Frances Moore Lappé's Recipe for Radical Renewal

Frances Moore Lappé has, for the better part of four decades, done her very best to guide the United States toward a more rational relationship with the planet and its inhabitants. It has not been easy work, and the current circumstance would suggest that it has not been nearly so successful as Lappé or the readers of her groundbreaking books would have hoped.

But the truth is that Lappé has succeeded, masterfully.

No popular intellectual has been so very successful in reshaping the character and content of debates about environmental and food policy as this remarkable woman. It is true that there are still deniers of the truths she advances. But they are increasingly isolated in the West Wing of the Bush White House. And their days are numbered.

The future belongs to Frances Moore Lappé -- who in on a national book tour that will take her to Burlington, Vt.; Madison, Wi.; St. Louis and Worcester, Ma., in coming days -- and to those who have been guided by her wise assessments of the most fundamental issues.

Lappé will always be known as the author of Diet for a Small Planet, the 1971 book that reshaped the debate about famines, food shortages and consumption. In it, the author argued that it was not patterns of over-population, bad weather or technological inadequacy that caused human beings to be denied the sustenance they required to survive. Rather, it was the unfair distribution of the world's resources and a deficit of democracy, which undermined the ability of citizens to make that distribution fairer and more responsible.

This simple calculus, which even now is neglected by many policy makers, was revolutionary. It returned the debate about how to deal with famines and related crises to the fundamental issues of inequality and inhumanity.

The response was unprecedented. More than three million copies of Diet for a Small Planet have been sold, and the 15 books Lappé has written in ensuing years have added nuance and perspective to her original arguments while taking the debate about the human condition to new and exciting places.

The value of Lappé's contribution is now broadly recognized. She has received 17 honorary doctorates from distinguished institutions, along with the global Right Livelihood Award and the Rachel Carson Award. "A small number of people in every generation are forerunners, in thought, action, spirit, who swerve past the barriers of green and power to hold a torch high for the rest of us. Lappé is one of those," says historian Howard Zinn. The Washington Post made the same point with the observation that, "Some of the twentieth century's most vibrant activist thinkers have been American women – Margaret Mead, Jeanette Rankin, Barbara Ward, Dorothy Day – who took it upon themselves to pump life into basic truths. Frances Moore Lappé is among them."

It would be easy to rest on such laurels.

But Lappé is not resting. She's out campaigning -- to renew civic and democratic values, to restrain corporate excess and governmental abuse, to stop fearing fear itself and to start embracing the radical responses that will make America and the planet as peaceful, as healthy, as humane and as fulfilled as our knowledge and our technology makes possible.

That's the "gospel" Frances Moore Lappé preaches in her terrific new book, Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity and Courage in a World Gone Mad (Small Planet Press), and on the national tour she's now on to herald its publication.

Lappé is saying what every presidential candidate should, and she is doing so with the boldness that is required if we hope to break with Bushism and shape a future worthy of a nation founded on revolutionary promise and a world that will only be set right if that promise is kept.

"I just want to go for it," Lappé asks in the introduction to Getting a Grip. "Why can't we have a nation - why can't we have a world we're proud of? Why can't we stop wringing our hands over poverty, hunger, species decimation, genocide, and death from curable disease that we know is all needless? The truth is there is no reason we can't. They say - whoever the "they" are - that as we age, we mellow. I don't think so. I'm getting less and less patient. Why? Because I realize that humanity has no excuses anymore. In the span of my own lifetime, both historical evidence and breakthroughs in knowledge have wiped out all our excuses. We know that we know how to end this needless suffering, and we have all the resources to do it. From sociology and anthropology to economics, from education and ecology to systems analysis - the evidence is in. We know what works."

Frances Moore Lappé is as right now as she has been in the past. It is time to go for it -- no half steps, no half measures. We have a name for the failures of the past: Bush. Now that the Bush era is ending, we need to name and claim the future.

Comments (24)

1. Thanks for the excellent post, John.

   That is the one thing to be thankful for in regards to the Bush administration -- they've gotten a lot of people thinking about what the hell is going on.

   The time to think --and act-- fast is definitely upon us.

   Posted by b_kool_66 at 11/01/2007 @ 2:20pm

2. "But the truth is that Lappé has succeeded, masterfully."

   "Diet for a Small Planet" came out in 1971.

   Track the rise of vegetarianism with the rise of McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC, Jack-in-the-Box, etc.

