Comments on: Intensive farming is a solution, not the problem

By: Ed Harris

Ed Harris — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:47:28 +0000

As you suggest in your piece, it’s important to encourage people to think beyond individual behaviour and to question the broader structures which have brought intensive farming to its current depths. Some writing about captialism and neoliberalism (I forget who, would cite if I could remember) said that in today’s world, the state has power without responsibility, and the individual is given responsibility without power. In the case of intensive farming, last week’s programs emphasised the responsibility individual consumers have to make more ethical food choices, but failed to acknowledge the lack of power that many consumers feel in today’s society. The programs also spectacularly failed to question the role of the state in regulating (using their power) agri-industrial farming in the UK - evidence perhaps of the lack of responsibility required from the state in today’s neoliberal age?
It’s good to read a well-balanced bit of analysis on this subject, amidst all the class- and income-focused journalism that’s been spinning around this week.
I’ve written more on this here.

By: morethananelectrician

morethananelectrician — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 03:44:10 +0000

This is a very well developed effective solution to a very complex issue. This is a subject that must hit you close to home.

Here in the states, “Intensive farming” falls under similar scrutiny. But, generally speaking, not enough to make any kind of change. I would be curious to see data on percentages of household that are able to live by their own means (within their own city, town or village).

By: mauzi

mauzi — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:28:28 +0000

Very thought provoking and I certainly agree that the issues we face are far more complex than “intensive farming”. Your list of what to do was very extensive and yet very very achievable - thanks. I always believe that if you have a complaint you also should offer your opinion of the solution.

I also believe that we are coming into a crisis situation where we will all be forced to look at the size of the issues facing us. It seems that is the only way that many will even consider that their is a problem at all.

By: Stonehead

Stonehead — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:02:49 +0000

I’ve just had an email claiming that the difference in the cost of production between an intensively reared, indoor chicken and a less intensively produced free range chicken is a negligible 50p.

I don’t where the figure came from or how reliable is, but it’s hardly negligible. Lloyd Maunder alone produces 500,000 chickens per week. Yes, half a million chickens a week.

As 60 per cent of their chickens are reared in higher welfare systems, that leaves 200,000 “standard” chickens.

If, and it’s a big if, the 50p figure is correct, then changing those 200,000 standard chickens to free range would cost the company £100,000 a week. How much of that would the company have to bear, how much the supermarkets, and how much the consumers?

And that’s just one producer of chickens.

By: Stonehead

Stonehead — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:50:30 +0000

At what point do we start turning people on to the complexity and size of the problems facing everyone? Most of the modern issues facing humanity have been around in some form or another for decades, and still they have to be kept simple for “the masses”.

It’s become a convenient way of avoiding responsibility, postponing action and ignoring consequences.

i suspect we can’t stay simple and dumb for much longer, though, as the point is coming when reality is going to reach through our invisible clothes, grab us good and hard, and twist unmercifully hard.

By: mummys little angel

mummys little angel — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:29:36 +0000

here, here!

I was saying a similar thing to my mother the other day who was banging on about banning this and banning that saying that we can all afford free range chicken etc and that £1 or £2 on the price is not much. Well that’s easy for her to say she doesn’t have to feed to growing children, with very healthy appetites, on a tight budget.

I am one of the lucky ones, I do have access to good quality meat, most of the time but if I did not have that resource I too would have to put up with the intensively farmed stuff.

Baning is not the answer, as you say, because it just mean cheap inferior imports!

By: uphilldowndale

uphilldowndale — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:27:02 +0000

Whilst I agree with your list of what needs to be done, I think it is worth while considering that for the large majority of people, they haven’t ever given a thought to where their food has come from or how it was produced, and if watching this weeks programs has given them food for thought, it a step, all be it, a baby step, in the right direction.
I think the programs that have been aired this week, of course barely touch the complexity of the problems and err on the side of populist and sensational, but people have to start somewhere, if they are not to be ‘turned off’ by the magnitude of the problem.
It’s not, in my view the programs that are wrong, the important thing is what other debates comes with them.
The irony is that, in living cheek by jowl with intensively reared poultry, as is happening in Asia, we run the risk of Avian Flu, making the leap across to infecting humans; I suppose pandemic flu will get the world population numbers down a bit.