Yelling into the Hurricane (yes, my 1st blog post in a long time is about California water)

© 2014 Joshua Stark

There is no such thing as California water.

There is water in California, to be sure, from many varied places and of varying degrees of quality.  Los Angeles, for example, sits immediately next to the single largest body of water on the entire Earth -- and reminds me of a line from Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

If you read any op-ed piece or news article, or listen or watch any reports on our drought, you may be forgiven for thinking that there is such a thing as California water.  Alas, it is not so.  Let me explain.

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California is blessed with more climates than all other states combined; we have literally dozens of micro-climates, as well, and, it goes without saying (almost) that we have hundreds of watersheds.  This is because our topography and our range of latitude are both extreme.  We have the second longest coastline of any state in the Nation, the highest peak in the Lower 48, the lowest and driest places in the country, and the hottest place on Earth.  California's seasonal precipitation varies from 2.5 inches to to ten and one-half feet (see this great map).

California is also very, very large.  For example:  The drive from Sacramento (considered by many in Los Angeles to be "Northern California") to Crescent City is the same distance as the drive from Sacramento to Los Angeles (if you don't know where Crescent City is, by the way, you legally have to move to Nevada and petition to get back into the State).

Now, consider the same water conversation on the Eastern seaboard:  Do we talk about "East Coast" water as if it is one thing?  Rarely do we consider the environmental, economic and social impacts of any policies in Portland, Maine, on Richmond, Virginia; more to the point, we would never consider pumping water from Portland to Richmond.

In fact, we don't even have language that would begin to encapsulate a conversation around water and watershed impacts between those two completely separated regions of our country.  Nor should we -- it would be absurd.

Of course, our political boundaries make all things possible (or impossible)...

The reality is that this year, each region of California is experiencing a drought.  The ecological impacts of one year of drought are tough, but California's weather is so diverse, and we haven't invested in the research to understand the extraordinarily complex implications of drought on each region.

Instead, we let our political boundaries frame our perception of reality, and when we try to shoehorn that perception into the physical reality of our gigantic State, we are left dumbfounded.  This occurs when we try to understand our impacts on water -- like when we unnaturally store and pump water the length of New York City to Charlotte, North Carolina.

But, instead of putting more resources into understanding the implications of our ecosystem-shifting actions (like pumping water, but also like mandating that people stop using outdoor water), we make a boatload of sweeping assumptions:

We assume that we have California water.

We assume that all water has the same value everywhere.

We assume that water's value is only in its commercial or civic use.

We assume that water is "used" like a product -- consumed and poof! it's gone.

We assume that residential water use is always consumptive and bad, and that radically diminishing its use will have only good impacts.

We assume that we dramatically diminish our consumption of water, overall, when we cut back on residential use.

We assume that California (corporate) Agriculture is a foundation of our economy.

We assume that the Central Valley and Southern California would not survive without "Northern" California water.

All of these are terribly inaccurate assumptions, but the worst of all (in my opinion) is our assumption that all human water users everywhere are exactly the same.

But, just as we live in radically different ecosystems throughout our state, our use of water and the impacts of that use on the landscape radically differ.

I can provide myself as an example.  I live 200 yards from the Sacramento River, on the edge of the California Delta and squarely within a riparian (or wetlands) corridor. 

My ecosystem has evolved with certain features, a relative abundance of water being one of them.  With our fluctuating temperatures (over 100 degrees F in the Summer, down to the high 30's in the Winter) and our wildly divergent seasons (all of our measurable precipitation occurs between October and April), this abundance of water has local impacts such as relative humidity, and its ease of access means that animals haven't adapted to go very far or for very long without taking a drink. 

I have a tiny pond in my back yard.  That pond -- plus a dog who doesn't care -- means a safe place for a drink for many local birds.  I have identified five separate species using the pond to bathe, four of them native.  Additionally, the safety of the space from the local feral cat population, plus my gigantic trees, has proven useful for nesting, and I know of four species of birds who are nesting in my back yard, alone (and I'm confident that there are many more).  One species, yellow-billed magpies (endemic to California), is threatened with extinction from west nile virus, and so my pond management (using my pond to water my garden and trees every three days) may even be providing some help, as I have kept my mosquito population pretty low. 

I don't use any fertilizer on my lawn, nor do I spray any pesticides on anything, so our runoff to the local river isn't any more polluted than when it came in.  I'd like to say it's because I'm environmentally friendly, but I've never cared what my lawn looks like.

In fact, my habitat is very thirsty and my soil is porous, and very little of our water actually runs off into our curb (where it would evaporate and pour down a sinkhole, because our street doesn't have a drain). 

When we shower, run the sink or flush the toilet, our water heads to a water treatment plant, where it comes out cleaner than the water that came downriver. 

One variable I don't understand (but I expect is quite large): I do not know how much water is leaked out of bad city pipes and infrastructure on its way to and from my 1/8th acre lot. 

Much of the water that we paid for and "used" then continues downstream, where some of it is collected, pumped 200 miles South, and sold by somebody who claims to own it.  For some reason, my payment for the use of the water never resulted in transfer of ownership of that water to me to sell to this downstream entity. 

Chances are great that this water is then sprayed into a field of alfalfa or an almond orchard, where it collects very large amounts of artificial nitrogen, along with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and locally occurring heavy metals.  It then either evaporates, sinks into the local groundwater, or runs into the local river.  Such water is not cleaned, and so its costs are borne downstream, in the air, and in groundwater aquifers.  Through this landscape where "my" water flowed, cleaner because of me, it passed thousands of Californians whose groundwater is now so contaminated that they cannot drink it.

If I lived in a desert or a rain shadow, my use of water in such a way may be considered wasteful.  But where I live now, with water such an important part of my ecosystem, dramatically curbing my water use may be the wrong thing to do.

I could write a book dispelling the other assumptions made above (eg., agriculture is 3% of our economy and is a huge burden on many Central Valley communities; if we cut all of our outdoor residential water use completely, we'd save about one-third as much water as we use on alfalfa in the State).

But for now, I only hope that this opens up a conversation about water's use and real impacts throughout our gigantic and diverse, and wonderful State.

Trying again: Let's start with frankenfish and consumers' right to know

© 2012 Joshua Stark

According to some producers, wild salmon just don't grow fast enough.  Oh sure, a Chinook salmon can reach 40+ pounds in two years, feeding for free and adding to the health of our lands and waters as it does, but this kind of willy-nilly public resource just doesn't cut it for those who wish to have complete control over their market.  So in the name of profit, these folks have genetically engineered a species of salmon that grows over twice as fast as wild fish.  Meant to be farmed in closed systems, these GE salmon will be fed by fishing for baitfish, presumably, and will not be allowed to enter our oceans, for fear that they will out-compete and destroy wild salmon.  First, however, the producers of this fish must get past the FDA, which doesn't look like too big a hurdle.

