The right way to eat meat and drink milk

JENNY THORNHILL

Shop Manager, Jenny Thornhill, explains the stark differences between small scale, mixed Biodynamic farming and large scale industrial monocultures and gives her opinion on the cultural climate towards eating meat and drinking milk. Does farming how we do hold the answers to many of the problems we face with the environment today?

After the busy hectic Christmas period is over there follows a quiet period where there is time to reflect on the issues coming towards us. Farming is in the news a lot at the moment and not in a very positive way, much of it in relation to the climate. Sadly, there appears to be no recognition that there are very different approaches to farming. There is little or no distinction between large industrial farming units and small mixed farms and the impacts they both have on the environment. It is as if all farming is bad and responsible for the climate crisis, but without farms we would have no food.

Most large monoculture industrial farms are producing a ‘commodity’ that is sold into the commodities market. The farmer has no connection to the end consumer and isn’t involved in where it will end up and who it will feed; humans, animals, or fuel for cars. All that is of interest is yield, and yield at any cost; this is the goal and this is how their income is determined. To continually improve on yields the crops and soil depend more and more on ‘inputs’ - fertilisers, pesticides and fungicides. There is no doubt that modern, industrialised farming is very efficient if you are purely looking at yield and ignore its consequences.

Small, mixed farms like Plaw Hatch and many others in the UK and across the world, operate in a very different way. Mixed farms mean growing a variety of crops and raising several species of livestock. This has benefits for the soil and those working the land and with these ever-changing weather patterns, if one crop suffers because of the weather it is likely that another will benefit from it (for example, in 2018 we had a brilliantly hot and dry summer, and whereas our leafy field crops were less productive, we had an absolute glut of tomatoes and cucumbers.) Our eggs are really not all in one basket. This approach makes us far more resilient; it more closely matches what happens in nature. We have to work with nature; not try to control it.

The present bad press about farms, farming practices and the climate should be good for farms like ours if only it were made clear that not all farms work in the same way, but we feel like a target too. There are many like us that want to produce food (not commodities) in a responsible way. We want to engage with our customers. I would love to see the press encourage the public to support the farms that practice high animal welfare and care of the soil, and therefore help these farms flourish and grow. Such support would encourage more farmers to farm this way.

When I was growing up, we always had two Jersey cows; Gem and Sapphire were our first. We drank raw creamy milk everyday (we didn’t call it raw; it was just milk) and we made our own butter and yoghurt and from these Jersey cows we raised a couple of beef animals each year.

We also kept a few pigs who would drink the excess milk and when the time came the pigs and beef animals would go off to our local small abattoir, just 10 minutes away. My mother had a very good relationship with the people at the abattoir and she was very particular about the animals arriving stress free and not hanging around unnecessarily. The carcasses would be returned to us and a local butcher would come to our home and butcher the carcasses into the various joints for our freezer. Although we had all known these animals intimately, we all saw this as a part of the circle of life and knew we were eating meat that had had a good life, and ultimately a good death.

“We do not have a right to farm them if we disregard their welfare and wellbeing in pursuit of cheap meat.”

I don’t think I appreciated at the time how lucky I was, and it was when I moved away and was faced with purchasing ‘anonymous’ meat that I became vegetarian. Anonymous because I had no idea where or, more importantly, how it had been reared. There was simply no connection.

Years later when I moved to live here in Forest Row and encountered both Plaw Hatch and Tablehurst Farms, I then began to eat and enjoy meat again.

I listen to many radio programmes about food and farming. When the topic of livestock comes up, and particularly in relation to pigs, they discuss the different methods of raising pork. There is often the comment that for as long as the consumer demands cheap pork then we must produce cheap pork, meaning pigs raised indoors in cramped conditions, on slats, in farrowing pens, away from their natural habitat and unable to exhibit natural behaviour like digging and rooting. I completely disagree. We have no right to demand or expect cheap meat. To demand or expect animals to be kept in such conditions.

We should only produce meat that is reared in a way that allows the animals to exhibit their natural behaviour. And if, as a result, we can only afford to eat it now and again, then that’s how it should be. We do not have a right to farm them if we disregard their welfare and wellbeing in pursuit of cheap meat.

As a farm that produces raw milk, I am very aware that many people are thinking about whether adopting a vegan diet would be better for the environment and of course we have just had Veganuary. If you believed everything that was written in the press about the impact eating meat and consuming dairy has on the environment, then you would be right in your thinking. But the statistics used are not based on farms like Plaw Hatch and Tablehurst, they are based on large industrial scale farms (if calling them ‘farms’ is even the right term. Perhaps factories would be more accurate). These are models of farming that we have nothing in common with.

And are milk alternatives really a better option? These are my concerns: what will be the impact on the land of growing nuts and oats on the scale that would be needed? Very few nuts are grown on a commercial scale in this country. What wild habitat is cleared to grow these crops? What impact does that have on the wildlife there? How many miles go into the production and where does the waste go? I have read that often the waste is fed to livestock in feed lots. The list of concerns goes on. And then of course there is the packaging. How can that be better for us and the environment than the nutritionally rich unpasteurised milk from our grass fed cows, that after being chilled and bottled travels a matter of metres from the milking parlour to the shop? That is in returnable glass bottles and where you can see every aspect of its production and meet all the lovely ladies that produce the milk?

I do believe we should primarily eat what grows in the environment where we live. I believe this is better for us and the land. We need to know where our food comes from and the impact it has on the land.

What grows well on much of this island of ours is grass and what does well on grass? Livestock. Livestock eating what nature intended they should eat. If we eat meat, it should only be from livestock that have been reared in as natural conditions as possible and with great care and respect.