This is a question I get asked in a variety of ways ranging from honest curiosity to furious, borderline threats.
The question/accusation usually goes along the lines of there isn't enough meat for everyone and where will we grow our grain?
While I am a firm believer that everyone needs to find their own nutritional strategy, the thought that ecologically founded farming, including meat (husbandry) is less sustainable then subsidized grains and genetically modified crops is problematic. Long term soil quality and ecological balance can not occur and does not occur with super productive crops and with artificial nutrients added in artificial fertilizers. There is a population boom going on that will cause food production challenges, but this is beyond the topic of deciding on our best method for producing food over the long term.
People like Joe Satlin ( www.polyfacefarms.com) and my local friend and grass-fed farmer Brad martin (http://echovalleygrassfedbeef.com/ ) in addition to Robb Wolf and the Liberty Garden concept have helped me to better isolate how and why the concept of paleo, or maybe a better term is ancestral health, is the best choice we have now. The best way I have heard to simplify the concept of beef vs. crops like corn for feeding people is a consideration of viable land for cropping vs. amount of grass land we could be using for animals of all types (foot hills, mountains, rolling land etc.)
"Their genetically modified organism (GMO) paddy grows lots of rice.
The adjacent one, built on indigenous
methods, grows rice, tilapia in the water,
ducks that make meat and lay eggs, and
around the edges, prodigious bok choy
and arugula. But these Western linear,
reductionist, compartmentalized, fragmentized, systematized, parts-oriented
researchers don’t measure the ducks,
eggs, fish or edible greens. They went
to study rice. And the GMO rice,
in a chemical-ized paddy devoid
of any other life in or around it,
sure grows rice. Conclusion —
our side can’t feed the world"
With numerous health issues in humans and diseases in animals it is obvious the convential ways are not working
"[We] aren’t worried about mad
cow disease because we don’t feed dead
cows to cows. ’Tain’t natural.
We don’t worry about avian influenza
because our chickens are on pasture in
uncrowded conditions. We don’t worry
about erosion because we’re building soil.
And we don’t worry about feeding the
world because as we heal our farms and
landscape, we see everything get better"
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