Can eating meat be sustainable? A Trip to Joel Salatin’s Polyface Cattle Farm.

I have been a vegetarian for 3 years, and am the first one to criticize our industrial meat food system, however a sustainable cattle farm trip I took recently left me questioning whether all cattle farms are problematic.

A three-mile drive west from William & Mary, Joel Salatin manages Polyface farms, a cattle farm in Swoope, Virginia. Some friends and I dodged Hurricane Hermine by roadtriping out to the farm. The day was filled with hay barrel rides under a blue sky, meandering through waste-high prairie grasses, starring contests with cows, and a long interview with self-proclaimed “environmental libertarian lunatic” Joel Salatin.

I left the farm with a new mentality toward sustainably raised meat. Now, I have questions ringing in my ears like ‘is a slice of grass-fed beef worse for the environment then oil-refined plastic packaged granola bars?’

Here are a couple notes I took on some of the kinds of sustainable practices I saw on the farm.

1)   Mobility:

a.     Joel had 150 cows grazing in 1.25 acres of prairie grass each day.  So every day at 4pm, farmers would move the fence to box in a new acre of tall handsome prairie grass. Similar to crop rotation, this system gives fields time to regenerate and grasses to grow tall again.

2)   Reducing negative and increasing positive outputs:

a.     Reducing Neg Outputs: There are portable chicken coops that follow the tracks of the cattle. They eat the insects in the cow’s poop and while doing this, they dig the poop into the ground. This reduces nutrient runoff into waterways. 

b.     Positive Outputs: This farm is economically profitable—more so than most conventional farms. A large reason why is because the farmers do not have to pay for feed for the cattle (see few inputs). 

3)   Integration of the natural environment:

a.     One example of this is when you look at where the pigs live there are patches of small forests with trees and brush. It is not until you see a snout or tail that you realize that this is also where the pigs live.

b.     He uses gravity to bring the water down through the three miles of water lines to water crops on his property. He joked with us “once gravity stops working, I quit.”

4)   Few Inputs 

a.     We walked out to the waist-high prairie grasses, and in one spot, Joel picked twenty different grasses. He gave us their names and function for pollinators in the ecosystem. These grasses are also food for all the cattle. That means that Joel doesn’t need to buy highly transported, packaged and water-intensive grains like alfalfa and corn for his cattle. Instead they eat the vitamin and nutrient rich prairie grasses.

5)   Health food cycle and reduction of atmospheric carbon.

a.     The cows eat the prairie grasses. The grass grows back and takes in atmospheric carbon to convert into food for itself. This cycle is key for combatting climate change.

So, Joel Salatin’s farm is truly a polyface, multi-organismal kind of place. However, his cattle farm is definitely the exception to cattle farms these days. Most large-scale farms raise cattle inside feedlots with little room, fresh air and nutrient content in the feed. The runoff is disastrous to local waterways, the antibiotics are plentiful and the corn/alfalfa-based feed is both water and cost intensive.

My hope is that cattle farmers can learn from innovative farmers like Salatin and consumers choose meat that reflects the way they would like to see the ag industry look.

Sustainable Agriculture Conference

Interested in sustainable agriculture and environmental education? This past weekend I went to the Sustainable Agriculture Education Association (SAEA) Conference in Santa Cruz, CA. At the conference, there were several environmental educators and students running farm programs at their schools. My favorite part was touring the LifeLab Classroom, an organic farm. John, an on-site educator, led use around the sustainable farm switching between our teacher to a partner-in-the-field. First, a few of us went on stage to perform the cow poop to strawberry milkshake skit, and then we meandered around the farm following scavenger hunt cards from the pizza garden to the cement (recycled from an old sidewalk) garden beds.

 We changed roles into collaborating comrades when we shared information between one another about crops and  teaching practices. Here are a couple of my favorite things I learned….

• 1.     Weeds: Weeds are basically just plants that don’t need your help growing and grow in unwanted spaces. There are edible weeds like blackberries (and you can take kids on an edible weed tour).

