We just watched a documentary film about a diet of veganism (plus no
added plant fats/oil) as a way to stop and potentially reverse the
adverse health effects of the standard industrialized diet. We're
definitely not vegans, and we don't mention this film because it
represents us or any of our views, but as farmers we take extra interest
in all the various diet theories and their supporting arguments, and
even diet theories that fail to offer good solutions can be helpful in
assessing the problems.
As we've discussed before, our diet theory -- if we had to give it a
name we might call it "radically homegrown" -- isn't based on any kind
of nutrition or health theories. In other words, we're strongly
inclined to believe that eating a radically homegrown diet while
completely ignoring the difficult questions of any and all nutrition
theories will actually result in a healthier diet than following the
advice of the world's most brilliant nutrition experts, whoever they may
be. Are we saying that ignoring nutrition theories can lead to better
nutrition? Short answer, yes. How could that be?
First, nutrition science is invariably a very muddy field. If any
of the fringe theories (like the one in the film we just watched) were
scientifically compelling it would be more than a fringe scientific
theory. That's not to say those theories are necessarily wrong, only
that the scientific case for any of them is fraught with questions and
legitimate doubts. On the other hand mainstream dietary advice like is
embodied in the USDA food pyramid seems undeniably damned by its
results. In other words, mainstream dietary advice is too closely tied
to our problems to reasonably consider it any kind of solution. And, in
any case, even if the nutrition experts could agree on a diet theory --
which they can't -- that still leaves the rest of us needing to eat but
without the expertise to sort out the advice from conflicting experts.
(The arguments that we always find most convincing are the ones making
the case that the case for someone else's theory is grossly
overstated.) In short, as with the documentary we just watched, every
diet theory seems to lose any real scientific footing as soon as it
moves beyond criticizing the standard industrialized diet.
So the next question then: what reason is there to trust that a
radically homegrown diet offers any better hope of nutrition? First, our
current diet-related health problems are clearly the result of the
industrialization of our food supply, and a radically homegrown diet is
the only alternative (at least in the industrialized world today.)
Secondly, although the nutrition science is very muddy, one thing that
seems very clear to us is that the giant food and agriculture
corporations (and the government and university systems that serve them)
aren't fundamentally pursuing any kind of health (of persons, soils,
waters, air, animals, communities, etc. -- which, of course, are all
deeply interconnected), but rather all large corporations are structured
so as to ensure a narrow focus on corporate and executive profit. Surely
dependence on that corporate system, no matter how much it conforms to
any superficial diet theory, is fundamentally at odds with good health.
If we are to have any real nutrition choices at all, we're convinced the
first step needs to be breaking loose of the corporate-industrial grip
on our diets.
In that light, a question this documentary raised, as all nutrition
theories do for us, is how compatible is veganism with a radically
homegrown diet versus dependent on an industrialized corporate food
supply. There is a limited point on which we think vegans score some
points here. In recent years vegans have commonly made the case that
animal products increase our dependency on the evils of the
corporate-industrial system. They'll say that animals are an
inefficient use of grain crops, i.e. that the grain fed to animals would
go a lot further if fed directly to people. If we lay the nutritional
and gastronomic problems with that idea aside, we think it has to be
conceded that they have a real point: raising animals strictly on field
crops grown for the purpose of feeding animals is highly questionable.
(So, of course, is raising annual crops for the purpose of feeding our cars,
which now consume more of our most planted field crop (corn) than all
farm animals combined.) The limits we see in their argument are that
(1) exchanging dependency on large quantities of grain for dependency on
smaller quantities of industrialized grain doesn't really solve the
problem, and (2) although modern industrialized agriculture completely
fails to realize it, animals offer all sorts of potential for making
food out of things that aren't food to start with. The most important
example of this second point is grass, and the benefits of grass are
huge. Especially in regions like ours where much of the land is quite
susceptible to erosion, a permanent cover of grass is surely the most
sustainable farm use of land. Pasture also drastically reduces the
pressure on farmers to depend as heavily or at all on herbicides,
insecticides, fossil fuel-powered tractors and combines, genetically
modified seed, etc. Much more could be said about the gains to be had
from farm animals and from grass, in particular, but the point here is
that animals offer lots of potential (even if commonly unrealized) for
reducing our dependency on the corporate-industrial food system.