While the FDA wrestles with the question of legalizing GE salmon for consumers, California is considering whether or not to require labels identifying such meat as GE in the marketplace.  And while I might address the basic question of even allowing GE salmon at some future point, right now I want to address consumer knowledge in the marketplace.

This, of course, is a no-brainer outside of the halls of governance:  Libertarians to Socialists agree that consumers have the right to know where and how their food comes to be.  Even the opponents of the labeling bill (AB 88) couch their opposition in a manner that acknowledges some leeway in labeling requirements, arguing not that they shouldn't be labeled, per se, but that such requirements are the responsibility of the federal government, not the State.

In reality, the bill's opponents are concerned that if consumers know what they are buying, they will probably choose not to buy it (about 50% say they wouldn't).  Really, consumer choice is the issue here, and California has every right to require labeling.

Opinion piece in Grist gets it wrong about fishing

© 2011 Joshua Stark

There are few controversies in the environmentalist world quite like fishing.  Most folks agree that most recreational (though I hate that term) fishing is a great way for children to connect directly to the wild in a special way, a way that often begins a lifetime of love and appreciation for the outdoors; fishing is often our gateway.  Really, only the animal rights groups have a problem with recreational and subsistence fishing, and as I've pointed out before, "animal rights" is not environmentalism.

But, then there is "commercial fishing", that ugly moniker attached to images of mutilated sharks, denuded seascapes, and "Whale Wars".

Yet, there is more to commercial fishing than many give credit.  Commercial fishing, when done right, is a powerful way for many people to connect to the wild, through their food.  In fact, commercial fishing is the only major food market left with a direct connection to and need for healthy wild places.  And many organizations and fishing groups have tried to make commercial fishing an ecologically viable enterprise, especially in the past couple of decades, and especially in California. 

Also, consider commercial fishing's impact to wildness vs. farming's impact.  As one fisheries biologist points out, commercial fishing, at its worst, impacts about 30% of habitat, while agriculture, at its best, still impacts very nearly 100%, by completely altering landscapes. 

And the importance of having a group of people whose very livelihoods are affected by the health of ecosystems is vital to ensuring that those same ecosystems have a voice in our democratic systems.

I'm not defending all commercial fishing, but I am arguing that it is a powerful connection to a wild place that would suffer worse without that connection.

This is why I'm disappointed in a recent opinion piece in Grist Magazine titled the, "Sustainable Seafood Myth".  I can expect Grist to go over the top on a typical day, though I am a fan of their reporting and suffer the flash to get to the meat of their stories, but this one didn't have much meat.

Grist uses the very real dangers associated with global warming to pooh-pooh Whole Foods' (and others') attempts to provide real information to consumers about the sustainability of various fish.  Instead of asking Whole Foods why they might still sell fish with a low sustainability rating (I don't know if they do), or simply pointing out that the sustainability rating should include carbon emissions, the piece makes wild claims like, "Sadly, in the era of climate crisis, overfishing and other forms of unsustainable harvest are the least of our problems."

First of all, the least of our problems are still problems.  Second, if it's in the "problems" category, there is no reason to attack a solution.  Third, it may be the least of our problems, but it ain't the least of fish's problems.

The author of the piece does recommend that sustainability rating systems include carbon footprints, but he then wades into deeper waters with an over-simplified and risky solution:

"...dedicating portions of the ocean to farming -- while reserving large swaths for marine conservation parks. These farms need to be small and decentralized. Industrial aquaculture farms have rightly been branded as large-scale polluters producing low-quality food. Simply replacing destructive fishing fleets with destructive global fish farms will only hasten the demise of our oceans. Guided by principles of sustainability, our shorelines of the future can be dotted with organic fish farms servicing local communities."

Ah.  So, the author (an oyster farmer) sees a solution in ending our connection to the wild and replacing it with seafood only for those wealthy enough to live right next to the sea... got it.

This excerpt is so damaging on so many levels, and so completely dumbs-down so many ideas, that it becomes destructive to the greater good.  First, "marine conservation parks" can be problematic, as they often only disallow fishing, but allow for water pollution and resource extraction, both of which come with far larger carbon footprints and other ecological impacts than well-regulated fishing.

Second, dedicating portions of the ocean to farming is the same thing as saying "completely denuding wild landscapes from portions of the ocean and replacing them completely with man-made operations".  Third, not all large-scale aquaculture is bad - in fact, fully enclosed, freshwater systems are very important alternatives that remove impacts on the oceans and can provide local fish to inland consumers who aren't blessed with trust funds. 

Shorelines and oceans aren't homogenous, but pretending that one stretch of beach is the same as another is detrimental to an understanding of fish, habitats, and fishing.  The same spot that will make a great oyster farm (for example) is very often the very same spot that makes great wild habitat for varieties of species.

Last, fish farming in ocean waters is problematic, not only because of the damage it has on wild systems, but because of the political economy.  Fish farms can scale up and pressure markets and governments quickly, and without commercial fishing operations who need healthy ecosystems, there will be little pressure to keep farms' impacts in check through regulation.  (This is true for any industry:  hence, the "well-regulated" label.)

Commercial fishing has a horrible history, but there are proven ways to operate a well-regulated system that helps the environment - just think of the salmon folks fighting today to recover salmon habitat inland throughout the Pacific Northwest and California.  And the commercial folks' check on  aquaculture is vital to a well-regulated market.  We would be far worse off if we lost yet another connection to our wild oceans.

At the end of the piece, we are tasked to, "reimagine our waters as agrarian eco-spaces designed to curb seafood's carbon footprint..."  To which I say no, thank you.  I prefer not to "imagine" my waters as anything. I prefer to understand my waters as they are, and to understand and improve my relationship with them.  I do not wish to pretend that just by ending commercial fishing they will no longer suffer from global warming.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I am a board member of SalmonAid.)

Much going on...

© 2011 Joshua

With a baby and a new job, I've found my blogging time constrained.  Alas, the world still turns, and there are many topics on which I'd love to wax poetic...

First, this report from the U.N. on sustainable agriculture.  In a nutshell, "agroecological farming practices" can double food production in many regions.  These science-based practices empower local communities with their foods, which puts major corporate enterprises out - so, expect them to fight these conclusions.

