Uncategorized

Meat: A Benign Extravagance

Saturday, February 23, 2019Saturday, February 23, 2019 admin

Given how broad this field is, Fairlie naturally must limit the scope of the book. Nutritional factors and the morality of animal eating are completely excluded from consideration in this work. Meat is purely focused on an analysis of how much of what type of food can be produced on how much land under what conditions. Also, as noted in the book, each chapter consists of a stand alone essay, so the overall work feels a little disjointed.

I didn't find that to be much of a negative. Despite the author's status as an enlightened carnivore, I found this book to be highly free of bias and polemics. He gives equal space to proponents of veganism and omnivorism, permaculture and industrialized agriculture. All arguments are critically examined using rigorous scientific, statistical, and historical evidence. Furthermore, extensive portions of the book are devoted to analyzing common scientific data, exploring the presumptions and ideological biases that formed potentially unreliable conclusions.

One of the first chapters includes a detailed investigation into various productions methods for livestock and plant matter, and what actual yields of each under different conditions really are. Later in the book, this information is used to analyze the food producing capacities of four different models: I found these sections especially interesting, as most mainstream vegan literature does not include technical analyses of what vegan agriculture actually looks like. When the advantages and disadvantages are weighed, some critical problems arise. However, again due to the limited scope of the book, the author chose to apply much of his analysis to the unique circmstances of the United Kingdom.

While the principles are interesting and informative, it's hard to know how much different his conclusions would be in other locales. Another limitation is that Fairlie assumes that the fossil fuel age will end in the near decades without a new infrastructure based on renewable, zero carbon energy. While the prospects for the future energy economy are varied and beyond the scope of the book, it's worth noting that much of his analysis presumes that there will be no new easily accessible mass source of energy.

However, his explanation of the difficulties in properly managing the nitrogen and phosphate cycle and the maintenance of soil fertility, which as he and others argue is vastly harmed by urbanization and chemical agriculture, highlight extremely important issues that must be addressed in the development of a sustainable food system. Overall, the book succeeds most where it is deconstructing conventional wisdom surrounding the role of livestock.

The vegan establishment ubiquitously decries the caloric inefficiency, the extreme use of water, and the contribution to climate change associated with livestock production. These are often cited as reasons to abolish animal agriculture. Fairlie conducts a meticulous investigation into those claims, and the nuanced truth he uncovers suggests that they are fallacious. Even in that setting, given that most of the animals' weight comes from grass prior to the CAFO, the ratio drops considerably. There are a number of considerations that can affect it, but it seems Similarly, the water usage statistics tend to come either from a calculation of all of the rainwater that fell on grass that animals ate, or an extrapolation of one specific region in a desert climate where pasture land needed to be irrigated.

A more realistic analysis results in livestock production contributing far less green house gases. Fairlie advocates a return to decentralized, rural based agricultural systems where animals what he calls default livestock use are integrated with the land, serving as a source of fertility and a way of converting non arable pasture land in the case of cows and food waste in the case of pigs and chickens into a source of human sustenance. As the pressures of population growth and the costs of technological development continue to pose a threat to human civilization, the debate on how to balance the needs of human food requirements and ecological carrying capacity is increasingly critical.

This book is a meticulously researched, well documented, and informative investigation of the various problems and potential solutions, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who eats and cares what the world their grandchildren will live in looks like. Jan 13, Sarah Clement rated it liked it.

I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly

I think this book had a lot of potential, and I was intrigued to see what a fellow environmentalist would have to say on the topic of the sustainability of meat. While I think Fairlie did a phenomenal job overall, there are many glaring and not-so-glaring errors in his book, both in terms of data and in terms of conclusions.

The best part of the book is, by far, the scenarios he develops involving different agricultural systems and how they would relate to the dietary patterns of the public. He I think this book had a lot of potential, and I was intrigued to see what a fellow environmentalist would have to say on the topic of the sustainability of meat. He discusses these in a way that I wish vegetarians and vegans would do more frequently, although I think he sometimes makes very large assumptions that don't necessarily stand up to scrutiny. The worst part of the book was his discussion of a vegan vision of the world.

