The untroubled omnivore

[helenjp]

Perhaps we generally under-value food - we treat soil, plants, and animals badly, and we don't pay much to those who work with them, and those who prepare and sell our meat and produce, and even those who carry food to restaurant tables.

The only people we seem to value are those who "denature" food! I've often wondered why I should pay so very much more for a fried reconstituted potato than for a raw potato delivered fresh and in good condition, and why I should pay a chef more than a grengrocer.

I wondered why more cattle weren't promptly moved from the evacuation area around the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Turns out that apart from other difficulties, many were kept in pens their whole lives, and were simply not able to walk out of their pens and up a ramp onto a truck.

This is a type of farming that I just don't understand at all. I don't understand why it's necessary, and I don't understand why it's considered acceptable. To be honest, I feel the same way about plant life - that cabbage was living its cabbagey life until it was cut and sent to market for me to buy and eat.

Bad farming damages not only plants and animals, but the soil itself...luckily, soil takes a lot of punishment, but unluckily, it's difficult to clean it up when it is damaged past the point where it can recover naturally.

I grew up on the edge of my grandparents' dairy farm - they ran it profitably, but no animal on that farm (the cattle, the cattle dogs and farm cats, the family hens and originally pigs and horses too) was kept penned or caged 24 hours a day. There was damage to the environment according to modern standards, from artificial fertilizer and milking-yard run-off, but the low-intensity farming also meant that costs were low - feed did not need to be bought, nor were expensive, high-maintenance pens needed. That seems to me just as realistic a way to farm as the Fukushima way.