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Suzanne Ubick
San Francisco, CA
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Suzanne commented on the petition |I am very seriously concerned about the not-so-subtle message of this game. Love slap?? Hitting a woman is never done out of love, especially if the woman is protesting forcible abduction. Does the world really need yet another "game" condoning violence against women? It is never okay to steal a woman and then hit her to shut her up if she objects to the treatment. Walmart is already in serious trouble regarding its realtime, real life treatment of women; selling this game would be a public declaration of an attitude that women are commodities.
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Suzanne signed the petition |
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Suzanne signed the petition | -
Suzanne signed the petition | -
Suzanne signed the petition | -
Suzanne signed the petition | -
Suzanne signed the petition | -
Suzanne commented on the article |I carefully read the arguments in the GrassFed Myths paper. However, the author falls right at the beginning into the either/or fallacy; s/he states that the only way to produce beef on grass is to endorse overgrazing of public lands in the arid West. This argument can be falsified with minimal research into the subject. There are many successful grass farmers across the world whose intelligent, skilled management of their range results in increasing fertility, resilience, and biodiversity as wild animals are drawn to the region by increased food supplies. There are also ways of integrating livestock and crops in a synergy that produces more food for people than either would alone on the same amount of land.
The author appears to be unaware of the difference between grazers and browsers, as well as the concept of resource partitioning within ecosystems. The author appears to have no knowledge of historically extremely productive savanna and prairie ecosystems, where herbivores were predated both by humans and other animals. Birds, grasshoppers, and small mammals were part of the grassland guilds.
There is no need to irrigate permanent native species pastures. The wise farmer knows how many acres he has and how many acres he needs per head of livestock; the carrying capacity varies widely with region and seasonal variation. Part of the land is rested each year, sometimes for two or more years, to allow seed production and root replenishment. Part can be cut for hay a couple of times during the growth flush, and then left to grow for winter feed. Part is left untouched throughout the growing season, to provide bulk carbohydrates (including fibre) as a fodder bank. The remaining land is rotationally grazed throughout the growing period.
It's extremely poor management to allow livestock access to watercourses and, with inexpensive solar systems now available both to power fencing and to pump water from watercourses into drinking troughs, false economy not to do so. However, this kind of incompetence is not universal among grass farmers. Supply of site-specific information and investment in infrastructure is required. Some areas should probably never be farmed in any way.
I was surprised to find that continuous unmanaged grazing is the default mode of raising livestock on grass in the USA. I was born and grew up in Rhodesia, where conservation farming was the norm; conservation of land and water was a national obsession. Even the cancellations on mail read "The wise farmer: he came, he saw, he conserved." We were taught from the time we started school about the fragility of soils; I remember our class getting very dirty and happy, in Standard 3 (we would have been around 10 years old), by setting up experiments with soil in pans. Some soil was bare, some we covered with varying amounts of leaves and grass. We had to drop water onto each pan in turn, from different heights, and notice what happened to the soil. Then we dropped water onto grass on our playing fields, and noticed that nothing happened. "Carrying capacity" was a concept with which we grew up.
Perhaps the author of this publication (GrassFedMyths)has genuinely never been exposed to the principles and success of grass farming as it is practiced in a number of countries. Here are links to information:
Holistic Resource Management: http://www.jstor.org/pss/3900847 JSTOR articles can be accessed through membership in a public library, and pdfs downloaded for personal use.
Rotational Grazing USA:
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/rotgraze.pdf
http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/natresources/az1184.htmlDefence of Continuous Grazing where stocking rate is correct for the region: http://essm.tamu.edu/people/briske/documents/REMSynthesis08.pdf
Australian systems:
http://www.gms.wa.gov.au/documents/emu%20rotational%20grazing.pdf
http://lwa.gov.au/files/products/land-and-water-australia-corporate/ew071245/ew071245-cs-24.pdf
http://www.mla.com.au/TopicHierarchy/News/MediaReleases/Profit+vital+to+environment+-+Sustainable+Grazing+Systems.htmSouth Africa: There are regions that produce far more meat from sustainably harvested game populations than cattle or sheep would yield. http://thegamerancher.com/game%20ranch%20managemnt/Ecological%20Principles.html
A portal to other resources:
http://www.wild-about-you.com/ServiceVeldManage.htmRangeland Management:
http://www.rangelands.org/
http://www.cnr.uidaho.edu/range/ -
Suzanne signed the petition | -
Suzanne commented on the article |
Before I talk about my personal experience as a smallholder, I want to re-iterate that I fully believe that Westerners, and particularly US Americans, can cut their consumption of animal source foods at least by half and probably by three-quarters, and experience only benefits. I fully support eradication of cruelty, and to me this extends to the enormous killing and maiming of wildlife associated with agribusiness of corn, wheat, soy, broccoli, spinach, peaches, strawberries, and any other mono-cropping. I would like to see the return of the smallholder, the return of city farming, and the return of real knowledge about and experience with our food. I would like to see a situation where public health comes first, and one mega meat-packer or one mega spinach-grower does not hold the health and even lives of the nation in its hands, balanced against its profits. I'm rather passionate about these issues.
This is one of my favourite images, of a suburb in Basel, Switzerland:http://www.cityfarmer.info/?p=48
I would like to see recognition of the reality behind food miles. I've seen it written that it's better environmentally and karmically to eat non-animal foods flown or shipped from anywhere in the world than to eat local animal-source foods. This leaves me breathless. What about the animals known as "other people?" What about the starvation and brutal conditions in Third World countries pillaged by the over-wealthy West? I'm talking about the obscenities of strawberries, cucumbers, and cut flowers, flown from the Sahel to winter-locked Europe, while the nomads who used to survive quite nicely, thank you, on the products of their herds have lost their traditional wells and their best grazing and their herds alike to multinational corporations. These people are forced into camps where they depend on the bounty of the West for starvation rations of, you guessed it, corn and soy products. Sugar? Up to 800 gallons of water per cup of refined crystals, and human rights violations that should be blazoned across the skies. It's been very interesting to see the mainstream reaction to the documentary "The Price of Sugar." "Violent refusal to believe" puts it mildly - who wants to feel guilty while eating a sweet pastry and drinking sugared coffee?
Amazonian acai berries: It's naive to think that local growers won't clear riverine growth to expand their croplands and increase their income. Why on earth would this be different from any other wonder-crop that will sell to the wealth-crazed First World? One has only to look at the palm-oil and cacao bubbles of very recent history. Can one blame the growers who will chop down everything non-acai in the area and replace it with money-spinning acai, destroying one more ecosystem and replacing it with one more monocrop? I think I would do that if my choice was bare survival or a higher quality of life. If one tree produces 6-8 bunches of fruit up to 6kg each in weight, then it's going to take a lot of trees to produce a reasonable income. Of course, fashion is fickle. Once the next wonder-herb comes along, the market will switch and the Brazilians will be left with gang-raped land and more acai than they'd ever be able to eat even if they wanted to.
My point is that unless the food production and delivery system is looked at holistically, the flagrant environmental, non-human animal, and human abuses will continue. I can do only what I can do, and I have chosen to start with what I personally eat and use in my home.
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