Food comes from the land.
We are bewildered by fashions in clothes, architecture, literature and philosophy. Technology advances at a pace beyond our comprehension. The one constant element in our lives is food. Good or bad, it nourishes us from one century to the next.
Food is the most essential of all essentials. Land, grain, cattle, food and man belong together. The soil yields the grain we fed to the animals we eat. The key questions here are how does grain grow, how is it harvested, how do animals live, how do they die, and how is all this converted into human cells? This is the cycle of materials, but also the culinary arts and ethics.
Of all the uses man has for land, the most important is to produce food. When we take care of the thin, sensitive layer of soil on the earth’s surface, we are also taking care of ourselves. Some ten thousand years ago, when man changed from being a hunter, fisher and gatherer into a cultivator of land, plants and animals, he also assumed responsibility for the land. The land is bread.
If a continent – in this case Europe – is unable to feed its population from its own area, it must conquer land elsewhere. It colonises and uses the land of another continent. This does not depend on whether it buys it or at what price it pays. Each major area on earth, at least each continent, should be self-sufficient in respect to its basic needs. These are water, food, energy and wood, of which the first two are the most important.
Energy consumed as food constitutes two per cent of the total energy used by Europeans. Although this is small, it needs more space to produce it than all the other forms of energy together. A sustainable continent would produce its energy, and its food, from the sun. This requires a lot of space. The basic problem is the shortage of land, its use for food, wood and energy.
In this respect, foods are not equal. You get much more energy from the land by consuming plant-based foods and forgoing meat, milk and cheese. When there is little land but many people, then the consumption of meat should be forbidden or at least restricted. This is even done in certain countries. The fundamental ethical question is, should be give up eating meat?
Europeans will not agree to compulsory vegetarianism and neither is it even necessary. A more natural answer is to restrict population growth and use the land more intelligently. Nevertheless, Europe must get by on its own. It must be self-sufficient in essentials, particularly food. Europe cannot sponge off the rest of the world. But even this is not enough, it must radically change its attitude towards other living creatures, particularly animals. Consideration for animals is the hallmark of civilised modern man and a civilised continent.
ANIMAL-BASED FOODS
Olof Andersson is a happy man, he’s a shepherd. He lives on the island of Öland, in Sweden, and looks after the sheep of three eco-villages. This flock includes a thousand ewes, three hundred rams and an unknown number of lambs. They are highly respected throughout Europe, being the outcome of a romance between a Russian Romanov ram and an English Suffolk ewe.
On this evening in late May, in the year 2035, the mosquitoes are annoying Olof. Riding his elegant mare, Ingemar Johansson, and accompanied by three sheep dogs, he is making a final round before night descends. Just then the mobile alarm clipped to the saddle rings. It’s an order for a thousand kilos from Paris that has to be delivered, ready-cut, by the following evening.
The original order from the French sourcing company had come from the security chief of French energy production, a gourmet with a particular for these northern breeds, who is to throw a dinner for a group of distinguished guests.
The food spectrum
We Europeans eat too much.
The healthy, daily average food requirement for a person is 2 600 kcal, of which slightly over half is plant-based: cereals, bread, vegetables and fruit. In most European countries this limit is grossly exceeded, but more in respect to plant-based foods than those of animal origin. There is a clear north-south difference as Mediterranean people eat a lot of fruit, vegetables and cereals. Fish is eaten in Norway and Portugal, meat on the other hand in Denmark and France. The Italians eat a hundred times more pasta than Norwegians (Consumer Europe, 1993).
In the future, books on nutrition, but more importantly the methods of production, must be changed in the interests of health, ethics and ecology. People obtain far more calories from plants per unit of cultivated area than from meat or other animal products. When the amount of energy obtained per cultivated land is more economical, vegetarians leave more space for nature. The imprisonment and execution of animals, especially under inhumane conditions, must be condemned on ethical grounds. Meat produced in this way is brutal. Intensive breeding occurs when too much emphasis is placed on cheap prices and ultra-efficient production. The importation of cattle feed from other continents is neo-colonialism. These questions cannot be ignored when replanning land use.
