Ps I’m vegan, asking for a friend. Thanks!
Posted Jan 27, 2020, 8:41 AM UTC
I would contact people that have plenty of experience in helping farms transition away from animal exploitation.
I can personally recommend "Hof-Narr" which is an animal sanctuary in Switzerland.
Send them an E-Mail ([email protected] ) if you are interested.
Their website (https://www.hof-narr.ch/) for now is only in German tho.
You can also find them on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hofnarrhinteregg
The premise that the soil is permanently too poor to farm except by sheep farming is just false. Wales (and Scotland) used to be heavily forested and got deforested because people wanted firewood and wanted to farm sheep. We no longer use firewood and we could just as easily stop the grazing and start reforestation to improve soil quality. Once that process carries on for two or three decades you start regenerating soil enough to plant some fruit trees and there you go. Apple farms instead of sheep farms.
Sounds great in theory, but in reality that's not how it works. Where I used to farm (sheep) in England is a place very similar to the place where OP farms. Those hills will once have been forested but that was a very, very long time ago and that good soil has gone now. Our mountains in the UK have been bare since the Romans.
When you move to forestry the only way to make it pay is to move to mono cultured pine forestry which comes with a lot of its own problems and does not really improve soil quality like you are saying. The soil it produces is not really very rich at all and can become quite acidic. Planting native/deciduous forest is not an activity that is supported by government subsidies or the CAP and it is not something that makes money commercially either.
Planting native/deciduous forest is not an activity that is supported by government subsidies or the CAP and it is not something that makes money commercially either.
And meat subsidies exist. CO2 taxes don't or aren't very effective Traditional people like farmers tend to stick to traditions.. etc. There are lots of reason why Welsh farmers can't or don't stop farming sheep.
That is not the point. Whether something is a certain way is not the same as how that thing should be. Veganism is a moral philosophy, not a science. Veganism deals with how things should be.
There should be subsidies for restoring ecosystems that have been destroyed, even if that happened thousands of years ago. And people should stop using animals as property. That is kind of the whole point.
So you mean changing the way nature made that land and forcing animals to go on that land and most likely starve to death. Not mentioning that it would take decades before animals would to able to move in. Plus, what about the farmers that used to live off this land, what would they do?
Nature didn't make the landscape in Wales. Humans did. Changing the landscape back is a lot of work that the farmers will be needed for. They can also get some other job. Farmers are a minute fraction of the job market.
Forests do not indicate high quality soil, in fact, the Amazon is regarded as pretty bad soil.
Forests indicate better soil quality relative to grasslands. You are absolutely right that the tropical satosol soils are very washed out and poor (compared to most temperate soils). But if you slash the Amazon, turn it into feedlots and grassland the soil quality decreases even further.
That is in general of course. If you plant eucalyptus monoculture forests you'd literally poison the soil and prevent any other appreciable vegetation from growing. And it would be worse than grasslands.
Forests are not good quality soil. They use synthetic fertilizers to make various crops grow. They just cut down the forest for space.
forest soil is the best soil there is
Very wrong.
nope, i'm a farmer. i know what i'm talking about
The premise that the soil is permanently too poor to farm except by sheep farming is just false.
Anecdotal (because I live in Wales and this is my observation). There is a LOT of lowlands which is used for beet farming, and some other crops. Most of the beet is used to support the sheep industry - they will use the sheep to strip the beet to fatten up prior to slaughter. At least that's how it was explained to me by my wife's family who run a farm.
The fact there is land in which you can grow arable quite happily to support the animal agriculture system shows that there could be suitable investment into changing that to crops for human consumption. And I'd hazard a guess that the amount needed would be less.
Highlands (mountains and the like) is a completely different story. Leave them wild.
TL:DR - crops are grown in Wales on a regular basis, just not for humans.
No one cried for type-writer manufacturers or type-writer repairmen when type-writers become obsolete.
Why should animal-farmers be any different?
It's not on us for the Luddites to adapt.
Type-writer manufactures = farmers
You have to read dumb things when you are in this sub
*animal-farmers
you have to read dumb things when you are in this sub
Why not tourism?
Keep the sheep as rescues to live out their lives. Plant a small raised raised bed veggie garden. Make the farmhouse into a cute B&B, with meals from the garden. Allow international tourists to see the beauty of the Wales countryside, and allow them to be part of the living history that is a farm in Wales. Get a WOOFER or two to help with the veggies and sheep for a place to stay if it's too much.
