A Happy Alternative? Could It Be?

The system described in chapter 11 of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma is much more palatable.  In this chapter, Pollan explains his experience on Joel Salatin’s Polyface farm.  Joel uses an extremely sustainable system to produce beef, poultry, pork, rabbit, and eggs.  In his system, he rotates his animals so as to use their natural habits and natural waste to aid each of the other elements in the cycle.  There is no one place to start, since it is a loop.  This is a major difference between his system and the industrial system.  Instead of a linear path from fossil fuel to corn to animal to waste, Joel’s system turns all waste into fuel for a different cycle.  Joel uses sunlight for grass, which is food for cows, whose manure houses larva to feed chickens.  The chickens then spread the manure and eat the larva, which eliminates cattle pests, and of course, the chickens produce eggs.  Turkeys and meat chickens also cycle over the land in a similar fashion, along with spreading and pecking through rabbit droppings, which otherwise would be garbage due to its high ammonia levels from rabbit urine.  Pigs, in a similar fashion, aerate the manure that cattle produce in winter in their shed.  Joel gets them to do so by spreading corn in the manure as it layers, leaving tasty treats for pigs to dig for as they turn over manure to create ideal fertilizer.  This system does not rely on fossil fuel, and within the cycle are happy animals doing exactly what nature intended, whether it pecking, eating, digging, scratching or wandering.

           

            This is exactly the kind of system that gets me excited about local, natural foods.  It seems almost to good to be true, and is truly ingenious.  The animals are happy, the farmer is proud, the food is apparently delicious, and the system is sustainable.  What more could you really ask for?  Well, I guess people would argue that this system could not feed the world’s population, and this is probably true.  This system is not focused on mass production and quantity; it is focused on the truth of the system and the quality of the food.  Sure, this will not feed the world, but adding these kinds of farms to the market is a vital step forward.  It is a totally different mindset, and like was mentioned in chapter 13, change in the food system can be much like the change in our religious system in the past.  By adding new structures and markets, we will diversify, and create a more rounded society.  Local food, organic food, industrialized organic food, industrial food, and who knows what is next, can each have a part of the food industry overall.  Joel’s Polyface farm opened my eyes to a whole different perspective, without government regulation and without the strict mindset of profit and yield.  This is the food I would like to eat, and I think this is a system that will be very attractive to those who are exposed to it.  And where there is a demand, someone will supply.

Why don’t you think the government chooses to help subsidize these kinds of farms?

If this system really works, why don’t more farmers switch to this kind production?

Is there a fault in this system that Pollan did not reveal, or is this system as seemingly flawless as is it made out to be?

chickens in sunshine?

grass-eating cows?

space between pigs?

Could It Really Be?

Images from:
[Photograph], Retrieved Feb 15, 2011, from: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/national-sustainable-agriculture-standards.php
[Photograph], Retrieved Feb 15, 2011, from: http://williamsgreenscene.wordpress.com/
[Photograph], Retrieved Feb 15, 2011, from: http://martinzoo.homeschooljournal.net/2010/05/13/polyface-farm-tour/