One of the many points buried in the most current Richard Manning manifesto discussed in Serial Advocate is the belated realization by some organic growers - who have long had vegenazi sympathies - that their supposed mimicry of natural systems in pursuit of a more healthful and sustainable agronomics was wildly mistaken since Mother Nature never farms without livestock. To do it well they needed to get over their nonsensical views about animal foods and do competent integrated general farming. Look around, that's how the system evolved. Pay attention.

It's been semi-amusing in the last couple of years to hear some of the extremists trying to save face and back away from their ignorant and irrational earlier positions. "Environmental Heretics" speak up now and again to challenge dogmas, researchers unhelpfully disprove health fads, the policies of government agencies such as the USDA are shown to be based on crass political considerations at the expense of the health of the people, and even the parasitic international NGOs that have oppressed developing nations have had to publish some weasel words.

While rising consumption of meat, milk and eggs is one of the factors in epidemics of obesity and heart disease in developed countries, consumption of meat and milk in developing countries is associated with good rather than bad health. In poor countries, where most people subsist on poor starchy diets, the study highlights the fact that modest amounts of these foods improve people's nutrition and health, lower mortality rates, and enhance child development.

In truth, it is the starchy diets in developed nations that are the killers as well. The USDA food pyramid is a death sentence to those who plan their diets according to its recommendations. The difference between rich and poor societies is that the poor ones more often do follow such recommendations, though not by choice, and suffer adverse consequences, especially in youth. The rich ones eat just as much junk starch, or more, and also eat more nutritious foods. As many have found reducing the junk starch hugely improves diets. Such blunt dietary tinkering is insufficient to achieve rude good health, but it's better than has been done in the past.

"Livestock are a lifeline for hundreds of millions of people, for whom livestock represent one of few options available to improve their incomes and nutrition," said Carlos Seré, director general of ILRI. . .

"It would be unethical, even for the sake of the environment, to advocate policies that prevent the poor from increasing their consumption of milk and meat . . ."However, without further investments in livestock that improve production and marketing efficiencies, rapid increases in milk and meat consumption in developing countries pose serious threats to the environment and will still fail to feed many of the world's poorest and hungriest people."

"Livestock are not bad for the environment everywhere," said Herrero. "We need a thorough consideration of the trade-offs involved in livestock systems, so that we know where and how it makes sense to limit livestock production and consumption and where and how to increase production in sustainable ways."

It never makes sense to limit "livestock production and consumption". What does make sense is to at long last drop the irrational dogmas of an earlier age and look closely at natural systems for a change. Look at agronomics with fresh clear eyes. Who can fail to see that gouging the earth to plant monocultures of a few cereal species and root crops is inherently destructive and produces impoverished foods inadequate for human nutrition? This is unavoidable, the basis of civilization, but no agronomic system can long endure, and no civilization can prosper, that does not have a livestock system to repair the harms of cropping and provide nutritional balance for humans.

The authors cite major opportunities for easing the tradeoffs, such as improved management of vast rangelands to remove significant quantities of carbon from the atmosphere in exchange for environmental service payments. There are also opportunities for exploiting synergies among different components of livestock-based agro-ecosystems, such as by breeding food crops to make better and wider use of their stover for livestock feed and providing incentives to pastoral livestock herders to continue to conserve the wildlife on their rangelands.

Changes in animal diets can dramatically reduce the amount of methane produced per animal. Shifting to more productive breeds would allow farmers to reduce the number of animals they keep while increasing their production levels.

"Governments and policymakers need to design policies that cap animal numbers, while at the same time providing incentives that encourage farmers to feed their animals better, so they can produce more food with fewer emissions," said Seré.

This is idiotic. Insane. Evil. Well managed agronomic systems with integrated livestock and cropping improves land, not least by increasing soil carbon. This would be proper even if we were trying to fight off an ice age and wishing we had ways to spew more GHGs into the air to keep us warm. There is no role for governments and their destructive policy makers in this. There is a role for education but the first need is to rid the world of the meddlers peddling bad education now. Many of our current problems were caused by such people and their nonsensical policies, and they still have no useful expertise in the matter. They have one objective, one imperative, and that is to support themselves in their meddlesome bureaucracies no matter the harm to the planet and its people.

"Right now, farmers get paid only for the beef or milk that they produce. If these other options come on board, then people will adopt more sustainable practices to cash in on environmental services," said Seré.

Yes, growers can be bribed to do dumb things. That isn't the issue. The fix for the destructive policies of the past is to stop meddling. Let the farmers get paid for good work and good management. All of the benefits that the policy wonks claim to want would be a natural result since good farming is environmentally beneficial while producing nutritious foods. The "something wonks can do" is to step aside from decision making and work to undo the damages they have already caused by making information about agronomic advancements available to all growers. This would help compensate for skills lost over the generations of policy meddling and rent seeking when smart farming was not rewarded as much as groveling before bureaucrats.

Update: Ultimate Groveling

Fairtrade provides a minimum baseline price for commodities, allowing farmers to hedge against market volatility. The co-operative system allows small farmers better access to global markets and encourages democratic representation. Each commodity price also includes a "social premium" which can be reinvested in social or development projects.

However, economist Paul Collier argues that Fairtrade effectively ensures that people "get charity as long as they stay producing the crops that have locked them into poverty". Fairtrade reduces the incentive to diversify crop production and encourages the utilisation of resources on marginal land that could be better employed for other produce. The organisation also appears wedded to an image of a notional anti-modernist rural idyll. Farm units must remain small and family run, while modern farming techniques (mechanisation, economies of scale, pesticides, genetic modification etc) are sidelined or even actively discouraged.

Fairtrade director of communications Barbara Cowther admitted in the documentary A Bitter Aftertaste that the organisation had no real policy on mechanisation – this despite the fact that it is central to agricultural development.

By guaranteeing a minimum price, Fairtrade also encourages market oversupply, which depresses global commodity prices. This locks Fairtrade farmers into greater Fairtrade dependency and further impoverishes farmers outside the Fairtrade umbrella. Economist Tyler Cowen describes this as the "parallel exploitation coffee sector".

Coffee farms must not be more than 12 acres in size and they are not allowed to employ any full-time workers. This means that during harvest season migrant workers must be employed on short-term contracts. These rural poor are therefore expressly excluded from the stability of long-term employment by Fairtrade rules. Indeed, The International Development Committee declared in 2007 that "Fairtrade could have a deeper impact if it were to target more consciously the poorest of the poor".

The whole idea stinks. The more that you care about the issues that the Fairtrade opportunists exploit, the more that you ought to avoid such products.