Meat free Mondays! Starting tomorrow...maybe?

Thanks to Laura S for replying to a comment which was a reply to a comment... if you catch my drift?!? She suggested the site Meat free Mondays.


The site is great for recipe suggestions which surprisingly don't have any meat in at all!

Now... I have to be honest, today I made a tasty chicken teriyaki tikka masala curry with tasty thai jasmin rice... *om nom nom... anyways I have some left over... rather than waste I shall, as the say in Italy 'mangio' the curry. I know bad right?... but I did not eat meat on Friday or Thursday, at least I don't remember eating any? *thinks deeply to himself*


So enjoy the site and all the tasty suggestions...


Tomorrow I shall post a good post... it is a special day!!! YAY ME! lol I am sad but... well there is no justification, I just am.

Livestock in Food Security: the debate widens...

With all the talk about environmentalism, and when we are all too busy hugging trees, we do forget other things that are happening on the planet. 

Sustainable development is not just some buzz-phrase cooked up in the nineties to gives us 15 year olds in the naughties to learn about in geography... well there is some truth in that too.

It is easy to forget that livestock, farming, is a valuable source of income for some of the poorest families in the world. A new report by the UN FAO on the importance of livestock to food security is a great summary of what kind of role livestock plays in developing nations in particular:

"livestock make a vital contribution as generators of cash flow and economic buffers, provided that market chains are organised to provide openings for small scale producers and traders and those in remote areas." (Forward, ix, FAO 2011: Livestock in Food Security)

The fundamental point is that livestock is not just a source of emissions, pollution, ethical controversy but at the end of the day is a source of food and income. Highlighting Sub-Saharan Africa, the expansion of agriculture (like that seen in China and India in the late 20th Century, Green Revolution) is pegged as a lifeline to reduce poverty and improve on the health problems.

The report highlights the changes in livestock production numbers and per capita consumption (Table 4) and also shows specific region and national scale changes and predictions (figures 1, 2 and table 16). I could bore you describing what they say... alternatively you could read? read isn't a good word to use, you don't 'read' a graph do you? observe the graphs yourselves.

As you can see, the numbers only increase...

Pastoralists number 120 million, and they depend on their livestock for food, income, transport and fuel; would it be fair to force them to stop stocking animals because climate change is getting out of hand? After all it is the 'developed' who have truly mechanised GHG emissions; should we tarnish everyone with the same brush? I don't think so.

This coupled with the need to maximise profits and reduce cost to open the market to everyone, livestock intensification is needed, and these agricultural systems are the worst environmentally, ethically and for small business competition which just does not have the finance to compete.

The report (FAO, 2011) goes onto stress that the dichotomy for environmental mitigation and sustainable economic development doesn't necessarily result in changes in the way development is going but rather the point that:

"suggest that the average global consumption of meat should be approximately 90 g a day, compared with the current 100 g, and that not more than 50 g should come from red meat from ruminants. If this target were achieved, it would lower the peak demand for meat. However, government-sponsored nutritional and healthy eating programmes have had limited success in changing dietary preference." (page 82)

The root of all evil it seems is not money but consumption, and a lot of it at that!

Inequality in food distribution is widely known. Last year I had the opportunity to sit in on a UN Young Ambassador Society events held at the Institute of Education and none other than the Executive Director of the World Food Programme gave a keynote speech. There, Josette Sheeran spoke quite bluntly about the inequality of food distribution worldwide. There is enough food but a billion remain undernourished and a billion over. That means there is still a lot of waste, and through waste reduction we can 'offset' carbon emissions and save the environment!

It is a very long read and I would bet there are gems that I haven't mentioned that I haven't read in the report... it's 100 pages long! What do you expect me to do???

Keep watching the posts!!

Alternatives to Meat? Watch this!

Video from the infamous One Show! Please Watch!!

This video sums up the arguments for and against meat alternatives. It is an easy and fun watch... in fact I remember watching this when it first aired on tv... how sad am I!?!?!

Next up... a reply to another comment! I would love to see more! :D

And remember, if we can send a man to the moon any thing is possible, even reducing our consumption!

How do you solve a problem like Maria eating meat? Alternatives!

VS

 

The end is nigh!

