Natasha Chart

Recent Activity

• 

  Natasha commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  In Response to "The Omnivore's Delusion" Part 2

  If you have healthy soil to start, you're working with organic matter added previously by animals, perhaps birds and small rodents, and by microfauna in the soil, even if it happened over a very long period of time imperceptible to the current occupants.

  
  

  Unless worms and beetles, etc., are really misclassified plants or fungi, you're just wrong about how that all works.

  
  

  If you only care about animals that remind you of yourself, you're as anthropocentric as I am. Take some biology classes.

  
  

  And gods, gooseberries and kale. Nice side dishes. That reminds me of how, whenever I'm forced to eat vegetarian meals, I'm always grimly unsatisfied no matter how much I chew through, not even counting the inevitable blood sugar crash. If I never eat another nasty, undercooked lentil dish (and really, lentils? one of the fastest cooking beans?) proferred by earnest vegan potluckers, it'd be too soon.

• 

  Natasha commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  In Response to "The Omnivore's Delusion" Part 2

  Anthropocentric? Guilty.

  
  

  I'm not insulted by the suggestion that I care more about my own species than other species, because it's true. There isn't a single animal anywhere whose life I'd put equal to the life of a human. Any human. Not one. You can feel differently if you want to.

  
  

  And the point of integrating animal and plant agriculture is that plants need the nutrients animals provide. Without the synthetic agriculture that's poisoning the world, some or all of dung, bones, urine and blood are necessary for plants to thrive. If you exclude animals from the ecological systems where our plant foods are cultivated, you must use the planet's dwindling supply of fossil fuel and mineral resources to get a harvest out of them, you must poison animals and fungi and plants with horrendous chemicals that cycle around the food chain for generations. That's your choice.

  
  

  But exploring the other main alternative for plant fertilization, fossil fertilizers, that's also an animal product. That's all oil is. Compressed, dead animals, that offgassed more or less 'natural' gas. 

  
  

  Plants need to eat animal products, themselves, or they can't sustainably feed us. You can try it at home. Try to raise plants that haven't been fertilized, see how it goes. This is what I mean when I've said there are no vegan ecosystems, because it's the ecosystems themselves that need animals, whether we're growing food in them or not.

  
  

  It may be a nobly-motivated sentiment not to want anything to die so you can live, but that's not how it works.

• 

  Natasha commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  In Response to "The Omnivore's Delusion" Part 2

  There's a lot of the planet's surface which is extremely unsuitable for row crop cultivation, land that needs to be kept under steady cover of vegetation and not dug up every year.

  
  

  Unless you want to rely heavily on petrochemical dependent crops that strip the land of it's nutrients and provide insufficient cover even without tillage, and that often requires unsustainable fossil water use, that land is mostly unsuitable for producing food for humans. Poultry and ruminants can turn grass and scrub and bugs we can't eat into high quality, nutrient-dense food that we can eat. Their waste, when not contaminated with pharmaceuticals and heavy metals, builds vibrant soil communities that sequester carbon and preserve nutrients.

  
  

  And while it's certainly possible to have a vegetarian diet in areas where the land is better suited for milk-producing animals than grain, there are no pre-industrial vegan societies. Without manufactured foods and synthetic agriculture, most people and particularly children, need milk and eggs at least to grow up as strong and healthy as their genetic template allows. While we may be nearly drowning in fat, it was a prized, if more occasional, part of a diet that didn't rely on an industrial food chain, high calorie sugar hits, and revolting levels of soy consumption.

  
  

  A sustainable agriculture requires a vision of agricultural production communities as functional, self-repairing ecosystems. There are no such ecosystems without animals.

  
  

  There need to be things grown for animals to eat out on land that resembles their natural habitat, ways to recycle their waste immediately into productive soil, predators to cull their excess numbers and keep them in balance. That would work for a long time, it could continue. That agriculture could sustain itself without fossil fuel-derived pesticides and fertilizers, without exhausting mineral phosphate reserves, without poisoning the rivers and seas.

• 

  Natasha commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Boycott Whole Foods

  I'm sure it would suit corporations best if they could wholly divorce that last little shred of conscience from our purchasing decisions, but alas, niggling scraps of concern for the common good remain.

