off for a while, have a read of This canadian paper.
A few interesting tidbits:
Methane emission from cattle can be improved by 20% simply by changing their diet.
Feed efficiency of cattle is being concentrated upon heavily, not just to reduce costs but to reduce carbon footprint.
One of the secrets of pasture carbon sequestration is less tillage and more pasture, making a more intensive production of cereal and other crops a potential problem.
Ask yourselves how long it will be before the coal/electricity industries show those kinds of improvements.
Laura, my own personal contribution to the GHG problem is already well below that of most first world dwellers. I would be happy to reduce my beef consumption to further lower it (and probably to improve my health and vary my cuisine), and frequently encourage, as diplomaticly as possbile, my wife to alter her shopping and cooking habits accordingly (she does both about 75% of the time, but isn’t much of a fan of vegetarian dishes). But any lifestyle you choose to live causes some amount environmental damage – indeed I’d suggest at this point with current technology and political/societal constraints there isn’t any way that 6.5 billion humans can all live on the same planet without the environment slowly being degraded. I’m therefore not inclined to completely give up a very enjoyable part of my life in the hope of making a minute and ultimately futile effort to slow down the rate of damage. The changes that I have made to my lifestyle to reduce my environmental impact are ones that either involve very moderate sacrifice (paying for 100% green energy etc.), or indeed benefit me in other ways. Realistically those are the sort of changes that we can get hope to encourage everyone to make.
“Where exactly did I say the same meal? I said “combined” – overall diet.”
So those who eat lentils are so stupid they need to be reminded that they can’t eat just lentils? This is a totally redundant point. No vegetarian I know has ever recommended a legume only diet.
“Methane emission from cattle can be improved by 20% simply by changing their diet.”
What is the improvement if we cease to raise cattle for the table entirely? Also ‘can be’ doesn’t mean ‘has been’.
As for the points about intensive crop production, I’m simply not in a position to assess this. As I feel like I’m getting an incredibly skewed perspective from you, DR, I’m going to have to reserve judgement. Needless to say, nothing you’ve shown me has convinced me there are strong enough environmental arguments for NOT being a vegetarian, only, perhaps, that vegetarianism is not a panacea. Which I wouldn’t have assumed it was.
David, that page reads
“For the most benefit from complimentary protein foods, plant sources of protein such as legumes, seeds and whole grains should be eaten in combination and during the same day, but do not necessarily need to be eaten during the same meal as once thought.”
So what part are you referring to?
I really think you’re pushing it to suggest that having everyone convert to vegetarianism could possibly result in an increase in fossil-fuel use.
But ultimately, insisting everyone go veg is about as realistic and sensible as insisting people no longer heat or cool their homes.
wizofaus wrote:
Ask yourself one simple question: Where does the extra plant matter come from that will have to substitute for meat? It has to be grown/tilled/fertilised/harvested somewhere, all of those practices require more fossil fuel consumption than pasture based animals. On top of that, tilled soil does not sequester as much carbon and may in fact release it depending on the soil.
Feed lotting is of course a different story, but my impression is that environmental concerns will start to limit that practice (and bring on carbon pricing of some sort which will help quite a lot in terms of assessing the real costs of those kinds of management practices).
Am I biased? Hell yes, I stated that at the beginning. I honestly don’t care who turns vegetarian and who doesn’t, but to extrapolate your own personal experience out to some kind of panacea for society is just fantasy. And no, it isn’t just about what tastes nice. It’s about appropriate uses for the arable land we have.
David, there’s no extra plant matter. We already feed more food (yes, yes, protein) suitable for humans to livestock than we get from livestock.
We could stop farming animals tomorrow, change nothing else, and have more to eat.
laura wrote:
I suppose if you wanted to subsist on soy bean husks and non-food quality grain, you should go for it.
Some bias from the other side
Before you say it, yes subsidised corn production in the US is a different story, and a major source of problems including inappropriate use in livestock and ethanol production. But having more to eat by stopping livestock production is basically a myth.