   I'm sorry, but "reshaping the character and content of debates" is just talk. ANY politician (serious, not Dennis) going to shut down the "meat industry" and get us all "combining proteins"?

   Posted by Mask at 11/01/2007 @ 2:47pm

3. NICHOLS: We have a name for the failures of the past: Bush. Now that the Bush era is ending, we need to name and claim the future.

   Holy crap!! Nichols is blaming the "failures of the past" on Bush dating to Ms. Lappe's first book, 1971?

   Ms. Lappe: We know what works.

   Wonder if she:

   1) Gives any credit for capitalism taking hold in China & India....for eliminating famine for over 1/3 of the world's population; or

   2) Skewers socialism for turning the ex-Bread Basket of Africa, Rhodesia, into the Basket Case of Zimbabwe?

   Posted by Happy at 11/01/2007 @ 3:03pm

4. Posted by HAPPY 11/01/2007 @ 3:03pm

   Mask asks the right questions to show that Mr. Nichol's schoolboy enthusiasm is just that. And you provide some of the real answers that are proving effective in reducing poverty.

   It's Clinton and Bush, and many others around the world, with their biases toward globalisation and liberalised international trade that have and will continue to help end world poverty.

   Democratisation, mentioned in the article as part of the equation, is only advanced, so it seems, by leaders like Churchill-Roosevelt (WW2), Reagan (USSR disintegration) and Bush (Iraqi) rather than the Fabian gradualists.

   The latter is a form of dogoodism to be talked about and enjoyed by those who know little about the real world and do even less to help those at home and abroad who suffer from poverty.... except of course to blame politicians for a problem whose parameters the dogooders only dimly perceive.

   Posted by lrjones4 at 11/01/2007 @ 7:26pm

5. Democratisation, mentioned in the article as part of the equation, is only advanced, so it seems, by leaders like Churchill-Roosevelt (WW2), Reagan (USSR disintegration) and Bush (Iraqi) rather than the Fabian gradualists. ----Posted by LRJONES4 11/01/2007 @ 7:26pm

   LR, given Bush has taken longer to get Iraqi dead-per-month from 1000 to 850 than it took us to get from Normandy to Berlin (and no indication that he'll get it down to under 500 in a timeframe from "Normandy" to "The start of the Korean War"....

   do you really think there is ANY relation of Bush-43 to Churchill/Roosevelt?...or even Reagan (he was in office 8 years, if he ended the Cold War SOLO...Bush is still doing worse by a magnitude of order)?

   Also did either of those 3 men have approval ratings in the low 30s?

   Posted by Mask at 11/01/2007 @ 8:35pm

6. ....approval ratings in the low 30s?

   Posted by MASK 11/01/2007 @ 8:35pm

   Of all the people I read here, YOU are by far, the most POLL OBSESSED....Dennis at 1~3%, Edward at 7% in home state, Queenie up by bilion %, 70% wants this, 30% want that......blah, blah, blah! Maybe this explains your willingness to swallow HRC...she polls well among those susceptible to.....drum roll, please....POLLS!

   Posted by Happy at 11/01/2007 @ 9:23pm

7. i did find the articles conclusion rather tenuous.

   bush has made things worse, but an inherent greed in european (and what are we (mostly) but europeans) culture is what has truly prevented a more equitable distribution of the planets riches.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 11/01/2007 @ 10:50pm

8. Posted by MASK 11/01/2007 @ 8:35pm

   I was really trying to elicit a bit of cussin' from the alternative life stylers because that is where Frances Lappe sits. She may have been radical 30 or 40 years ago but I suspect she is passe with that movement these days.

   However you will find she is a little more than that if you read, for example, her broader ranging article "Time For Progressives to Grow Up" (common dreams 2005).

   As you know I think G W Bush's intentions were good and I tend, lacking any real evidence, to not believe that oil or enriching various corporations were his prime motivations in going to war. There is no doubt, in my mind, that he was influenced by the better aspect (viz. its idealism) of the neo-conservative philosophy.

   That combined with what has sometimes been described as an Anglo-American view of itself (GB and America) as the great civilizing - freedom bringing force in the world is, I would suggest, part of Bush's rationale for what he did. (Incidentally I think that was part of Blair's motivation also). When the war started it was referred to over here as the "Anglo/American" war.