Next, California Watch reports on a Pacific Institute report on nitrates in California's Central Valley groundwater... we've all known it's been there for years, but this report attempts to quantify the human impacts. 

My view on the Central Valley, my second home, is that its social, political, and economic infrastructure is effectively a 3rd World country, a fiefdom for a handful of extraordinarily (and inordinately) powerful people.  Pile this report on top of the reports on asthma, air quality, cancers, unemployment, working conditions, transportation, income inequality, etc.  And if you are so inclined, please pray for the Valley. 

The L.A. Times reports on Republicans using the budget in California to dismantle our environmental regulations.  Please, conservative conservationists, keep up the calls to legislators, letting them know that this is not your value.  The major law usually attacked is CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act), which, in a case of powerful irony, is just about the only transparency-in-government law out there, and is also a law very often used by companies to keep out competition from industrial growth. 

Looking at our economic and fiscal conditions, it's safe to say that these regulations have not had an economic impact on our State to any great extent, especially in relation to our quality of life, nor in comparison to more lax states like, say, Texas, whose budget deficit is larger than ours in absolute terms and in relative terms ($27 billion in Texas vs. $26.6 billion in California).  Far larger an impact on our quality of life has been our decision to stop funding infrastructure like transportation, schools, and energy. 

And, speaking to California's impact on the rest of America, it looks like our Congress has decided to run its budget show like we do here in the Golden State.

That's it for now.  I'll try to get back into the swing of things, but first, I'd like a full night's sleep.

Organic milk is better for you than conventional milk

© 2011 Joshua Stark

Research continues to buck the attempts by industrial ag. to convince people that the only difference between organic/sustainable products and their industrial doppelgangers is the price.

First, it was, of course, research that showed that pesticides were bad for the environment.  Next came studies showing that yield per acre is considerably higher with sustainable methods vs. the application of artificial fertilizers.  Studies continue to come in showing that locally grown and consumed produce often contains higher concentrations of nutrients, because they are fresher.

Now, here's another one.  U.K. researchers have discovered that organic milk is better for you than industrial ag. milk.

Go figure.

California okays methyl iodide

© 2010 Joshua Stark

Yesterday, the State gave the final approval to methyl iodide, despite the opposition of dozens of scientists, and more than a few legislators. 

Back in June, I posted a piece using the methyl bromide-to-iodide controversy as a great example of "internalizing externalities".  In the case of this switch, it seems ridiculous to me that we should replace one chemical because of its impacts on the ozone layer with a chemical that stays closer to home, thus raising serious cancer (and other) risks. 

As sfgate.com reports, State officials are reassuring the public by claiming that this fumigant will only be applied by specialists, and the soil will be covered by an impermeable tarp... must I point out how much more awful that makes the product sound?  What a way to reassure!

And this reassurance illustrates, yet again, just how we structure our ag. policies to favor huge, monocropping companies.  How many mom-&-pop small farms will be willing or able to tap strawberries when the big companies are able to increase yield/lower prices by paying for "specialists"?  The burdens to entry into the strawberry market are thus ratcheted up, leaving it safer for oligopoly. 

Again, in the wrong direction with our agriculture.

Fear mongering and non sequitors from a couple of pro-Big Ag liberals

© 2010 Joshua Stark

A Grist blogger slams Ezra Klein at the Washington Post over a snippet in support of industrial agriculture.  Klein "argues", in two paragraphs, that we'll have to keep agriculture industrial, and he quotes a man saying the same thing... well, in fact, half of "his" piece is the quotation.  The good news?  If that's the best he can get in support of big ag., then we don't have much to worry about in the arena of reason. 

The quotation claims that farming benefits from economies of scale, like steel manufacture, so we should keep it industrial, and even make it super-industrial.  Klein tries to add to this excruciating generalization by noting that no other enterprise that has gone industrial has ever gone back, and he does so in a remarkably juvenile fashion, I might add.   We can comfortably ignore Klein's little "addition" because there is no argument in there.  It's so silly, in fact, it's actually quite shocking.

However, the gentleman being quoted, Mr. Raynor from the Observer, attempts some semblance of a conversation on a serious topic that involves the lives of billions of people.

Mr. Raynor believes that the U.K. is on the verge of food shortages of such a level as to cause riots.  His description of the British food supply goes a long way toward proving how silly that sounds, but he sticks to it - it is the gist of his opening line, after all. 

In light of the cheap, perfect-looking foods Brits have come to expect, Mr. Raynor argues, the only way they will avoid Mozambique-like riots over food is to build a big mega-dairy...?

From there, he gets even more lost.

First, Mr. Raynor makes an across-the-board claim about agriculture, taking an extraordinarily diverse concept and treating it as if it is one product in one market.  His belief that "agriculture" always and everywhere benefits from economies of scale illustrates his ignorance of both agriculture and economics.

Mr. Raynor fails to realize, for example, that economies of scale in agriculture most often come from lax environmental regulation, extraordinarily cheap labor, poor animal treatment, and/or subsidies.  Mr. Raynor spends much time considering the British apple market, probably because they are an iconic English crop, but he gives no example of how big ag. can save British apple production.  Would he be willing to allow DDT, labor at a pound or so per day, and tax breaks in order to save apples?  I think he would argue that these measures wouldn't save British farming, and he would be 100% right.

And if Mr. Raynor is worried about the status quo, he must surely realize that the status quo includes big ag. for most of his food supply right now, anyway.  Those imported apples he hates?  They get there only through a few, gigantic corporations.  Instead of vilifying the apples, he should be praising their availability to the skies. 

Since he couldn't provide an industrial ag. solution for the problem he outlined, he picked up another one:  dairy.  I don't know the specifics of the dairy industry in England, and from Mr. Raynor's quick description, neither does he.  I've spent some time debunking the "farmers don't get profits from sick animals" claim, so I won't do that here, but the fact that he uses this as his argument in favor of a mega-dairy says a lot about how much he really knows about food production facilities.

His last point, the inference that organic and sustainable farming practices can only be enjoyed by the wealthy, actually undermines his first point, that Brits have put themselves in a pickle by demanding produce at half of what they've previously paid (and will even burn buildings and kill people if they have to go back). 

Mr. Raynor's bias of omission is also startlingly revealing:  No mention of the impact of oligopoly on food markets, which often exacerbate scarcity and jeopardize food security to maximize profits - the very crises he hopes to avert by concentrating food production in the hands of a few people and places.  He needs to consider the past 25 years of price gouging and collusion that major corporate agriculture enterprises have committed, and study the recent foodborne disease outbreaks originating from huge, centralized production facilities, before he goes waving the Big Ag Flag in public.

