(en) France, Coordination of Anarchist Groups - The antispecism a false solution to environmental problems (fr, pt)

We will develop here the disagreements we have with antispecism the place of livestock in 
food production and its environmental consequences. ---- Livestock: a horizontal transfer 
of fertility ---- This barbarous term means that livestock can transfer the fertility of 
an area to another. Caricature, animals feed in one place and with their droppings 
fertilize go elsewhere. The idea is to graze animals in non-arable areas (hills, uplands, 
mountains ...) then the park at night in areas of grain or vegetables, or make manure.
Most agronomists believe that this is one of the essential reasons for livestock 
development in societies. With specialization in Western agriculture, this function is 
less developed but it is widely available in many countries. For example, after the millet 
harvest, flocks will graze crop residues and the surrounding bush and will be parked on 
the cultivated plots. When grazing areas are remote from cultivated areas, shepherds 
pen-eras relatively tight flocks and bag dry manure and sell it. This practice still 
exists in the Cevennes.

Manure is not the only way to improve soil fertility for agricultural production. Among 
the various techniques, we find shifting cultivation (a short cultivation and long fallow 
that is burned to repeat the cycle), rotation and / or association with legumes (nitrogen 
fixing air and enrich the soil to nitrate), from industrial fertilizers ...

Among industrial origin fertilizer, from a large part of the oil industry. So they can not 
be considered as a relevant and sustainable way for soil fertilization. The shifting 
cultivation is interesting in some contexts but can not be considered as a means 
universalized because it requires a large area of production due to the fallow periods. 
Farming associations are very interesting, but it is not always possible, and only as 
fertilization technique is often inadequate.

As the global population increases (the current demand for food is already quite large), 
we need to have large grain and vegetable yields. So we need to increase soil fertility to 
achieve this objective 1 and the use of livestock for this purpose is essential for us, 
especially if there is agreement on the reduction of the oil industry.

In short, without breeding (without manure) can not reach cereal and vegetable yields 
measuring current needs.

Animals, an effective force-workers artists

If we live in a society with all engines, this is not the case for all people. 
Approximately, manually, a e Worker cultivates little more than a hectare of cereals, 
whereas with a horse or oxen go up to 10 ha.

If you want to reduce the use of fossil energy, the strength of animals is an interesting 
alternative that with modern tools, allows to consider effectiveness of agricultural labor 2 .

We are curious to know how you can manipulate the trees in the forest without skidding 
tractor without a horse.

Farming not only produces food products

Indeed, livestock produces leather and wool that can serve as resources to the production 
of clothing, shoes ... In textiles, a large part of the production comes from the oil 
industry and is not a sustainable resource. The culture of cotton, linen or hemp used to 
provide usable fibers in the textile industry but these crops are at the expense of food 
crops.

According to FAO, it produces about one million thousand tons of wool in the world per 
year. If we consider that there is half the volume after the various stages of production 
and a sweater weighs 3 kg (this is deliberately exaggerated to have a minimum order size), 
an equivalent of 23 sweaters are obtained for each 7 billion humans. Wool can be used in 
isolation to make soles, carpets ... Anyway this is far from a straw and it would be 
interesting to calculate the area required to replace this volume of wool with vegetable 
fiber ( cotton, flax, hemp ...)

The quality of clothes and shoes made with animal fibers is greater, including longevity. 
It is certainly secondary but significant because it is good to have strong and waterproof 
shoes mountain and forest.

Livestock, a reprocessing of organic waste

Plant grown food consumed, it remains an important part of the biomass that we do not 
consume, especially with cereal we eat peeled.

Livestock production is a means (not only but the most direct) to enhance organic "waste".

Environmental performance of livestock

It is clear that the workshops aboveground (livestock without the use of surface course) 
have a disastrous environmental record with an excess of CO2 and methane, excess nitrogen, 
high pressure antibiotics ...

For cons, the grassed systems (based overwhelmingly on the use of grass or dried fodder) 
are relatively in balance. Sometimes the cattle bed is the main source of carbon in the 
world, calculation based on multiplying the volume of CO2 and methane / cow and the number 
of cows in the world. In our view, this reasoning is false. Must in our view be the carbon 
balance in the agroecosystem (ecosystem of an agricultural area) concerned, which is valid 
for carbon analysis. For example a tree consumes carbon from the air but a mature forest 
has a zero carbon footprint, because that pump shafts is rejected by the activity of the 
fauna and fungi.

In the case of grassed breeding, the carbon balance is zero or less, that is to say tons 
of carbon released by cows / sheep / goats correspond roughly to tons of carbon consumed 
by grazed grassland plants 3 . There is a slight carbon in Europe and North America 
related to the fuel consumption to excess forage. This zero balance is relative because 
the shape of the carbon is not the same, the plants consume CO2 and cows rejecting a high 
proportion of methane. Nevertheless, we can say that livestock contributes grassed low 
carbon emissions responsible for global warming.

In many places, including grassed livestock transhumance (that is to say moving to find 
grass for cattle) is directly involved in biodiversity. To illustrate this, we will use 
the example of one of our comrades. It keeps a flock of sheep on a mountain pasture of 200 
ha in the Haut Jura. This estive consists of a botanical environment, said pseudo-alpine 
lawn, where there are many rare and protected species (over thirty, with beautiful 
orchids). Without grazing animals, there would be a move towards a forest ecosystem and 
therefore a significant reduction in botanical diversity of the area. We have similar 
situations in most pastoral areas of Europe as well as permanent grassland (that is to say 
simply mowed or grazed unlike artificial grassland sown).

From an ecological point of view (scientific sense), grazed lawns are unstable and 
transient states and if you want to keep, it is necessary to have structural impairments 
that prevent them from going to the stable environmental conditions that the forests and 
moors, which allows livestock. This includes meadows and mountain pastures but also bogs 
which are priority ecosystems excellence. So the total cessation of farming lead to a 
significant reduction in biological diversity (at least in Western Europe).

Finally

In conclusion, stop the exploitation of animals in our deprives humanity of a great number 
of things that can not be compensated by a greater use of the oil industry (for 
fertilizer, strength, textile ...). We can also consider the advent of a technological 
revolution that brings an energy source capable of supplanting the oil industry and 
biological energy of animals, but it seems a little risky.

Coordination of Anarchist Groups
January 2014

1 To give a rough idea, wheat yields on good soil without fertilization are 1 tonne / ha, 
3-4 tonnes / ha with smart plant associations, and 5-6 tonnes / ha organic fertilizer 
production, with animal.
2 today was trailed by a team that includes a motor to the desired, such as blades for 
mowing or a crane to haul, with surprisingly low diesel consumption by turning mechanism.
3 For ecologically intensive agriculture, Michel Griffon, p59