• 2.     Organics & weeds: When talking about organics, it is important to stress why they are more expensive— the time and labor spent weeding. You can give kids the two scenarios—a. spray pesticides (animals like goffers are poisoned and don’t eat crops, but then beneficial animals like owls or your pet cat could eat that goffer and get sick) vs. hand pick weeds (time and cost) and setting out goffer traps. There are other organic options like flame weeding or tracker weeding too. As an educator, your job is to TEACH the different options and their job to CHOOSE what they think works best.
• 3.     Organic Pest Management: .It’s good to plant trap crops (like Yarrow, Queen Anne’s Lace or Allysum-- think about plant structure with lots of flowers) to attract predator insects and birds like bees and ladybugs to eat bad bugs that eat up the crops.  Also hedge rows (bushes of flowers that are planted to break up the farm) help reduce and break up populations of bad bugs on the farm.
• 4.     Specific Plant Lesson that we created together: 6 Parts of the Plant (see more on ESLI's page) 

a.     Diagram of 6 parts of a plant

b.     Plant song (different parts of a plant to head, shoulders, knees and toes)

c.      Plant Burrito Cooking Demo:

                                               i.     Lettuce- leaf

                                              ii.     Beans-seed

                                            iii.     Tomato: Fruit

                                            iv.     Carrots: root

                                              v.     Green onion: stem

                                            vi.     Brocelli: flower

d.     Quiz Back- Ask kids examples of the foods that are different parts of the plant.

• 5.     Awesome colorful felt “My Plate”- like demo.

Picture from Pie Ranch- an awesome farm practicing food justice 

Climate Smart Agriculture

Check out this article and podcast I wrote published by the Pulitzer Center on Climate Smart Agriculture and the Future of Food

Mosquito- Disease Zika and Climate Change

Zika, a mosquito-born illness known to cause birth defects, has spread throughout two dozen countries in S.America. Experts say that climate change is playing a role in the spread of the disease. Increased rainfall, in part due to El Niño, a cyclical weather change event, has created a greater breeding ground for Mosquitos and increased heat has both allowed mosquitos to thrive and put more people outside to get the virus. 

This Environmental Health Article  explains the problem further.

I am personally concerned because I have a trip set up to go to Ecuador for Spring Break and again was hoping to work there this summer. This kind of illness is not something to kid around with and definitely making me reconsider my trips. 

But honestly the other side of the coin is that experts anticipate these kinds of mosquito-born illnesses to increase in the future due to climate change, so do I sit this trip out in hopes that these diseases will seize soon or do I confront the reality that very soon these kind of incidences aren't going to be just something I "wait out?"

And even that luxury of choosing not to go to disease-ridden areas will soon not be an option. Why? Because diseases are coming here. Here is a picture of a child from Texas who recently returned from South America and reported to bring back with him the Zika virus.  

And this disease will affect not only the health of many, but also hurt many other sectors. Increased taxes for the average person to cover the additional health care expenses needed to deal with these problems, and strangled tourism economies just to name a few.

Signs of global warming are popping up again and again- it's time we take more concrete steps to deal with this serious threat. 

Rethinking the Safety of Foam

Researchers at Wash State University found in a recent study that flame retardant chemicals are escaping at a higher level than originally thought, according to a on Environmental Health News article These flame retardants, backed by the American Chemistry Council, are found in polyurethane foam (which is found in things ranging from furniture, children’s care seats, baby products). These compounds, specifically organophosphate flame retardants, replaced PBDEs due to found health risks; however, the flame retardants have been shown to pose their own serious health risks. Some studies show these flame retardants are linked to cancer and reproductive problems and hormone development. Two of which have been identified by California as carcinogens, and Washington State is introducing a new ban in their House and Senate to limit 5 flame retardants from furniture and children's toys. 

Strikingly,  these flame retardants could pose more damage than aid to the firefighters. Because of the "toxic soup" that develops as these chemicals are burned, female fire fighters between the ages of 40-50 years old have been shown to have breast cancer rates six times that of the national average. 

One of the things I find most fascinating about this whole problem, is the idea of replacement. PBDEs were found to be harmful, but they were replaced by toxic flame retardants. Now in Washington they say with this new legislation comes a commitment to “set up a system to make sure new replacements are safe.” I think this process will be interesting. We see this replacement of something bad by something worse in the case of water bottles and all sorts of products- reminding the public to stay skeptical. 

I first heard about this flame retardant issue when watching the documentary “Toxic Hot Seat” . I recommend everyone check out the trailer on the site. It was a wake up call to me that we need to think about the products we use every day. 

I still have some questions though. How do we know that these flame retardants are the reason that female fire fighters have higher rates of breast cancer? They are breathing in different chemicals and smoke all the time. And just how disruptive are the flame retardants to our development and hormone development. Does the fire reduction outweigh the risk of cancer?

Don’t Think Youth Can Make a Difference? Think Again: The Role of Youth at the Paris Climate Talks, COP21.