To me, though, his biggest offense is that he compares Mozambique with England to give a frightening picture of a possible English future.  This is just wrong, and maybe immoral.  Mozambique's GDP per capita in 2008 was roughly $440.  Ten years ago, it was below $200, which means that Mozambique has been slowly improving, and that people remember times worse than when they averaged four hundred bucks per person.  This, alone, should explain the reaction of Mozambicans in light of a 30% hike in bread prices, and  it should make startlingly clear just why it is so wrong to compare Mozambique to England.  What do Londoners pay for bread, two pounds?  If it rose 100%, there would be no riots.  If it rose 500%, there would be sternly-written letters to MP's, replete with apologies for doing so, but there would be no riots. 

Mr. Raynor points out that Brits are paying half of what they paid for food 20 years ago, from about 20% to about 10% of their incomes.  If prices rose 100% for all foods, not just bread, they'd just be back where they were twenty years ago.

Mr. Raynor makes no serious claims for supporting big ag.; he obviously is not familiar with scientific studies that point to organic and sustainable smaller ag. producing higher yields and more sustainable business models without the need for exploitation of the resource or of humans; he ignores the market impacts of oligopoly that come with big ag.; he completely misses the problems associated with food security when production is centralized; and he tries to scare people in England into thinking that they may start killing each other over the price of bread.

I don't buy it.

Must... avoid... cliché... can't resist... must try... ah, heck: A rose by any other name will still cause obesity

© 2010 Joshua Stark

How can a person resist the ease of title-writing via cliché when the topic makes it so horribly easy?  BlogHer reports that the makers of high fructose corn syrup want to officially change its name to "corn sugar". 

The author of that report, Rita Arens, took the topic further at her personal blog, and it's well worth reading.

As Ms. Arens points out, for those already into these issues, a name change won't make a difference.  But in my humble opinion, the name change will have a detrimental effect on the public's buying habits.  In general, marketing works. It works so well that we've decided, socially, to develop our media streams solely on the back of the revenue generated through marketing.

Specifically for this product, "high fructose corn syrup" is not very sweet sounding, because you have to get through three un-sweet words before you get to syrup.  Additionally, the term has become one word, really, and a social inertia has been building against it.  By changing the name to something vaguely nutritious in our society (corn) and something sweet that has already well stood the forces aligned against it (sugar), and is even a term of endearment, hfcs producers hope to distance themselves from the social opposition that has taken hold against the term.  They are betting that A) a typical consumer won't read labels and stay up on the news; and B) the association with "sugar" will diminish the social stigma.

But, the purpose of hfcs, just like marketing, is a means to maintain market share.  Marketing differentiates between products, building resistance to competition in the marketplace.  High fructose corn syrup is a very expensive endeavor to begin, with huge up-front cost in materials and labor, making it difficult for competitors to enter the market.  Unfortunately, these ways of increasing barriers to entrance create scarcity in food markets to create profitability among a few, gigantic corporations.  This trumped-up scarcity for a necessity is a bad way to build a market and a horrible way to distribute food.  In fact, creating scarcity completely contradicts the purpose of economics.

The Basic Economic Problem, the only reason for the existence of the field of study, is scarcity.

The science of choice, bovine flatulance edition

© 2010 Joshua Stark

...and I don't mean it like, "The Breakfast of Champions."

Economics is often called the science of choice (which is also why it's called the "dismal science"), because an economist spends her time thinking about everything you could have done with that $1.25 you spent on the King Sized Snickers you bought at the corner liquor store (the Standup Economist has a simply genius take on this when translating Mankiw's Ten Principles of Economics).

It's interesting, because economics looks at the choices we make with an eye toward improving efficiencies, but efficiencies come in many shapes and sizes, and increasing one efficiency may, in fact, create a less efficient outcome for something else.  Take California cow farts, for example.

That's right.  KQED posted a snippet about methane digesters at two huge dairies in the Central Valley, and the problems they are having getting them up and running.  In it, they talk about the farmers' troubles with lowering their pollution.  You see, methane is a greenhouse gas, but burning it causes a local pollutant known as NOx.  It just so happens that the air quality district in which these dairies operate is almost constantly far beyond the legal limit for its local, human-health-destroying pollutants.  For some perspective, note that one in five children in the Central Valley has asthma.

Unfortunately, KQED decided to place this in its "ClimateWatch" series, and not its, "OhMyLordOurIndustriesAreKillingOurChildren" series, where the "efficiencies" argument might be considered in a different light.  However, they did, and they talked about how these farmers, in trying to do a good, unselfish deed, were coming up against the heartless and cold steel wall of bureaucracy.  Why, one poor farmer has had to spend $200k for one pollution control device!

But, what the report does not do is compare the costs of containment to a number of other factors.  For example, how much was saved in medical costs for asthma attacks?  I'm no doctor, but I'm guessing that a couple hundred grand is chump change.  Also, how much of these farmers' energy costs were offset by generating their own power, even after the added pollution-control measures?  How much ag. production from neighboring farms was saved, since pollution is responsible for probably a 15% reduction in plant productivity from dimming the Sun in the Valley? 

And, if they'd saved that money, how many additional cows could they have bought, thus increasing their pollution contribution?

Economics uses money because it is a convenient way to measure relative efficiencies, but it isn't the only way, nor is efficiency the only thing to worry about.  For example, how many children were spared a painful, frightening and life-threatening asthma attack?  How many parents were spared the horror of rushing a child, who simply cannot breathe, to the hospital?  We can put these savings into dollar amounts, but that would cheapen it in a bad way, now wouldn't it?

I will tell you right now that these farmers did not fund methane digesters simply because they believe that global warming is partly their fault, just like we consumers don't all put solar panels up on our houses or run out and buy an electric car just to save the planet.  They ran the numbers, and the energy saving they'll get from doing it in-house pays off.  Plus they may get carbon offsets in the near future.  Plus they help do their part to save the planet.  Plus they have the ability to cover the up-front costs of conversion, and the risk of doing something fairly new.

I commend these farmers for taking a step out unfamiliar territory, and I'm especially glad that John Fiscalini at Fiscalini Farms put in that pollution control device.  That's great work.  I'm also very happy with the work of regulators telling folks that they have to control their NOx pollution in a place with the worst air quality in the entire country.  I'm not so happy with KQED losing the heart of this story by contriving an angle to shoehorn it into their ClimateWatch series.

Economics, in getting us to consider our choices, is a great boon to society.  But remember that these choices go beyond the over-simplified monetary quantities.  Our choices have real impacts.

