Response to
Planet Money: Meet Claudia, The High-Tech Cow
The productivity increases are impressive, but if we look at them without any consideration of the fact that they are based on faster depletion of water, soil and petroleum, we will have a distorted view of the full implications of this technological change.
This is not a more sustainable method of food production. It is less sustainable. Which is to say, it is not sustainable.
Why not mention that these higher per cow rates of milk production are supported through the depletion of resources (soil and water) that future generations will need? I want to say, 'soil, water and petroleum' here. Human beings will have to learn to sustain a civilization without an extractive fossil fuel industry. But it may be that human beings are approaching depletion of petroleum faster than we are learning to adapt to its absence. In other words, for the sake of the stability of civilization, it may be preferable to slow the rates of extraction of resources, so that their eventual depletion can be put farther into the future, to allow more time for adaptation. The mechanism for slowing the taking of the resource (a fee for extraction) serves well as the financial incentive to industry to adapt to higher energy and materials efficiencies.
The 'learning to adapt' challenge is met most effectively through a fee mechanism.
Our current economic system functions with built-in systemic defects. Much of the water that supports the dairy industry is mined from the Ogalala Aquifer and other aquifers to grow the feed grains that are fed to the cows (and to wash the industrial dairy 'farms'). The side-effect of the industry, then, is the depletion of a limited resource (and water pollution). The defect in the system is that this pollution cost, this cost to society, is not reflected in prices. It is called an 'externality'. It is outside the cost-benefit analysis of industry.
Industries, corporations, do not pay attention to things outside the cost-benefit analysis.
Cultivating crops to feed to animals so that we can eat the animals or their products is a very IN-efficient way to produce food for human beings.
'Inefficient' is a synonym for 'not productive'.
This fact is evident in the natural world: Populations of plant-eaters are always larger than populations of animal-eaters. We now have a large population of human beings, but we are trying to live as animal-eaters. This is not sustainable over the long term.
Free market forces would not drive industries toward unsustainable practices if all costs were included in the price structure. If players had to pay when they deplete water resources, petroleum and soil, then they would find ways to do business by producing less of these kinds of impacts on the Earth.
Labor productivity is not the only measure of productivity that we might be interested in. It may not be the most important, either.
When industries produce wealth, we should be able to assume that that wealth benefits humanity. That is what wealth is. It is a benefit or the ability to provide or enjoy benefits.
In the case of milk production, the product is not offering much benefit to humanity. Aside from the pleasure on our palate that we experience when we ea ice cream and cheese, and some would say when we drink milk, the benefit of the dairy industry to humanity is highly questionable.
Setting aside all those unaccounted environmental and resource depletion costs, the impact on our bodies from the excess protein and fat from milk is doing us no good at all.
We suffer higher rates of osteoporosis, obesity, breast cancer and other problems when we pretend that cow milk is food for human beings.
Fri Mar 09 2012 12:39:39 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time)
Biodiversity as a public good
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