Ramblings on Mark Bittman and Meat vs. Produce

Last week I had the privilege of hearing Mark Bittman, cookbook author and NYT writer, speak at an event in Portland, Oregon. Although I admit to not reading much of his work and owning only ONE cookbook at the moment (Joy of Cooking!, what else?), I follow him on Twitter and occasionally read one of his opinion pieces in The Times now and again. I was pleasantly surprised to hear him focus the majority of his talk on the myriad of problems in the food system instead of waxing on about cooking and other foodie fluff that I assumed he was going to talk about (based on the fact that his talk was part of a fluffy foodie fest in PDX). His speech was essentially a repeat of everything you hear Michael Pollen or Erik Schlosser talk about in Food Inc. or Fast Food Nation, but it's important to have several voices out there repeating essentially the same thing. More people are likely to hear that way.

However, Mark Bittman's continued portrayel of meat as "bad" and produce as "good" is starting to annoy me. My background in science, especially agroecology, instructs me that everything needs to be looked at in context to it's connections to other organisms and natural processes. Well managed livestock, for example, can be a nice complementary activity with other forms of agriculture and can reduce input dependency. In terms of human health and sustenance, we all know that animal products contain more calories, protein, and fat (i.e. nutritional density) than most plant-based foods. In a world of dwindling food supplies, those things are important. Instead of labeling one food as good or bad, let's look at some of the nuances and grey areas of meat production (part of the whole reason behind this blog!). Although I do agree with Mark's labeling of some food as "nonfoods" and other food as just "food". Soda and Hot Cheetos are undoubtedly "nonfoods". Let's say bye, bye to them...

So while Mark was railing against the supposed ills associated with animal agriculture (as if it's all done the same exact way around the world), I began to think about the old farm we used to have. We rented 20 acres of land in a floodplain that was not appropriate for crop production because much of it was under water for 3-5 months a year (flooded fields are considered a food safety hazard for crops). However, because it flooded, it kept the pastures greener much longer into the dry California summer. The hard clay held onto moisture and nutrients, but would scare most fruits or vegetables away by constricting their roots. Hardy perennial grasses, clovers, and mustards did just fine there and supported a diverse menagerie of animals that we raised. So I think you get my point that pasture and animals were a good fit with the land.

Next to us was a slightly raised up field that had topsoil added to it over the years to get it just above the active floodplain. Another farmer rented this field and grew berries and vegetables. The majority of his acreage was planted with one crop though- organic strawberries.

So after listening to Mark Bittman talk about all the environmental and public health ills created by animal production, I decided to do a little comparative math between the inputs and outputs of our animal production with the neighboring berry production. The organic strawberry numbers were derived from a UC-Davis publication on sample organic strawberry production costs, so those number are averages.

Measurement	Org. Strawberries/ACRE	Animal Combo*/ACRE
Water Usage	868,937 gallons	130,341 gallons (1/5th the water usage)
Fertilizer Usage	5 tons compost/acre 500 lbs bloodmeal/acre 94.5 gallons liquid & foliar fertilizers	0 (animal excrement provides all needed fertilizer)
Tillage	Average of 11 tractor passes/row	0 (no tillage used for pasture establishment)
Calories Produced	2,736,000 per acre (strawberries have high sugar content, thus high calories)	4,546,875 per acre (40% more)
Protein Produced	57,600 grams per acre	351,973 grams per acre (83.6% more

 *Animal combination includes rotating 2,500 laying hens, 250 pigs, and 6 beef steers across 20 acres using rotational grazing.

So as you can see in this table above, strawberries utilize a considerable amount of water. Produce in general requires a significant amount of water, yet the water footprint of fruits and vegetables is hardly discussed. With increasing droughts, dropping water tables, salt water intrusion into groundwater, and climate change, I'm not sure we should be promoting growing more water hungry crops as a replacement for eating meat. Plus, think of all the areas of our land mass that can't or shouldn't be irrigated- they could support rotationally grazed livestock but they will never support irrigated agriculture. So our integrated animal production used about 1/5th of the water, which was mostly needed to irrigate pasture for a few months out of the year and run the automatic waterers for the animals.

As for fertilizer use, we did not use any in the 6 years of renting this ground. The animal excrement was all that was needed. As practitioners of rotational grazing, our animals spread and deposited their manure all over the fields. The strawberry farmer had to use compost, bloodmeal (which comes from factory farmed animals), fish emulsion, and other liquid organic fertilizers to grow his crop. Who knows the embodied energy that went into making those fertilizers and transporting them to his fields.

Regarding tillage, we used no tillage at all. Our animals revitalized the pastures and we overseeded a couple times. The strawberry farmer made an average of 11 tractor passes before the berries were planted. Each tractor pass not only burns a bunch of fuel, but it also compacts the soil. Because we practiced multi-species rotational grazing, our soil compaction was limited, usually to just right around the automatic waterers.