He essentially trolled around the internet to develop this 'vision' and as such it is more the rantings of random vegans from the web than an actual alternative, as presented by informed people. For someone who only peripherally follows the topic, this would look like vegans are just lunatics who have no insight into a future without meat, which is far from the case. I think this book could make a really valuable contribution to the discussion around environmentally sustainable food systems, but I don't know that it will ever take off given his dry approach.

And while I know that he deliberately avoids the other aspects of this issue e. While other writers on the topic of sustainable food systems like Pollan have perfected the art of engaging the reader through a mix of narrative and facts, Fairlie all but drops the narrative altogether and expects the strength of his facts to carry the reader to the same conclusions as him.

Unfortunately, if you're not well-read on the topic, I suspect you may tire of his number crunching, and if you are well-read, you will spend a lot of time circling errors and commenting in the margins. Mar 23, Richard Reese rated it it was amazing. Fairlie is a powerhouse thinker, a fire hose of ideas, and a tireless detective who hunts down those who ejaculate statistics that are ridiculously biased or fictitious. This book will reduce your trust in all statistics by I strongly recommend it to readers who have an addiction to food. Fairlie is an ex-vegetarian, a hippie eco-journalist, and a jack-of-all-trades.

Once upon a time, he was living on a vegetarian commune in England, and contemplating their diet. He suddenly realized that it made no sense. The protein and oils that they consumed were imported from faraway lands where people were poor and hungry, whose cropland was being diverted from essential subsistence farming to produce commodities for export — nuts, soy, pulses, peanut butter, and vegetable oils. One of his primary interests is livestock production.

Follow by Email

His impossible sacred mission in life is to envision a sustainable way of feeding 60 million Brits. Three ideas provide the foundation of this book. The book contains an enormous number of words and ideas, and it did not have space for some important issues. Fairlie sincerely believes that caring and competent livestock husbandry does not involve cruelty. Allowing animals to suffer from the painful maladies of old age is cruel. In the good old days, merciful wild predators ethically put elderly critters out of their misery. He proposes a radical redesign of the British way of life, whilst not addressing the Mother of All Problems — the extreme overpopulation of the UK, and its dependence on importing large amounts of food.

Or is agriculture itself the Mother Problem? Obviously, it would be far easier to feed one million or fewer Brits in a sustainable way. He sensibly omits a discussion of diet and health, in which a million experts can agree on nothing. Ruminants cattle, sheep, goats convert plant fiber that we cannot digest into meat and milk that we can digest. Normally, they dine on lands that are unsuitable for raising crops. Hogs are omnivores that, in traditional societies, excelled at converting garbage into bacon. Chickens played a similar role. So, if the consumption of animal foods were limited to animals raised in these traditional ways, it would cause far less harm.

Never forget that the production of grains and vegetables is also a source of immense harm. Plowing and reaping a grain field destroys many animals in a cruel and unethical manner, and it gradually ruins the soil, too. Fairlie devoted considerable effort to exposing the sources of ridiculous statistics cited by the anti-meat crowd. His calculation included rain that fell on the grassland — rain that would fall whether or not livestock were present.

At the very most, his grass-fed beef required liters per kilogram of meat. Fairlie also butted heads with those who blame climate change on livestock, the alleged source of 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Cattle are worse than cars! The statistic was blessed by the reputable International Panel on Climate Change IPCC , went viral, and was repeated by major media outlets, with no fact checking whatsoever — an instant imaginary catastrophe.

Transportation probably produces about 52 percent of greenhouse gases. Ruminants probably produce from 5 to 9. If all cattle were exterminated tonight, they would soon be replaced by wild ruminants, which also fart and belch. The Great Plains of the US were formerly home to 60 million bison not a problem , but they have been replaced by 60 million climate killing cattle oh my God! The ecologically worst foods come from exterminated rainforests. We must avoid rainforest products like soy, beef, and palm oil.