After the sheep pass away, there are five native species of deer that I'm sure would love to hang out and safely graze. Deer are smart and like us, like to chill where people won't kill them; when I visited my dad's rural hometown as a kid deer would always be on the church steps or wandering around town because they couldn't be hunted there.
I do realize y'all are part of Brexit and that makes pretty much everything more difficult when it comes to international trade or work, but tourism is a model other sanctuaries and transitioning farms have used.
Why do they have to be a farmer forever?
I think we'd have to go through the reasons why the land is not fun. However we have modern fertilizers which can boost baby, also modern tilling and other methods to add organic inputs into soil to improve the quality. Also you could even go to the Netherlands or Spain route and have highly productive greenhouses
When we have a vegan world there will be less farming overall because producing plant based food is much more efficient and in some regions farming wont be profitable, so some farmers will have to find another way of making money, that is a risk every business faces.
As a society we should not ask how we can save farming in some area because first it is a good thing if less people work in farming because it means that we became more efficient at feeding us, which means that as a society we either have to do less for the same standard of living or we have free resources to improve it. The second is that if we try to keep farming profitable with subsidies or similar we are paying more for a product than it is worth and are destroying businesses elsewhere which could produce food more efficiently.
Animal agriculture is destroying the planet. Animal rights will help Wales continue to exist into the future
Global population is only expected to increase, while our soil quality is only expected to decrease.
The only way to effectively feed all those people is to shift to plant based agriculture and re-wild less productive crop areas to preserve our environment.
Air farms or hydroponics
shits not healthy. plants need living soil for nutrients. that being said, there are contexts where hydroponics can serve a transitional role
Bro stop talking from your ass. The same as you have to take supplements plans receive nutrients in the water, so is vegan not been healthy? The things that you have to read.
"The same as you have to take supplements plans receive nutrients in the water, so is vegan not been healthy?" -- The things that you have to read.
soil quality can increase very simply. loam can be built within a 5-10 year span. it just relies on small-scale farming though, which is the catch. this is why vegans should make it an imperative, especially if you're young and/or not tied to a career, to become produce farmers.
Most likely, something can be grown there. If any vegetation grows in a reasonable quantity there, there is surely something profitable that can be grown.
Fun fact: Things that occur on "non arable" land: vineyards. Nut trees. Tree farms. Just to name a few.
What kind of crop can occur on any given non-arable land is entirely dependent on the specific piece of land itself. I have no idea what Wales could grow, but I bet they have a few options.
As others have said though, in general vegans are not concerned with the well-being of those who farm animals. They're welcome to either adapt or get fucked in the transition away from animal exploitation. Nobody was worried how slave drivers would fare after ending slavery. As such, it makes no sense to worry how mass animal abusers will fare after ending mass animal abuse.
who the hell raised you to talk to people that way?
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yeah. veganism doesn't advocate for rewilding. most compost is cheap. expensive compost is effective. build soil.
Do something else with the land. Why must you grow something there if it's not profitable? Either invest in bettering the soil, or do something else with the land.
Since I believe in social democracy, I think that the government should help them by providing an economic safety net, which should empower welsh sheep farmers to find other, more ethical ways to make a living
why can't those farmers just become the new animal sanctuary caretakers for the no-longer-on-the-market sheep in the new vegan society? animal-farmers also defend themselves with cries of love for the animals they slaughter. well, here's and obvious alternative. that always puzzled me....
Yeah that could work hopefully. I'm not an expert in animal farming economics so IDK
it's heavily subsidized. the same subsidies would pay for sanctuary workers
I’m not sure there’s really a practical answer to this.
Sure, some areas in Wales have recently converted to tourist sites (zip wires across quarries, trampolining in mines etc) but you need just the right environment to do that successfully and the balls to risk everything you own on making it work too. Oh and shit loads of good fortune...
Good luck to your “friend”...!
"possible and practicable" - in your scenario as you have laid out I don't see another solution. Keep grazing
The answers so far as to how do you help Wales are, you don’t. Wales just accepts the new rule of law and shit situation it’s in.
Veganism (at least in this sub) does not seek to help, improve or accept small step forwards in the overall goal. Only to lecture the narrowed world view on all topics, regardless of the situation.
Down vote me, I’m sure you will
I upvoted you!
doing my part!
Boycotting animal products will not help welsh animal farmers. It won’t help any animal farmers in fact. The whole point of any boycott is to make the unethical businesses unprofitable. Helping those who profited off misery and suffering of others is only an afterthought, at best.
It is also pretty arrogant to suggest that Welsh sheep farmers represent the entire country of Wales, when they’re only a small part of its modern economy. We’re helping Wales by making its citizens to live a more ethical life.