Manure production

Gene Baur pushed my limit today with his blog entry. I have a short fuse because Mabel stopped running this morning and I'm liable to not take anti-livestock agriculture sentiments well today.

My apologies, but my blog comment will be a summary instead. Gene, you spend so much time trying to pin livestock agriculture as the proverbial tail on a donkey of fault for the world's problems. You'd probably do better if you weren't distracted by the ass in your own mirror.

It didn't take me long to find some reputable information about the waste produced in the US. 4 lbs. every day x 300.000.000 people in the US adds up to a lot of waste every day. The waste production is a much larger problem than that of manure production in the US, besides the fact that manure is recycled by farmers whereas garbage is just dumped. Per a news article this summer about the mess the Mississippi River is experiencing, and topped by a slight BP spill this summer, I think Gene is out of turn in accusing the Gulf of Mexico's problems as the fault of livestock agriculture. The gulf has a significant problem, but this is the combined fault of many factors not the least of which is the wastefulness of Americans. Spend your time figuring out how to better reduce and reuse your own impact on the earth and please spend less time pointing fingers at environmentally responsible, governmentally regulated and audited farmers. We are doing our part to feed the world and care for the environment, what are you doing?

Do livestock farmers use a lot of water? Sure, but the water is recycled (something the Columbus Dispatch also conveniently neglected to mention in their despicable article on Sunday). Farmers are some of nature's recyclers and they use their water over and over again to help feed America and the world. Is the same true for that ridiculous oasis in the desert, Las Vegas?

For your mild entertainment I have included a video of some farmers who had a unique approach to telling people about their care for the environment.