Well I am not talking about 21st of December... regardless of what those great survivors the Mayans thought (even if THE Britney Spears 'sings' a song about it) the world won't end; but one absolute certainty is that the cows will come home to fart....

The end of my blogging days may be over... screams of please no I hear?!? (or are they all 'Thank God!')... nevertheless I will try and look at the alternatives to a life in an atmosphere of animal farts.

From what the much of the literature points to as the driver in increased livestock production, demand seems to generate the largest fundamental factor in the quantity of emissions. So, to reduce emissions and other detrimental effects of livestock farming we have to reduce demand and consumption.

This is not easy... I personally do not want to stop eating meat altogether, although, after watching the documentary Mat the Truth, I was seriously contemplating going cold turkey... on turkey...

Proteins are vital to human health and life. So if we don't eat meat, what would we eat instead?

A commonly given example is fish. Fish is often seen as a better food stuff than meat, but fishing has caused a substantial amount of environmental damages as well as the state of fish stocks world wide ebbing closer and closer to depletion. The UN FAO World Fisheries and Aquaculture report (2010) states that 32% of stocks are over exploited/depleted or recovering; 53% are fully exploited and 15% are moderately exploited. Shifting more than a billion people in the developed world onto an already stressed resource will cause its collapse. Greater consumption of smaller fish which is environmentally sustainable and healthier for you is one option. If this resource is ever going to support an increasing number of people then sustainability is required, please read Worm et al. (2009) for an in depth insight into the potential approaches to take, most could be applied to other environmental problems; a multidisciplinary approach.

Corn, Soy and Grains are the food stuffs we generally feed to livestock. They are also very much fit for human consumption; but we tend to feed more of it to the meat we eat then personally consume ourselves. I personally don't eat corn... I know shoot me... but as you will find out in a later post (ooh foreshadowing I know right?!) I have taken certain steps in the right direction already!

This list doesn't look too impressive... but one factor easily neglected is simply reducing the amount of meat we eat. Meatless Fridays, or what Roman Catholics call Fridays... notable celebrities do it, Paul McCartney, Leona Lewis, they are talented because they eat a lot less meat... in fact none! OK... there is no link between talent and meat consumption. 

Reducing meat consumption has many benefits. You are healthier, richer (from not buying any meat, doesn't work if your meat originates in a five finger discount manner), aiding the environment in becoming less polluted and less full of cow farts. Also you can waste all those calories on chocolate, more room for nutella! OK I am not advising you to go on to an all nutella diet as fun as it would be, full of chocolaty goodness..... OMG it has been so long since I have had nutella I would kill love to have some right now..... *drools* mmmmmmm. Nutella pizza - nutella instead of tomato sauce and kinder in place of cheese. HEAVEN... like this, but rather than the nuts (which are a great source of proteins and energy!!!) add bananas... *collapses*.

10 minutes later....*wakes up*

Back to the point!

My New Years resolution is to eat less meat... so far I think I have eaten a little meat every day FAIL, but it hasn't been one whole week yet!

So I'll let you ponder about other foods you can stuff yourself with... but remember put down the fork, don't eat too much beef chicken or pork!

Replying to a comment! Again!

This is another reply to another great comment posted on the 'Free the Turkeys! Put down that fork!!!' post made on Christmas Eve! Yulia K wrote:

"I agree, the last video you posted is very insightful, reminding us of the priorities. I like the idea of using pee for P and hope it materilizes, as this will provide us with a renewable source of P, alleviating one of the numerous global problems. However, your last three posts also made me realize something more gloomy, which is that in reality people choose to lead an unsustainable lifestyle, such as choosing to consume meat, and shift the blame for problems such as the global food shortages onto factors like biofuels, for example, which is what I am writing about in my blog. 

It takes 3-4 times more P to support a meat-based diet and also more land to cultivate meat, as land is needed to produce cattle feed too. This means that meat production uses more natural resources, indirectly resulting in the food shortages. If we evaluated what our priorities are and all took responsibility for our own actions, would it not make more sense to lead a less meat-intensive diet, as this would free up the natural resources, such as land and P? 

