Sustainability: More Questions Than Answers

The concept of sustainability has encompassed a flurry of activity in recent years. For example, our college campus, like many others, now has an Office of Sustainability. The department’s mission is to “promote a culture of sustainability…integrating principles of ecological integrity and social equity into academics, practices, and partnerships.” The concept possesses good intentions but, in my opinion, the stated objective remains somewhat squishy. Most notably, it avoids incorporating economic principles. And I’m left wondering about real application.

Ambiguity is one thing, misusing it is another. Unfortunately, “sustainability” is often utilized by advocates as proxy to promote a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. I’m all for freedom of choice but draw the line when activists misrepresent the facts. For instance, earlier this fall, a regular column entitled, “Sustainable Living” asked the question:

“Omnivore, vegetarian or vegan? Which is more sustainable?” The column incorporated a litany of reasons (albeit urban legends) why the public should consume less meat.

There’s not room to address them all but let’s stab at the more important ones.

Credibility of such arguments is undermined at the outset when the most fundamental fact is incorrect. The column cites that, “Americans don’t often see the unappetizing effects of eating 260 pounds of meat per person, per year.” A little perspective: USDA data reveals that last year’s average annual per capital consumption of red meat and poultry in the United States runs closer to 180 pounds (boneless weight) – a whopping 30% less than the asserted benchmark.

Now let’s turn our attention to more basic “sustainability” issues - resource utilization committed to meat production. The popular claim that beef production requires, “2,500 gallons of water fed to a cow to make one pound of beef. More than half our farmland and half our water consumption is currently devoted to the meat industry.” That assertion overstates reality by a factor of almost six. Published scientific data estimate the real number to be closer to 450 gallons - never mind the principles of the hydrologic cycle.

What about grain utilization? The column contends that, “We eat most of our grain in the form of meat, 90 percent actually, which translates into 2000 pounds of grain a year.” USDA projections (December, 2010 WASDE) put annual feed grain usage at 139.9 million metric tons. That represents less than 40% of total use (357.6 mmt). Meanwhile, sustainability activists conveniently overlook ethanol; it now represents approximately 36% of corn use in the United States (not to mention ethanol’s water utilization).

Moreover, livestock actually facilitate ethanol’s sustainability through utilization of the industry’s by-products.

Topping it off, though, was the column’s citation from Frances Moore Lappe’s book, Diet for a Small Planet: “Imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce steak dinner, then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in front of them. For the ‘feed cost’ of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains.” So what’s needed is real action. There’s no mandate to feed grain to livestock. Anti-meat activists are free to transfer their concern about world hunger into market activity; nothing stops them from purchasing and transporting food grains. And let’s not overlook the fact that ruminants represent an important source of protein for a hungry planet by utilizing forage resources that would otherwise be unusable by the human population.

So what about sustainability and ensuing connotations for agriculture? That issue was addressed in a recent paper (Int’l Journal of Agricultural Sustainability) surrounding the top 100 questions of importance to the future of global agriculture (Int’l Journal of Agricultural Sustainability). The authors state that, “Vital work needs to be done to establish more precisely what ‘sustainable food’ represents, and to identify best practice standards across a wide range of activities throughout the [food supply chain].” In other words, sustainability invokes more questions than answers.

Therefore, the default position that sustainability and animal agriculture are mutually exclusive is wrongheaded - it assumes to know all the answers. Wholesale, disingenuous denigration isn’t helpful; it merely serves to protect personal, ideological vestment in a movement and fails to advance meaningful solutions.

Source: Nevil C. Speer, PHD, MBA, Western Kentucky University

http://www.cattlenetwork.com/NLA_Mon.aspx?oid=1294226&publishdate=2010-12-27&urltitle=Sustainability---More-Questions-Than-Answers&tid=Archive

http://www.depsyl.com/

http://back2basicnutrition.com/

http://bionutritionalresearch.olhblogspace.com/