Evolving Beyond Animal Agriculture
The Beyond Animal Agriculture summit was a joint online project organised by the Rancher Advocacy Program and the JaneUnChained News Network.
It’s pretty clear we need to ditch animal agriculture - and soon. Animal ag contributes at least 10 percent of all greenhouse gases, is responsible for 90 percent of deforestation in the Amazon and creates industrial amounts of waste and pollution. And, as the earth heats up, making animal products is currently consuming one third of the world’s water supply. A single lactating dairy cow needs 150 litres a day to create milk, at a time when an estimated three in 10 people worldwide — 2.1 billion — lack access to safe drinking water. At the same time, the vast majority of the 80 billion land animals slaughtered for food are raised in factory farmed conditions, creating untenable levels of suffering and misery for conscious, sentient beings. Crazy doesn’t even begin to describe it.
But how do we transition to an agricultural system that is good for the planet without laying waste to traditional livelihoods? This is the question posed by the Beyond Animal Agriculture summit, a joint online project organised by the Rancher Advocacy Program and the JaneUnChained News Network.
More than 18,000 people gathered to watch the event on Facebook, which featured leading lights in plant-based agriculture including Kip Andersen, director of seminal documentariesCowspiracy and What the Health fame, Miyoko Schinner of Miyoko’s Creamery, one of the world’s top vegan cheese and butter brands and Leah Garces, President of canpaign group Mercy for Animals.
Stanford PhD, author and systems analyst Dr. Sailesh Rao of Climate Healers and food justice activist Eugene Cooke of Grow Where You Are shared their thoughts, together with Kim Sturla, executive director of Animal Place Sanctuary and Robert Grillo, head of Free from Harm. David Simon, author of Meatonomics, attended the event as a viewer and commentator. Moderators included JaneUnchained journalist and author Jane Velez-Mitchell and Renee King-Sonnen.
King-Sonnen’s presence was key. The wife of Texas cattle rancher Tommy Sonnen, it was King-Sonnen who convinced her husband to turn his ranch into a farmed animal sanctuary - and to go vegan. The work echoes that of the Europe-based ReFarm’d. The couple shared their story, outlining their journey to compassion via video content, before they were joined by other Texas ranching families: Hollie and Davey Schacherl, who talked about inheriting their family’s ranching land but not wanting to inherit the cruelty; and Richard and Cindy Traylor, who spoke about their desire to switch to growing bamboo, inspired by the guilt of sending their animals to slaughter.
“The escalation of the environmental tragedies we have been causing prove that we desperately need to rethink our food system,” CIWF. Picture: Unsplash.
Also discussed was the primary block to change: income. Many farmers are already saddled with mortgages and debt, making the expense involved in transforming existing facilities to alternative infrastructures prohibitive. The seminar looked at possible solutions, including Green Bonds, also known as Climate Bonds, which raise funds for new products that deliver environmental benefits and create more sustainable economies. Major companies are already investing in Green Bonds. One option was that farm collectives could offer their land as collateral, in return for wiping out their debt and becoming part of a professionally overseen transition to plant-based agriculture. A second response sees groups of local farmers joining forces to transition to a particular product or selection of products, simultaneously saving costs and creating economies of sale, while opening up markets and allowing for contracts with plant-based companies looking for specific ingredients.
Refarm’d CEO Geraldine Starke is attending the second summit, taking place next year, with former dairy farmers Katja & Jay Wilde. “We need a lot of different methods to bring change into this system,” she says. “It's heartwarming to see so many people involved. At our own little scale, we at Refarm'd also hope to contribute in bringing added solutions for farmers who want to get out of the dairy industry by helping them become plant-based milk producers and turning their farmland into animal sanctuaries. We try to create low investment, low risk schemes where we provide the equipment and the training and handle the logistics and the marketing around it all. We just launched our third farm and are excited about the year to come where we aim to work with many more farmers.”
Global campaign group Animal Rebellion works to highlight the contributions of animal agriculture to the climate emergency, demanding that governments support farmers who want change. "We’re seeing a growing sense of crisis as the way we’ve lived for generations is increasingly revealed as a source of injustice, oppression and destruction,” says spokesperson Harley McDonald-Eckersall. “We are facing an intersection where we can choose to support a system of destruction that's causing instability and inequality - or transition to one which allows us to live within our values, which is sustainable, just and which provides for the future of our families, our country and our world.”
Compassion in World Farming’s Global Senior Campaign Manager, Mandy Carter, agrees: “The escalation of the environmental tragedies we have been causing, such as deforestation, soil degradation, biodiversity and ecosystems loss, water and air pollution, prove that we desperately need to rethink our food system and its impact on the world. Factory farming contributes to each of these issues and the current pandemic has raised alarms about the very real potential for another viral outbreak due to human encroachment on animal habitats. We must preserve our planet, reduce animal suffering and protect ourselves – and a huge part of that would be ending intensive animal farming.”
All is possible and, as awareness grows, the will to change will also expand. With the world on course for a catastrophic 3.2 degree rise in temperatures, according to the UN Environment Programme, and with more people around the world waking up to the cruelty endemic in current agricultural systems, that change cannot come fast enough.