   Of course when you read Lappe you realise that her "democratisation" is closer to the idea of nation as a family with shared interests, presumably, I haven't read her enough to say, with referedum style decision making. That in contrast to her view of the Conservative paradigm as that of strong-father-figure, top down democracy. (I feel a strong, male chauvinistic impulse coming on but I will resist it).

   We probably still have unfinished business Mask but I know your interest is in maintaining your good track record of political and geopolitical predictions. All I can say is it is not over til the fat lady sings and history, is very likely in my view to be very kind to W.

   The point I was making is that the precursor to the democratisation process (Indonesia is a modern exception) has almost invariably been bloody conflict and civil war, as in your country and France and in Iraq as perhaps the civil war it had to have, rather that talkfests and ideas that are more applicable to societies of basket weavers, vegetarians, nomads and cave dwellers.

   What I do like about the present political state of play in Iraq is what appears to be a bottom up, or even Lappe style democracy, (re?) taking root, across the recent(?) sectarian divides in Iraq.

   Don't think the fat lady has even picked up her tuning fork...... yet.

   Posted by lrjones4 at 11/01/2007 @ 10:56pm

9. Who is Frances Moore Lappé? Another lost hippie?

   Posted by ACook at 11/01/2007 @ 11:07pm

10. As a long-time admirer of Frances Moore Lappé I would warmly recommend all of her books. My personal favorite is "World Hunger: Twelve Myths" (1986).

    "Happy" wonders why we leftists don't credit "capitalism" with eliminating famine in one third of the world.

    Good grief, "Happy," you make it too easy: It's because we can't ignore the poverty, drudgery, and occasional famines that capitalism perpetuates in the OTHER TWO THIRDS. Sheesh!

    Unlike John Nichols, I would nominate as the representative of "the past" not G. W. Bush, but Earl Butz, Nixon's agriculture secretary, the man who believed that increased US-American agricultural production, minus protection for farmers or for the long-term health of the soil, was the solution to world hunger. This is precisely one of the "Twelve Myths" that Frances Moore Lappé has so skillfully demolished in her book. I can only heartily recommend this book yet again.

    More recent writers, like Michael Pollan, author of "Omnivore's Dilemma" and Barbara Kingsolver, author of "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," have confirmed FML's insights. Pollan now observes that the overproduction engendered by Earl-Butz-onomics has made processed high-fructose corn syrup one of the cheapest substances we produce -- though this cheapness is to some degree artificial, due to ag-industry subsidies. So we in the USA are increasingly becoming obese, while millions in the developing world continue to go hungry.

    The problem is not how to increase production. The problem is how to make the distribution of economic resources more fair. "The free market doesn't respond to demand -- it responds to money," argues Frances Moore Lappé. When money is more evenly distributed among the world's peoples, then the market will respond more fairly and more efficiently to their needs.

    I know the solution isn't just to print money and to ship it abroad. What we're talking about is a combination of debt forgiveness, strategic microlending (another thing FML talks about), technology swaps for carbon credits, and other means of distributing economic and technological resources to where they are most needed.

    If capitalism were just, then the hardest-working people, namely farmers, would make more money than anybody else. But most of the world's farmers are just barely scraping by -- even in our own country, despite its reputation as "the richest in the world." The few decent socialist protections that our farmers gained during the New Deal were scrapped -- by Earl Butz, who offered them nothing to compensate for their loss of autonomy but his own cynical advice: to "get big or get out."

    The sun is now setting on the Age of Earl Butz and all of his folly. And soon it will rise upon a wiser world, in which Frances Moore Lappé will be regarded as one of our new culture's Founding Mothers. I only hope our dangerously immature nation and the rest of humanity survive the tumultuous night that lies in between.

    Posted by JakobFabian at 11/01/2007 @ 11:18pm

11. Posted by JAKOBFABIAN 11/01/2007 @ 11:18pm

    Sounds to me you are howling, as usual, "Abolish Poverty! Nothing less will do."

    Posted by Happy at 11/01/2007 @ 11:46pm

12. Sounds to me you are howling, as usual, "Abolish Poverty! Nothing less will do."

    Posted by HAPPY 11/01/2007 @ 11:46pm

    is that a bad thing?

    Posted by frosty zoom at 11/02/2007 @ 12:42am

13. Teach how to fish, not give away the fish of the fisherman to those who never thought about fishing...

    Posted by JOMAMMA 11/01/2007

    there's not many fish left, actually.

    large factory ships have gobbled them up for "profit"

    Posted by frosty zoom at 11/02/2007 @ 12:44am

14. For food..

    Posted by JOMAMMA 11/02/2007

    for whom?