It’s probably true that there some forms of livestock farming, i.e. grazing on marginal land where only grasses unsuitable for human consumption can be grown, that are ‘better use of land’ than the alternative. But what percentage is it? Even if it’s as high as 50% (which seems unlikely), we’d still do better by reducing our meat consumption by half. That would free up substantial amounts of good agricultural land currently used for growing livestock feed, surely more than enough to grow more the grains/vegetables/legumes/fruit needed to supply the nutrients and calories lost through halving meat consumption (especially when it’s pretty clear that the average Westerner consumes more calories than necessary anyway).
wizofaus:
Land use in Australia
Basically, 61% of Australia was used in 2001/2002 for farming of one kind or another, 55% of Australia is basically arid and can’t be used for anything else other than natural pasture. However, it can be used.
Of the land currently used for improved pasture that could conceivably be used for grain food production? 3%. Some of that 3% improved pasture are wheat/sheep operations where the sheep are fed on wheat stubble after harvest so is already being used for grain production about half the time (usually because the other half is unsuitable for any kind of cropping due to seasonal rainfall, like WA).
So the answer to your question (what is the alternative use for this land and what percentage is useful for something else): not much of it, at best 3%.
Due to drought, my guess is that the numbers have changed somewhat for the worse since that survey was done.
David R,
your last answer ignores a few rather pertinent facts (and btw your link doesn’t seem to be working):
– our native pastures are getting converted at a rapid rate, and as a result our native grasslands / pastures are one of the most endangered habitat in Australia. Those that still exist are frequently over-grazed and flogged, resulting in significant environmental degradation. Even if we only grew our meat on native pastures stocked at sustainable rates, we would still have significant environmental problems because hooved animals are not the natural grazers of this continent, and the damage to soils and spread of weeds, and demand for water resources, shows this. Roos make more sense if we could find a humane way to make it work.
– improved pasture takes significant inputs of fertilisers in particular and water to maintain, neither of which is sustainable. To say that this land couldn’t possibly be used for other purposes is a rather large fallacy, not least because it ignores the fact that it’s not suited often to improved pasture either – hence massive inputs. It also ignores the fact that the reason such large tracts of land have been converted to improved pasture is largely driven by the economic argument – eg money to be made exporting meat – and because prime agricultural land is now dominated by tree plantations and dairy in many areas.
In short our land use isn’t driven by what’s ecologically sustainable, but by what you can grow and make a buck from. Our entire land use classification system needs a massive overhaul where it doesn’t rely on massive inputs as a defacto assumption about what is possible to do with that land.
– Australia’s meat production is geared almost entirely to export, with the domestic market being only a small percentage of production / demand. So we are in fact using – and abusing – huge tracts of land to produce huge quantities of meat, far beyond what we need. And we are largely supplying developed world people to also eat far more meat than they need.
– we also grow more grains etc. than we consume here, most of being for export again.
Australia could easily grow all the cereal crops etc. it needs to be self sufficient. The madness is using the driest inhabited continent on earth with the oldest, most depleted soils to be a net food exporter on a massive scale.
Fixed link for land use in Australia
Myriad, it would be morally wrong of Australia to limit it’s own land use just for our own consumption. Other countries with much higher populations simply do not have the resources to feed themselves. The sustainability arguments you make have been around for along time and have also been addressed for a long time – farmers that don’t look after their land go broke, and the ones that do look after their land get rich.
While we do send a lot of exports to rich countries, we send a hell of a lot to poor countries too. Are you suggesting we starve them out? I suppose it’s one way to stop global warming: reduce the world population by unilaterally deciding who is worthy enough to eat.
“Roos make more sense if we could find a humane way to make it work.”
There is a growing market for roo in Australia but I believe much of it is exported.
The suggestion that the industry is not already acting in a humane manner is nonsense. They are shot by professional shooters, immediately refrigerated for factory processing.
On site shooting is a far more humane killing, for the animals, than the experience for sheep, cattle and most chicken. At least they get to spend their life naturally until the final moment.
“…reduce the world population by unilaterally deciding who is worthy enough to eat.”
Did Garnaut mention the benefits of cannibalism?
Laura – I think it’s weak to eat meat, actually. Weak as piss.
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Oh outstanding!