Sick and tired of hearing that ‘nobody listens to youth,’ or ‘one person can’t make a difference’?

If so, it is time for a trip to an international environmental conference. This past December, I attended the Paris Climate Talks or COP21. There, youth were some of the first to arrive and last to leave- never ceasing to demand serious climate action.

Nearly 5,000 youth arrived in France a week before official negotiations for the Conference of Youth, a meeting organized by youth organizations around the globe. Here people learned about the climate agreement and methods to take action.

This momentum led into the two weeks of official climate talks. Youth groups demanded strict government regulations to reduce the blow of climate change- recommending actions like sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, a temperature increase restricted to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century, and decisions that consider both people today and those of the future.

There is a youth non-governmental organization, YOUNGO, which was formed six years ago to give youth a larger stake in the process. There are two members of YOUNGO who are allowed to communicate information out to the government officials. However both young and civil society groups are in the clear minority in the rooms where negotiations took place.

According to a member of the Sierra Student Coalition, Katie Gibson, only nine badges were permitted to the 70 incredibly well-informed members of the Sierra Club attending the conference. Youth, who made up about a quarter of the 70 members, were lucky to share two of the nine badges. But even with two badges, students in the coalition made it work switching up who received the prized badge every couple of days. And whoever went into the conference room that day tracked down negotiators, trying to get their ear and persuade them to support strong climate legislation. They were strong, persistent and when push came to shove, feisty.

“These are not things that I was not involved in creating so we have to leverage the space in a way that we are heard and understood and we are going to hold [government leaders] accountable. So that is why we are [here]. And we will continue to do this no matter what,” Gibson said.

With lack of accessibility into the negotiating room, youth found other ways to get their voices heard. Dyanna Jaye and Timothy Damon, leaders of SustainUS, a U.S. youth environmental advocacy group, said they generated attention around these issues through measures like demonstrations and social media.

"[Youth] are really calling countries to task," Damon said.

One of SustainUS’s primary goals is to decarbonize the global economy by 2050. This would require equal amounts of “carbon sinks” or places to absorb carbon like oceans and forests as the amount of emission outputs. To demonstrate this concept, youth drew an “O” around their right eye to represent zero-net emissions by 2050.

Youth were instrumental in some of the largest demonstrations reminding political leaders that they were in Paris, and demanding action.  Actions included the placement of 10,000 pairs of shoes in a Paris square (representing the number of people ready to march for climate action and social justice), to “fracktivist” rallies where youth demanded that “oil stay in the soil.”

And the noise didn’t stop in person. Hundreds of thousands of videos, podcasts, tweets and posts flowed out of the mouths of protestors onto the walls of social media.

And the pinging of the phone followed me back to the youth hostel where I was staying. Youth from around the world ended up sharing bunk beds and stories. The girl who lay in the bed next to me was from India and the boy in the bunk above me had be displaced from his home in Alaska due to rising sea levels. We talked about the environmental challenges in our own communities and shared solutions for the future. These conversations only began in the negotiation rooms and continued throughout the night, until the light shinning through the windows reminded us that it was morning.

Jaye explained one of the most important roles of youth: their “international identity.” Negotiators put their domestic concerns as number one, which can prevent necessary global action, she said. But youth, she added, stick with the big picture. Damon agrees.

"There is a generational identity taking priority over national identity," Damon said.

Damon acknowledges flaws in youth activism like a high turnover rate of students since nobody is paid for their work. Also, there was a clear majority of youth from the Global North, where the conference was held. Regardless of the flaws, he agreed with Jaye that the role of youth is fundamental. He recalled specific examples. In this year’s text, he worked with the Guatemalan negotiator to include the importance of “intergenerational equality concerns” in the preamble of the agreement. Other youth contributed to an “environmental education” component of the agreement.

And even when youth were quiet, their presence had an impact. During climate talks in Warsaw in 2013, Damon recalled that the youth put black tape over their mouths to represent their lack of representation at the table. As negotiators left the meeting, he remembers them coming over to the youth to ask about their concerns.

Youth are not only active at the conference, but also when they come home.

"While youth bring an international perspective, they are still domestic actors," Damon said.

As domestic actors, youth can take what they learned from all of their experiences ranging from late night talks with the students sleeping in the bunk above them to the message of a girl speaking up at a rally.

I, for one, look forward to bringing those lessons home.

Students represent what they believe is the relationship between the oil industry and the public.