Was your tofu, vegetable oil, or soy burger born in a former jungle? Seventy percent of vegetable oil comes from soy. Soybeans are processed into vegetable oil and soy meal. About three percent of the meal is eaten by humans. Most of the meal becomes high-potency feed for the industrial meat-production facilities that we all love to hate. There would be no livestock, and no manure, so soil fertility would have to be maintained by devoting a third of the cropland to growing green manures, instead of food.

If the land were to be worked with biofuel powered machines, then more land would be needed to grow the fuel. Maintaining and replacing the machines would require the existence of an industrial society, which is not sustainable. If horses were used for traction, producing their feed would require between a quarter and a third of the farm for oats, grass, and hay.

On the bright side, land formerly used for grazing could be returned to woodland and wildlife. On the downside, expanded woodland would provide habitat for expanded numbers of wild animals, which vegan communities could not ethically kill. Bunnies, boars, and deer frequently confuse large thriving gardens with a delicious paradise, and they routinely disregard stern instructions from agitated gardeners.

No farmer, meat-eater or vegan, can tolerate the presence of uncontrolled wildlife. One solution is defoliation — surround the community with a wide vegetation-free buffer. Animal rights advocate, Peter Singer, recommended capturing and sterilizing the wildlife. The other option is an impermeable fence, tall enough to block deer, and deep enough to block burrowers. Do you enclose the garden, or do you enclose nature? What about mice, rats, and pigeons? After observing the world through the mind of a livestock husbandman, I was impressed by how much effort, complexity, suffering, and damage was required to keep way too many people alive.

The original indigenous inhabitants of the land simply adapted to living with the ecosystem that surrounded them. They ate salmon, bison, and aurochs that thrived without human owners and managers. Their way of life had no objections whatsoever to the existence of lions, wolves, and bears.

They had little need to molest the living forest. They never had to think about soil depletion, erosion, or pollution. They enjoyed a far healthier diet. They could drink out of any lake or stream. They lived well, without rocking the boat, for quite a while. Aug 20, Brian rated it it was amazing Shelves: First off, before I start, I heard about this book through a caveman diet blog, so you know where my biases lie.

A Benign Extravagance is, as it says, a defense of eating meat. The author explains and then knocks down one vegan myth after another: The exaggerated emphasis on the alleged four or five percent of [greenhouse gases] emitted by cattle, and the mendacious rhetoric about cows causing more global warming than cars, look suspiciously like an attempt to shift some of the blame for global warming from below ground to above ground, from fossil fuels to the natural biosphere, from the town to the country and from the rich to the poor. The vision of a vegan England well, one vegan's vision of given later on, where in order to live in harmony with nature and prevent having to kill millions of pest animals in the course of agriculture, they literally wall themselves off from the natural world, was also especially ironic.

However, the book is in no way an unbridled paean to the joy of meat. There are two major caveats I'll add after my above list: A Benign Extravagance is, by design, concerned only with the ecological and economic impacts of meat eating. In the face of soil depletion, climate change, peak oil, and a myriad of other pressures, something will have to change, and probably quite drastically. Meat is benign, yes, but is also extravagant. The book is quite dense and full of references, but is written in a conversational tone with several anecdotes about the process of research.

There are a number of instances where the author writes about the difficulty he had trying to find the source for claims made by either side, and in once case after being repeatedly given the run-around he resorts to just typing stuff into a search engine and seeing if he can find out where the source got the information for her claims.

For the record, it's a source claiming that climate change can essentially be solved through carbon sequestration of pastured land grazed by cattle. For me, I actually think the most interesting points were the times when he departed from his usual recounting of statistics and facts and talked about the emotional impact of eating meat; that doing so keeps us close to nature, which is, after all, red in tooth and claw though this obviously doesn't apply to city-dwellers who get all their food prepackaged like myself! A society in which no animals are eaten, even if it doesn't follow the lines of some of the more extreme vegan ideologues in gengineering most of the animal kingdom to eliminate predation entirely, is farther from nature than the omnivores are.

