Hard Hill Farm

OK. I’m angry. Now, as a stressed-out mother of two and a half and the wife of a farmer Iwill admit that it doesn’t take a lot to nudge me in that general direction these days. But reading this week’s Weekly Times (“Helen’s fight for farmland”, p.34) Iwas “miffed”  (understatement used in place of expletive) to read that, discussing the preservation of prime agricultural land, farmlets were highlighted as the number one threat. “They are causing far more damage to our farmland, not just in the area they’re using, but also the weeds they’re introducing and the risk to fire control and biodiversity.” What a sweeping, and puzzling statement! “Using farmland”- to live and raise a family on? “Introducing weeds”- are these being smuggled past customs or are they new varieties to the ones naturalised to most pieces of farmland in Australia? “Risk to fire control and biodiversity”- hmmm, a contradiction in terms? A fire risk implies vegetation and vegetation implies habititat for native species… Minimal fire risk implies bare dirt but then no habitat… How can you be both? And here I thought the monoculturalist agenda pushed by modern agriculture was the biggest threat facing biodiversity, silly me.

I presume the article is aiming to paint those with farmlets as stereotypical tree-changers, with no clues, no productivity, lots of weeds and pests and with high-paying city jobs to fund their neglected retreat while their traditional farming neighbours, who have all the answers according to modern agriculture, are left to clean up the mess. This isafter all the image propogated by government and industry for at least the past decade. Yet turn back just one page in the paper to read about a man growing capers, a lucrative crop on his 8 Ha FARMLET in the northwest Riverina. 

From what I have seen, the biggest threat to the preservation of prime agricultural land is the inability of farmers to maintain that land due to declining terms of trade and the ‘cost-price squeeze’ i.e. less money in, more money out = less money for maintenance and improvements to land and thus the land becomes worth more as real estate than as farm land (the latter is touched on by the article). This cycle also spawns many other social and environmental issues because, as farmers are forced to cut costs and increase production in order to remain viable, the consideration of other factors such as lifestyle, pollution, animal welfare and biodiversity understandably decreases.

Everybody is very keen to make money out of the new breed of hobby farmers, mostly by enticing & encouraging them to play like the big boys- does anyone else see the correlation between the increase in small landholder numbers and the boom in small, cheap tractors and utes? The government likes hobby farmers when they are contributing their cash to the economy or when they successfully become commercial in their hobby and start paying more tax. But both the government and the media continue with this condescending and critical attitude. Obviously the desire to know where your food has come from, the commitment to growing your own food & living sustainably on your own income without borrowing vast amounts of capital (which used to be called money…) has unsettling implications for the powers that be- how do you control a sub-population that has no need for supermarkets & banks?

It is human nature to simplify matters for ease of understanding but I think that is the cause of the hysterical and counter-productive state our media-driven world is in.

As I understand it, the release of methane is a “natural” process occuring when carbon-based compounds (i.e. man, animals and plants) are degraded. This may occur by burning or decomposition (digestion by bacteria/fungi) and is part of the Carbon Cycle, a basic concept taught during High School (at least when I went!). It goes like this-

1)The sun provides energy for plants to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) and water >>>into carbohydrate and oxygen (O2).

2) Carbohydrates are a source of energy. Plants use them to grow and, in the process, release 02 which maintains life on earth (most organisms being aerobic or requiring oxygen).

3) Plants (and the carbohydrate they contain) are either eaten by animals or decompose to form (under certain conditions) fossil fuels.

4) The process of using the energy in plants, whether by animals or by burning fossil fuels, converts this carbohydrate back into CO2. Somome of this CO2 is absorbed by the ocean or becomes part of rocks/soil but the rest is released into the atmosphere and the cycle begins again.

So to remedy the problem of increased CO2 in the atmosphere we can:

1) Plant more plants.

2) Use less fossil fuels.

3) Decrease global animal populations.

That is all very nicely simplified and seems to make perfect sense. But when you look at the consequences of each option it becomes obvious that each of those options impacts on a complex system that cannot be easily simplified.

Option 1. Plant more plants. Sounds simple but where will we put them with human population expanding and urban areas replacing vegetation? And what plants will we plant- native vegetation is being replaced by crops and farming for food production but do we have any other choice in the current global situation?

Option 2. Use less fossil fuels. With declining resources and escalating cost this would seem the obvious choice but the fact that alternative technologies are still in their infancy bears testimony to the existance of a much more complex situation, unfortunately involving conglomerates and the economic viability of entire countries.

Option 3.  With Options 1. and 2. having been relegated to the “too-hard” basket, media attention now focuses on decreasing the number of organisms on the planet. Not humans since that would be immoral. Not native species, although we seem to be managing that anyway. Instead we are told we must decrease the number of ruminants- those evil farm animals that emit methane, the greenhouse gas of the moment. As a vegetarian, a zoologist and an environmentalist I would be the first to suggest this option if there was any merit to it. Fortunately I am also a farmer and a scientist and can see that we are being pushed down a path that spells disaster for humans and the environment. This is why:

 Starving people do not care about the environment. In a world where we have a current/looming food shortage (depending on where you live) the focus must be on managing sustainable human populations, and that means producing enough food globally. Ruminants are the most obvious means of achieving this goal, provided we manage them as nature intended.

Grass is largely indigestible to all mammals including humans. Some simple carbohydrates such as starch and sugars can be digested but the major carbohydrate component, cellulose, is indigestible. Ruminants include cattle, sheep, goats, buffalo and bison. They have 3 stomachs prior to their true stomach, all for the purpose of housing bacteria that breakdown cellulose. All herbivores rely on these bacteria to some extent but in ruminants the bacteria are housed PRIOR to the true stomach, in most other animals the bacteria are housed AFTER the true stomach. This means that ruminants alone can digest and absorb the bacteria living in their gut- not a big deal until you consider the following:

1) BACTERIA ARE A SOURCE OF PROTEIN.

2) THIS ALLOWS THEM TO SURVIVE ON LOWER PROTEIN DIETS THAN OTHER ANIMALS.

3) PROTEIN IS THE LIMITING NUTRIENT IN THE WORLD FOR HUMAN NUTRITION.

Thus the methane emitted by cattle and other ruminants is the cost of producing protein from non-protein sources, a valuable and unique quality. They can grow and produce food for us by eating low-energy and low-protein grass. If fed grain, legumes and other high-quality foods (more suited to humans than ruminants) then I agree that ruminants represent a net-loss of global food energy and are a danger to the environmental health of the earth. But if managed to utilise a food source (dry grass) that non-ruminants cannot utilise as efficiently they will be invaluable to sustaining the earth’s human population. 

The question that remains is whether it would be more efficient to convince the entire world to become vegetarian, eradicate ruminants and rely on increased plantings of legumes (and other high-protein crops) to feed the world… (The image of Monsanto rubbing its corproational hands together in glee at the prospect of all that GMO soy pops inexplicably into my head at this point).

Or do we stop feeding our ruminants “human” foods such as grain and high-quality protein, feed said foods to the human population instead and allow our ruminants to graze sustainable perennial pastures to produce meat, milk and fibre to further reduce the world food shortage?