My book pursues a liberal view in respect to the eating habits of different peoples, and I approve and encourage the variety offered by different cultures. The culinary arts are the most enduring and the least susceptible to the vacillations of fashion. Some years ago, for example, the in thing was to arrange food on the plate like a miniature sculpture, forgetting its true purpose. This absurdity soon came to an abrupt end. People will listen to new music and read new poetry, but a steak’s a steak for all that. Culinary differences are an intrinsic part of Europe’s cultural diversity.
Personally, I must admit to being a gourmet. I enjoy meals with a variety of aromatic dishes, juicy steaks with creamy sauces, fried eggs and bacon for breakfast, shiny pink slightly-salted salmon, blinis and vendace roe washed down with a glass of snaps, unhealthy sweets and creamy desserts, rounded off with a large cigar and an Irish coffee. Gourmandising is great and I do not wish to take this please away from anybody. Those moralising munchers of bean shoots are for me a totally alien bunch.
However, there is no point in planning a future for people or continents based on unhealthy eating, but one which approaches the recommended healthy levels. In the following, I am less
concerned with the culinary delights people bring to their tables, and more with analysing the amount of cultivated land necessary to make Europe self-sufficient. Here, too, morality plays a role.
This chapter is only concerned with foods of animal origin, mainly the quantities of meat, eggs, milk, butter and
cheese and the area required for their production. We shall start with the present consumption levels in Europe and then ask, how large an area should be allocated for growing feed in order to achieve the suggested ideal nutritional quantities.
These quantities are still considerably higher than the recommended healthy levels, except in Norway where they are already very close. Norway, the land of tough, rosy-cheeked skiers. Generally speaking, the quantities of calories proposed in the plan are close to present levels and the rounding-off has been mainly to simplify the calculations. Thus the ideal amount of calories obtained from animal sources is 1000-1400 kcal per person. The greatest change will be in Germany, where the European record level of 1631 kcal per person will be reduced to 1400 (Figure 26). In the future, the Germans will have to eat less sausage. The figures for Portugal and Spain have been slightly increased.
Figure 26. The present and proposed consumption of animal-based foods in certain European countries
(Source: Food Consumption Statistics 1976-1985, 1988)
The case of Holland
Holland, the most populous country in Europe, lives from agriculture. At first sight this appears highly contradictory, but on closer examination the matter becomes clearer. This is no primitive, peasant agriculture, but one based on automatised and highly refined mass production, advanced technology and competent foreign trading (Figure 27). And it’s based on animals.
Long before the German gets his sausage, it has passed through many stages, at least nine of them have been identified, each one of them being managed by some federation or association. Individual companies make up the membership of these federations, which compete among each other for a share of the booty. The first stage consists of the producers of raw materials for feed. In addition to milk and grass, the feeds the animals are fed on are 20 per cent home grown, 40 per cent from other European countries, and 40 per cent from other continents. The most important countries of import are Argentina and Brazil, which produce soya cake, and Thailand, which produces manioc or cassava. Thus the first stage in the production process is trade with feed producing countries far away from Holland.
Next, the raw materials are transported to the feed manufacturers. In every case the most economic way is chosen, the most profitable being to ship it as mass freight to the port of Rotterdam and then in smaller vessels down the canals to Veghel, for example, to the largest feed plant in Europe. Veghel is a convenient spot as it is located in southeast Holland in the geometrical centre of a million pigs.
The Cehave company mixes raw materials into foods for cats, dogs, cattle, pigs, chickens and horses – altogether about 300 different products, each one scientifically fed to a specific gender of a specific aged specific species of a specific breed at a specific time of the year. Cehave has five plants which produce 2.2 billion kilos of food per annum, the compositions of which are – naturally – top secret.
The next stage of production is storage. Reserve stocks allow business between feed buyers and raw material suppliers. The feed producing and selling company is thus never in a tight spot. Then come the livestock growers, of whom the most important are the pig breeders. Each year some 21 million pigs are born in Holland.
The largest piggeries can contain up to 30 000 animals. The Hedelse Varkens Combinatie in Hedel is a family business. Eight of their boars occupy a key position (Figure 28). They produce the sperm for 900 sows, which then give birth to anything up to twenty piglets each. When they weigh between 110-115 kilos, they are sold to abattoirs in Holland or Germany. A pig farmer need own no land as the animals are never outside. Perhaps they don’t suffer from their boring inside life.
