Organic vs Vegetarian

   One of the frustrating things about being vegetarian are the odd, and to be honest sometimes downright rude, reactions you get when you utter the words ‘I’m a vegetarian’. When a lot of people hear those three simple words they seem to think it’s OK to immediately tell you what their assumptions about vegetarians are. The most common replies revolve around the feelings of animals, and my most common comeback is ‘I’m a vegetarian, not a tree-hugging hippy’. In all honesty, when I first became vegetarian I wasn’t really sure why. I just knew that it was meant to be. As I’ve grown up, I’ve learnt to understand more about my beliefs around eating and wearing animal-based products, and our impact on the planet. I suppose I consider myself to be a ‘realist vegetarian’. I’ve not really got an issue with people eating meat, as long as they know where their food comes from and it’s produced ethically. What annoys me is that, in the Western world today, most people will only eat meat if it comes pre-packaged from the supermarket. And they couldn’t care less where it comes from. They argue that it’s natural for humans to eat meat, but as soon as you suggest they go out and kill their own prey they look at you like you’ve just told them to run six marathons back-to-back. If it came down to me or the animal, I wouldn’t hesitate in slaughtering the animal. Having spent a lot of my childhood in the countryside, I grew up eating rabbit that the local farmer caught, pheasant that my uncle was paid in (he’s a pheasant beater) and fish that my dad and I caught ourselves. I even used to gut my own fish. Besides, most of the types of meat available in supermarkets were never originally eaten my humans. Cows, for example, started off as skinny bags of bones before they were fattened up during the agricultural revolution. The omnivores I respect are the ones that are aware of the origins of the meat they eat, whether they’ve caught it themselves or not, and obtain it in a way that has as little impact on the environment as possible.

   I’m not the best person to explain this belief, but I’ve found someone who is. ‘Scenes From a Smallholding’ is a book written by Chas Griffin about the experiences his family had when they decided to leave suburbia and take over a farm in West Wales. Rather than try to change his words, and get it completely wrong, I’ve decided to just copy the insert from his book into my blog. In the unlikely event that Chas Griffin reads this blog, I hope he doesn’t mind me using his material, and I apologise if he does.

‘Organic vs Vegetarian?’ by Chas Griffin, Summer 1992     ‘We were vegetarian for quite some time before we moved to the smallholding, but living and working here has driven us to the unexpected and apparently harsh conclusion that as far as we can see, you can either be organic, or vegetarian, but not both.
   The logic behind this seemingly brutal claim runs like this: like all living things, plants need feeding; chemical farmers who produce the tasteless rubbish you buy at the supermarket, use chemicals; chemicals weaken the plants, kill off the micro soil life, and destroy the soil structure, so it eventually erodes away, just as it is now doing in East Anglia (Britain’s own up-and-coming dustbowl) and across the world, at the alarming rate of millions of tons a month. And once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. Now there’s a thought. Never mind global warming, soil loss is humanity’s greatest problem. And the less soil there is, the more they are going to blast it with chemicals, aren’t they? Unless you and I can persuade them to stabilise their soil by going organic.
   So chemical farming is a long-term disaster. What is the alternative?
   Organic farmers use compost, which feeds the soil that feeds the crops; so the soil is built up, not destroyed.
   But here’s the rub: it is virtually impossible to produce enough vegetable-only compost for the needs of a farm or market garden, and anyway, compost needs a nitrogen input to get it going. The nitrogen naturally comes from animal urine and dung.
   There may be a way around needing this animal input, but there is no convincing evidence that I know of that is really practically possible for an organic farmer to avoid the need for animal excreta. And anyway, it is clear that animals and plants were made for each other. The animal is designed to eat the plants, and then to fertilise the land it grazes on.
   As a by-product of the essential nitrogenous waste, a cow also produces valuable milk, and, with a bit of extra work, butter and cheese. But… and here’s the point… she will only produce milk after producing a calf.
   Unfortunately, 50 per cent of calves are male. As one bull will serve about 40 females, what is going to happen to the other 39 bull calves? They can’t be left to eat a whole herd’s worth of grass, or the price of milk would double every year (work it out for yourself). What is more, 39 testosterone-stuffed bulls in one field would soon make the Battle of Kursk look like Salad Days.
   On top of all this, the Artificial Insemination service has reduced the need for bulls even more. One super-stud can now serve hundreds or thousands of heifers, and without all that unseemly bellowing and drooling.
   So… if you want organic vegetables, and I for one think you ought to on ecological grounds alone, you must accept animals going for early slaughter, unless you can find a logical flaw in my argument.’
  
   See, I told you that Chas Griffin could explain it much better than me. Personally, I still prefer to be a vegetarian who eats a plant-based diet for health reasons. Besides, I have no desire to eat meat. I do agree with what Chas is saying, though. I think we need to take a step back and look at how we farmed before the agricultural revolution. Before the days of mass farming, everyone ate from local, small, organic smallholdings. If all omnivores thought like Chas Griffin, I for one think the world would be a better place.