Now for the outputs of production, strawberries, being a high sugar fruit, do produce a decent amount of calories per acre. If the farmer averaged 24,000 pints of berries/acre x 114 calories per pint, then they produce around 2,736,000 calories per acre. Between our eggs, pork, and beef, we produced an average of 4,546,875 calories per acre (this is in raw form, not the cooked products). I based this number on average egg production and carcass yields. That means we produced around 40% more calories per acre. I did not factor into this equation the grain feed that went into the chickens and pigs because our feeds were mostly waste feeds derived from wheat middlings, brewer's spent grains, waste vegetables, and local, dry-farmed barley.

As for protein, our animals obviously produced more (being made of protein!), producing nearly 351,973 grams per acre while strawberries produced only 57,600 grams per acre. Humans need much more than protein, but this illustrates the nutrient density of the foods we were producing. And keep in mind that we were using land inappropriate for vegetable or berry production. In fact, two other farmers tried growing produce on that land before us, and they both quickly pulled everything out before they lost their shirts.

So not only did we produce more food with less inputs, but we did so on land that was not suitable for growing fruits, vegetables, or nuts. So my suggestion to Mark Bittman is to investigate further how animal agriculture can be suitable on certain types of land with certain types of resources constraints and that eating grass-based animal products can be more sustainable at times. It can use less water, little to no fertilizer, utilize little to no tillage, and produce more food and more calories to feed a growing population. Imagine if there were hundreds of thousands of us small livestock producers all over the world feeding our local communities instead of 3 or 4 enormous meat packers controlling our meat supply? That seems like something worth supporting. So instead of constantly railing against the problems in our food supply, let's start supporting the positive alternatives before it's too late. And let's develop a more holistic, science-based understanding of our food system instead of casting everything as black or white. That's my goal and I'm sticking to it!

Comments

[Rebecca Thistlethwaite]

Greg- When part of the land was flooded (~13 of the 20 acres) we moved them to the upper portion of the field (~7 acres). Because it was a smaller area, we would add a bunch of cheap hay that we baled off the lower field on occasion in order to reduce the animal impact for those months. As for eating, I mentioned it above in the article.
Orna- you asked some good questions. I am not sure how to calculate all the energy that went into the fertilizers and I don't even know where they come from. As for the feed, I mentioned we used mostly waste feeds for the chickens & pigs while the cattle just ate grass. Probably 20% of the pig/chicken diet did come from formulated organic feed and I did not put that into my calculation due to the difficulty in doing a life cycle analysis on each ingredient in the feed. But you are right- feed does act as fertilizer if it passes through the animal. The chickens would make use of much of the undigested feed coming out of the pigs, and vice versa!
As for water, I don't include any post harvest handling for either the berries nor the animal products. The strawberries have considerable energy use in the post-harvest (forced air cooling, cooling, transport, retail cooling, etc.) and the animal products have water use at the slaughter. I did not quantify either in this analysis because I don't have access to that info. But you are right- they add up. But having watched and participated in the slaughter & butcher process with our animals, I did not see that much water use. Perhaps the clean up of the buildings & equipment at the end of the day is where most of the water gets used?

I feel that animals really have a place in human nutrition, especially on marginal lands. Goats are used world-round to turn dry scrublands into protein, for instance. Chickens can turn unpalatable insects and weeds into high quality protein as well. Pigs can take a spring or summer surplus and turn it into food for the winter. Humans need protein and I feel that grass-fed grazers/browsers or pasture-raised chickens and pigs are in many cases a more efficient way to get it than vegetable crops, especially if one is using land that is not suitable for crops to raise those animals!

[Orna Izakson, ND]

Very well done! I agree with everything here in principle, but have a few clarifying questions.

First, re. fertilizers: It would be great to see the actual energy inputs for the bone meal, fish meal, etc., at some point. Do you know if anyone's done all that math? Because it seems very significant to me that this invisible piece is missing from the critics' calculations. By the same token, it seems to me that the true comparison here is not so much what's put onto the land, but what food is needed for the final output (strawberries vs. meat). So I think it would make sense to calculate in the grain you fed the chickens and pigs; it's functionally the same as the bone meal in that it provided building blocks.

Second, water: I've always heard (though never quantified) that most of the water used in livestock production is related to slaughter/butchering. Whether or not that's precisely true, if water is a significant factor in prepping animals for market that should get figured in somewhere. Similarly, if there are significant energy expenditures involved beyond the growing, I'd love to see those figured in.

Thanks again for your good work. If you have time to address these questions I believe the numbers will continue to strengthen your argument.

[Greg]

Where do you put the animals while the land is flooded? What do they eat?

[Kim Williams]

Thank you for crunching those figures and making a fact-based comparison. As you essentially said, the more voices that say it, the sooner it becomes part of the public psyche.

[Jackie @Auburn Meadow Farm]

Really great article Rebecca. So true, I wish people would stop judging and categorizing everything as if black and white existed- that's really starting to annoy me, lol.

And, when judging farming, you do reach a point where book smarts only goes so far. I take with a grain of salt any dictates about what the world should eat from someone who hasn't tried to grow their own food.