    Posted by frosty zoom at 11/02/2007 @ 01:37am

15. Maybe we should start cutting world population..perhaps starting with the groups that tend to have 5,6 or more kids and can't feed 1 or 2...

    nah...that would be culturaly insensitive...I should be willing to change my life style instead...

    Posted by JOMAMMA 11/02/2007

    actually, each of your kids (most likely) uses 20-40 times the resources as a resident of a less "affluent" locale.

    aren't you willing to change your lifestyle, even if it's just a wee smidgen?

    or would you like to continue on waste-o-matic?

    Posted by frosty zoom at 11/02/2007 @ 01:40am

16. "It is not the hardest working persons that capitalism necessarily rewards, but rather those who figure out a niche, provide a service or product that can be delivered to those who want (demand) it.....

    I could work hard all day making buggy whips, but it wouldn't mean a thing.

    Posted by JOMAMMA 11/02/2007 @ 12:07am

    Your reference to buggy whips is a metaphor for what really is at the heart of the movement that Lappe represents. Though it produces reams and reams of data and analysis, that appear to be scientifically credible because of its many statistical references, it is the fundamental premises about the efficiency and power of traditional v modern methods of agriculture, to feed the world's billions, that is incredible.

    The movement essentially is an extended diatribe against capitalism and free markets and particularly the incorporation of modern technologies into agriculture, as being, not only, no more able to feed the world than traditional agricultural methods but also as:

    (i) Responsible for indirectly making the capital poor farmers poorer and more prone to hunger.

    (ii) Responsible for progressively degrading the earth's agricultural soils and its eco systems.

    Here are some excerpts from an article co-authored by Lappe which spells out its position on this issue:

    http://tinyurl.com/2u64n8

    "LESSONS FROM THE GREEN REVOLUTION"

    "Do we need new technology to end hunger?"

    "Introducing any new agricultural technology into an inequitable social system cannot eliminate hunger if the social questions of access to the technology's benefits are not addressed. And if the technology in question destroys the very basis for future production by degrading the soil and generating pest and weed problems, it becomes both ecologically and economically unsustainable."

    by Peter Rosset, Joseph Collins and Frances Moore Lappe

    "Clearly, the production advances of the Green Revolution are no myth. Thanks to the new seeds, tens of millions of extra tons of grain a year are being harvested. But has the Green Revolution actually proven itself a successful strategy for ending hunger? Not really."

    "Narrowly focusing on increasing production - as the Green Revolution does - cannot alleviate hunger because it fails to alter the tightly concentrated distribution of economic power, especially access to land and purchasing power. Even the World Bank concluded in a major 1986 study of world hunger that a rapid increase in food production does not necessarily result in food security - that is, less hunger. Current hunger can only be alleviated by ‘redistributing purchasing power and resources toward those who are undernourished', the study said. In a nutshell - if the poor don't have the money to buy food, increased production is not going to help them."

    "Introducing any new agricultural technology into a social system stacked in favour of the rich and against the poor - without addressing the social questions of access to the technology's benefits - will over time lead to an even greater concentration of the rewards from agriculture, as is happening in the United States."

    Our own post industrial history of the demise of the small subsistence farmer and his consequent gravitation to the easy life style and employment opportunities of the city has also been occurring in the developing countries (eg China) and is just as certain to be the way many will escape from the present hunger and poverty of rural life. That is why developing countries are pursuing all the increased electrical energy options that are available. What they are thus effectively saying is: "Ms Lappe, you patronising old dear, you can stick your buggy whips and dirt under (our) fingernails".

    Here is just one randomly chosen but juicy headline that says it all (with URL). It's from the other side of the argument that indicates we may be dealing with a virulent form of pseudoscience:

    Plant Physiol, October 2000, Vol. 124, pp. 487-490

    EDITOR'S CHOICE

    ENDING WORLD HUNGER. THE PROMISE OF BIOTECHNOLOGY AND THE THREAT OF ANTISCIENCE ZEALOTRY

    Norman E. Borlaug

    Nobel Prize Laureate for Peace, 1970

    http://tinyurl.com/2xxeeb

    Posted by lrjones4 at 11/02/2007 @ 06:36am

17. Posted by HAPPY 11/01/2007 @ 9:23pm

    HAPP, two points--

    1. Why do I get a sneaky suspicion that when Bush was riding high in the 60s, even 70s (post 9/11)....you were more than HAPPY to point out his high approvals to all comers? Now that he's proven himself a failure...they "don't matter" and anybody pointing it out is "poll obsessed".

