Examining Alternatives to Globalization

Avery and Elam/Confinement Farming a Boon to the Third World 479

Meat is more than a dietary element, it's a symbol of wealth and prosperity. Reversing the factory farm tide will require think- ing about farming systems as more than a source of economic wealth. Preserving prosperous family farms and their landscapes, and raising healthy, humanely treated animals, should also be viewed as a form of affluence.

For Class Discussion 1. What does Danielle Nierenberg say are the conditions of factory

farming that we should oppose?

2. Nierenberg seeks to establish connections among factory farming, multinational corporations, and the fast-food industry. How does she articulate and support these connections?

3. She presents ways that Filipino farmers can resist the industrial farming model. How persuasive is she in supporting the feasibility of this resistance?

4. How do emotional and logical appeals work in this argument? 5. Worldzuatchmagazine is a publication focused on environmentalism

and social justice. How successfully does this article engage readers who do not share these values?

6. How has this article influenced your view of meat production in the global food system? I

Confinement Farming a Boon to the Third World Dennis T. Avery and Tom Elam

Dennis T. Avery is director of and Tom Elam is agricultural agronomist at the Center for Global Food lssues (CGFI), a project of the Hudson lnstitute, a conservative, nonpartisan research and policy think tank. The Center cites as its goals f urthering agricultural f ree trade, promoting technological innovation as a basis for agricultural sustainability, and connecting agricul- tural productivity and conservation in the public's mind ("About CGFl," www.cgfi.org/abouVabout_index.htm). Active in foreign policy, Avery has held numerous governmental appointments, including agricultural analyst for the U.S. Department of State. He writes regularly for the Center, speaks internationally on world food production, and has authored several books, among lhem Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic: The Environ- mentalTriumph of High-Yield Farming (1995, 2000). Dr. Tom Elam has been a professor of economics, the chairman of the Market Research Committee

480 CHAPTER B Feeding Global Populations

of the U.S. Animal Health lnstitute, and an agricultural economist for Elanco Products Company, a company that "develops and markets products to improve the health and production of animals" (www.elanco.com). This op-ed piece was published by CGFI on May 13, 2003.

How does Avery and Elam's use of the term "confinement farming" reflect their professional backgrounds and their audience? What are the connotations of "confinement farming" in contrast to "factory farming" and "industrial farming"?

t The Worldwatch Institute has a new doom story: the rise of "factory farming" in the Third World. Worldwatch's Danielle Nierenberg writes that ihe production of low-cost pork and chicken on modern confinement farms overseas is an unmitigated disaster character- izedby abused animals and the countryside ruined by the wastes from hog herds and poultry flocks.

z Worldwatch should start, however, by applauding the im- proved nutrition available to Third World children because of mod- ern livestock production. The lower-cost feed supplies (generated by today's high-yield seeds and fertilizers), and the healthier birds and animals (protected by indoor facilities and modern veterinary medications) give millions of kids high-quality protein and key micronutrients such as calcium, irort, zinc, and vitamin B-12 from meat, milk, and eggs.

3 Without livestock products, infants are likely to suffer bone deformities, delayed cognitive development, and other nutritional problems. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control recently concluded that two infants raised and breast-fed by vegan mothers suffered retarded development due to serious deficiencies of vitamin B-12.

+ Fortunately for the Third World's kids, meat consumption in the past 20 years increased seven-fold in China, five-fold in Mexico andBrazil, and more than three-fold in the Philippines. This is pos- sible partly because of rising incomes, and partly because modern farms can raise chicken on only 75 percent as much feed and 10 per- cent as much farmland as is needed by the traditional farmers.

5 Ms. Nierenberg of Worldwatch paints a rosy picture of pastoral family farms raising a few free range chickens and/or outdoor hogs under sunny skies and the careful eye of the peasant farmer. Then, she wails, giant corporations came along and built polluting mega-farms that put the small farmers out of business.

o She's left out a few things: The backyard farmers expose their birds and animals to predators, parasites, bad weathe4 and dis- eases. The confinement farmers don't.

z The traditional farmers' birds and animals produce manure and urine at the same rates as the birds and animals in confine- ment. From the small outdoor farms, these wastes wash into the

Avery and Elam/Confinement Farming a Boon t0 the Third World 481

streams with every storm event. The fact that a million chickens are distributed on 10,000 small farms doesn't make the wastes disap- pear. But the confinement farms save their wastes and spread them carefully as organic fertilizer to nourish the crops in the fields. The wastes turn from an environmental negative into an eco-asset.

Then there's the problem that the peasant farms would need far more land to raise the livestock-lrr,d r"hich would have to be taken away from wildlife. If the Third world put all of its 500 million hogs outdoors, at four hogs per acre, the hogs would need another 125 million acres, a land area equal to all the cropland in China.

China, in fact, has 430 million hogs ,26 perceitof the world,s peo_ ple, and only 7 percent of its arable land. This is why its hogs ,." iupt in small pens. No nation in the world puts hogs out in prit .", urry more because hogs root and wallow and cause enormoui soil erosion and stream bank destruction in addition to their water pollution.

The world currently feeds about 150 million toni of grain and oilseeds to its broiler chickens, virtually all of them are iaised in- doors. Outdoors, the birds suffer more from heat, cold, and stress, which retards their weight gain. Also, we'd need another 50 million tons of feed per year-and might have to clear another 30 million acres of the world's scarce wildlands to raise the extra feed.

Of course, if we actually put the birds and animals back on peasant farms, the cost of meat would again become so high that few people could afford it. The price for givlng up,,factoryiarms,, would be borne by the little kids who didn,t gei enough meat, milk, or eggs for good health.

It's no accident that the criticism of modern farming comes fooT ,19 best-fed people in the history of the world. ih"y ur" spoiled by the good fortune that allows them to take their good diets for granted. what would Ms. Nierenberg write if she spint a few y_ears living on one of the outer islands or ine nnihppines, earn- ing $500 per year, and eating mostly rice and corn?

Shame on you, Ms. Nierenberg, and shame on the Worldwatch Institute for publishing your article. If you really want to help the poor of the world, help Third world farmers inciease their produc- tivity, not lower it.

For Class Discussion 1. Dennis T. Avery and Tom Elam wrote this piece as a direct rebuttal

to Danielle Nierenberg's article against faitory farming. How do they refute Nierenberg's points? \Atrhat counterreasoni and evi- dence do they offer?

2. How many assumptions underlie Avery and Elam,s argument? How much do they provide support for tirese assumptionsi

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