Sanet,
Oh my, I would sure like to know where Avery gets his figures from on the
statement where he says, "Confinement hogs
>generally use 25 percent less feed per pound of meat than outdoor hogs.
>And they mean more livestock and poultry jobs in the rural United States
>instead of in China or Argentina."
First of all, the claim on feed conversion. If anyone does some simple
math that means that an avg. 3 to 1 feed conversion for finishing pigs would
have to be improved to 2.25 to 1 !!!!!! I have not even heard of any feed
companies trying to brag of a figure like that yet! This also doesn't take
into account that the factory farm type loop production systems up here in
Ontario also take out the bottom 10% of the pigs at weaning and at the time
they are moved to the finishing unit. So the production #'s they release to
compare to the production #'s of an independent family farm are bound to be
better when you only count the top 80 out of every 100 pigs!
The only time I've heard of a feed conversion approaching that 2.25 to 1
efficiency, it involved good clover pasture. [right Greg!? :) ]
And the statement on jobs, does Avery have a study to back up his claims
on that? I know that I have read some of John Ikerd's and Bill Heffernan's
work and their reports certainly show that corporate farming does not
support as many families as do independent family farms. Does Avery not
realize that with the systems that companies like Smithfields are forming,
they can simply cancel or fail to renew production contracts with a mortgage
holding serf, and start producing the pork in another country where the
labor is even cheaper? When that scenario comes about, they will be
providing a big, fat, zero jobs to the U.S. or Canada in hog production.
Oh, I guess I forgot Avery is not interested in the truth!
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: Ericka & Rich Dana <doodles@netins.net>
To: orGANicgrowing@egroups.com <orGANicgrowing@egroups.com>; sanet
<sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu>; Ban-GEF@lists.greenbuilder.com
<Ban-GEF@lists.greenbuilder.com>
Date: Saturday, February 19, 2000 5:27 PM
Subject: Avery's response to the Pie People (BBB)
>Here's another Avery piece, FYI. Enjoy!
>Ericka
>
>--The Mighty Oak was once a little nut that held its ground.
>-------------------------
>http://examiner.com/opinion/0503avery.shtml
>The San Fransisco Examiner
>May 3, 1999
>
>Dennis T. Avery, based in Churchville, Va., is director of global food
>issues for the Hudson Institute of Indianapolis.
>
>The pied piper of biotech farming
>By Dennis T. Avery
>SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER
>-------------------------
>CHURCHVILLE, VIRGINIA --
>
>I HAD the honor of being splattered with a chocolate pie, hurled on behalf
>of the Biotic Baking Brigade, as I was giving a speech at Grinnell College
>in Iowa.
>The Brigade issued a statement that said the pie was punishment for my
>"dangerous, shameless and flagrant support of biotechnology and industrial
>factory farming."
>I am proud to say, "Guilty as charged." I am guilty of supporting virtu-
>ally any technology or farming system that will safely and sustainably
raise
>yields on the world's farms.
>I am proud to be a small part of the global agricultural research system,
>which has saved a billion babies from starvation and death ‹ and
>incidentally prevented the plowdown of 15 million square miles of wildlife
>habitat for low-yield crops.
>The pie was a special honor, considering other recent recipients of pies
>from the Brigade, a network inspired by activists loosely based in San
>Francisco.
>It is flattering to be among giants like the Nobel laureate Milton Friedman
>and Larry Vanderhoef, chancellor at UC-Davis, where some of the world's
>finest agricultural research is conducted. (Last November in San Francisco,
>Mayor Willie Brown was pied by the Brigade; his three assailants were
>sentenced to jail for misdemeanor battery.)
>The real insult at Grinnell College was that the pie-thrower, who isn't a
>student, didn't listen to the speech. He simply snuck through a back door,
>threw his pie and fled.
>David Campbell, chairman of the environmental department at Grinnell,
called
>the pie-throwing "witless, cowardly, puerile and violent."
>A pie in the face hardly advances the discussions the world needs to have
>about biotechnology, disappearing family farms, the environment or anything
>else.
>I'm in favor of biotechnology in food production because the expected world
>population of nearly 9 billion people in 2050 will demand nearly three
times
>as much food as the world consumes today.
>Without new breakthroughs in biotechnology, we will probably not be able to
>produce that additional food ‹ not without plowing up tens of millions of
>square miles of land now in a wild state.
>The risk for the 21st century is not famine, but wildland destruction on a
>huge scale.
>Of course, the Biotic Baking Brigade may be able to identify a risk to
>humans from biotech food that outweighs the conservation of wildlands. If
>so, I want very much to take such risks into account.
>To date, however, scare tactics about "Frankenstein foods" have been backed
>only by vague mutterings about "allergens" ‹ and humanity has always been
>surrounded by millions of allergens.
>Some activists have even gone so far as to claim that the new "Terminator
>gene" will cause all the world's plants to become sterile and trigger mass
>famine.
>But how does a gene that prevents reproduction get loose into wild plants?
>If it works, it stops itself. It is designed to prevent the escape of
>bioengineered traits and should be welcomed by intelligent
conservationists.
>What about "factory farms?" I have many neighbors involved in contract
>production of poultry and several friends involved in contract hog farming.
>They see it as a more efficient way to produce meat. Confinement hogs
>generally use 25 percent less feed per pound of meat than outdoor hogs.
>And they mean more livestock and poultry jobs in the rural United States
>instead of in China or Argentina.
>Of course, we don't have farming to please farmers. We have farming because
>we need food and fiber. Farms produce a lot more food per acre than hunting
>or gathering. So much for the praise heaped upon primitive tribes and
>peasant farmers.
>I hope that someday the adolescent mock-heroism of the Biotic Baking
Brigade
>will find a goal worthy of its members' passion and intelligence. Forcing
>the world back into low-yield farming doesn't even come close.
>I have one other suggestion for the Biotic Bakers. I am not that fond of
>chocolate. I hope they make the next one banana cream.
>
>
>
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