What has prompted this blog post is the relentless noise in the media that the salvation of humanity is for our diets to become plant based and or eat lab grown “meat”. The volume keeps going up as a...
What has prompted this blog post is the relentless noise in the media that the salvation of humanity is for our diets to become plant based and or eat lab grown “meat”. The volume keeps going up as a lot of people have invested a lot of money in this future and money buys you a lot of media noise. It is almost as big a lie as all the Covid lies put together.
I have written about the vegan movement three times on this blog, twice in 2014 and once in 2018.
THE GOOD.
The good of the vegan movement is that most urban folks in the world are now aware that most of their animal protein is produced in caged systems that are a disaster for the animals, the environment and the humans eating this “meat”.
THE BAD.
First, there are more animals in cages today than when the vegan movement started its awareness campaigns. This failure has not been addressed by the movement.
Second, the ecological impact of veganism/lab meat is, to put it mildly, a disaster. In the vegan utopia there are no animals. In the regenerative/organic farming world animals form the cornerstone of fertility. If there are no animals the only way to grow plants is by using artificial fertilisers which not only destroy the soils but in their production methane is released. Cornell University did a study in the US and found that the due to massive underreporting the US fertiliser industry emits 3x times more methane than all other industries in the US combined.
Third is what I refer to as body count. How many beings are killed to produce the food that I or the vegan movement eat?
I eat mostly beef from cattle from our farm. A grass fed beef cow has only given life in her time on earth. She has given birth to calves, half of which should give birth to calves. She has been rotationally grazed and so her manure and urine has been feeding the microbes in the soil and enabling the growth of our pastures.
This has led to an increase in soil carbon in our pastures as per the table below.
| Year | 2011 | 2014 | 2017 | 2020 | 2023 |
| Organic Matter % | 1,2 | 1,45 | 1,866 | 2,237 | 2,701 |
| Difference | 21% | 29% | 20% | 21% | |
| Difference from 2011 to 2023 | 125% |
In contrast the vegan/lab grown body count is in a different quantum which is best explained by the photo below.
Combines harvesting dry land wheat on the Vulgamore Family Farm just south of Scott City, Kansas. The Vulgamores have been farming this area for five generations, and have one of the largest farms in the county. The wheat harvest last about two weeks, and starts at 7AM with servicing the combines, and usually continues non-stop until 11PM.
The first killing that takes place is when the land is ploughed in preparation for the crop. Every time you plough you kill an underground city (there are more microorganisms in one handful of healthy soil than there are humans on earth) earthworms take 18 months to build their permanent burrows.
The second killing happens when pre-emergent pesticides and herbicides are sprayed. I wrote this about Glyphosate, the 13th apostle in the religion of conventional agriculture.
Then during the growth season most life above and below ground is killed by artificial fertilisers and the chemicals sprayed on the crop.
Then during harvest most living beings (rodents, birds, snakes etc) will get sucked into the combine harvesters along with the crop.
Finally those animals that survive the combine harvesters will die of starvation as their food source is removed.
THE TRAGEDY.
Big food has hijacked the vegan agenda and supersized it with an overdose of virtue signalling. Big food is a pejorative that is glibly used but just for a moment try to understand what it means that just one big food company, Pepsi, made net income of $9 billion in it’s last financial year. A billion is a thousand millions and a million is a thousand thousands.
The dream of big food is to have big retail buy LOTS of their products and never send any back. This is achieved by highly processed (makes them shelf stable at ambient temperature for a long time) and addictive products being on shelf and what better way to appeal to your customers by getting them to virtue signal about doing something about climate change and being kind to animals.
It is very sad that the well meaning folk of the vegan movement have been hijacked like this.
In conclusion. None of the solutions being supported/forced by government, academia, “thought leaders” or big business are regenerative. They are “sustainable” at best. We banned the word sustainability on our farm years ago. What is happening in the world today that should be sustained?
The laws of physics and chemistry and biology prevent farmers who grow the food that goes into plant based and lab meat to be regenerative.
Regenerative agriculture creates jobs. heals the earth and produces nutrient dense food. You, dear consumer, can change the world by choosing which farmer you support.
Angus
21 April 2023.
The post The good, the bad and the tragedy of the vegan/lab meat movement. appeared first on Farmer Angus.