    2. Polls are pretty good trackers of the popular opinion.....AND the trends ELECTORALLY. You YOURSELF have said that it's like the Dems will pick up seats in Congress in 2008....why? If the polls are unimportant...AND also why, given you claim we're "winning in Iraq"?

    Posted by Mask at 11/02/2007 @ 09:02am

18. Unfortunately JAKOBFABIAN is not only fighting the "last war"...but the "war before that one".

    He thinks he's going to resurrect the "family farmer"? No...long ago, well after Earl Butz, Big Agra took over. Anything put into place to help agriculture get higher prices...is going to help ADM and ConAgra...not Farmer Brown and his family.

    And there isn't going to be some "Central American land redistribution" plan whereby we "give back" all the farms to single family or small co-op ownership.

    So...what's he think will happen in his perfect world?

    Posted by Mask at 11/02/2007 @ 09:05am

19. Dear Everybody,

    Seriously, you should visit some farmers' markets. The family farm is alive and kicking -- no thanks to Earl Butzian policies and subsidies.

    And really, all of your arguments against Frances Moore Lappé and me are variants of "might makes right." I do not cave to such bullying.

    "LRJones," Frances Moore Lappé and Michael Pollan are not recommending that we manufacture horse whips. You need to READ what these people have written before you use a silly hyperbole like that. Food production is the very opposite of a silly technology that we no longer need. We all need to eat!

    Not that your equine-age metaphor is completely useless. I believe the mighty agri-biz behemoth that today seems so invincible will soon be regarded as the "horsewhip manufacturers" of a more enlightened future age. It will never survive a loss of the agricultural subsidies that keep it afloat. But farmers will -- for the simple reason that people need to eat and always will.

    I have heard and appreciate the anecdote about "teaching people to fish" rather than handing them fish. But "Frosty Zoom's" point is well taken -- there has to be a well-managed, not over-exploited fish supply for fisherfolk to survive on; mere know-how is not enough.

    And there is another point to ponder: Which costs more to provide? A fish, or knowledge of how to get a fish?

    And really, fishing is one of the simpler tasks to teach, provided that a well-managed fish supply exists. Most jobs are much more complicated. They require education, literacy, and technological job training -- all of which costs more than a hook and some bait.

    This is why I mentioned "technology transfer" in my admittedly long previous posting. The phrase "in exchange for carbon credits" was intended to prick readers' conscience. Since we of the industrialized world are primarily responsible for global warming and the developed world is likely to suffer the worst consequences of global warming, I believe it is only proper for us -- in exchange for more time to kick the carbon-surplus habit -- to give to the peoples of the developing world the technologies they need to become more economically independent.

    Posted by JakobFabian at 11/02/2007 @ 10:03am

20. Posted by JAKOBFABIAN 11/02/2007 @ 10:03am

    JAKOB, I HAVE visited farmer's markets. In several reasonably populated cities...they are an enclave for upper-middle class folks who either think they're being "environmentally conscious" by buying a few tomatoes or a bag of apples...while spending the rest of their food dollar at the local chain on the 80-90% of items that are not available from the local growers.

    They're fun...but they're a lark for those who can afford such larks. And on a mass scale, won't work.

    Not without a MAJOR disruption of the American food production/supply system that is feeding MILLIONS of people right now. "Gradual move towards 'locally grown'"? Sure, but at a rate that won't end up with dangerous scenarios and risk...it would take just as long as it did to GET AWAY from "locally grown"....i.e. 100 years or more.

    I've heard folks here (no names needed) who think that SOMEHOW we can grow enough food...with "small farmers" (created out of no labor supply after the land is "taken back" from ADM and ConAgra)....setting up farmer's markets.

    But run the numbers sometimes....figure up HOW MANY "local markets" would it take to feed, say...CHICAGO...or Houston....or Denver...or Seattle...or Pittsburgh....or Boston. Figure up how MUCH food could be produced with 100 miles (or less even) of those major metropolitan areas to feed the MILLIONS that inhabit them.

    In other words, the "solutions" don't work...not in reality. "Gradual" would take so long that by the time you did it, we'd have "food replicators" based on nano-tech in every home and make the point moot. "Radical" solutions would end up in famine and starvation.

