Vegetarianism and Sustainable Agriculture

Most food would be organic and non-GMO, and muchappeared in Countryside & Small Stock Journal, a
more food would be locally grown, rather thanhomesteading magazine. NAIS is a system in the
imported and trucked thousands of milesplanning stages by the National Institute for Animal
– those things tend to be important toAgriculture (NIAA), made up of the big corporate
vegetarians. Processed food would be reduced,players in U.S. meat production (the National Pork
because optimum vegetarian nutrition comes fromProducers, Monsanto, Cargill, etc), and the makers
whole foods in their natural state, and mostand marketers of high-tech animal ID equipment.
vegetarians are interested in a healthy diet. So, muchAny person owning even one agricultural animal, like a
of the energy that goes into producing, packaging,horse, cow, chicken or duck would have to register in
warehousing and transporting processed food woulda federal database, and report any time the animal
be saved.left the owner's property. The expense of
Vegetables and grains need much less land and waterregistering, reporting etc, as well as the GPS tracking,
than animals, so it wouldn't be necessary to destroywould be born by the animal owners. NAIS would be
rain forests or irrigate arid land, or create desertsenforced through seizure and fines.
with over pasturing. Perhaps just enough animalsThis system would make it difficult and expensive for
could be raised to satisfy the ovo-lacto vegetarians,people who raise their own animals for food, or for
and those few people who haven't quite made thesmall local producers to continue, and strike a heavy
vegetarian transition, but even they would consumeblow not only at sustainable agriculture and local
far less meat, for the sake of their health.organic production, but at individual freedom as well.
This idea isn't necessarily obvious to sustainable agAs the article points out, it will also be completely
experts, mainly because they aren't vegetarian, andineffective in controlling disease and infection in the
can't picture agriculture without lots of animals. Theyfood supply.
are reluctant to be associated with what they regardThere's a movement afoot, spearheaded by the
as a fringe group of cranks, eccentrics and wierdos.National Cattlemen's Beef Association, to 'privatize'
In other words, they can't think outside theirthe database, which means they would have
meat-eating box.complete access to all the information, and control
Some Interesting Examplesover enforcement. Since this system is too big and
1. CAFO's:widespread to be effectively enforced, they would
A couple of months ago, I attended a communitymost likely just practice selective enforcement,
meeting, held to organize opposition to CAFO'sthrough fines and seizure, against anyone they
(contained animal feeding operations, or hog lots) inwanted to drive out of business.
SE Iowa – a serious environmental threat).This scheme goes right along with Monsanto's
One of the speakers stated that while he waspractice of suing farmers for patent violation when
against having a CAFO anywhere near his countrytheir GMO seed propagates uninvited on the farmer's
property, of course he himself didn't intend to stopland. NAIS is quite disturbing to anyone who values
eating pork. The audience was polite –individual freedom. For me, as an ovo-lacto
they didn't boo him off the stage!vegetarian, after this system goes into effect, I'll no
2. The Ties That Blindlonger be able to buy free-range organic eggs from
John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus, U MO, highlymy neighbor, whose chickens are family pets. And
respected and passionate sustainability expert, wroteour local organic dairy, with its blissful pampered
Meeting the Challenge of Peak Oil with Sustainablejersey cows, could be driven out of business. The
Agriculture. In his article, Prof Ikerd states: 'Shifting toAmish, who have a separate social and economic
a vegetarian diet would be one obvious means ofsystem, would also be seriously affected.
reducing energy use in agriculture, since most foodWhat will NAIS do to vegetarian sustainable
crops are net energy producers – possiblyagriculture? Not a lot, except that there won't be as
cutting the food energy input/output ratio in half.much organic manure available. And animal manure
However, (and here's where he lost me) processingisn't strictly necessary to organic growing
and distribution would still leave about a five-to-one– all you really need are lots of green
net fossil energy deficit for total food production. Inmanure and worms. Since growing vegetables and
addition, the 20% fossil fuel equivalent produced bygrains doesn't require animals, it could be quite
pasture and forage plants – large nettempting for small meat producers to focus instead
energy producers – would be lost.'on raising grains and vegetables, and herbs. There are
I can see that processing and distribution would stillquite a few high demand organic crops with which
be a problem, unless there was no processing, andsmall farmers do well. And the scarcity of organic
the food was distributed locally. And I don't see whatfree range and pastured animal foods will mean that
the 20% fossil fuel equivalent produced by pasturemore health conscious and environmentally aware
and forage plants has to do with being vegetarian. Ifpeople will turn to vegetarianism. And that local
you didn't have the animals to pasture and forage inorganic production will continue to grow and thrive, as
the first place, there would be 100% fossil fueldemand for vegetarian foods increases exponentially.
equivalent, not 20%. Apart from that lapse in logic,Ms. Zanoni doesn't mention those possibilities, as the
attributable to the meat-eating bias, I recommendsilver lining in this black ugly cloud, and the way that
this article and all of John Ikerd's other writing,NAIS will backfire on these nefarious schemers. But
available on his websitenever mind – the less they know about it
3. NAIS:the better! Of course, if we're forced to go back to
Another article, by Mary Zanoni, Ph.D., Cornellhorse powered farm machinery, that could be a
University, 'The "National Animal Indentificationproblem.
System (NAIS)": A new threat to rural freedom?'