Tasmanian businesses are going through a rebirth.
They have to, in order to anticipate changing markets. Companies are well poised to adjust, farming what they did so well in past and adding strategic new industries that harmonise with the environment.
State and local governments will be asked to commit to a plant-based treaty, not only to help avoid transgressing planetary boundaries, treat animals with a modicum of dignity, and save around 300% of land and water now wasted to get nutrition, but also to prepare to cash in on emerging markets.
Tasmanians may seem reluctant to change, but the state is strong in agriculture and for its livelihood has to follow mainland trends to ensure employment. 1*)
The future will be secured by fostering plant-based food production, cultured tissue and greenhouse agriculture to separate wild from cultivated environments, saving on land, water and insecticides. It is profitable and good planning. It can be done.
The strong trend towards plant-based foods has been reported in the Tasmanian Times on February 14 and May 2 this year 2,3*) Consumption of animal foods may have been driven by cheap prices and rural lobbying. It skyrocketed after WWII 4*), not just in Japan and the West, but all over the world. Now we are reaching the limit.
While there is still some left over, wildernesses are being cleared. It is not only a horrible fate for flora and fauna, but for people too. We are slowly realising we are co-dependent on a viable tree of life, and what was norm in days past is no longer acceptable.
Tasmania is lucky. An island in the southern hemisphere that still has ample bush. But limits are reached: no more Tasmanian tigers.
Let’s face it: human habits are changing the face of Earth, and instead of enhancing the place it is being smashed.
There is urgency in this debate as the planet is showing signs of stress: floods, bushfires, C02 levels and so on. A main cause of this: too many people eating too many animals. Together it causes ‘overshoot’. While it has many stress factors, like pollution, methane and use of fossil fuels, the critical cause these days is human food habits 5*).
These things are becoming problematic with population growth.
One cow fart does not bother at all, but too many of them and breathing becomes hard. It’s similar to the way in which one petrol engine makes very little difference, but billions together do.
It is a newly-emerging problem to many, maybe not even fully anticipated by environmental leader Bob Brown. His foundation rightfully galvanises ‘action for nature’. But since WWII, population grew four times around the world.
6 billion people means many more farms and pets. What was the norm in decades past, is now deadly. We are maxing out. The Earth is being milked dry.
These limits must be better understood. Personal behaviour counts. In eating so-called ‘livestock’, many of the bold defenders of forests may well help drive environmental destruction… as consumers. They help define wilderness best practice, but may fuel the fire.
And totally unnecessarily so. Hunger can be sated with plants. It has been done by various cultures for millennia, improves health, is tasty, saves on personal and state budgets, makes managing society easier, raises consciousness and helps protect remaining wild lands.
Consuming animals is a habit often nurtured by parents. Seen as a basic need or sign of good living. It may go back to a wrong interpretation of Genesis stating that people ‘have dominion over nature’.
The Reverend Dr. Brennan explains it well: the word ‘dominion’ can be interpreted as exploitation or wise stewardship. 6*)
Why this gross ambivalence you may ask? Why not a law that defines the word?
Simple: human population has multiplied some 100 times since the Bible was written. A few people facing endless environments can behave different than many people facing a shortage of environments.
Things change. For example, a lifetime ago, it used to just about cost an arm and a leg to make a phone call to the other side of the world. These days it is close to free and even can include pictures. Dick Tracy was a cartoon back then, now it is a reality.
Hence the drive to plant-based food: it is much more efficient than a high-meat diet. Tasmania and the rest of Australia could grow, with economies and environments improved.
But do not believe that all plant-based foods today are the holy grail. Some firms pollute, use poisons, exploit workers, greenwash, and as a result not only can create cheaper products, but also add to the problems managing the public domain.
It is not just production, but clarity in messaging so the public can make free choices without being bamboozled. 85% of buyers want to see better labelling 7*). This issue far exceeds any political division.
Civilisation is a delicate dance between individual choice and community need.
I know, as both city and rural living have been kind. It allows thriving in body and soul, or matter and mind, but one can also make useful contributions to common goals.
We need our own space, but no matter how we boost self-reliance, we also depend on collective skills. City surviving on rural output being one dimension, and vice versa.
We require nature to be viable, as biology has clearly established our co-dependence on a healthy tree of life. In many spaces Tasmania has that in spades, but for how long?
Our future as a species depends on finding the sweet spot between making a living without buggering up environments. We need to not simply improve on it, but return to what we used to do in living off nature.
This path leading us from herbivore food supplemented by scavenging via hunting, gathering, farming, city formation, provinces, states, regions, global village trade to multicultural pressures are teaching something new: with endless population growth comes the limit of planetary boundaries.
We may be standing at the edge of Milky Way’s endless opportunity and lands, but without viable economic systems it will not get far. Environments on Earth and life on exoplanets need to be dealt with within the limits of systems.
The issue is necessarily only what a person thinks, but what the community decides is best.
And therein may be the potential clash of individual and collective needs: both want to survive as best as possible.
Just as thriving families, extended clans and tribes depend on appropriate behaviour, like avoiding lies and inbreeding, so a new value is enshrining itself as an additional commandment: at 8 billion, humanity depends on a viable tree of life.
Renewal is in the air. Cities and state politicians will soon be lobbied to sign the Plant-Based Treaty 8*), to help divert people, economy and culture from self-destruction.
If there are any understanding people reading this, it is time to get active, care for all creatures great and small. Not only defend the wild from exploitation, but consume with more awareness.
Traditional economic pursuits now are killing the very Earth we are living on.
References
1. https://business.yougov.com/content/45056-tasmanian-victorian-politics-aussie-plant-meat
2. https://tasmaniantimes.com/2024/02/the-rise-of-plant-based-meat/
3. https://tasmaniantimes.com/2024/05/plant-based-meat-steadily-expanding-in-australia/
4. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-japan-became-hooked-on-meat-2016-3
5. https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/output/infodesk/planetary-boundaries/planetary-boundaries
8. https://plantbasedtreaty.org
Pieter Verasdonck is a retired planner, degreed in business and philosophy, who helped build resilience, forward planning capacity and income generation in organisations, villages, cities, regions, states and industries working with communities, large and small enterprises, including a decade with NSW Government as Community Economic Development Manager.
Helen Adkins-Sherston
September 30, 2024 at 17:17
I agree wholeheartedly. We need to reduce our meat intake and stop the insatiable greed of logging for cattle agriculture and soybean plantations, as well as palm oil deforestation. The English colonists were the culprits in clearing all the necessary old growth forests for their sheep, meat and cattle.
I have not eaten red meat nor pork for over 14 years. Australia has the insatiable diet in our being carnivores, not herbivores.
You are what you eat.
Ted Mead
October 1, 2024 at 12:06
As a defender of natural and wild places, I stand by the statement that there is no rational argument to justify altering more of the landscape for any further to secure more food production. The debate about sustainable food production has been around for half a century .. but nobody has been listening!
The book ‘A Diet for a Small Planet’ was published back in 1971. The book advocated environmental vegetarianism against the global impacts of meat production, and claims that world hunger is not caused by a lack of food – but by ineffective food policies.
Of course, subject to ongoing global warming, the decreasing medium rainfall in arable food production areas is becoming a notable occurrence, and countries such as Australia are one of the most likely to be highly affected. I essentially summed this up in my article to Tasmanian Times here.
What was not included in that article was the use of water in food production which in the following graph clearly shows that meat production is not sustainable if limited water supplies are a factor.
The disappointing epilogue is that chocolate production is going to be adversely affected!