    As for the non-industrialized world...do what you like. "Teach them to fish" and cut the subsidies to Big Agra to stop selling them cheap food...but again, you better have a "cushion" built in to those countries FIRST, capable of taking up the slack!

    Posted by Mask at 11/02/2007 @ 10:35am

21. Posted by JAKOBFABIAN 11/02/2007 @ 10:03am

    That's all very interesting, for a discussion at the local Sunday school picnic, but it doesn't cut the ice with those who produce the vast bulk of the world's foodstuffs.

    In Australia, the driest continent on earth, the government pays farmers, on increasingly non-viable holdings because of the increase in the cost of inputs combined with lack of size or marginally fertile land, to leave the industry.

    We also have "farmers" who are quite wealthy but are managing directors or business owners in anything but farming. They are referred to as hobby farmers who contribute little to the food supply but often play around with innovative farming technologies, in concert with Dept. of Agriculture scientists. Thus they help the "real" food producers by proving up some of those ideas.

    When our children were younger we bought a clapped out 80 hectares (200 acres) country block and built an Angus cattle stud, through AI and embryo transfer technology.

    We used ultrasonic testing to measure heritable traits like muscularity, back fat and intra-muscular fat (marbling) then selected to optimise those traits as well as low birth weights, high weaning weights etc. Just before we sold out, a few years, ago we were selecting for feed conversion efficiency i.e. weight (kgs) of feed consumed per animal weight (kgs) gain. This was proving to be a moderately heritable trait. You can see how useful the latter trait would be in reducing stress on the soil if kgs of beef produced per hectare was kept constant, if that was a priority for reducing soil degradation.

    All this data was processed through a national recording scheme, which was then able to rank each animal for each trait. That sort of technology that is being repeated in other areas of food production shows why the subsistence farmer is wasting his time in attempting to compete with modern farming methods.

    We also took a crash course in soil science to get the carrying capacity of the property up and solve the various nutrient and mineral deficiencies typical of many of Australia's ancient weathered soils.

    Every time a crop is harvested or animals are sent to market, nutrients and minerals, that once were in the soil but are now in the produce, disappear via the farm gate. That is true whether the present conventional or organic methods are used. In one way or another soil fertility will decline unless those nutrients are replaced by mulching or rotating crops, such as legumes that fix nitrogen in the soil but that does not replace all the necessary minerals that end up in the produce. Thus soil testing, whether on cropping land or on pastures, is the usual way of monitoring soil fertility. Replacement of those minerals such as zinc, copper and cobalt, that are vital, in the right proportions for optimum plant growth can be added without over or under usage.

    Further farmers are apolitical when it comes to using ideas and some of the good ideas from conservation farming, such as minimum tillage, are now standard practice for successful farmers. Sustainable agriculture is the order of the day.

    I notice that Australia often joins developing countries in complaining that Europe and America are not helping the poor countries sell their produce on a "free market". One impediment is market distortion by trade barriers, like quotas and tariffs. Maybe that is part of the reason for the claimed poverty and hunger of many third world farmers.

    Posted by lrjones4 at 11/02/2007 @ 2:43pm

22. Dear "Mask,"

    Actually, I found your previous posting more thought-provoking. It raised the following question: Which happens first: a corporation gets big, or it gets subsidized? Sounds like the old chicken-and-egg conundrum to me. And a cynical one -- it's rarely the big corporations who need subsidies, after all; it's the little ones that do. But the bigger wheels squeal louder.

    The best agricultural subsidy would of course be a limited one, which starts when it is needed and stops when it is excessive. Farmers would receive it in bad years, but not in good years. They'd get more benefits for better stewardship of the land, and of course the use of fragile, marginal land would be restricted (as in Australia). This subsidy would actually benefit small farmers rather than the big ones. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to design a system of limited subsidies that would work.

    Come to think of it, as Michael Pollan writes (in "Omnivore's Dilemma" recommended reading for all omnivores), we nearly had a system like this in the 1930s (following the disastrous Dust Bowl), but it was dismantled in the 1970s and replaced by a system of subsidies without limits, which rewards production above all else, quantity always over quality. This system, as we know, benefits the big farmers more than the small ones, which was Earl Butz's scheme all along.

    And it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: Without the subsidies, organically grown stuff wouldn't seem so expensive. It isn't really that expensive, anyway, compared to most commodities, especially if it's produced locally.

