The logic of the land, tells us to eat animals that can eat the tough cellulose that survives there. But the logic of the vegans leads us away from the local, our only chance of being sustainable, back to the desperate dying wetlands, her eroding delta. Yes, I may say that eating grains directly is less water-intensive that eating grain-fed beef. But why eat either? Animals integrated into appropriate polycultures destroy nothing.
Now, my question to you. Are you an environmentalist? If yes, why are you killing a distant river with every bite? Up until 1950, agriculture was still limited by the amount of energy that fell from the sun. What that meant practically was that animals has to be integrated into small farms because their manure, the best source of naturally occurring nitrogen, was needed there.
Animals ate the cellulose in pastures, pastures rotated with annual crops. In most places, most soil wore out and eventually imperialism was the final results, but there were limits of biology and physics, building blocks and energy. Nitrogen was prized, and every molecule of that was used by hungry plants and ultimately hungry humans.
You have probably heard that amino acids are the building blocks of protein. Well, guess what? Nitrogen is the building block of amino acids, the alphabet of DNA. While nitrogen is abundant in the atmosphere, it's not available for life processes since it's paired in tight bonds. To be available those pairs must be split and then rejoined to hydrogen atoms. This is called 'fixing nitrogen". If you are a gardener, you might have read that leguminous plants 'fix' nitrogen. As usual, it is the bacteria doing the work, but these particular bacteria live in a symbiotic relationship with leguminous plants, trading in the nitrogen for a droplet of plant sugar. This is where essentially all the fixed nitrogen on the earth started.
Do remember that annual plants only get their day in the sun after a catastrophe opens a niche in the perennial polyculture. By the way, does any of you know that nitrogen makes great bombs? We have Germany's nitrates came from Chilean mines, until British disrupted the German supply. Anyone heard of Haber Bosch? His discovery kept Germany in the war business. It also won him the Nobel Prize. This brilliant guy also developed poison gases, including ammonia and chlorine.
Now, the myth is that civilization is progress, for human rights, human health and human culture. The myth continues, agriculture's foods are the foods of peace and justice. If I could still remember right, since 1950 or so, the fertilizer has come from fossil fuel. Breaking our dependance on the sun and nature's fertility meant an explosion in the grain production. Please do understand that we are only here, is because of fossil fuel, because we figure out how to transform stored energy into edible energy. There is no where else to get that energy.
As the natural gas and oil get more expensive, then prohibitively expensive, there will be no way to keep that grain coming. And then what? But, it's the industrialization of agriculture that has made factory farming possible. This is another point political vegetarians need to understand.
Animals were taken off from their native food, out of their natural life patterns, because they weren't needed on farms anymore. Their ability to turn cellulose into protein wasn't an asset when corn could be grown so densely, so cheaply out of bare land and fossil fuel. And the truly bizarre began to make economic sense. Guess what? Mountain of corn that the US produced had nowhere else to go but into animals. Cheap corn. Crops yields have doubled as of year 1997, and the practice of repeatedly plowing the fields, removing the covering of grasses, and poisoning the bugs and the weeds(pesticides, herbicides, etc) robs the soil of most of its life giving characteristics.
As of now, it takes more then a calorie of fossil fuel to produce a calorie of food energy for humans, somewhere between 4 and 10 calories of fossil fuel for a calorie of food. The fossil fuel is in both the fertilizer and the pesticides, and it's essential to the machinery needed to plant, harvest, process and transport grain. The political vegetarians, however noble with their intentions, are planning a planetary diet in complete ignorance of where the food comes from. Vegetarians, like everyone else in an urban industrial culture, have no concept that plants need to eat, that soil is alive and hungry. Every single vegetarians look shocked when I told them that plants are highly carnivorous! Are you stunned too when reading this right now? You must be wondering do plants eat?
Before I sign off this post, let me briefly enlighten you about plants. Now, majority of the plants, every single one of them, usually has its own microorganism which protects them. Example, the fungus is protecting the host plant from the predatory parasites, and how does this work? Well, the fungus, is able to secrete a type of 'glue', sticky substance, which is used to melt minerals from the rock. Heard of rock salt? Yeah, that's where the minerals came from. And when the predatory parasite comes within the range of the host plant, it will get stuck in the 'glue' (imagine spiderman web), and guess what? This part is interesting folks. Check this out. the fungus then split open the gut of the parasite, and then eats the internal organs, and feed them to the host plant. Why? Plants wants nutrients, particularly MEATS, and it is the internal organs which has the most value in nutrients. Any internal organs in animals are nutrient dense. Unbelievable? Study soil science and you will know this true facts about plants, microorganisms and the symbiosis between them.
Let me ask you, what is fungus favorite food? Take a wild guess. Come on, try. Has any of you had fungal infection before? Well, the answer is SUGAR! Yes, the host plan is feeding the 'protector' fungus as much sugar(sap) as they need, in return, the fungus traps earthworms, parasites, and literally feed the plant their internal organs. Sounds cool? Now, vegetarians, now you know plants is highly carnivorous. So, being a vegetarian for religious purpose, isn't 'really' a real vegetarian. There is no such thing as pure vegetarian.
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