And, when you click over to the KQED piece, please note the convolutions the editor had to go through to get to use, "cut it", in the title of a piece on cow farts.

Bad article on feedlots, with a twist

© 2010 Joshua Stark

A few days back, I came across an online article in the tweet-stream written by a self-described vegetarian, about CAFO's (confined animal feeding operations).  This might not sound very strange, as vegetarians often write about CAFO's.  But the catch was this: the article was going to be in favor of them.  This, I had to read.
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After reading it, I'm sorry I spent so much of my time on it.

Basically, it boils down to this:  This article is nothing more than a fluff piece for CAFO's.  In fact, it is so fluffy, I'm willing to say that I seriously doubt the author's authenticity.  The piece is riddled with misrepresentations, flawed logic, and the typical arguments couched in a "wow! as a VEGETARIAN I never knew that!" style of writing.

First off, I'll admit that I am confused about the author, because his "favorite" t-shirt was a bust image of a woman's t-shirt (on a woman) that read, "have you hugged a vegetarian today?"  Also, though the blog author is, "Ryan Andrews", the introduction was obviously written by somebody else, and that, coupled with the objectifying shot of the woman's headless torso make for a discombobulated opening.  But, on to the actual reporting.

The claims of this article are extraordinarily polished - by which I mean that they have been worked and worked to avoid, as much as possible, actually false claims, while trying really hard to address specific concerns voiced by people who actually care about animals.

For example:  "You see, very few people in the nutrition world are ever allowed to visit feedlots.  In fact, some of my favorite authors have written entire books about feedlots without ever being granted permission to see one in person."

I'm sure this is technically true.  I mean, what logical person owning private property would willingly let in people who are looking to destroy their industry?  However, quick search engine searches, or searches on YouTube, easily offer video footage of animal cruelty within actual feedlots.  There is a difference between being granted permission and getting inside. Yet, the author's claim here is meant to give his article a credibility that other "favorite authors" (who?) shouldn't have, without actually calling anybody out.

Another example:  "So if Steve’s (the feedlot owner) is a “family farm,” what’s a “factory farm”?  Well, the term “factory farm” isn’t actually used in the agricultural community.  So, in essence, it’s slang that was coined by skeptics of the cattle industry."

First, note the two "so's" sandwiching a "well" - creating that shucky-darn down-homey feel, trying to hide an industry mantra, that there is no real factory farm, and that farming is still a family enterprise at its heart, with the hope that people will automatically equate "family" with local, good, simple, humble.

But there is something more insidious in this claim.  I, for one, have heard many in the agriculture community use the term "factory farm".  Organic and small farmers serving multiple products largely to their own communities often refer to their subsidized, promoted, competition as factories.  And of course, if you eat, you are a member of the ag. community.  And don't even get me started on what constitutes a "farm" (multiple products) vs. a "ranch" (one product).  It's bad enough to perpetuate the illusion that there is an ag. industry that doesn't include its customers, but trying to separate organic and multi-cropping farms from the agriculture community is downright wrong.

I could really spend an entire post pointing out these little, weasley wordings.  But there are some actual claims made by this PR piece that don't stand up to scrutiny, even after all the polishing, and it's those I'd like to really address.

I'll start with the CAFO definition.  The author claims that the EPA says a CAFO are places that, "congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals, and production operations on a small land area. Feed is brought to the animals rather than the animals grazing or otherwise seeking feed in pastures, fields, or on rangeland."  But, this is the definition of an "AFO", not the definition of a CAFO.  According to the EPA, a CAFO is defined by its pollution contribution, a criterion which Magnum (the feedlot in the article) meets.  Pretty interesting omission, that one.

 Another one has to do with the author's "surprise" at the diets of feedlot cows:  "Wait, wait.  What about all those reports of sick cows being stuffed with corn?  Well, folks, at Magnum anyway, there’s no such thing as an “all grain” cattle diet.  In fact, the diet of the cattle at Magnum never exceeds 50% corn.  And often, it’s much, much less."

This statistical claim is so out of context that it is rendered beyond useless, it is actually misleading.  The simple, unanswered question is:  What amount of corn in a cow's diet is bad for it?  The author doesn't know, or doesn't say; but by showing shock at the grass in the cows' diets (what does he think all those alfalfa fields are for?), he misleads the reader into believing that he does know, and that the percentages used by Magnum are good for cows.

Michael Pollan claims that 15-30% of feedlot cows show abcessed livers, which more reasonably leads one to believe that the diet is not good for cows.  Also, fat marbling in muscle is a fairly unnatural phenomenon in nature, so one can reasonably assume that whatever is being fed to feedlot cows is doing unnatural things to their bodies.

Next:  "Growth-promoting hormones are used in feedlot cattle as it (sic) increases efficiency. These are naturally occurring hormones that are regularly metabolized by the body.  Most cattle don’t get antibiotics. And if they do, they need it. Further, they won’t be sent to slaughter until 21 days after antibiotic administration, since it takes that long for the antibiotic to clear the system."

Okay, I'm sick to death of this argument.  Do you know what else is naturally occurring?  Puffer fish poison.  Cyanides.  Hell, petroleum is naturally occurring.  And when a body metabolizes it, what happens to it?  Does it completely disappear, doing nothing?  Another bias of omission.  Also, the last sentence is at least misleading, and probably false.  The folks at Magnum have to give a waiting period for cows on antibiotics, per USDA regulations.  We don't really know if it takes 21 days to clear the system, but we definitely do know that this isn't the reason the folks at Magnum wait 21 days. 

And another:  "According to Magnum, organic feed doesn’t seem to increase meat quality or safety.  Research doesn’t really support the idea either.  But, organic feed does allow consumers another option (i.e. organic meat vs. non-organic meat).  And organic farming practices may have some benefits for the planet." 

Holy cow!  Really??!!!  It's hard to address this one, because it's a whopper.  "Quality" is subjective, and many folks who raise grass-fed beef get the smelly end of that stick, because USDA quality criteria include fat where it shouldn't be.  The "another option" claim is a way to give lip-service to an industry the author doesn't necessarily want to offend (other cattle ranchers).  That last sentence just... it just... well, I'm sure you know how that last sentence makes me feel. 

And that was just the bump-set for this spike:  "Sure, some folks think grass-fed, free-range is better.  But, as any good PN reader can attest, it’s a heckuva lot more expensive.  And, at the end of the day, Magnum is competing for the protein food dollar. Mainstream America is currently buying conventionally fed meat from cattle, so, feedlots keep producing it.

"It’s also important to know that if we continue to eat 200+ pounds of meat per person per year in the U.S., grass-fed isn’t really an option.  There’s not enough land."