    "LRJones" makes some good sense in his last posting. However, I have this to add: Health-conscious consumers nowadays are wary of marbled beef. And they are discovering that cows are both healthier and provide better meat if they're fed grass rather than grain -- the way nature designed them. Cows that live on corn get sick to their stomachs (yes, "stomachs," since each cow has several) and need perpetual veterinary care and medicine; cows that graze on grass do much better. We and the developing world could spare most of the worry and expense of so-called "modern" agriculture if we simply fed cows grass rather than corn.

    But we feed them corn -- and why? Because corn is extemely cheap. And why? Because of Earl Butzian agricultural subsidies!

    Are we starting to notice a pattern here?

    Posted by JakobFabian at 11/03/2007 @ 01:02am

23. Posted by JAKOBFABIAN 11/03/2007 @ 01:02am

    Of course it is the fat that gives meat its taste so I guess the option is eating pleasure or a potentially longer life. I could easily be a vegetarian, probably have meat once a week but have no conscience whatever about possibly shortening others lives by producing this product. (If the silly buggers want to kill themselves.....) Our original venture into cattle breeding was on an impulse (plenty of money and no brains) at the behest of our then teenage girls and boy but our interest developed from there. Our oldest, David, has just this month finished a Masters in Ag Science so the adventure probably led to his interest in the topic.

    Australian beef is primarily grass fed with some feed lotting done by the supermarket suppliers to meet that continuous demand. The only supplement we fed our cattle was grass hay in the winter (Except bulls that were prepared (by contract feeders) for national show/sales). Funny thing, breeders want them paddock raised but don't buy them unless they have been fed up to look like "prize" bulls.

    We found intra muscular fat could still be measured by ultrasound with these grass fed beasts, at 12 moths old with no grain feeding at all, if measured after grazing on clover rich spring pastures. Snow doesn't fall in most of the dry lands pasture areas and never in the extensively natural grass cattle stations (ranches), which are measured, in many square kilometres across the northern part of the country.

    The Japanese love marbled meat and pamper and stuff their Waygu cattle with any supplement that will increase deposition of intramuscular fat. Think even beer can be on the menu.

    I'm a bit out of touch now but Australia promoted "clean green" grass fed cattle to Japan with some success maybe 7 or 10 years ago.

    Here's a reference I found:

    I highlighted the word big in the previous paragraph, because big they are... South and North America certainly produce a lot of cattle, too. (Brazil is the world's biggest exporter, before Australia at number two.) But if you look at the size of the individual stations you will find that the Australian cattle stations are by far the biggest in the world. In fact, some Australian stations are bigger than some European countries... Take Anna Creek Station, well known as the biggest Australian cattle station: this station in the Outback of South Australia covers 6'000'000 acres, or 34'000 km2. (Belgium by comparison is just over 30'000 km2, and the biggest American ranch is about 6'000 km2.) Why this huge size? Most of Australia's cattle stations are located in the north and the central regions of the Australian Outback. The Australian continent is so dry and the vegetation so sparse that a large amount of country is needed to support enough cattle to make a living. This style of farming cattle is very different from what you might know, especially if you come from Europe. It is a very natural way. The animals are basically wild. They are usually born and grow up without any human contact. They are grass fed and rarely require any chemical treatment. Trust me, you can taste the difference between a steak from the Kimberley and one from a grain feed lot...

    Posted by lrjones4 at 11/03/2007 @ 02:42am

24. Posted by JOMAMMA 11/03/2007 @ 11:53am

    JM,

    Asked the missus how often we have meat. She said if you weren't on the phone or with your head in a book, at mealtime, you'd know what you were eating. In my usual diplomatic way I asked; are you going to answer my question or not? Most nights of the week, she said. So there you are I'm not almost a vegetarian after all. Thank goodness (Also forgot the 3 or 4 business lunches per week. I guess that tasty stuff with blood oozing out of it was rare beef steak).

    A few years ago a Welsh friend came to Australia for a holiday and he stayed with a mutual friend, in their home of healthy eating fanaticism, for a few days. When he left he came racing over to our place and said to my wife; "Quick! Please give me something to eat that's bad for me".

    So there it is in a nutshell. You can die a bit younger with a contented smile on your face or eke out a few more miserable years on barely edible food.

    Posted by lrjones4 at 11/04/2007 @ 02:24am