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Let’s go the absolutist moral road. It’s so effective. Effective that is at alienating the majority of the population, precipitating autocratic social environments and filling all and sundry with the urge to eat sliced baby panda for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
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Never mind the Aristotle, here’s the John Calvin: Oh what fun!
Adrien, ‘weak’ isn’t a moral category.
ChrisL [86]:
Like your culinary description.
The texture and flavour of Boerwors – like any other home-made or regional sausage – depends on who makes it and with what. Any I’ve had was a lot drier than the usual thick beef sausage and some has approached fresh salami for dryness.
My point was that using the meat left over from butchering out a kangaroo would make a pretty good variety of home-made sausages, including boerwors.
Yes, I believe so. In the recipe section in one of the appendices of his report.
As I recall he recommended that one should marinate in sweet chilli sauce and fresh coriantder, then BBQ or pan fry.
He recommended a chilled Chianti as the accompanying wine.
I wondered about the “chilled” recommendation which I think is environmentally insensitve and unecessary for a well balanced wine.
David R,
The argument that Australia has a moral obligation to grow food to feed the hungry is spurious at best if we’re sticking with reality. The food shortages in the world are still largely caused by excessive consumption and profit-driven agribusiness dominating the agricultural sector, not because there isn’t enough land to grow food etc.
And there’s a world of difference between farming sustainably and producing good yields that then allow for modest export, and trashing an entire country solely for the purpose of food export. I propose the former, middle way.
The sustainability arguments you make have been around for along time and have also been addressed for a long time – farmers that don’t look after their land go broke, and the ones that do look after their land get rich.
Oh goodness, are you really that innocent? I so wish that was the truth, but it most certainly isn’t. I’ve worked in NRM (natural resource management) for 10 years, and if this was the case my career in that area would have been 8 years shorter. Industralised agriculture not only pushes farmers to trash their land, it favours practises that externalise the costs of their unsustainability. You might want to take a look at the state of our waterways & wetlands, our still appalling loss of top soil, the spread of weeds and feral animals and diseases. We just keep subsidising the inputs (diesel, fertiliser), and spend what little government money there is available on mitigating the ongoing, never-ending damage done by industrialised farming practices. ‘Good’ farmers are still largely just as much in this bind as ‘bad’ farmers because we refuse to take a radical approach to shift our farming methods, still clinging to the notion that industrialised agriculture is the only way to produce large crops, and can somehow be made sustainable. Poor fella, my country.
myriad wrote:
People starve because of politics myriad, not farming practices. Toxic political situations in poor countries are by far and away the biggest contributor to hunger. Trying to offload this problem onto the farming sector is wrong.
As I said, this is being addressed through research although the results take time to filter down to every farm. Some bits of Australia clearly shouldn’t be farmed for anything, but given that the industrialised farming that does the most damage is generally cropping, it makes grazing seem not so bad in comparison.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/organic.farm.vs.other.ssl.html
describes a peer-reviewed study whereby legumes were grown with no fertiliser input, achieving the same long-term (20 year) productivity as fertiliser-enhanced soils.
How well it would apply to Australian soils I’m not sure.
People starve because of politics myriad, not farming practices. Toxic political situations in poor countries are by far and away the biggest contributor to hunger. Trying to offload this problem onto the farming sector is wrong.
You’re changing your arguments to suit the facts David R – it was you who brought up Australia having a moral obligation to help feed the world, not me. And you’ll notice if you pay attention I haven’t blamed ‘farmers’ as an aggregate set once. I do blame western agribusiness models and their evangalists though.
The biggest ‘toxic political situtation’ of all is the profit-driven and developed-world dominated agribusiness approach to food production, which doesn’t focus on food production at all, but profits. The farmer is at the eye of this long-running political storm, no matter where s/he is located. Whether it’s Indian farmers suiciding, having had their livelihoods destroyed by GM cotton, or North West Tasmanian farmers planting and harvesting potatoes in precisely the wrong seasons to meet Simplot’s demands and watching their topsoil wash into local rivers as a result, it is the insanity of “the market” that drives this.