Of course, the first real reference to consumers is derogatory.  The hapless, helpless little beef industry buffeted by the market and insatiable appetites must, simply must provide what is demanded.  As an economics-minded person, I'm always sickened by the hide-behind-the-demand defense, because it pretends that profits don't exist, that wealth doesn't exist.  Also, the economist in me immediately asks, "why is grass-fed more expensive?" and the answer is apparent:  The big CAFO ag. industry is heavily subsidized, in its feed, in its water deliveries, in its pollution, in its energy consumption, even.  So, we are paying more for meat, we are just paying for it socially, through taxes and social costs associated with its production.

And I've already blogged about how untrue the land claim is regarding grass-fed vs. feedlot cows. 

And on to animal welfare:  "...Magnum wants the cattle to be clean and comfortable.

"I know, I know, I can see my animal welfare comrades shaking their heads – - but think about it. From a profit standpoint, if animals aren’t comfortable, they aren’t going to eat. If they don’t eat, they don’t grow. If they don’t grow, they won’t be much use to the dude wanting to buy a big steak."

I have thought about it, and the consequentialist ethic here regarding cleanliness is wrong.  Magnum doesn't want cattle to be clean.  They want carcasses to be clean.  Magnum doesn't want animals to be comfortable, they want them to be fat.  To be fat, they need to eat, not be comfortable.  Comfort does not always equal eating well, and discomfort does not always equal eating poorly.  One does not have to follow the other.

Plus, "comrades?"  Can you say, "subliminal message?"  No Commie inference there, I'm sure.

And on "waste" at Magnum:  "Magnum recently started composting manure and mortalities (i.e. cattle that don’t make it). It’s gotten more expensive to send deceased cattle to processing plants that manufacture pet foods, so this was the next best option.

"Plus it’s more sustainable.  And the cattle don’t end up standing around in piles of their own feces.  Whew!"

Did I miss something?  Is dog food made out of cow poop?  A sneaky little semantic sleight-of-hand there, moving from all its waste to just its "mortalities".  The last sentence there makes one think that Magnum has folks just standing around behind cows, waiting for them to poop.  But wait!  What was the author's first thought upon arrival?  "“Oh, god, the smell.”"  Now, go to your local county fair, and smell a cow.  Don't smell just the barn they've been standing in, but really smell a cow.  They smell like cows, not cow poop!  Cows, like other animals, only smell bad when something is wrong.  He should have trusted his nose, it always knows.

I could spend an entire post on his "conclusions."  But I won't.  His conclusions, based on such faulty information, cannot lead anywhere good.  Of course, he never touches the notion of animals having worth in and of themselves, or our responsibility toward allowing them to live like they should.  Nor does he address the fact that pollutants in a CAFO are actually additive in a grass-fed environment, and that farmers can reap greater output with fewer inputs, over the long run, with grass-fed beef.  Nor does he address the health concerns of the people working in industries that support this CAFO (like the folks who have to deal with the pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides in the fields that feed these cows). 

Please, food folks, stop passing this article along as some kind of new and improved way of looking at CAFO's.  It's bad reporting, it's bad writing... it's, it's just bad.

The meat of Environmentalism

The controversy over meat within the environmental movement is a long-running one.  Not having originated from what is known as the hippy-crunchy enviro. crowd, I'd always considered eating meat a natural human activity, though my own concerns with the sadness of death and the moral implications of causing pain gave me pause in my life, and continue forcing me to consider my actions and impacts.
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Lately, a number of articles and conversations formed the impetus for a post about the environmental consequences of eating meat.  A couple of months ago, I started receiving emails from Grist, an environmental e-zine, and quickly found a number of articles and blog posts on the meat-eating controversy.  Then, David Zetland posted this on vegetarianism, and Ms. Niman wrote this article for the Atlantic Monthly.  Most recently, Tovar Cerulli posted a piece on providing game for the homeless, and Holly at Nor Cal Cazadora just posted a review of the book, "The Vegetarian Myth."

I, too, have posted some thoughts and feelings about eating meat, in particular this post on the Calculus of Death, where I look at the nature of death and sustenance, and compare the environmental impacts of a typical vegetarian vs. a conscious meat-eating diet.

Although I don't mind a person making a choice to eat vegetarian, or even vegan, I do have serious problems with the ethical claim that vegetarianism is environmentally preferable to omnivory.  Vegetarianism may be a religious requirement for some, or a health decision for others, but its impacts on the environment are negligible, at best; and at worst, the practice may lead to an unnatural perspective on the world parallel to our current food industry.  Now, I'm not arguing that it is as bad as our current agricultural system - vegetarianism in the current system, as an individual choice, may have some positive impacts.  But what is lacking in vegetarianism as a system tends to perpetuate the same problems we have under our current regime, though probably on a smaller scale.

For example:  One tendency appearing in 'vegetarian-as-green' arguments is the belief that since feedlots are usually sources of pollution, eliminating meat in the diet eliminates this pollution.  Another argument notes the size of agricultural land needed to feed these animals, land that could be used for growing a veggie diet with room to spare for the wild.  But, these arguments miss a big point.  As Wendell Berry has pointed out:

Nature farms with animals. 

In nature, lands are fertilized and revitalized by animal and fungal activities.  Ms. Niman points out that the very slightly tilled North America prior to European migration maintained at least as many large, hoofed ungulates as it does now.  And yet, there were no gigantic dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, no need to process chemical fertilizers, no need to truck food here and there.

Right now, big ag. desperately tries to separate each ecosystem component into its own box, ala other large-scale enterprises, from the belief that this is more efficient.  But this is not more efficient in terms of food production.  The organization 'Co-op Voices Unite' cites a USDA study showing that smaller, multicropping farms are far more efficient at food production than large-scale, monocropping ranches.

Right now, big ag. separates cows from farms and puts them into CAFO's (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations).  Their effluent then becomes a waste product that must be contained, cleaned, and trucked out, and much of its nutrients are lost.

Right now, big ag. separates plant species into huge fields, and must artificially plow and apply processed fertilizers, fungicides, herbicides, and pesticides, because nature keeps wanting to creep into these huge chunks of land.  With no real infrastructure in the soil, these lands become susceptible to erosion and quickly slough off much of the artificially produced and applied fertilizers, etc.

And so, due to the tremendous loss of nutrients at the CAFO and the at the field, we are forced to artificially produce more nitrogen and other components to maintain "healthy" plants.  This raises the levels of these nutrients outside of the feedlot and land - these become pollutants, where otherwise they would have been food.  

