We will develop here the disagreements we have with antispecism the place of livestock in
food production and its environmental consequences. ---- Livestock: a horizontal transfer
of fertility ---- This barbarous term means that livestock can transfer the fertility of
an area to another. Caricature, animals feed in one place and with their droppings
fertilize go elsewhere. The idea is to graze animals in non-arable areas (hills, uplands,
mountains ...) then the park at night in areas of grain or vegetables, or make manure.
Most agronomists believe that this is one of the essential reasons for livestock
development in societies. With specialization in Western agriculture, this function is
less developed but it is widely available in many countries. For example, after the millet
harvest, flocks will graze crop residues and the surrounding bush and will be parked on
the cultivated plots. When grazing areas are remote from cultivated areas, shepherds
pen-eras relatively tight flocks and bag dry manure and sell it. This practice still
exists in the Cevennes.
Manure is not the only way to improve soil fertility for agricultural production. Among
the various techniques, we find shifting cultivation (a short cultivation and long fallow
that is burned to repeat the cycle), rotation and / or association with legumes (nitrogen
fixing air and enrich the soil to nitrate), from industrial fertilizers ...
Among industrial origin fertilizer, from a large part of the oil industry. So they can not
be considered as a relevant and sustainable way for soil fertilization. The shifting
cultivation is interesting in some contexts but can not be considered as a means
universalized because it requires a large area of production due to the fallow periods.
Farming associations are very interesting, but it is not always possible, and only as
fertilization technique is often inadequate.
As the global population increases (the current demand for food is already quite large),
we need to have large grain and vegetable yields. So we need to increase soil fertility to
achieve this objective 1 and the use of livestock for this purpose is essential for us,
especially if there is agreement on the reduction of the oil industry.
In short, without breeding (without manure) can not reach cereal and vegetable yields
measuring current needs.
Animals, an effective force-workers artists
If we live in a society with all engines, this is not the case for all people.
Approximately, manually, a e Worker cultivates little more than a hectare of cereals,
whereas with a horse or oxen go up to 10 ha.
If you want to reduce the use of fossil energy, the strength of animals is an interesting
alternative that with modern tools, allows to consider effectiveness of agricultural labor 2 .
We are curious to know how you can manipulate the trees in the forest without skidding
tractor without a horse.
Farming not only produces food products
Indeed, livestock produces leather and wool that can serve as resources to the production
of clothing, shoes ... In textiles, a large part of the production comes from the oil
industry and is not a sustainable resource. The culture of cotton, linen or hemp used to
provide usable fibers in the textile industry but these crops are at the expense of food
crops.
According to FAO, it produces about one million thousand tons of wool in the world per
year. If we consider that there is half the volume after the various stages of production
and a sweater weighs 3 kg (this is deliberately exaggerated to have a minimum order size),
an equivalent of 23 sweaters are obtained for each 7 billion humans. Wool can be used in
isolation to make soles, carpets ... Anyway this is far from a straw and it would be
interesting to calculate the area required to replace this volume of wool with vegetable
fiber ( cotton, flax, hemp ...)
The quality of clothes and shoes made with animal fibers is greater, including longevity.
It is certainly secondary but significant because it is good to have strong and waterproof
shoes mountain and forest.
Livestock, a reprocessing of organic waste
Plant grown food consumed, it remains an important part of the biomass that we do not
consume, especially with cereal we eat peeled.
Livestock production is a means (not only but the most direct) to enhance organic "waste".
Environmental performance of livestock
It is clear that the workshops aboveground (livestock without the use of surface course)
have a disastrous environmental record with an excess of CO2 and methane, excess nitrogen,
high pressure antibiotics ...
For cons, the grassed systems (based overwhelmingly on the use of grass or dried fodder)
are relatively in balance. Sometimes the cattle bed is the main source of carbon in the
world, calculation based on multiplying the volume of CO2 and methane / cow and the number
of cows in the world. In our view, this reasoning is false. Must in our view be the carbon
balance in the agroecosystem (ecosystem of an agricultural area) concerned, which is valid
for carbon analysis. For example a tree consumes carbon from the air but a mature forest
has a zero carbon footprint, because that pump shafts is rejected by the activity of the
fauna and fungi.
In the case of grassed breeding, the carbon balance is zero or less, that is to say tons
of carbon released by cows / sheep / goats correspond roughly to tons of carbon consumed
by grazed grassland plants 3 . There is a slight carbon in Europe and North America
related to the fuel consumption to excess forage. This zero balance is relative because
the shape of the carbon is not the same, the plants consume CO2 and cows rejecting a high
proportion of methane. Nevertheless, we can say that livestock contributes grassed low
carbon emissions responsible for global warming.
In many places, including grassed livestock transhumance (that is to say moving to find
grass for cattle) is directly involved in biodiversity. To illustrate this, we will use
the example of one of our comrades. It keeps a flock of sheep on a mountain pasture of 200
ha in the Haut Jura. This estive consists of a botanical environment, said pseudo-alpine
lawn, where there are many rare and protected species (over thirty, with beautiful
orchids). Without grazing animals, there would be a move towards a forest ecosystem and
therefore a significant reduction in botanical diversity of the area. We have similar
situations in most pastoral areas of Europe as well as permanent grassland (that is to say
simply mowed or grazed unlike artificial grassland sown).
From an ecological point of view (scientific sense), grazed lawns are unstable and
transient states and if you want to keep, it is necessary to have structural impairments
that prevent them from going to the stable environmental conditions that the forests and
moors, which allows livestock. This includes meadows and mountain pastures but also bogs
which are priority ecosystems excellence. So the total cessation of farming lead to a
significant reduction in biological diversity (at least in Western Europe).
Finally
In conclusion, stop the exploitation of animals in our deprives humanity of a great number
of things that can not be compensated by a greater use of the oil industry (for
fertilizer, strength, textile ...). We can also consider the advent of a technological
revolution that brings an energy source capable of supplanting the oil industry and
biological energy of animals, but it seems a little risky.
Coordination of Anarchist Groups
January 2014
1 To give a rough idea, wheat yields on good soil without fertilization are 1 tonne / ha,
3-4 tonnes / ha with smart plant associations, and 5-6 tonnes / ha organic fertilizer
production, with animal.
2 today was trailed by a team that includes a motor to the desired, such as blades for
mowing or a crane to haul, with surprisingly low diesel consumption by turning mechanism.
3 For ecologically intensive agriculture, Michel Griffon, p59
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