As I said, this is being addressed through research although the results take time to filter down to every farm. Some bits of Australia clearly shouldn’t be farmed for anything, but given that the industrialised farming that does the most damage is generally cropping, it makes grazing seem not so bad in comparison.
the ‘research’ is also largely a dead-end David, as it starts from the assumption that industrialised mono-cropping and grazing on the largest possible scale is the only way to farm. So we watch science twisting itself into pretzel-like shapes trying to work out how to mitigate for eg massive crop disease outbreaks when we know exactly what causes them – reliance on single variety, undiversified, heavily chemically subsidised crops that are inevitably overwhelmed by the adaptation speed of evolving diseases. Yet rather than reverting to what we do know works- planting mixed variety crops, and not planting enormous fields of the same single variety, we persist in trying to develop ‘better’ single strains over and over.
With regard to cropping being worse than grazing – it’s simply not that simple. Over-grazing is a major cause of erosion, top soil loss, waterway degradation and weed spread. Australia still insists on grazing massive marginal areas completely unable to sustain such damage. I’m not particularly interested in saying that grazing is ‘worse’ or cropping; what I know is that we undertake both largely within a paradigm that is completely disconnected from several thousand years of successful, sustainable farming techniques (because they aren’t ‘modern’) and from the reality of the Australian continent, persisting with the American agribusiness model of expansive monoculture with profoundly destructive results.
myriad wrote:
This is garbage myriad. Profit driven agribusiness doesn’t starve people, thugs with guns and countries with no laws do that. Zimbabwe being the perfect example – it was an incredibly rich and productive country before the political situation turned it to shit. Not farming, farming practices, agribusiness or profits. We *do* have a moral obligation to feed the world, simply because our political system is stable and allows us to make a surplus of food. It’s got nothing to do with the insanity of markets and everything to do with the insanity of geo-political manipulation of countries with quite different resources (say, oil for example). You’re really missing the point.
As for the rest of the rant which amounts to a noble savage argument, it’s bullshit. Those farmers that can’t produce a surplus can’t even replace their seedstock and starve for 3 seasons out of four, let alone feeding anyone else. India and China cannot sustain their populations without the green revolution, so we get back to the idea that you’d rather starve out the world to fit some kind of stupid Eden-like dream of perceived sustainability. That is detestable.
Have a look at this: famine no longer inevitable in India, think about the implications of the so-called “sustainable” practices of old and the implications it has for world population.
The situation in Australia isn’t perfect (and I didn’t claim it was) but you can’t throw the whole lot down the drain just because it needs improvement.
“India and China cannot sustain their populations without the green revolution”
But probably only selective parts of the green revolution – i.e. breeding programs that helped significantly boost yields. It’s not clear that fertiliser input is such a benefit over any significant period, as per the article I cited above.
In general, as I understand it, intensively mechanised farming of large scale monocultures does *not* boost land productivity – only labour productivity (which is a worthwhile goal in itself, but not actually necessary to ensure sufficient food can be produced).
Another good listen and links:
Late Night Live discussion on finding old seed varieties to help with climate change adaptation
and
the global seed bank
hmm, my post before this seems to have disappeared?
Shorter version then:
International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development:
key reports here
or synopsis + some discussion here
Summary: we’ve come a long way in recognising what went wrong with the Green Revolution; and traditional knowledge is only some sort of static ‘primitive’ irrelevancy to those who stupidly premise western knowledge over all others – which is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Laura – Adrien, ‘weak’ isn’t a moral category.
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Actually it is. In Western moral philosophy most definitely. Please read “The Sermon on the Mount” in the Gospel According to St Matthew and The Geneology of Morals for starters.
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In any event your remark was a judgement. A refutation of conciliatory admonition to enlightened dialogue. I don’t truck with it.
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I understand that there are people who view meat as murder. However this is a minority view and unlikely to become otherwise so long as those who advocate it insist on puritanical condemnation of what is after all natural. I understand animals, I am one; an omnivorous predator to be exact. Ironically we humans wouldn’t possess the intellectual capacity to consider the moral consequences of eating meat unless we had eaten it for some hundreds of millenia.
Myriad and David R -
Well at least that’s better than the other way around.
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And of course business and failed states never collude. Just ask the people of Conga. They’re enjoying all that prosperity, oh wait. No no no, the lawlessness there prevents businesses from conducting there affairs there, oh wait.
