Ecology and Farming

uminant animals be raised in grazing systems or
are confinement feeding operations acceptable? The
third question deals with the appropriateness of
meat in our diet. Organic vegans argue that a truly
organic diet is plant-based and excludes meat and
dairy products. And the final question considers
appropriate animal welfare standards in organic
systems. Some of our colleagues have argued that
“sentient beings” must be treated “humanely” in
a truly organic system. They believe that killing
animals for food is inherently inhumane, so raising
animals for food cannot be condoned in organic food
systems.
Animals in Organic Agriculture’s Past
Of course, many of the original proponents of the
organic and biodynamic movements argued from
the outset that animals are essential components
of organic production systems. In his Agriculture
lectures of 1924, Rudolph Steiner, for example,
defined a “healthy farm” as a farm that had animals
embedded in the system. Within our farms, he
argued, “we should attempt to have everything
we need for agricultural production, including, of
course, the appropriate amount of livestock . . .
A healthy farm would be one that could produce
everything it needs from within itself.” The
implication, of course, is that a farm could not
produce everything it needs without the appropriate
amount of animals.
Our modern industrial agriculture system has
taken us in a very different direction. We have now
adopted an agriculture paradigm which assumes
that the only way we can maximize production
and achieve product uniformity is through
specialization, and by obtaining all of the energy
to sustain that productivity from outside the farm.
So our current production systems are virtually the
inverse of what Steiner envisioned. Most modern
farms now grow only one or two crops in simplistic
rotations or specialize in producing a single species
of animals in confinement feeding operations to
enhance labor efficiency and product uniformity.
And, as some of our organic production systems
succumb to the pressures of industrialization, they
begin to look quite similar - even though they use
“natural” instead of “synthetic” energy inputs.
From the perspective of producing food “stuff,”
this modern, industrial system has been successful.
It has dramatically increased the volumes of raw
material food and feed stuff, and many would
argue that this has helped prevent the starvation
of millions of people. However, the success of this
industrial system was based on the availability
of two critical components: the natural resources
stored up on the planet over 3.5 billion years of life,
and the sinks in nature capable of absorbing the
wastes produced by this system. As we enter the
next era of agriculture, both of these resources will
be in short supply.
Owing to its extractive nature, industrial agriculture
has been enormously exploitive. In the space of half
a century it has been partly responsible for depleting
our fossil fuel resources, our fresh water reserves,
and the incredible bank of soil fertility which, as Sir
Albert Howard reminded us, “is the first condition
of any permanent system of agriculture.” During
that same half century, it has filled the natural sinks
to the point that wastes from the system can no
longer be absorbed. There are now an estimated
150 hypoxia zones on the planet, all of them
downstream from highly industrialized agricultural
production regions. The amount of CO2 released
into the environment is now beginning to cause the
kind of climate instability that will place increasing
stress on highly specialized agricultural production
systems.
The depletion of these critical resources ultimately
will force agriculture to change. It will provide
Organic Agriculture with a unique opportunity to
help design the next era of agriculture on the planet.
And it is in that context, I think, that we must now
explore the role of animals in Organic Agriculture.
Let us be clear at the outset that animals are not
essential to achieve sustainable productivity of
specific farming operations. In an enlightening
article published in the May/June issue of World-
Watch magazine, Brian Halweil reports that in many
parts of the world productivity can be increased and
maintained without compost or animal manure.
He cites the work of a University of Michigan
team of scientists who summarized the results
of 77 studies from both temperate and tropical
areas. The findings demonstrated that “the greater
use of nitrogen-fixing crops in the world’s major
agricultural regions could result in 58 million metric
Special Feature: Animals in Organic Production
2