Leadership Misdirection (Don't be fooled.)

The first farmers on this continent made a mistake.  500 years later, we’re making it worse.

Early explorers didn’t have the luxury of experience when they first started growing food in the New World, so they simply farmed the way they had in England.

Weather and topography did not accommodate techniques suited for the comparatively calmer climate back home.  Farming was something of a wreck from the get-go, but the ‘unlimited’ possibilities of the continent distracted everyone from fine-tuning their farming.

Farmers killed increasing amounts of sod from the first vegetable plot all the way until the infamous Dust Bowl in the 1930s.  Between those landmark points in history, hillsides eroded, streams were choked with topsoil sludge, and fertility was destroyed to such an extent that the ground would no longer grow a crop.  It wasn’t overpopulation, or even an overwhelming desire for adventure, that pulled people west across this land; it was infertile soil that forced people to move into uncharted territory. 

Prior to mechanization, farmers used draft animals to power their operations.  Livestock required pasture, so roughly 40% of every farm remained in sod.  This was something of a saving grace for the earth, as the sod kept some stability on the landscape and the manure from the animals offered rich soil fertility.  After mechanization, draft animals were replaced with tractors, which do not require pasture, so farmers started ripping up every bit of property they could get their hands on.  Gone, too, was the manure.  Farming became a free-for all with no checks or balances.

Farming today is still all about killing sod to grow annual plants in the absence of livestock.  So much of our landscape is deadened that the water cycle, the carbon cycle, and the mineral cycle cannot function.  The disruptions are causing people to be concerned; climate discussions are becoming more prominent and more aggressive.  Solutions are sought.

My favorite climate solution is to stop eating meat.  If we switch to a plant-based diet, we’re told, climate change will stop in its tracks.  This rhetoric is actually being considered by world leaders.  The anti-meat agenda seems to be well received.

Let’s think.

We didn’t end up in this situation by nurturing grassland, savanna, and forest, all of which are perennial ecosystems.  We’re here because we killed those ecosystems in favor of annual crops, and we’ve done that more effectively on larger acreages for hundreds of years.  If we switch to a plant-based diet, what kind of production system does that support?

Pea protein comes from peas, which are harvested from annual plants.  So are soybeans.  So are mung beans and quinoa and wheat and oats and spelts and chia seeds and sorghum and every other blasted ‘superfood’ that’s been listed as ‘planet friendly’ for the past twenty years.  Nearly everything the anti-meat crowd heralds as a climate-saver is the direct result of an annual crop, which links back to a big tractor and many acres of blacked-out ecosystem.  What conscious eaters they are.

Nature is remarkably good at healing itself if we pack up our technology and step away.  The first thing nature would do in such a scenario is replace our annual crop land with perennial ecosystems.  This step takes place because nature needs perennial ecosystems to reestablish the water, carbon, and mineral cycles I mentioned earlier.  The next step would be to place caretakers on the permanent landscape to keep vegetation in check.  Nature’s caretakers are herbivores that eat plants and poop fertility.  Of course, the herbivore caretakers need kept in check, too, or overpopulation will kill all the plants.  Nature will plunk something down that eats the animals that eat the plants.

Now, what do we eat?  Super-fake food borne from a big tractor, a chemical load, and a tech-zillionair’s manufacturing process?  Or the herbivore?

It is beyond obvious that a diet encouraging perennial ecosystems is the best diet for our health and the health of the planet.  In other words, every trendy individual should replace that granola pack with beef jerky, favoring meats from various herbivores over peas from various agribusinesses.  That would be the most climate-positive move our society could make.  Heck, with better livestock management, we wouldn’t even need farming.

I catch a glimpse of the news and see senators, governors, and even the president talking seriously about our need to adopt plant-based eating, and I want to scream.  They are influencing the masses to do the exact opposite of what needs done.  Are they seriously that removed from reality?  Or are their ‘opinions’ funded by the companies pushing fake food?  An even better question – why do people believe them?

Those who wear planet-saving vegetarianism on their sleeve should, for perspective, spend a full year living (with Bill Gates) in a (small) tent in the middle of a crop field, watching the tractors roll by. 

But me?  I live with my family in the middle of a pasture.  The air swarms with birds.  Nothing has been sprayed in years.  Frogs, snakes, turtles, and salamanders live in the waterways.  Soil is rebuilding.  And, yes, I eat a lot of meat from this landscape.  The surplus is distributed regionally when customers arrive at our store to support the ecosystem and nourish their families.  Their pro-meat meal choices ensure the landscape remains blanketed in robust turf all year long, dotted with self-propelled, solar powered harvesters that taste so delicious. 

Yep.  Feels pretty good to be so out-of-touch with societal trends.