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No that’s not it.
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Facts are a lot of multinational corporations like lawless places. Gets rid of all those pesky rules about ‘poisoning’ the environments and ‘killing’ dissidents. Hey said the guy from a prominent Oz resource company in the Congo I didn’t send those dudes around to kill the protestors. I just bought ‘em a truck. I didn’t know what they were gonna go in it. Wasn’t me. Sure so I bought ‘em some guns. They just wanted to do a bit of target shooting. What? Yeah so? There was a sale on AK-47s (there always is).
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And then there’s this sort of thing. IP law is there for a good reason. It’s there to protect creativity. And this was very creative. Very creative use of patent law that is.
you are thinking of weakness of the will Adrien. I am talking about being pissweak, ie mediocrity, ineffectuality, and unimpressiveness. Motives (and excuses) don’t interest me, on this issue.
you are thinking of weakness of the will Adrien. I am talking about being pissweak, ie mediocrity, ineffectuality, and unimpressiveness.
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Which means: you are thinking of the weakness of the will and so I am I. I’m not just thinking of the weakness of the will actually. Nietzsche may have done so. Jesus advocated the virtues of the weak: the meek shall inherit the Earth and all that.
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Just in refutation of your assertion that ‘weak’ isn’t a moral category. It is. Your argument here is ineffectual.
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I do not have to make excuses for eating meat. And you have no moral authority to impose any such need on me. Period! I’m continually puzzled as to why this basic point viz persuasion as a better currency than puritanical judgement is lost so often. But I s’pose it’s just a mindset and there’s nothing I can do. What did JS Mill say about the Calvinist mentality? Anything that is not a duty is a sin?
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Ah brings me back to those days when I mixed with those who confused political philosophy with the Word of God. Here’s the news: My sins are mine and they belong to me. I own them. And you will have to do a lot better than that if you wanna change things.
That said the situation as Robert illustrates above, is a basis for rendering the eating of meat, at least as much as we do so now, immoral. Which is why I don’t eat it very much and endeavor to obtain it from sustainable sources like kangaroo.
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Still I can’t help my knee-jerk heresy. Another conversation with some hysterical finger-pointer and it’s sliced baby panda for breakfast.
You can solve the big problem with roo farming by cutting the tendons in their back legs so they can’t jump. After that they should be excellent stock animals.
That’s not very nice.
I thought you did not recognise animal rights adrien? anyway, I thought you’d like to know that there is a technical solution within easy reach.
Adrien, I couldn’t agree more. I don’t have a problem with non-carnivores; eat what you like by all means, but don’t force your fundie eating habits on me.
Persist and we’ll have to force feed you (shudder) offal for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Even our half-wit hound wouldn’t come at that!
Levity aside, agribusiness is appalling land use, particularly in the third world and countries recovering from conflicts and other upheavals. Where once some were feeding themselves albeit at subsistence levels, their arable land has been increasingly given over to non-food crops like coffee or other mono-culture at the behest of the IMF and World Bank, resulting in them having to import most of the staples they rely on from developed nations at enormous cost and consequently driving them deeply into debt.
The Globalisation of Poverty Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, by Michel Chossudovsky, first published in 1996, discusses these issues among others. Although the main thrust of his argument is on the financial and economic cost of these practices, their environmental impact doesn’t go unrecognised.
“Persist and we’ll have to force feed you (shudder) offal for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
Levity aside, indeed. There’s very little of it conveyed in this comment, whatever your intentions. The tone of this is quite different to Adrien’s crack about baby panda and I hope you can see why.
Also, some vaguely judgemental comments on a blog thread is not forcing anybody to do anything.
“you are thinking of weakness of the will Adrien. I am talking about being pissweak, ie mediocrity, ineffectuality, and unimpressiveness.”
Well, thank god the above is only vaguely judgemental, then. I’d hate to cop a really judgemental comment.
Being force fed offal is one of the direst things that could happen to anyone, as far as I’m concerned, and if it was said to me in the heat of an argument, I’d take offence. However, that was not the case, nor the intention, as I’m sure you are aware. If I have offended your religious or cultural sensitivities, I apologise.