I find this issue very relevant to biofuels, as decreasing our meat consumption and food waste would likely result in less food shortages and free up more land for activities such as sustainable biofuel cultivation, which should result in GHG emissions savings and greater energy security. Would this not be more useful than leaving all as it is at present i.e. blaming so much on biofuels, for example, as the Gallagher Report (2008) seems to do, preventing the cultivation of biofuels, carrying on with our meat-intensive diet and high P consumption to then realize in the future that food shortages are still increasing as more and more people consume more, P and fossil fuels are running out and we are not prepared for that, and our GHG emissions have not decreased.

While I am also a hypocrite promoting a vegetarian diet here, my point is that I feel that too much emphasis is placed onto blaming industrial activities for the global problems and very little onto us, the consumers, which is not always useful. Therefore I very much agree with you that we should take greater action as citizens (I think this is what you were trying to say, if I understood correctly), even though technological fixes may help."

My Reply:

Thanks for this EPIC post!

You are right; if we did eat less meat, then it would be significantly justifiable to produce more biofuel. However like every other resource or commodity it falls down to the distribution of the meat that is important. If the cost of meat actually took ecosystem service costs into consideration as well as environmental valuations then the cost would increase and there are potentially two outcomes: decrease in demand, reducing consumption; increase in 'innovative' ways at maximising profits to reduce cost production and increase consumption through economies of scale.

The first way would disproportionately affect those who have the lowest incomes as cheap meat is sometime the only source of protein in a diet as most substitutes cost a lot more. The second would lead to further environmental and ecological degradation as intensive farming would become more intensive at the cost of land quality, animal welfare and pollution.

The second point is relevant due to the EU 'wide' ban onBattery hen egg farming. A reported 80 million hens are being 'freed' (some are going to be slaughtered) due to new legislation preventing the use of the current intensive hen cages to produce eggs; a new 'enriched' cage (37% bigger) has to be used.

This results in a just bigger than a sheet of A4 paper space per chicken in a cage. Not that nice! (some info on ending factory farming here).

If we all became concerned consumers and thought about our individual actions then we would achieve a lot more than holistic legislation which is passing the buck of responsibility to people we pay and elect to act for us. I agree with you. Consumption is the problem; and as consumers, we are the ones who have to change OUR habits.

I hope this reply isn’t too bad! I like posting long posts too! :D

Add a little P, get a load more Poo! Part 4: P reserves and losses!

Cordell et al. (2009)’s paper on the story of phosphorous is a MUST READ! 

It is packed full of information on the subject… but I will try my best to extract the useful information. Being half Moroccan (half Italian), I can’t help but rub my hands with glee… the largest stores of P are locating in the country (regardless of what anyone says, Western Sahara does not exist in Morocco; we call the southern provinces… moving swiftly on…!) as shown in the figure below from Elser and Bennet (2011). 

This is however a big problem in terms of global securities and power balances. With turmoil in north Africa and the apparent ‘revolutions’ reaching their 1^st birthday, it is more important than ever that food and the fertiliser used, does not fall into the same fate as it did 3-4 years back with the large prices rises in grains (Elser and Bennet, 2011). 700% price rise in P coupled with the price rise signalled a warning light to governments worldwide. However, as Cordell et al. (2009) and Elser and Bennet (2011) note, the world still is not reacting to this train wreck; they can’t even pull their act together on gas emissions and the Kyoto agreement (COP Durban 2011 round of talks).

One thing is for sure is that if we use less, costs will go down and we are less dependent on another out-sourced commodity that everyone needs. If we all became vegetarian, then we would require significantly less P than a meat based diet, and most of the crop can easily be returned to the soil as residue, recycling most of the P used as a fertiliser. Even so; the largest wastage of P originates in the poor application of fertilisers to soils (8 million tonnes, MT). Leeching of the synthetically produced nutrients results in massive inefficiencies in P management; contaminating ground, surface and coastal waters with high levels of nutrients had led to vast amounts of eutrophication.

Eutrophication is when nutrients (either via leeching direct from fertilisers or poor waste management) added to water bodies causes the growth of organisms; algal blooms are a common example of added nutrients altering the natural ecology of a body of water (lake, sea, estuary, etc.). (Smithand Schindler, 2009) The blooms photosynthesis at high rates, starving most other organisms of oxygen (increased when the blooms die and decompose); creating a hypoxic environment.

