No Man is an Island

Last month, I wrote a piece for The Times of India on the impact of the over consumption and production of meat on the environment.

Recently, I came across this article by farmer Eliot Coleman, arguing that the problem is not meat consumption itself, rather corporate/industrial agriculture and its methods. It is Coleman’s contention that the fossil fuels lobby has created a straw man of small farmers like himself who, because they raise their cattle on grass not grain, are not responsible for the greenhouse gasses that are causing climate change.

Eliot Coleman is right to say that the fossil fuels lobby has created a straw man of farming’s impact on the environment, but only insofar as small farmers are easier to attack than big oil. When it comes to the crunch, however – and with the icecaps and glaciers melting, Bangladesh flooding, Bolivia short of water, crops failing and millions being turned into environmental refugees, this really is the crunch – it does not make sense to stand in the playground pointing at the bigger boys crying ‘Miss, he did it too!’ No one should be in any doubt that we, as a society, as a species, need to clean up our act, or that this has to start by ending our dependence on fossil fuels and with the implementation of green energy and transportation technology. But we cannot ignore the impact of agriculture, and particularly the over-production and consumption of meat, on global warming.

Coleman’s approach to the issue, whilst a valid assessment of the negligible impact of small-scale pasture reared cattle like his own, is unfortunately very insular. Global problems need to be examined on a global level. The problem, he argues, is not meat-eating itself, rather the grain used by large-scale industrial meat production. As we well know, due to all that energy lost by animals wandering around, keeping warm, farting, only a fraction of the energy they gain from their food finds its way into our stomachs. As such, it requires considerably more grain and vegetable matter to keep a single person on a meat-based diet than a vegetarian one. As David Pimentel, professor of ecology at Cornell University points out, “If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million.”

This is an inefficient and energy-intensive process which Coleman believes he is exempt from because his cattle are raised on grass. He is keen to lay the blame at the door of corporate/industrial agriculture. In a sense he is right, but only if John Donne was wrong and, unlike most men, Coleman is in fact an island. The trouble is, approaching this on the global level, it would be impossible to produce the amount of meat the world currently consumes based on the small-scale farming model Coleman advocates. It is not, after all, about supply, it is about demand. That’s capitalism 101. As long as demand for meat remains at its current levels, there is no solution to be found in the corporate/industrial producers scaling back their operation, since supply will always fall short. As such, the carbon-sink rainforests will continue to be cleared for cattle rearing, grain will continue to be pumped into meat production rather than human consumption and, according to research conducted by ecological economist Susan Subak, 36 times more CO2 will be emitted producing a pound of beef than a pound of asparagus.

Of course we should, as Coleman suggests, condemn the enormous output of greenhouse gasses due to fossil fuel and fertiliser use by a greedy and biologically irresponsible agriculture. But doing so would be an utterly fruitless task if we do not recognise that it is our own consumption patterns that necessitate these patterns of production. Paul McCartney’s suggestion of Meat Free Mondays provides the perfect first step in addressing our unsustainable levels of consumption. There are many ethical reasons why one might choose a strictly vegetarian diet, but this is not the time for them. This is the time to provide solutions to a much bigger problem. One that threatens entire species and communities. Because no man is an island. And if we do not address the issue of over-consumption of meat and its impact on climate change, on melting icecaps and rising sea levels, there will be far fewer islands left.