I thought this was interesting.....seems that no matter how
harmful the SAD may be......the "big brains" in our
universities are still beating the drum.......I'm sending
the whole thing along for those who always want to
know the source.......but I've put *****'s around
the sections that particularly struck me.......with
my comments................................
[log in to unmask]
Walk The Path With Practical Feet!
Forwarded from Gaia-l List.......................
UniSci - Daily University Science News
Applying the "polluter pays" principle, a Cornell University ecologist
and author suggests a way to improve the environmental sustainability
of agriculture: Levy taxes according to food-chain ranking so that
products with the worst environmental impact cost the most.
"We should internalize the costs of dietary preferences. If one
chooses to eat high-impact food, one should pay the full costs of such
a choice," says David Pimentel, the professor of ecology and
agricultural science who is a co-editor and co-author of the newly
published book Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment,
Conservation, and Health (Island Press, 2000, ISBN 1-55963-807-9).
******************************************
At the top of the ecologist's tax table -- and highest in his ranking
of foods that require the most resources to produce while wreaking
more environmental degradation -- are meats from factory-farmed
mammals, such as beef, pork and eggs. The same foods are the least
healthy when consumed in excess, Pimentel notes.
To be taxed the least are products at the bottom of humans' food chain
-- foods that are more efficiently grown while causing less
environmental impact -- such as legumes, grains, vegetables, starch
crops, fruits and nuts. People eating plant-based diets generally
consume fewer health-care resources, the author maintains.
******************************************
****My Opinion.....this is the same story that has been preached
for many generations......but in my opinion, the diet heavy in
legumes and grains and starchy foods is a "poverty" diet....
as in beans and rice, or cornmeal mush......we didn't evolve
to eat this way.......and our obese, diabetic population
should prove that to anyone with a lick of sense.....the rest
of this is the original post.....no opinions from me...........
Ardeith.................................................*********
Pimentel's beef with beef and other mammalian food products at the top
of the food chain centers on efficiencies of production and their
"true costs," including long-term degradation of the environment.
Writing a chapter on agricultural sustainability with Robert Goodland,
the tropical ecologist and adviser to the World Bank, the Cornell
professor offers statistics to spoil the appetite of filet mignon
fans:
o Seven pounds of cattle feed is required to produce a pound of beef,
compared with two pounds of fish feed for some aquaculture species.
o In the United States, the 104-million-strong cattle herd is the
country's largest user of grain.
o Growing an acre of corn to feed cattle takes 535,000 gallons of
water.
o Agricultural production consumes more fresh water than any other
human activity. Worldwide, about 70 percent of pumped fresh water is
consumed (is not recoverable) by agriculture. In the western United
States, the figure is about 85 percent.
o Worldwide, food crops are grown on 11 percent of the Earth's total
fertile land area.
o Another 24 percent of the land is used as pasture to graze livestock
for meat and milk products. Marginal land for pastures makes possible
the production of meat and milk products on land unsuitable for food
crops.
o Most cropland is threatened by at least one type of degradation
(including erosion, salinization and waterlogging of irrigated soils),
and 10 million hectares of productive land are severely degraded and
abandoned each year. Replacing agricultural land accounts for 60
percent of deforestation now occurring worldwide.
The new book, with 23 co-authors and three co-editors, represents the
synthesis and findings of the Global Integrity Project. Since 1992,
that project has brought together leading scientists and thinkers from
around the world to examine the combined problems of threatened and
unequal human well-being, degradation of the ecosphere and
unsustainable economies. The contributors examine key elements of
ecological integrity and consider what happens when it is lost or
compromised.
For his part, Pimentel notes that "a powerful trend to eat lower on
the food chain" has started in many developed nations. U.S. beef
consumption, after peaking at 95 pounds per person a year in 1976, has
dropped to around 65 pounds today. Beef consumption in Europe and the
United Kingdom never reached those levels and is now falling even
faster than in the United States.
"But the countervailing trend is for people in developing nations to
eat more meat as they become richer," Pimentel says, noting that
China's pork consumption jumped 14 percent in 1995 alone.
Pimentel and Goodland called on international aid agencies such as the
World Bank to phase out investments in intensive livestock production
in Third World countries, "especially grain-fed livestock, and leave
it to the private sector." Such groups, they write, "should ensure
that good economics prevail, including accounting for full
environmental and social costs."
The authors would make exceptions in their tax plan for small-scale
meat and milk production, such as natural range-fed cattle, the family
cow or pig and scrap-fed chickens. But they know where the food chain
tax collection should focus for the greatest bureaucratic efficiency.
In the United States, they write, "beef sales are the single-largest
revenue source within the whole agriculture sector. Only four
meatpackers in the United States hold 82 percent of the market,
suggesting a low-cost place to tax." - By Roger Segelken
[Contact: [3]Roger Segelken]
3. [log in to unmask]
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