“However, that was not the case, nor the intention, as I’m sure you are aware.”
No, I’m not necessarily aware of your intention if you haven’t taken the trouble to establish what it is with your interlocutors. There is some ambiguity in using the written word in the way you have in a context like this. The threatening overtones weren’t appreciated, but far from being offended, I’m simply reminded of those bores who like to say unfunny, unpleasant things to themselves and follow it up with ‘Why, can’t you take a joke?’
Once again, nobody is forcing anybody to do anything, so my point stands, whether I use the word ‘judgemental’ or ‘vaguely’ or any other. Laura is judging your own habits negatively and that is all. She only has power over you insofar as you are interpellated by what she writes.
(#12 Russell). Page 113 Livestock’s Long Shadow lists livestock
as responsible for 14% of total anthropogenic greenhouse emissions without
including land use change and 18% with. 4/18 = 22% not 1/3 as claimed
in the guardian article you linked to.
If we consider forcing (which is what real climate scientists use) the figure
is much higher. I can’t put a number on it globally, but in Australia, the
forcing due to livestock is higher than all our coal fired
power stations. Why? 3.1 tonnes of methane has a forcing equal to 3.1 x 72 = 223.
In addition the land clearing is associated with black carbon from biomass burning
which isn’t included in the LLS report. Globally black carbon is a very
large warming forcing but is hard to measure accurately.
Oh, come now. There were no threatening overtones and the context and tone was obviously set by Adrien’s remark about hysterical finger pointers and sliced baby pandas for breakfast which introduced the comment. I must say I was reminded of tedious nitpickers who need a disclaimer and a footnote stating the bleeding obvious.
I really don’t care whether Laura judges my habits negatively or not and most likely the feeling is reciprocated. What I do find provoking is the smug evangelical hectoring from people who believe that their diet makes them morally superior to the rest of us. It’s enough to put me off my vegies.*
*That’s a joke, klausk.
The force-feeding ‘joke’ is something that vegetarians encounter with disturbing regularity, let me assure you. To be honest, I doubt I would ever find it funny, even if the context of levity were successfully established, given that it contains not one iota of wit. It’s right up there with lesbians only needing a good f**k from the right man. And it does have threatening overtones – that’s why it’s not funny.
For my part, I haven’t been taking any position on the morality of my diet, so you might like to think about why I’m not letting this alone, jane. And clearly you do care enough about how you’re being judged to weigh-in on the matter. If you were comfortable with the morality of your choices you wouldn’t be at all concerned with smug hectoring evangelical anything.
I eat meat, but I’d say the majority of my friends are vegetarians because they think killing animals is wrong. Not once have I met with a hectoring or evangelical attitude from any of them. But I think if I want to eat meat then it’s fair enough for that to be disputed and argued with, just like anything else. Why meat-eaters get upset about this is beyond me.
That’s all I was saying really. It’s based on my experience of evangelical political moralizing which produces the exact opposite effect to that (supposedly) intended. It reinforces the behaviour one is trying to amend by embedding in those so accused of nefarities a knee-jerk and entrenched resistance to any suggestion that eating meat might be wrong.
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I don’t think it’s wrong – morally. I think it more humane not to eat meat. But that’s all besides the point. If one looks at the various facts viz the way we produce meat, the waste of resources doing so, the use of anti-biotics, hormones etc – there’s a problem. The Neo-Calvinist approach doesn’t help. It just shuts peoples’ ears down.
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PS I eat meat but I’m very much a pro-active consumer of it. I don’t eat anything that came out an abattoir. That doesn’t make me righteous (Shoot me if I ever become righteous.) Just sensible.
Humour’s in the eye of the beholder. I do wonder Klaus how does one successfully establish levity? A crack that one finds objectionable for moral reasons isn’t witless for that reason.
Nonsense.
True.
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It’s the mode of discourse rather than the content that I’m concerned with.
roos carry parasites, roos cant be farmed and inoculated they get myopathy and die if stressed by handling.roos regulate there breeding patterns by availability of food and water.there are less roos now than there have ever been.shooters dont always hit true and roos suffer.baby joes are bashed onto their nissan patrols bull bar.