Please read more on eutrophication in these sites:

• http://rtseablog.blogspot.com/2011/03/eutrophication-mapping-first-steps-that.html
• http://feastingonnaturalresources.blogspot.com/ This blog, by Megan Smith is great! She also talks about agriculture and environmental issues surrounding the wider debate. I highly recommend her post on Coastal Eutrophication – The impact of Agriculture in Chesapeake Bay

Back to wastes of P and as the figure above (Cordell et al. 2009) suggests, 14/17.5 MT of P go to agriculture; of that only 3 MT make it to our forks. 8 MT is wasted through poor application, and of the 3 MT we consume as food, 1 MT is wasted as spoiled food. By just eating within our means we save 1 MT. through better fertiliser management techniques with save an extra 8 MT. It is easier said than done, but through accurate monitoring of soil nutrient levels, we can guage whether or not the land needs to be fertilised, saving energy, money and effort as well as P. Using more natural fertiliser we can solve some of the problems, by no means is sh… poo a panacea for eutrophication/power insecurities/commodity prices/waste management/agricultural productivity and the like, but it is a step in the right direction!

Reserves of P aren't well documented globally, in fact many researches, scientists, geologists and mad hatters disagree as to how much P there is under ground. Cordell et al. (2009) explores this using a number of different scenarios showing just how long it would take, depending on how much P we need, to finally hit the last nail on the head of the coffin that would be global inorganic P reserves. 

Next part coming soon!

Replying to a comment!

I felt this deserved a whole post because I wrote too much to respond in a comment; the comment too (by Emily Smith who has a great blog called Treading on thin ice; about glacial melt and it's consequences - its great please take a look, I am not doing it justice!) highlights some issues that we face in the coming decades.

Her original comment was: 

"You're right it is a really provocative video. I hadn't even heard of the riots in 2008, let alone known they were partially due to phosphorus shortages. It really makes you think about our priorities, especially if the peak could be reached by 2035. Even if the peak is in 300-400 years like the Fertiliser Agency stated, its the wrong attitude to pass it off to future generations to deal with. Saying that, I'm not sure how many people, me included would be willing to give up meat. And even if they did, if it's a finite resource, I wonder what proportion of the population can be sustained when the phosphorus resource has run out? Not 7 billion I expect."

My Response:

It is very true, I personally love to eat meat occasionally, but how much meat we eat I feel is the question. Humans have always eaten meat, and in some parts of the world, meat is reared without the use of extensive amounts of resources, for instance well within the ‘carrying capacity’ of certain countries; especially subsistence farming.

Intensive agriculture has resulted in massive amounts of fertiliser being used when it is not even required (Europe for instance; I have read this in a journal article but fail to remember at the moment!). We eat a lot of meat, but by just looking at any reduced aisle in any supermarket we can see huge amounts of meat wasted; no one buys every meat product. Just think, how many times have you walked past a butchers or a deli counter in a supermarket and thought about buying meat a few days to expiration and left it? Or even thrown out some left over gone off meat? Please do not think I am accusing you personally of this (lol!) but society is wasteful, regardless of how conscious we are individually.

By reducing waste in the consumption of meat, I’m guessing (not very academic here!) that we will naturally produce less meat, or meat per capita. The alternatives of a low-meat high-protein diet result in either large shifts in diets to legumes/beans/soya (which the cows generally eat as feed now) or fish. Fish is one of the most consistently exhausted and depended upon food sources we have, adding more pressure could cause greater depletion of an already controversial ‘commons’ resource.

The fact that meat production will almost certainly increase in line with demographic change requires a renewable source of P, that’s where natural fertilisers come in. Like the video material has shown, P is not really absorbed by our body, so most of it passes straight out; the P used to make the meal for one person is now available to be used to make food for another person. We just need to roll this out on a large scale, thanks to urbanisation; the feasibility of capturing P from human waste is easier from cities. There is a great potential in harnessing P; and there are just as interesting ways of utilising this resource which I hope to explore in greater depth soon!!!

Sorry for the long reply! :D And I hope you do not mind me using your comment!

Meat the truth! Documentary Time!

This documentary, presented by a Dutch MP (Dutch Party for the Animals - might be a little biased) explores the role livestock plays in GHG emissions; pretty much what this blog is designed for!

The whole documentary is a great watch, please do!