One of a farmer’s main headaches is the disposal of dung, especially pig’s. The Hedel piggery, for example, has to pay NGL 150 000 a year for someone to come and take it away. The farm contains some 7 000 pigs that produce 10 000 tonnes of dung a year. This has only a limited use as manure on cropland, because the ground absorbs phosphorous and heavy metals, nitrogen enters the surface water thus increasing the nitrate content of ground water.
Pig dung is a problem because the stock farmer has no land on which it could be used for muck spreading. The main trouble with dung is that it is too wet, the water content is often over 90 per cent. Singular solutions have been suggested; the consistency of dung is taken into consideration in developing feed products, its quality has been studied with scientific exactitude, and a manure exchange has been established in Holland to monitor the flow and manage the storage, processing and disposal of the excess. Huge drying plants have been built and dried dung is increasingly exported. All in all, it’s quite a profitable business.
After the manure exchanges come the abattoirs from whom the breeders invite bids. There are numerous industrialised slaughterhouses in Holland selling jointed meat for retail or processing. The various options open are to sell the pigs live, slaughtered, or processed to domestic or foreign buyers.
Ton Godee, the information manager of one the larger abattoirs, calmly describes the slaughtering process in all its gory detail. On arrival at the abattoir the pigs, who have become unsettled during transportation, are first sprayed with a tranquiliser, then lined up in concrete booths, stunned by an electric shock, after which their throats are slit, the carcasses sawn in half and jointed by hand. Slaughtering is a highly industrialised process; up to 60 000 pigs have their throats slit each week in the largest abattoirs.
Figure 27. Flow chart of animal-based food production in the Netherlands
(Sources: Akkerbouwproduktschappen, 1994; Environmental Statistics of the Netherlands, 1990; Facts and Figures, 1994)
Once the pigs have been slaughtered, the meat processors, transporters, wholesalers, retail butchers and restaurants enter the picture. All this shows that pig breeding can be a profitable business, even for those who do not own any land. Cattle breeding, on the other hand, is a bit closer to traditional farming (Figure 29).
Detrimental aspects
There do not appear to be any basic problems concerning the consumption of foods of animal origin in Europe. The present level of land-based foods – that is everything except fish – has been calculated to require about 108 million hectares of land. This is based on the present level of consumption and the amount of land required to produce each type of food, estimated on the basis of reasonable averages. This produces a figure that is about fifty per cent higher than the amount of pasture land mentioned in official statistics and about two-thirds of the arable land in use. This gives an average level of calories obtained from animal sources per person of 1 181 kilocalories (Figures 30 and 31).
Figure 28. Zorro the boar – king of the Hedel piggery
Even though total production and total consumption are in balance, the continent self-sufficient, and there is no need to change our eating habits, there are a couple of problems that need to be rectified. They concern the structure of meat and dairy production and its division between the different parts of Europe.
It is to the benefit of future generations that farming be placed on a healthier basis. Neither ground nor surface waters should be polluted, soil exhausted or saturated with wastes. Dung should enrich, not harm the soil.
Particular attention should be paid to the production of meat in Belgium, Holland and Denmark, which are very dependent on imported feed. These three countries, whose combined area is only 110 000 square kilometres, produce 6.5 million tonnes of meat a year. If they produced their own feeds, this would require an area of 130 000 square kilometres under normal European conditions. These small countries do not have enough land to feed their own animals, so mountains of feed materials have to be transported from neighbouring countries or shipped from distant continents. Holland, for example, imports about a million tonnes of soya cake from Brazil and Argentina and 3 million tonnes of manioc from Thailand (Akkerbouwproduktschappen, 1994).
Figure 29. Cattle grazing on a summer pasture in Belgium
These three countries produce 220 kilos of meat per person per annum, four times the amount required by a healthy diet. A profit-oriented, super-efficient meat industry imports feed products from elsewhere, processes the animals into meat which it sells to other European countries, and simultaneously ruins the soil with excessive dung and poisons. Every year, Europe imports some 20 million tonnes of soya, manioc and other feeds from outside the continent. This regional dependency in meat production is one of Europe’s most serious problems.
