Whipping Boy
From Whipping Boy to Community Hero
Studying agriculture prior to industrialization reveals a system that hinged on livestock. The domestic herbivore was valued by society at the highest level because the beasts represented mobile, self-duplicating, self-feeding, nutrient dense meat, milk, fertilizer, and hides. To own stock was to own food security.
In his book Craeft, archeologist Alexander Langlands highlights his studies of excavated farms and their brilliant use of resources. Each resource depended on the presence of another, and animals were the focal point of the entire food chain. For centuries in England farmers directed attention first to the management of precious stock and their dung, recognizing the graze – manure – cultivate cycle to be the key that made cropping function. Without animals, soils would wear out, crops would wither, and society would destabilize.
Society so valued the security of proximate livestock that villagers’ customs evolved around the seasonal movement of animals. In Europe, massive fall festivals were held as shepherds returned from summer grazing lands with their flocks. The whole village pitched in to help herdsmen prepare for winter. In the early years of the United States, community gatherings were dictated by hog butchering. From the youngest to the oldest, everyone had a role to play in putting up pork for the winter. People used to gather around valuable food.
As society continues to demonize domesticated farm stock (especially ruminants) we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. The role livestock plays in sustaining food production has not diminished with time. The reason we can’t see value in the stock is because specialized farming bifurcated cropping and livestock, creating a rift between the two.
Since the separation there has been a relentless corruption of food production. Soils subjected to year-after-year cropping are exhausted and washing down every stream and river in the country. Most people recognize the concomitant ocean dead zones as a problem. Ever-consolidating feedlots, dairies, hog barns and chicken houses produce ever-increasing quantities of manure that, in such volumes, is a toxic hazard instead of a healing fertilizer. Family farms are folding as corporate businesses acquire monopolies. Volatility is the word on everyone’s lips, and people are worried about tomorrow. One can argue that society is destabilized.
Unfortunately, the current trend is to blame livestock for the woes created by human mismanagement. As is the case with fads, they come on fast and spread quickly. Just a perfunctory look around the grocery store reveals ‘plant based’ imposters for everything from hamburger to eggs. Nobody wants to associate with an animal so we’re finding every reason we can to condemn them, yet the anti-livestock message remains inconsistent.
An article in the Asheville Citizens Times newspaper comparing pseudo burgers to real beef couldn’t help but add a caveat at the end: “Beef is considered taxing on the environment because of the resources it takes to grow crops to feed cows.” It goes on to quote Christopher Field of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, stating “…pork and chicken have a much smaller environmental footprint than beef.”
Pay attention: they’re demonizing beef because of crops while promoting fake meat made entirely from crops and sympathizing with pork and poultry that, being the products of omnivores, require crops. In fact, the only subject discussed in the critique that can be raised completely without crops is beef, but it seems everyone conveniently failed to mention that reality, so beef remains the whipping boy.
Ironically, if we would manage our national beef herd differently, grazing cattle could become a basis for the very fertility required to grow crops, thus reducing the manufactured resources requisite for successful farming. I hesitate to sound excessively whimsical and nostalgic, but we can use history as a template to change the trajectory of our future.
Change must occur on a provincial level by people willing to accept responsibility and focus on proximate causes that are achievable and measurable. In other words, if we’re tired of what’s coming through the television, we need to turn it off and get to work changing our community. Small change will lead to big changes.
Entrepreneurs are creating local economic matrices that function independently of national fads and media manipulation. On our farm we’re assembling pioneers of modern agrarianism to create a carefully planned, livestock-based, multifaceted, environmental farm that serves a select group of individuals who believe in and respond to the vision of provincial living (try that food statement out on your friends). I’m always excited to watch people respond to a pro-beef message in an anti-beef world; it’s obvious there are still many who will congregate around valuable food. That’s a community I want to live in.
Maybe someday we can submit an article to the Asheville Times so people can hear the other side of the story.