We can have it all: Food security, rich biodiversity - and climate change mitigation

Where there's a will, there's a way - and humanity has shown its will (for better and for worse) a million times over. The maximization-driven world of meat and dairy industries are at the heart of the solution. Now, if only there were that will.

We can feed the world while, at the same time, tackle the biodiversity loss and climate change crises. What currently stands in humanity's way of doing so are, first and foremost, the meat and dairy industries. What you're looking at in the above picture is a snapshot taken this morning somewhere in between our hamlet and the village. It rained all night, heavily, and the morning sky was still shrouded with clouds moving away rapidly toward the Alps. Pretty picture, don't you think? But I cannot help but see monoculture, same as there are monocultures across just about every landscape everywhere. Large-scale fields upon fields upon fields where everything under the sun is planted.

The way we use the land is heavily driven by meat and dairy industries - and we know that this intensive land use for animal feed and grazing is as harmful as it is misguided. We know better, we clearly know better. And yet, those two industries keep ramping up industrialized farming and keep maximizing profits as if there were no tomorrow. While they proclaim to feed the world, the bigger truth is that they are wreaking havoc on the world.

The 'food security' boogie man

Those who are part of the industrialized farming machine will always instantly reach for their number one excuse when anyone tries to even question their modus operandi: food security. If we don't do what we do, they'll cry out, our country will no longer be independent! This is rubbish, of course, but a large chunk of the public still falls for it.

Why is it rubbish? Because the science has long made it abundantly clear that we can tackle the global twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change and feed every mouth on our lovely planet. In fact, we can do a far better job providing food security everywhere... if we shift away from our extreme reliance on meat and dairy.

Just recently the Swiss people rejected stronger laws for biodiversity, because the farm lobby had used that 'food security' battle cry against any change. They argued that Swiss farmers would no longer be able to provide food security for all citizens if more land were designated and protected for biodiversity. The truth was and is a very different one: Even during WWII, when Switzerland plowed football fields and everything else to produce more food, the farming world never managed to feed the country's population (20% of food still had to be imported - and it would have been 40% if not for rationing).

The reason Switzerland failed to be food-independent those dire times was its reliance on the meat and dairy industry. Nothing has changed since, except, of course, that industrialized farming has grown into a hugely efficient monster that continues to destroy nature left and right, drained moors and merged smaller fields into ever bigger ones, thus destroying every habitat in between (hedges, creeks, etc.) that had been. And why? So that more livestock feed can be grown, so that profits can rise higher, and higher, and higher.

If you'd mandate the meat and dairy industries to lower production by 50%, this is what would happen (after all of their screaming, of course): Meat and dairy prices would rise, yes. People would rapidly adjust their diet and eat meat 2-3 times a week instead of 7 times. And that would mean half the livestock overall - thus far fewer fields would be needed to grow animal feed (and could instead produce far more food for people), and far fewer fields would be needed for livestock grazing. It wouldn't even take one generation, with the right mandate/law, the shift would happen within just a few years. Switzerland would be food-independent and Switzerland would also have an abundance of land to dedicate to nature recovery and climate change mitigation.

The 'loss of employment' boogie man

The moment anyone tries to make demands (new laws, higher taxes, etc.), the screaming begins and the threats come fast - if you do x, we'll have to fire people. Standard behavior by any industry. They'll never mention, of course, that they're firing people all the time when they want to, when they see a way of cutting costs/maximizing profits. In the case of the meat and dairy industry, the same would apply. They'd argue that an industry that's 50% smaller would have to fire 50% of people - meaning lots and lots of farmers would lose their livelihoods. Again, rubbish.

The change would be dramatic, for sure. But the government's always been providing massive levels of subsidies to farming - and those could continue, with the only caveat that farmers would be required to change the way they operate. So no, there would be no widespread death of farms, but there would be a widespread change of farms, going from livestock farming to grain/potato/vegetable/etc. farming and land stewardship. The threat of loss of employment by those industries would thus clearly fall flat on the upstream sector, the farming side.

As for their own operations with slaughterhouses, dairy and meat processing plants - again, there'd be changes. But I've worked in the corporate world for decades and I know that any industry will always look for new ways to succeed. The meat and dairy industries would hike prices, as mentioned, and then of course they would diversify (no doubt they're doing it already to some degree). The moment they'd realize that the shift is inevitable, they would acquire large take stakes in e.g. the booming vegetable or artificial meat industries. And finally downstream with retailers, it would simply mean that they'd stock their shelves differently - no loss of jobs, at all.

Who's land is it anyway?