Figure 30. The quantities of foods and the land they require to produce a daily intake of 1200 kilocalories
(Sources: Food Consumption Statistics, 1988; FAO Yearbook, Production, 1993; Ala-Mantila, 1992)
These countries also produce dairy products considerably in excess of their own requirements. The environment suffers from the daily transportation of products from one country to another. It is not only pig dung that is ruining the soil, but also dairy cattle dung, as many harmful elements are seeping into the ground water. The quantities of heavy metals released into the soil in Holland, as well as potassium, nitrogen, phosphorous and ammoniac, are, in many areas, well over the recommended limits (Environmental Statistics of the Netherlands, 1990). The same is true for other countries that go in for intensive farming.
Figure 31. Total consumption of animal-based foods in Europe and the area required to produce them
(Sources: Food Consumption Statistics, 1988; FAO Yearbook, Production, 1993; Ala-Mantila, 1992)
The equilibrium of developing countries and other continents must not be disturbed. It is not their job to support European – our – gluttony. Thus Europe must not produce food from animal sources by importing feeds or cereals from developing countries, like Ireland, Denmark, Belgium and Holland do today. It should and will achieve self-sufficiency only when the whole process from manure through feeds, energy and machinery to the dining table and back again into to manure, is not based on imported feeds, soils drowning in waste and slowly becoming exhausted, or the exploitation of cheap labour in other continents. The only exceptions to this principle are tropical fruit like bananas, beverages like coffee, and spices like pepper. The importation of feeds means taking away land in the developing countries which should be used to feed their own populations.
Figure 32. The land required in the different regions of Europe to produce the animal-based foods proposed in the plan
The most effective way to make conditions healthier would be to restructure production in the agricultural countries of Europe. However, the national economies of these countries are to a large extent dependent upon the exportation of agricultural produce. Furthermore, they would not have enough land to supply all the food required for even their own populations. The only logical way out of this impasse is that these countries will have to radically reduce their populations over the centuries to come, as I have already mentioned earlier on.
The first of the above mentioned shortcomings concerns future generations, the second the peoples of the developing countries and the third, the treatment of animals in large, industrialised meat producing plants. Animals should not be considered as just another semifinished product and during their short lives should enjoy reasonable conditions. Few of these factories ever fulfill this requirement, so I feel the protests of animal protectionists quite justified.
One well-founded observation in conclusion. In no country may the condition of the soil be decided nationally. The soil is as much a totality as the atmosphere, and its preservation for future generations is a basic duty of us all. If one nation fails to do this, then its neighbours must interfere.
Land use solutions
The basic idea behind the plan for land use is that the different parts of Europe try to produce their own food in accordance with the idealistic objectives presented above.
At present Europe has 0.16 hectares of pasture and 0.30 hectares of arable land per capita. This is enough to give it self-sufficiency and, if used intelligently, could even be reduced without resorting to over-intensive cultivation. The land intended for food is, however, in the wrong place in respect to the consumers, so there is an unreasonable amount of transportation going on, including animal-based foods, from one area to another. The leading meat exporters are Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Hungary and Holland. The main importers are Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Dairy produce constitutes a major part of the traffic in animal-based foods, the main exporters being Germany and Belgium and the chief importers Spain and Italy.
Europe uses many times more land to produce foods from animals than from plants. The land required to produce plant-based foods is only 28 per cent of the total cultivated area, although the quantity of calories is two thirds of the proposed nutritional requirement. Thus the frequently repeated argument of vegetarians concerning the efficient use of land is well founded, if only people could be persuaded to give up meat. If indeed this happened, we could easily earmark another sixth of the total land area of Europe to other uses. Likewise, the demand to restrict population would not be so tough on people accustomed to eating plant-based foods. If the ideal values proposed in the plan are applied, this produces a figure of 110 million hectares for the total land area needed to produce all animal-based foods (Figure 32).
For all the reasons stated above, I have decided upon a plan for land use based on the following premises. Firstly, the number of people in the overpopulated countries has to be reduced, after which it is assumed that Europe will gradually become self-sufficient in food. This will involve the reduction in the area devoted to agriculture in some countries, because the land is used only to feed their own populations and not exported to the extent it is today. In other countries, the area in use will increase. The ideal populations, theoretical harvests, and the cultivated area required to produce animal-based foods yielding the ideal nutritional quantities have been calculated for the land use plan and are contained in Appendix 1.
Europe must lay down the principles for the production of animal-based foods. Transport volumes within Europe should be examined and considerably reduced from their present levels. Generally speaking, all the back-and-forth movement of food and other goods that goes on is quite senseless.
