Today’s Rivers Catalogue had a great ad for leather shoes, pointing out: ‘Leather is a premium lining material that gives the shoes added strength and durability. It also allows the feet to breathe better, which means they are less likely to sweat or smell.’ Rivers produce one of the best catalogues around – full of straightforward facts & interesting personal stories. Then I turn over the page and see the ‘Enviroweek’ ad. It lists useful things such as starting a compost bin to walking instead of driving. Then: ‘GOING VEGETARIAN’. It looks kind of funny being so close to an ad. for shoes made out of hides. The coolaustralia.org website lists many common sense measures that thoughtful people should have undertaken long ago, such as installing solar hot water systems and planting native plants (preferably right in their own backyards, where most needed by local wildlife, not out in the bush, where there is already plenty). But there the clanger sits, amongst the logical ideas: ‘Go Vegetarian’. Why? How will going vegetarian help the environment? Well according to the Enviroweek website, because:
Carbon Emission reduction:
‘Each cow releases 22.1kg of farts and burps (methane) and uses 17 square metres of land to produce 1kg of beef.’
and
Water:
‘It requires about 15,500 litres of water to produce 1kg of beef’.
– Has anyone actually measure the environmentally unfriendly emissions emitted by bean-eating vegetarians, and the environmentally unfriendly emissions from the production of their diet – largely soya bean dependent; from seed storage to sowing, harvesting right through until it lands on their dinner plates (a very substantial amount of mechanical activity is required over the whole process – i.e. production, storage and distribution includes burning large amounts of fossil fuel, as well as many other inputs).
– in Australia the vast majority of cattle are run in lower rainfall areas where no other type of agriculture takes place. Rather than run beef cattle, the Australian central and northern inland – the vast majority of the total Australian land mass – should be completely devoid of food producing activity? Or do they propose to grow soyabeans at Bedourie, on the Barkly Tableland and at Halls Creek? I wish them luck. Then we come to water. If they want to grow soyabeans at Birdsville, on the edge of the Tanami and at Fitzroy Crossing, they’re going to need many thousands of litres of irrigation water.
It might be news to whoever wrote these misleading statistics down, but ALL food production requires WATER. In fact producing nearly anything requires water. Some agricultural production requires more water than other activities – but comparisons should also take into account return-for-effort; eg the nutrition of the food produced in relation to the size of the inputs required. Gram-for-gram, beef is one of the most nutritious foods produced. In any case, beef cattle would be nowhere near top of the water-usage list. Cotton and rice are in fact the two most water-intensive crops in Australia and some have argued that neither of these crops are well suited to the Australian situation. If someone stops eating beef and takes up rice-eating instead, they’re going to vastly increase the amount of water required to produce their food, and they’ll have to consume a much larger weight of food to match the nutritive value.
The vast majority of Australian vineyards would be completely dependent on irrigation as well. And it could be argued that the production of alcohol is a complete waste of our most valuable Australian resources – fertile soil and precious water. In a complete tragedy that seemed to be largely overlooked by the media at large, whole dairy herds were sent to the meatworks during the recent savage drought in southern Australia, because desperate dairy farmers had no water to irrigate pasture for them. While winegrowers all around them spent up big buying water rights to keep their vineyards humming along. To add insult to injury, the price of milk is controlled and it is cheaper than bottled water. I didn’t seen giving up wine drinking anywhere on the Enviroweek list?
Lastly, something that completely sums up the lack of logic. It states ‘go vegetarian’ then bangs on about the environmental unfriendliness of beef production. Last time I heard, vegetarian meant not eating any meat – meat of every kind – so no beef, no lamb, pork, chicken, fish, seafood, etc. Why just pick on beef? And if they’re going to talk specifically about beef, why not at least distinguish between grassfeed beef run in extensive paddocks in outback Australia, as distinct from cattle fattened on grain in feedlots (which have a much less environmentally friendly set of statistics).
Why not? Because whoever stuck ‘Go Vegetarian’ into the list hasn’t got a clue what they’re actually talking about. Maybe there’s not enough iron in their diet?
They’ve even got the famous AFL footy coach, Ron Barassi, as the ambassador. Ron aren’t footballs made out of leather? (Or do we just take the hide off and leave the meat for the crows?)
After a bit of digging around it became apparent that Just Jeans empire heir, photographer, Al Gore-disciple and Melbourne resident Jason Kimberley is behind ‘Cool Australia’. No doubt his heart is in the right place, but like so many fashionable band-wagon jumpers, the big picture is not properly understood and there’s a classic one-eyed simplistic zeal about it. Exhortations to ‘eat food that comes from within 200 kilometres of home’ is typical. The stated reasons why are ‘Carbon emission reduction – reduced emissions in getting food to you’ and ‘Social – supporting local businesses’ (well I guess the residents of the Barkly Homestead (maybe as many as 10 people, in the peak tourist season) had better get busy eating those several hundred thousand cows poking around the paddocks just to the north of them). Bananas can be grown in Melbourne but they’ll require a very high level of inputs compared to those grown in their natural environment, such as hot and humid north Queensland. So exhorting people to buy food grown within 200km, regardless of what it is and how it was grown, will encourage environmentally unfriendly production and huge inefficiencies. To maximise environmental sustainability, food is ideally produced in the particular environment in which it is naturally suited – production efficiency gains far outweigh energy used in transportation. So cattle are grazed in remote areas on native pastures, and horticultural crops are grown in relatively well-watered and fertile soils along the central and southern coastline. If Jason Kimberley was serious about improving environmental sustainability by eating locally, one of the most vital and absolutely urgent things to lobby for is a cessation of all building (residential and commercial) on the fertile land immediately surrounding our cities, in particular the most populous one, Sydney. A Sydney Morning Herald article sums up this agricultural urban sprawl nightmare. But, as is typical, it’s easier to tell people to turn their lights off and buy compost bins.
It’s not apparent where exactly the money raised from the ‘enviroweek’ charity will be going.