The farming lobby would have you believe that all farmers are wonderful stewards of the land, people who care for flora and fauna, who've done so for generations, who tend every tree and treasure every bird and bee. There are such farmers, absolutely - and I know some of them and have huge respect for them. But a large majority are built into the industrialized farming machine that needs to deliver to meat and dairy industries. If you are part of that machine in its current form, then the priority number one will never be nature - it will always be profit, and the maximization thereof.

From our home I see several large fields. All of them nondescript, flat, square, easy to be tilled and fertilized and harvested by big machines. Most of what's grown on those fields is animal feed. Once upon a time a creek ran across one of those big fields, from a small pond down into the woods. I recently found out that the creek still runs its course - underground. To maximize farming efficiency, it was entombed in concrete pipes - gone from sight, gone from the sun, no longer in the way. Any real steward of the land would have been horrified. Any nature-loving farmer would want that creek there, a powerful engine for biodiversity-rich life within its bed and along its embankments. But industrialized farming with its big machines and drive for profit-maximizing efficiency makes it impossible for many farmers to be the stewards they could (and I'm sure would want to) be.

When you own land, you think you can do with it as you choose - and in truth many get away with it, too. The government doesn't have the manpower to check in regularly, random inspections are rare and the notion still holds that surely farmers will want to do what's right... except that there's ample evidence to the contrary. To my mind, while the land may belong to an individual, nature - the flora and fauna on that land - should belong to the citizens of Switzerland. When you choose to destroy a habitat in any way shape or form on your land, you injure Switzerland's nature.

I admit I'd be draconian about this and say: Yes, you own the land and you can do with it as you please, as long as you act as a steward of the land in the best interests of a biodiversity-rich, sustainable future for Switzerland's nature. If you don't, or can't, you're either given assistance to do better for nature - or the government steps in and buys you out of your land and then works with local communities to better steward that land.

If maximizing is the goal, an alarm should go off

The world needs feeding - and there absolutely is an important place for industrialized farming. With eight billion people roaming the world, and billions living in urban areas, we most certainly cannot return to smallholder and subsistence farming only. But we can change the overarching maxim of industrialized farming. There should be a simple guiding principle written across every operation: NATURE OVER PROFIT.

If the maximizing of profits is the driving force, nature will always lose out. Creating larger farms, combining more fields, acquiring bigger harvesters... if the reason for those actions is 'greater profits', then clearly they should not happen. Profit is important, but maximizing profit is not. "Enough" is important, "as much as possible" is not. If the overarching principle requires the farming industries to do right by nature first, then operations will change - but of course this will only happen if laws mandate this change and, for now, farming lobbies remain far, far too strong and too tied into legislators in power.

Unfortunately, humanity has shown time and time again that it takes tragedy for us to make necessary shifts. How many people had to die before seatbelts became the law? We adopt changes, we create new laws, we put protective measures in place... after the fact. So what will it take for humanity (or any one courageous government) to downshift the meat and dairy industries by 50%? Will it be research that undeniably points to meat and dairy as the culprits for certain illnesses that kill millions? Will it be a pathogenic spread by livestock that kills millions of our species? Isn't it enough to know what we already know?

What we know

About half of the world's habitable land is used for agriculture - and more than THREE QUARTERS of that is used for livestock. And if anyone argues about the desperate need of animal protein - below chart may enlighten. While the meat and dairy industries used a super-sized part of all agricultural land (and created super-sized ecological harm), they actually deliver a far smaller share of the world's protein and calories. What we know today is really all we need to know.

Again, do we really need to wait for a global disaster to make the inevitable shift?

Finally

I really want to believe that most farmers genuinely love nature, genuinely care about flora and fauna and genuinely want to pass it all in in good and better condition to next generations. I genuinely want to believe that most farmers are simply victims caught in the industrialized farming machine that doesn't allow them to go with the "nature over profit" principle... but there's what I want and then there's what I see.

Whatever the pressures, currently farming organizations successfully manage to get the majority of farmers to fall in line. Fear of income, fear of loss of subsidies, fear of standing, fear of ostracization. Whatever focus on nature protection and nature recovery, the wagons (tractors) are immediately circled. Whatever even smallest of change envisioned, outcry about the horrible treatment of those who know best - the stewards of the land, the ones providing food security. I wish I saw not an idealistic few, but a vast majority of farmers taking a stand for nature first, for profit second ... and never for that status quo.

The meat and dairy industries need to dramatically downsize - and farmers, for the love of the very nature these stewards of the land hold so dear - should be at the forefront of bring about that change. We don't have to wait for millions to die. We really can have it all - starting now: food security, rich biodiversity, and climate change mitigation.

Stewards of the land - rise up for nature.