This is just one example of the problem with specializing and separating ourselves from our food.  Unfortunately, an all-veggie diet doesn't leave this system, it tends to perpetuate it, but without the animal part, which requires more artificial fertilizers.  Much of the protein acquired from plants comes from soy cultivation, which needs this sort of treatment, in addition to the pest eradication that kill many millions of mice, rats and voles each year.

The environmentally aware answer, for me, is to understand that nature puts animals, plants, and fungi together.  Instead of deciding to stop eating cows and drinking milk, for example, we should encourage them closer to home, on grasslands and near plant crops.  We want them working within a system that improves watersheds and provides nutrients where they are needed.  If we pretend we can live without animals, we will find ourselves still trapped in an artificial world of false economy and separation from the land.  Nature needs animal life and death, and we are here a part of nature.

I've not yet heard how the pro-veggie side expects we will fertilize these lands, but if I've missed something, please let me know.  In the meantime, I will take my cues and lessons from nature, which needs animals, life and death, to farm, and not pretend that I know better how to make food.

Specialization can be bad: A crappy example

© 2010 Joshua Stark

The Washington Post has an interesting article out about manure being the next big pollutant. In response, expect animal rights' groups to argue that this is because we are meat eaters and dairy eaters, and if we'd only wean ourselves from these practices, we'd not pollute so much.
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But the problem isn't our carnivory, nor is it the poop, per se. The problem is our over-compartmentalization in agriculture.

As many farmers know, animals belong on farms. Pest reduction, soil movement, fertilization, and more are provided by animals, and in return, the land feeds and waters the animals. Humans add to the equation by providing protection and shelter for both, and by mimicking processes that most effectively provide, and in return, animals and plants produce more, and humans take the extra.

When we decided to separate the diverse systems into compartments, we temporarily increased our efficiencies. However, we quickly ran up against a problem: The effects of multiple components in a system provided for the needs of each particular component. Plants converted nitrogen, for example, from the manure provided by the local animals. In the new system, however, no nitrogen was being returned to the soil in the barren lands with one type of plant.

The solution was to engineer nitrogen from petroleum and subsidize it - the Green Revolution. Satisfied that we'd overcome the problem of compartmentalization, we pumped a tremendous amount of "new" nitrogen into the system.

Now, of course, we understand that nitrogen is a pollutant, too.

At the same time, other insidious consequences came with compartmentalization: Most humans were removed from the food production cycle; inhumane conditions were created for animals in the name of profit and a false economy; and an illusion was created that separated systems were cleaner and healthier than incorporated ones.

The first and second consequences above created the animal-rights movement; the first and third helped to create our obsession with "sterilized" environments, warping it with an unnatural environmental outlook.

Now, we are compartmentalized. By removing anything living from our sight and responsibility, by removing ourselves from working relationships with other living things, we have become hyper-sensitive to the "chaos" inherent in organic systems and we have anthropomorphized other creatures, instead of knowing and appreciating them as they are. We have also become addicted to the prices of our subsidized and unsustainable, compartmentalization of agriculture.

Feeding into this compartmentalized system is Monsanto, hoping to get its RoundUp Ready alfalfa approved for use in the U.S. (This is an alfalfa that has been genetically modified to not die when sprayed with RoundUp). Healthy grasslands don't consist of just one type of plant, and our current alfalfa-growing practices are used to support CAFO's. If you get a chance, head over and comment (by Wednesday!) that you don't want this alfalfa in our system. And, if anybody at the federal government is reading this, the comment system online is a hassle, and needs to be simplified.

Compartmentalizing the land is no way to maintain healthy food systems or ecosystems.

Lies, damned lies, and economics

© 2010 Joshua Stark

The L.A. Times has a great article today on real information about California farming during the past couple of years. After the great hue and cry from folks that the delta smelt and salmon were killing our farming lifestyle, the numbers are in, and they show very few changes from the previous few years, and in many cases, we have bumper crops. And the biggest news: Employment fell by about .5% in ag.

In even the most harsh case presented by Central Valley business-as-usual advocates, poor Mendota, unemployment only rose 8% from 2003, from 32% to 40%, a 25% increase in the number of people actively looking, but unable to find work. Meanwhile, Sacramento's unemployment rose from 6.1% to 12.2%, a 100% increase.

Of course, I hear the question rolling off your lips right now: Mendota had 32% unemployment in 2003?!? Yep.

It makes you wonder why the West side of the Central Valley wants to keep the lifestyle it's got, and not look for new ways to get people working.

Undue influence in your public education, and then some good news

© 2010 Joshua Stark

The Fresno Bee reports on an issue that won't die, the appearance of improper pressure by Harris Ranch on Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

It appears that the managers of Harris Ranch think that their additional funds entitle them to pressure faculty through the administration, and to influence (or decide) who gets to speak at the campus and under what format.
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Last year, the company sent the university a letter in which it threatened to withdraw its $500k grant when it heard that renowned author (and UC professor) Michael Pollan was going to speak. Pollan's attacks on grain-fed CAFO (centralized animal feeding operations) models for agriculture are well-known, as is his support for small, multicrop farms over large, monoculture ranches (and if you haven't read "Omnivore's Dilemma", please do!).

It's no surprise that Harris Ranch would be mad about these topics and perspectives, and so it's no real surprise that they also criticized a Cal Poly faculty member, Prof. Rutherford, for his similar views.

Yeah, none of it is a surprise. But, contrary to what news media might want you to believe, you shouldn't have to be surprised to be outraged or disgusted.

Had this happened to a private university, I'd still be mad, but I wouldn't feel a personal affront. However, my taxes go to pay for this university, and I'm willing to bet that many Californians pay the same percentage of total income as Harris Ranch to our public institutions.

On a related note, and having received no funding from Harris Ranch (or you all, for that matter), I'd like to link to a great article in this month's Mother Earth Magazine (they haven't paid me, either) on the benefits and potential for grass-fed beef. Here's the quotation that stood out to me:

"Churchill says that on properly recovered land, he can finish about two steers per acre. That is almost precisely the acreage it takes to grow the grain to finish those same steers in a feedlot. This whole system makes economic sense, acre by acre."

What?! That's tremendous news, a happy surprise, and flies in the face of what we've been told in recent decades about the efficiencies of feedlots. And, when you add to this concept the idea that grass requires lower feed costs, far fewer antibiotics and vet. care, and much less transportation and processing, plus native habitat restoration, there really is no reason to stay on the grain-fed path.

And you can now add to the costs of feedlots the undue pressure that they put on our universities.