PLANT-BASED FOODS
Better progress was made in some countries than others. Ireland, for instance, long resisted change. Even at the beginning of the 2000s, many farmers still prepared to plough with horses because it was so romantic. John O’Neill was one of those who cherished tradition, largely out of respect for his dear departed dad. He had been a strict Catholic with no time for the poppycock talked by the young.
Nevertheless, on this spring evening in the year 2035, John is in his favourite pub gazing out of the window as three unmanned tractors plough his fields. It’s much more fun drinking beer than driving a tractor or plodding behind horses from dawn to dusk. He’d given in the previous spring, bought his first robot and quickly noticed how much more time he had for his favourite pastime. At first he was worried about the dry-stone walls around his fields, but nothing happened. Furthermore, his pals in the pub were struck dumb when he traded in his horses for the new miracle machines. Neither has he had to use his fists so much around closing time since that evening last spring when the robots first appeared in his fields.
The consumption of plant-based foods
As with animal-based foods, there are also health recommendations for those derived from plants and also wide differences in their consumption in Europe. These can be seen by comparing the energy derived from foods of plant origin to those derived from animals given in the previous chapter (Figure 33).
The quantities of plant-based foods necessary to produce the required daily level of calories and the amount of cultivable land needed to produce them are given in Figure 34. It is worthwhile comparing the typical specific values of different plants to the comparable figures in the previous chapter. Only slightly more than half of the desired calories are required as animal nutrients, but considerably more cultivable land.
Once the figures for the consumption of plant-based foods in Europe is known we can, with the aid of their specific values, estimate the cultivable land required, as well as the equivalent calories (Figure 35). A total area of 44 million hectares is obtained and the average daily calorie intake per person is 2 300 kilocalories.
The total amount of cultivable land required is obtained by adding the area needed to grow plant-based foods to that necessary for the production of animal-based foods. This is not the same as the area proposed in the plan, because this is calculated for an ideal population with an ideal consumption. Neither is it the same as the present area under cultivation, because this includes wasteland and the effect of external trade.
What is important here is to consider whether the production of plant-based foods in Europe rests on a healthy basis.
The production of plant-based foods
Nowadays Europe produces nearly all its own food; only animal feeds and certain fruits and beverages are imported and grain exported. On the whole, Europe is reckoned to be self-sufficient in food.
The crops obtained from the different regions, however, vary considerably. The types of food grown in the south differ from those in the north, and as regards yields, it is useful to compare crops grown throughout the continent. These are mainly wheat, barley and potatoes, the yields of which vary considerably from one area to another and from one year to the next (Figure 36). The highest yields of wheat are in Ireland, Holland, Denmark and Belgium, for barley France, Belgium and Ireland, and potatoes Holland, Denmark and Belgium. The lowest yields are in the east Europe, Portugal, Greece and Spain.
The importance of fertilizers is paramount; the more they are used, the higher the yields. The lowest use of pesticides is not in the low-yield countries, but in Scandinavia. The most enthusiastic users are to be found in two of the most intensively farmed countries, Holland and Belgium (Figure 37).
This chapter is only concerned with the outdoor cultivation of plants. Far more productive is greenhouse production, which will be discussed in the following chapter. One special feature of outdoor cultivation is the combined effect of fertilizers, pesticides, soil treatment and machines on the quality of the soil from one year to the next. The excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides, unsuitable soil treatment and over-heavy machines are known to cause damage to the soil.
Figure 33. The present and proposed consumption of plant-based foods in certain European countries
(Source: Food Consumption Statistics 1976-1985, 1988)
Shortcomings in cultivation
The cultivation of plant-based foods in Europe causes the same damage as the production of animal-based foods. The area required for plant-based foods is a third of that for animal-based foods, even though the calories produced are much greater. However, the inputs and wastes are better absorbed into the environment than the by-products of animal-based foods. The inputs are not significantly hauled from other continents, neither do the wastes burden the fields to the same extent as cattle dung.
Figure 34. The quantities of foods and the land they require to produce a daily intake of 1900 kilocalories
(Sources: Food Consumption Statistics 1976-1985, 1988; FAO Yearbook, Production, 1993)
The adverse effects of industrialised agriculture, the causes and consequences, have been widely discussed (Clunies-Ross et al, 1992). The following examples are worthy of mention, some of which are related to animal-based food production:
1. Farms increase in size but the number of workers diminishes, neither is farming a way of life but a form of mechanised industry. The cultural diversity of individual countries is impoverished, and the decline in available alternatives makes people’s lives monotonous. Production becomes increasingly artificial.