I don't tend to think of my own meat-eating in moral terms--I tend to default to the nutritional benefits, especially over the available substitutes--and it was kind of eye-opening, even if of limited benefit to an urbanite. The vision of a pastoral society given at the end is likely to provoke a strong response from quite a lot of people, but as the author points out, it is a lifestyle led by a significant portion of the world's population right now, and while I doubt many people would adopt it out of choice, we may have to do so out of necessity.

Sep 02, Anna rated it really liked it Shelves: I would give the first half of Meat five stars and the last half three, but Goodreads doesn't work that way. Here's why the first half was awesome: It's a well-researched and unbiased account of the impact meat animals actually have on our environment. Yes, the text looks dense due to the font and footnotes, but it's actually quite easy to read. Maybe because I'm much less interested in philosophizing about societal changes, I found the second half to be a slog.

But it also felt much more opiniona I would give the first half of Meat five stars and the last half three, but Goodreads doesn't work that way. But it also felt much more opinionated and less rounded, citing theorists instead of studies with numbers. Since the book was written with each chapter a separate essay, the author gives you complete leeway to skip around and read only what you want.

If you've got a limited attention span, you'll get most of the highlights by reading chapters 1, 3, 4, 9, 10, and Sep 25, Stewart rated it really liked it Shelves: The most comprehensive consideration of the inadequate arguments of omnivores, vegans, vegetarians, and worst of all born-again carnivores. There is no easy solution. Fairlie has no tolerance for bullshit from grass eaters or meat eaters. He is concerned with fact.

He concedes that the best argument for veganism is land use -- that land could be used for other purposes. Unfortunately, few lifestyle vegans have any idea what veganic agriculture would look like other than "More trees, wildlife. If meat is extravagant for diverting possible human food to feed other animals, biofuel is even more extravagant.

Fairlie has certainly made many enemies out of dogmatists and has drawn others out of their dogmatism. Fairlie faces facts, not ideology. He is pathologically concerned with the truth. I'm an enthusiastic carnivore, but this book almost made me vegan. Fairlie presents a well written and thoroughly documented argument for the environmental sustainability of livestock, but he ties it to a worldview that requires the general population to abandon cities, motor vehicles, plastic, and pretty much anything invented in the last hundred or so years in exchange for rural lives as loosely organized mostly self-sufficient peasants.

As someone who enjoyed reading his book electronically on I'm an enthusiastic carnivore, but this book almost made me vegan. As someone who enjoyed reading his book electronically on my iPhone, after having returned by car from a business meeting that helped pay for said book, part of which included a meal made from vegetables and meats produced by people who are far more talented and interested in farming than I am, I cannot reject strongly enough his proposal for how we should live.

As I was reading I marked arguments that I found to be specious, with the intention of writing a rebuttal to them, but with well over passages marked I don't know where to begin and won't bother. That said, I still recommend the book. Fairlie's research is excellent, and he brings amazingly diverse fields of study into scope as he crafts his vision for a permaculture society. I remain unconvinced by his argument, but it's entertaining and satisfying to witness his crafting of it. But thank goodness I also used other sources in my own research, or else tomorrow morning I'd be trading in my eggs and bacon for tofutti and veggie "bacon".

Jun 01, Jules rated it did not like it Shelves: There's no attempt at narrative to carry what is essentially a string of back-of-the-envelope calculations interspersed with short polemics, and given that the author misunderstands certain key concepts embodied water for example I don't even trust the calculations.

There are a few interesting snippets that I would have liked to see discussed in more detail, for example the fact that much of the UK's food waste problem was caused by the fact that following the BSE crisis it was made illegal to feed food waste to pigs, but rather than essentially dismissing this as "health and safety gone mad" I'd have liked to see some discussion of how it might be possible to recycle food waste without propagating pathogens through the system. Maybe it will get there later in the book but thus far I've seen nothing that contradicts my basic belief that while it may be theoretically possible to design an agricultural system featuring animals that minimises environmental impacts without compromising welfare, we're a very long way off having that at the moment so in the meantime it's probably a good idea to eat as little animal produce as possible.