On omnivory

If you are looking for a great, mindless Summer thriller to read before heading into Fall, don't pick up "The Omnivore's Dilemma". It's got mysteries, and gruesome killings, and racy scenes all right, but probably not in the sense you'd hope for a Summer book. However, I took it upon myself to read it, because it tackles the ethical implications of humans in relation to the environment in probably its most profound realm: what we eat.

Spending about a third of the book in industrial ag., organic ag., and hunting/gathering, Michael Pollan delves deeply into Americans' relationship with food, coming to many interesting and compelling conclusions about why and how we eat, and pointing a direction for eating better while maintaining a journalist's distance vis a vis moralizing, for the most part. In laying out his descriptions of current mainstream agricultural enterprises, he doesn't rely upon controversial chemical analyses to condemn them, but he does provide as bulletproof a condemnation as I've seen. He uses (gasp!) economics, and is so effective at explaining it that this book should be required reading in every economics class.
And I used to teach the stuff.

American (and world) agriculture is a vastly complicated, horribly designed system, with too many incentives for genetic hoarding, market manipulation, and artificial scarcity. Add to this mix political boundaries, and fully one fifth of the world goes hungry each night, though we grow enough for everybody. Pollan's book outlines just how we've settled into this industrialization of our food supply, including one of our most hideous creations, the industrial slaughterhouse. He focuses on the manipulation of corn as an industrial commodity rather than a food commodity, and how the largest ag. corporations have gotten past the "problem of the fixed stomach", that while people only eat a certain amount of calories per day and our population only increases about 1% per year, corporations typically need to show 5-8% annual growth in profits in order to stay in the market. Wanna know how it happens? Read the book.

But he spends equal portions of the book discussing organic agriculture, and the manipulation of this term as it applies to what he calls, "big organic". He compares this with locally grown foods such as one might find at farmers' markets or roadside stands, and spends a week at the Platonic version of this ideal, Polyface Farm. This place, owned by a conservative Christian, Bob Jones University graduate, "Mother Earth" magazine reader, shows a beautiful way to farm, working chickens, pigs, cattle, grass, and forest in an amazing orchestration. The farmer also constantly touches on a concept I have often considered in the ethical implications of places like slaughterhouses, and in my defense of hunting: The ability of an animal to get to be that animal. He talks about the pigness of a pig.

Last, Mr. Pollan tries hard to be a hunter/gatherer, and does a great job of it, in my opinion. He did get a bunch of help, including the ability to hunt for pigs on private property in Sonoma County (about which I am jealous), and hunting wild fungus, but the camaraderie, the relationship, the apprenticeship are equally important aspects of hunting. He toys with the philosophy behind vegetarianism, ultimately labeling animal rights a, "parochial, and urban..." ideology because of his getting to actually experience animals, and in killing them for his food. "It (animal rights) could only thrive in a world where people have lost contact with the natural world...", surely a stinging rebuke to people who consider themselves saviours of animalkind. Mr. Pollan seems to fall squarely into the land of people who abhor animal cruelty, and feel that killing and eating animals has helped them to more clearly comprehend the world's realities.

This is a wonderful book, well-organized and eye-opening. Michael Pollan delivers a fascinating expose' into what we put into our bodies every day, and how we interact with nature, every day.

If you've read it, or haven't and have questions, please comment!

What is Your Calculus of Death?

A harsh title to this post, I'm sure, but let's not beat around the bush: Things die that other things may live.

A few months ago I heard the Senior Vice President of PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, talking on a radio show. He was on for the entire program, so I was able to hear a lot from him, about an hour, and I came away with an appreciation for his passion and love for living things. But, I was completely floored by his apparent inability to see the death that takes place in order for him to continue to live. He preached about the horrible industrial slaughterhouses (which are, indeed, horrible), and he talked up wearing pleather and latex instead of leather clothes. He talked about the health benefits of eating vegan.

The question that formed in my mind for this man became the title of this post.

By this question, I mean: How do you ethically calculate the deaths of creatures for your sustenance? PETA folks claim that killing animals for food is ethically wrong. But, why? In comparing meat-eating to plant-eating, what is the determining factor that makes one preferable to the other?

If the determining factor is the total number of dead animals, then I suggest that eating meat is the ethically preferable alternative. And, if the determining factor is the total biomass of dead animals, I again offer eating meat as the ethical alternative. In both cases, hunting is probably even the most ethical choice.

A person who lives on a vegan diet requires farming. Most farming in the US is done on a massive scale, with hundreds of thousands of acres allotted to a single crop. The ecological footprint of these enterprises is enormous, with the result a devastation of biodiversity. Merely harvesting a patch of wheat results in the deaths of countless birds, snakes, mice, voles, and other species. Many birds attempt to nest and raise young in wheat fields just prior to harvest. And even organic farms eradicate pests, or else they would not succeed as farms. Compare a vegan to a meat eater:

A person who eats a vegan meal requires that a swath of land be stripped of its native flora, tilled and planted with non-native vegetation. Then, pest deterrence and eradication must begin, through trapping, pesticide or other forms. Last, harvesting takes its toll. In the meantime, a person who eats a meal of grass-fed bison encourages the replacement of native flora and wildlife, thereby helping to restore natural watersheds, air quality, and therefore animal life. Killing the bison does not require mowing down countless other animals incidentally. Even more striking, a hunter who takes a deer in its native habitat, especially here in the West, is most efficiently converting the calories of the land into usable calories. Most native plants in the West are inedible to people, but many animals make do nicely, and by fitting into the existing system, we encourage positive impacts to it.

And the gentleman's suggestions to use fake leather or latex? I don't think he really considered the impact of latex farms on the biodiversity of rain forests, or of the petroleum drilling and carbon footprint of buying yet another plastic product.

We all make ethical decisions that involve death. Most of the time, we don't have to think about these decisions (like driving). However, when a person eats meat, and especially through hunting or fishing, they are more directly confronted with the truth of death in our existence. Hopefully, in time, this leads to better decisions, like choosing not to buy beef from those horrible slaughterhouses, and instead spending a little more and buying grass-fed, free range beef.

I eat meat. Also, I hunt and fish. Further, I believe that my hunting and fishing have a smaller negative impact on the environment, and a much, much larger positive impact, than if I had not ever hunted or fished. PETA folks find this behavior abhorrent, because it leads to the death of animals at the hands of people. But, as we've seen, even the most vegan lifestyle kills animals. Perhaps, instead of trying to eradicate death, we should understand its central role in our world, and try to make life better, to help perpetuate life and quality of life on the larger scale, while truthfully acknowledging the deaths that happen to make our lives possible.