Sustainable Meat – Where did it all go wrong!
In the UK we are lucky to have avoided (on the whole) the huge industrialised farming units of America, but much of our meat is still reared on cereals and the animals many don’t get the chance to see the great outdoors let alone eat a blade of grass!
How did it get to this?
The use of cereal feeds came about at the time of subsidised arable production when grain prices were falsely low. Around the same time, grasses and cereal plants were cleverly manipulated and planted in place of mixed herb rich grassland. These rye grass leys and strains of grain plants, yield much higher if supplied with N P K fertilisers, these fertilisers were still relatively affordable at the time and the use of fossil fuels was not so obviously unsustainable.
The outcome was a move away from traditional pasture reared livestock, to ‘finishing’ systems based on housing animals and feeding them cheap grains (and often food factory waste products too, I worked on a farm that fed Cadbury’s rejects, wrappers included!). Much land turned over to producing crops and inexpensive fertilisers replaced farm yard manure. Often the same crop is planted year after year and grassland was deemed unprofitable.
It worked quite well until –
Grain prices sky rocketed in correlation with exorbitant petro-chemical prices and unsustainable supply of fossil fuels.
The soils became degraded and unable to retain their moisture, so need regular irrigation. The soil is unstable, so after every heavy rain storm, tonnes of soil washes down becks and gullies.
Cultivated land hold less water too so it is much more likely are lower land and towns will flood.
The carbon that was once safely locked up in healthy nourishing humus, has been released into the atmosphere and is contributing to our climate change.
Our cereals and vegetables are depleted of essential vitamins and minerals as there is little to uptake from the soil.
The livestock that are fed these depleted cereals, are less healthy, need routine medical intervention and produce food that is of a very poor quality in comparison to the nutritious, delicious, grass fed meats, milk and eggs of early in the last century.
Aren’t we clever!
So let’s have a look at a pre war system, in my opinion this was the time when the lessons of the last 10,000 years of agriculture came to a perfect point and the land was able to produce optimal amounts of nutritious foods. People were healthier, animals were healthier and the planet was healthy.
Most farms adopted a ‘mixed farm’ and its greatest highly valued asset was its pasture. The benefit to the soils health from this system is great, grass transfers the sun’s energy into food for a whole underground world of organisms. Microbes in the soil are responsible for breaking the organic matter in soil and recycling the nutrients into a form that can be taken up by plants. In the process they ‘lock up carbon’ taking harmful CO2 out of the atmosphere and keeping it safe below ground.
This wonderful pasture contains a diverse range of plants and flowers, some of these plants have very deep roots that can tap into deeper nutrient stores including water in times of drought. The various species flower and seed at different times, ensuring a good balance of lush rich grass with fibrous material throughout the growing season, perfect for maintaining gut health in grazing animals.
The deep rooted sward stabilises the soil and prevents it from washing away in floods. The grazing animals have a secure and nutrient dense food source that will last all year round.
Our uplands act as a sponge to provide a slow release of water into the rivers and valleys.
When required, the fertile pasture can be ploughed and vegetables or cereal crops can be planted, its natural fertility is enough to produce a bumper crop without need for chemical fertilisers.
The use of the fields would be rotated to prevent fertility loss and manage any disease transfer.
I addition to the global climate benefits of the pasture based system, there is a great local biodiversity advantage too. A mixed farm landscape is ideal for flora and fauna and will have a range of different habitats to allow multiple species to thrive.
Traditional regional breeds of animals are well adapted to survive some very hostile grazing environments. Mountains, cliffs and fells are unable to produce food that requires cultivated land, they can however, still contribute sustainable meat, by providing grazing for hardy breeds. It is vital to maintain regional diversity and support rare breeds, each breed has particular characteristics that have evolved to adapt them to the local topography, climate and terrain.
You may be sceptical about the profitability of a mixed farm type system and may question if it can really produce enough food to feed our hugely increasing global population. The answer is yes.
It is very difficult to quantify the volume of food produced from a mixed farm as, by its nature, it is producing a mix of vegetables, grains, meats, eggs and milk. A hectare of modern arable land producing a high yielding crop of grain may produce an impressive tonnage, however remember that the grain may then end up being fed to animals to indirectly produce food.
Almost half the British wheat crop is fed to animals, to produce 1KG of beef it takes 8KG of wheat grains. Modern grain usually requires irrigation, fertilisers, and harvesting it is usually ‘carbon’ heavy. The food that is produced is unlikely to nourish us well, and the range of species we are regularly eating are becoming fewer. In times of drought and flood this system is very prone to failure so offers poor food security.
In the 1950’s Andre Voisin did a series of studies on grazing productivity and eventually published his remarkable findings in the hugely popular ‘grass productivity’. He concluded that with a particular way of grazing (now called mob grazing) grassland could produce more food per hectare than arable crops. This method was well accepted and followed in the UK but sadly fell out of favour with the introduction of Subsidies. The Government generously encouraged the growing of crops through the EU Common Agricultural Policy and made it impossible for a business minded farmer to ignore.
I think it’s time to take a long, hard, objective look at how we produce our food. You can vote with your pound, seek out producers who refuse to take leave of their inherent wisdom and stubbornly keep producing great food in a way that benefits us all.
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