Mar 03, Jean-Michel Ghoussoub rated it it was amazing. This book is a must read for anyone interested in what we eat, how it is produced and the impact it has on the environment and the worldwide economy and balance of power. Simon Fairly is not only a small farmer, he did tons of research and got even the tiniest detail. What I liked about this book, is its transparency and honesty. This is one of the rare books on the subject of food that does not takes sides for meat or against meat. This book is a treasure cove of interesting info. Whether y This book is a must read for anyone interested in what we eat, how it is produced and the impact it has on the environment and the worldwide economy and balance of power.

Whether you're a big time meat eater or a hard core vegan, this book will very certainly impact the way you see food and ultimately what you eat. May 05, Kurtzprzezce rated it really liked it Shelves: Fairly researched topic, challenging read.

PIS - Personalinformationssysteme (German Edition).
How to Get 4 Million Targeted Traffic & 250,000+ Subscribers: (Grow Your Visitors & Followers to Your Website and Social Media Page to 1 to 4 million with 1 or 2 years).
Hybride Texte in der Literatur (German Edition).
Sense & Sensibility: With an Introduction by Joanna Trollope.

Well written, but the language is not always straightforward which might be a minor problem for a non-native english language users like myself. I have only one major objection: He advocates "organic" above "chemical", but never mention the fact that what "organic" means is actually defined by local legislation. It not necessarily means that farmers are using duck to fight the slugs Fairly researched topic, challenging read.

It not necessarily means that farmers are using duck to fight the slugs. Using pesticides which are not synthesized in laboratories labelled as "organic" , but nevertheless dangerous even more than "chemical" ones is more accurate description of so called "organic" farming. I didn't like so much the last part of the book. It's rather opinionated defense of a rural lifestyle than factual analysis.

Furtunatelly there's plenty of that in the previous parts of the book. Jun 01, Bill Guerrant rated it it was amazing. Balanced, intelligent and well-researched, this book carefully examines the place of livestock in an ecologically sustainable world. While the author addresses in detail many of the ethical issues associated with livestock and meat-eating in the context of population growth and climate change, he sidesteps entirely what many regard as the principal moral issue--whether it is ethical for humans to kill and eat animals.

Some readers may be frustrated by this. Likewise the author's emphasis on the Balanced, intelligent and well-researched, this book carefully examines the place of livestock in an ecologically sustainable world. Likewise the author's emphasis on the social and ecological condition of Great Britain may cause some to question the relevance of the book to the rest of the world. But I found his analysis helpful and compelling, and had no trouble projecting his conclusions onto societies outside Britain.

Jul 04, Nick Harris rated it really liked it Shelves: Extensive and intensive investigation of livestock, their uses and misuses. Some valid points about the critical role livestock play in agriculture and livelihoods. Towards the end a low-energy rural permaculture idyll is sketched out, which mixes reasonable criticism with luddite fantasy. We are not getting to the stars by shepherding cows.

The book has gone back to the library, however, I've read enough to give it at least three stars. I intend to finish it. One of the nice things about Fairlie's bo The book has gone back to the library, however, I've read enough to give it at least three stars. Sometimes he will start to describe an idea favoring animal agriculture, and you'll say to yourself, "wait a minute, that's not right" -- but then sure enough, in a paragraph or two, he'll refute the idea he has just brought up himself.

So he's not just a parrot for the meat industry, or even for organic agriculture, by a long shot. In general, Fairlie's defense of meat seems to be based on the idea of meat as economically efficient those cows can mostly take care of themselves , and the idea of meat as a storage device what are you going to eat this winter or if your crops fail?

This is coupled with a fall back defensive strategy: In fact the somewhat minor problems small-scale meat production causes, in Fairlie's view, are outweighed by the economic advantages and flexibility of an omnivorous diet. If we defined our terms, "small scale meat production" could wind up being pretty massive and could still wind up doing a lot of damage. When you talk about small scale meat production, you convey to western readers the idea of meat 2 or 3 times a week, but in practice "sustainable meat" would be much less frequent even than that, or would be the practice only of a small elite, with resultant social problems of inequality -- or both.

