As a converted vegetarian and vegan, the article by Michael Pollan sincerely touched me. In high school I had confronted the many tragedies that the factory farming operations perpetuate. Michael writes about engaging with other animals and specifically mentions the importance of looking into an animal’s eyes. He asserts that, “eye contact, always slightly uncanny, had provided a vivid daily reminder that animals were at once crucially like and unlike us; in their eyes we glimpsed something unmistakably familiar (pain, fear, tenderness) and something irretrievably alien”. With this fantastic thought Michael draws a connection between the human-animal relationship and the way we raise and consume animals. He feels that we have grown distant from our food because of the limited contact that we have with other creatures. He continues to argue that if we passed, “a law requiring that the steel and concrete walls of the CAFO’s [concentrated animal farming operation] and slaughterhouses be replaced with . . . glass”, that few would eat the meat, eggs and dairy coming from these operations because of their sheer brutality and utter disregard for the life of the creatures.
On another end of the same field, Josh Donlan calls for the American people to consider reintroducing megafauna – large animals – that once occupied the same land that we now do. He explains how large animals such as elephants, lions and wolves play keystone roles in the ecosystem by causing trophic cascades. A trophic cascade means that one animal on the top of the food chain commits an act that ripples outward into the ecosystem. For an amazing explanation on how these animals create such substantial change, please take four and a half minutes to view this video called ‘How Wolves Change Rivers‘. Josh argues that reintroducing megafauna will allow for these animals to perform much needed ecosystem services, enhance biodiversity and restore the land that we humans have so greatly damaged.
My response to these two cases this week unifies ideas brought forth by Pollan and Donlan. How will we create ecosystems that allow animal life to flourish, sustain massive ethically and environmentally sound farming operations for meat and eggs, and restore the land all at the same time?
Fortunately, a farmer named Mark Shepard has asked similar questions and has worked towards solutions to these problems for the past twenty years. Mark established New Forest Farm, an agroecoystem that models the oak savannah biome that covered an enormous amount of land in the Midwest and Western United States. His farm consists of fruit and nut trees, berry and nut bushes, understory vegetables and herbs, grape vines, ground covering plants and mushrooms all working together in an integrated plant guild. He plants these guilds in rows that follow the contour of the land and allows a native grass mix to grow in the space between rows for animals to graze in. Mark makes comments repeatedly throughout the book that the savanna ecosystem has the capability of sustaining the most animal life compared to every other biome on the planet. He grazes cattle, sheep, chickens, turkeys, lamb and more on his farm while these animals enjoy an amazing diet consisting of forage, grasses, forbs, fruits and nuts.
Now, imagine a hundred thousand acre savannah agroecosystem farm. This enormous amount of land could theoretically sustain all of the animals that Mark Shepard cultivates, but it can also do so much more. With this amount of acreage, larger animals such as camels, lions, horses and even elephants could exist within this system, performing vital ecosystem functions and enjoying the abundant plant life. I believe that the savannah agroecosystem model provides an opportunity for incredibly humane animal production as well as a possibility for Pleistocene rewilding.
For more information about savannah based agroecosystems, please visit the Woody Perennial Polyculture Research Site.