This is a bit of a tangent, but to be clear, "pastured" pork and
poultry and eggs even from "organic" (whether officially or
unofficially) family farmers selling directly at small farmers' markets
rarely redefine the equation any more than their supermarket
counterparts: simply keeping animals on pasture while feeding them
complete rations of combine-harvested annual field crops (which is the
case with the vast majority of large- and small-scale "pastured" and/or
"organic" pork, poultry, and eggs) does nothing to silence
the vegan argument we've discussed. Swine and poultry and other animals
certainly have lots of potential in a radically homegrown system of
agriculture, too, but so long as farmers and consumers continue to
measure these possibilities against the artificial cheapness of their
industrialized counterparts any market for radically homegrown pork or
poultry will remain practically non-existent. In the meantime, we would
concede that vegans score valid points here, too.
But truly grass-fed/grain-free beef and dairy (and goat meat, lamb,
wool, leather, etc., not to mention wild game) does radically redefine
the equations, not just historically but in accessible ways here and
now. As practically the whole continent of Africa figured out before
us, goat meat and, in our case, also goat milk may be the most
sustainable products we produce, and we'd make nearly as strong a case
for our beef and cow's dairy. There was an interesting and repeated
contrast in the film we just watched that highlights some of these
differences. Images of dairy cattle on pasture were contrasted more
than once with huge, super-expensive, diesel-powered combines harvesting
mono-cropped annual grains. Completely apart from all the questions of
sustainability, is the corporate-industrial dependency of the implicit
vegan model not starkly obvious, especially in contrast to the pastoral
image of dairy cows? There are plenty of misleading pastoral images in
today's food marketplaces, but here the vegan advocates (apparently
unwittingly) chose images that exposed the flaws of their case. Small
herds of all grass-fed livestock are rightly viewed as consistent with
sustainability, small family farms, and community food sovereignty.
Equivalently homegrown grain and pulse (dry bean, peas, etc.) crops are
as non-existent in the industrialized world today as the radically
homegrown pork and poultry we already lamented. As with pork and
poultry, grains and pulses have plenty of potential in a radically
homegrown system of agriculture, but that potential is largely lost to
mass-produced corporate counterparts.
One more thing deserves mention on the subject of veganism and a
radically homegrown diet. With the diet promoted by this film as with
every other example of veganism we've encountered, simple homegrown
foods are replaced with fake counterparts: milk is replaced with rice or
almond "milk" -- it's worth noting, too, that we live in the most dairy
rich county in North Carolina, but rice and almonds, of course, aren't
grown here and are very marginally adaptable if at all -- turkey with
"tofurky," eggs with "egg substitute", etc., etc. Avoiding real milk or
turkey or eggs commonly has the result of forcing consumers to turn to
corporate-industrial foods from far away, often in less homegrown, more
processed manifestations. This is an aspect of veganism to which we
definitely object, and we suspect that it's an unavoidable aspect of any
diet theory that shuns any major food groups.
Obviously there's plenty of controversy to stir up with these
questions, but there's also lots of room for agreement. Proponents of
veganism and paleo diets and "traditional" diets and low-carb diets and
the USDA food pyramid and raw foodies, etc. together with us, can all
potentially agree that moving away from sugar and corn syrup, artificial
flavors, preservatives, and sweeteners, white flour, pre-processed
foods, confinement style animal products, and chemical-intensive field
and garden crops would be an improvement. These are the most emblematic
parts of the standard diet in the industrialized world in which we
live. And it seems quite plausible that drastically reducing these
things could indeed solve a majority of our dramatic, diet-related
problems. Without paying any particular attention to any questions of
diet or nutrition, pursuing a radically homegrown diet would necessarily
accomplish all these things, and it's something any of us can understand
unassisted (and unmanipulated) by any experts.