And even at small levels animal agriculture can be bad; in several ways grazing cattle is actually worse than feedlot cattle. It is very destructive both of the soil and of biodiversity. I understand Fairlie's argument, but I am not convinced. The health disadvantages of meat consumption are also very problematic and are not adequately addressed. We adopted meat consumption as hunter-gatherers when people frequently didn't live to be 30, so heart disease and cancer were of marginal importance.

If we want to go back to that life expectancy, then meat might be excused as a "benign extravagance," but otherwise, we are going to pay for it one way or the other. My basic response to this is that this concept of "waste" is an economic concept. Food thrown away can be composted. I strongly recommend it to readers who have an addiction to food. Fairlie is an ex-vegetarian, a hippie eco-journalist, and a jack-of-all-trades.

One of his primary interests is livestock production. His impossible sacred mission in life is to envision a sustainable way of feeding 60 million Brits. Three ideas provide the foundation of this book. The book contains an enormous number of words and ideas, and it did not have space for some important issues. Fairlie sincerely believes that caring and competent livestock husbandry does not involve cruelty.

Allowing animals to suffer from the painful maladies of old age is cruel. In the good old days, merciful wild predators ethically put elderly critters out of their misery. He proposes a radical redesign of the British way of life, whilst not addressing the Mother of All Problems — the extreme overpopulation of the UK, and its dependence on importing large amounts of food.

Or is agriculture itself the Mother Problem?

What Is Sustainable: Meat — A Benign Extravagance

Obviously, it would be far easier to feed one million or fewer Brits in a sustainable way. He sensibly omits a discussion of diet and health, in which a million experts can agree on nothing. Ruminants cattle, sheep, goats can convert plant fiber that we cannot digest into meat and milk that we can digest. Normally, they dine on lands that are unsuitable for raising crops.

Hogs are omnivores that, in traditional societies, excelled at converting garbage into bacon.

Simon Fairlie: How Eating Meat Can Save the Planet?
Simon Fairlie on Why Eating Meat Is Good for the Planet - TIME.
Subscribe To.
A Change of Heart: An Amish Gathering Novella.
Sweet On Candi;
Nellattesa della sua venuta (Italian Edition).
Meat: A Benign Extravagance.

Chickens played a similar role. So, if the consumption of animal foods were limited to animals raised in these traditional ways, it would cause far less harm. Never forget that the production of grains and vegetables is also a source of immense harm. Plowing and reaping a grain field destroys many animals in a cruel and unethical manner, and it gradually ruins the soil, too. Fairlie devoted considerable effort to exposing the sources of ridiculous statistics cited by the anti-meat crowd.

His calculation included rain that fell on the grassland — rain that would fall whether or not livestock were present. At the very most, his grass-fed beef required liters per kilogram of meat. Fairlie also butted heads with those who blame climate change on livestock, the alleged source of 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Cattle are worse than cars! The statistic was blessed by the reputable International Panel on Climate Change IPCC , went viral, and was repeated by major media outlets, with no fact checking whatsoever — an instant imaginary catastrophe. Transportation probably produces about 52 percent of greenhouse gases. Ruminants probably produce from 5 to 9. If all cattle were exterminated tonight, they would soon be replaced by wild ruminants, which also fart and belch.

The Great Plains of the US were formerly home to 60 million bison not a problem , but they have been replaced by 60 million climate killing cattle oh my God! The ecologically worst foods come from exterminated rainforests. We must avoid rainforest products like soy, beef, and palm oil.

Was your tofu, vegetable oil, or soy burger born in a former jungle? Seventy percent of vegetable oil comes from soy. Soybeans are processed into vegetable oil and high-protein soy meal. About three percent of the meal is eaten by humans. Most of the meal becomes high-potency feed for the industrial meat-production facilities that we all love to hate. There would be no livestock, and no manure, so soil fertility would have to be maintained by devoting a third of the cropland to growing green manures, instead of food.