  
  

  Anyway, if corporations believed so strongly in freedom of speech, people would never get hired, not hired or fired, over what they post on private web sites or facebook pages, but that isn't how it works. Corporations don't operate in a vacuum of value, nor do they believe that they do, however much they like to be insulated from the self-serving greed of their executives when they're dumb enough to let their inner Tory shine through.

• 

  Natasha commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Agriculture's Nitrogen Fix

  The number of things human beings have tried that seemed like a good idea at the time, but later proved to have unforeseen negative consequences, is vast. It doesn't seem like something that was intended maliciously.

  
  

  Nonetheless, it's run into problems and we know a lot more now about organic nutrient management techniques, as well as having a worldwide wealth of experimentation to work from. We can and should change direction.

• 

  Natasha commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  And .... We're Back

  Thank you, ma'am!

• 

  Natasha commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Living the Animal Life

  I've seen that, it's very cool and I'm glad they're doing it.

  
  

   

• 

  Natasha commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Living the Animal Life

  Animals are for living normal-for-them lives as well integrated parts of an ecosystem that maximizes the amount of biomass and species diversity that can be produced on the energy and nutrient allotment of a given piece of land.

  
  

  This always and of necessity involves eating and being eaten in turn. I don't know that I'm plugged into any deities' opinions on the subject, but a few billion years of evolution has said its peace and this is how a healthy world is made.

  
  

  Unpreyed upon herbivores eat the local plants bare to desert. Plant and soil communities not replenished by the feces, blood and bones of animals will eventually wither to dead mineral dust. Herbivores consume high cellulose plant tissue and then eat the bacteria that live in their guts that were able to digest the cellulose.

  
  

  If agriculture is ever going to be less destructive, it has to mimic the thriving ecosystems it replaced, the ones that built the soil we're burning and starving all other species out of. All those ecosystems formerly used animals, just as all farms once had to; there are no vegetarian ecosystems.

  
  

  Come to it, there aren't any vegetarian plants.

  
  

  People can also say that pigs are for packing in sheds all they want. But it makes them unhealthy and they don't like it and no pigs even try to live that way in the wild, so it's a pretty thin case.

• 

  Natasha commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Nutritionism and Guilt vs Coffee

  Ha, ha, very droll. It's common knowledge that corporate, and even political astroturfing, has been observed repeatedly over the years on political and issue-oriented blogs. The idea that someone would do it, well, it happens.

  
  

  And I might point out that neither the Mary Murphy who's known for such astroturfing, nor the think tank/astroturf twit who trolled my old political blog on behalf of the telecom companies in opposition to net neutrality, worked directly for the people who benefitted the most from their propaganda.

  
  

  Also I must say that your revelation is most sad. Because if you're not getting paid for posting this drivel ... sucker! Further, considering that you do post here during what most people consider regular work hours, you've previously yourself violated a central piece of the status quo you're upholding - which is to say that you're either not being entirely straight with me or you're being unfaithful to the corporate work ethic. Iffy all around.

  
  

  Then unlike some, I do believe writers should be paid, even if I'd object if they're dishonest about their interests or the resources behind them. 

  
  

  Perhaps you think this current infestation of biotech hacks is the first time I've had to put up with some corporate wankers freaking out because people were saying mean things about them on the internet. Please. Every bloody one of you thinks you're just so original, but it's impossible to freshen up the old profession of comforting the comfortable.

  
  

   

• 

  Natasha commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Nation's Food Policy Pro-Pus, Pro-E. Coli, Pro-Bribery, Pro-GMOs

  It's a cow sticking its tongue out, silly :) It's a terrible travesty of the homogenization of livestock breeds that people don't recognize a cow unless it's a short-haired, black and white spotted, tiny-horn-having Holstein.

  
  

  Anyway, I'm sure I'll think of something, or (far more likely) run across someone else who's thought of something, but no short term fix is sufficient to address the co-optation of the bureaucracy by corporate interests. I also probably really need this vacation, it's been years since I had a proper one.