Figure 35. Total consumption of plant-based foods in Europe and the area needed to produce them
(Sources: Food Consumption Statistics 1976-1985, 1988; FAO Yearbook, Production, 1993; FAO Yearbook, Trade, 1993)
2. The environment weakens. Ditches and hedges disappear, small thickets and insect breeding grounds are destroyed, meadows and pastures give way to intensive farming, swamps are drained, the soil erodes and hardens, irrigation silts up certain areas, pesticides remain in the soil and the groundwater is polluted.
Figure 36. Barley and wheat crops for certain European countries, 1979-1981 and 1991
(Source: FAO Yearbook, Production, 1993)
3. Foodstuffs deteriorate in quality. Preservatives and additives cause damage, pesticides remain in the foods, food becomes more unnatural and unrecognisable, user control disappears. Animal diseases infect humans. People eat what they are sold without complaining.
4. Animals are badly treated. Their movement is restricted and unnatural, the use of hormones and genetic manipulation increases, likewise artificial foods and crowded living quarters. Ethically unacceptable methods increase.
Figure 37. Use of fertilisers and pesticides in certain European countries
(Source: Numerotietoa läntisen Euroopan maataloudesta, 1992)
5. Certain European countries import extra feed from other continents. The producing country’s agriculture becomes distorted as the land is used for other purposes than satisfying their own needs, the rain forests are cleared for cultivation, Holland and Belgium produce an excessive amount of manure which they have no room for. Surplus grain is exported from Europe.
6. As a result of productivity, green areas diminish and are built on. The sod is asphalted over and compensated by the cultivation of peripheral natural areas.
The mechanisation of farming
Hardly a century ago all farm work in Europe was performed by hand and horse power. The care of horses and the power they provided played a crucial role in agriculture. The widespread use of tractors and other agricultural machines only occurred in the last half century.
In a generation from now, the use of present-day tractors in industrialised farming will be a thing of the past. A farmer in Provence will no longer have to start his tractor up in the barn in preparation for a day ploughing or sowing his fields. Instead he will programme his fleet of unmanned machines on his computer the night before. He has already entered a detailed map of his fields into its memory, so the machines will avoid large rocks and other obstacles, and plan their own routes which they follow to the inch.
If the task is sowing, then the machines are told where they can automatically refill the seed hoppers. When harvesting they empty the threshed grain into containers on the side of the field. Even refueling is automatic (Figure 38). All machines are satellite navigated. They test the temperature of the ground in front of them and move in response to a infinitely sensitive feeler. If a living creature larger than a mole strays across their path, they stop immediately and send out a warning signal.
There are several machines working together, because then it is possible to reduce their weight by a few hundred kilos in order to minimise soil strain. Such machines will only be of benefit to the soil because they are considerably lighter than present-day models. They do not need to be so wide because their working time is not restricted in the same way as those steered by hand within normal human working hours. They can be much smaller than machines today, with many of them working the fields rather than just one large one.
Any attachment can be coupled to a computer-run tractor, so they can plough, harrow, sow, manure and reap. They work irrespective of the weather, day and night, so a farmer can activate them before going to bed rather than at first light in the morning. Agricultural machines like these can be left in the field, they are programmed with an exact map of the area and the time they should start working. This is the way agriculture should be automatised within the black stripe of the zebra.
Advanced robotised agricultural machinery is already being developed. Prototypes of unmanned, programmed machines that can plough, sow, manure and reap already exist. In structure, they are even simpler than traditional tractors, as they do need room for a driver or a cabin to protect him from the weather. The key element is that they are precision navigated by satellites.
Position fixing can be adjusted by using a fixed point in the terrain and, with certain accessories, it is even possible now to stop a machine within 30 millimetres on its planned course. It can also be equipped with radar and an infra-red alarm that reacts to warm objects. There is no danger whatsoever of an unmanned machine running somebody over who has strayed onto its course. For safety reasons the areas where the machines are used could be sign-posted and fenced in. Railways throughout the world have operated on the same principle and in far more dangerous areas.
The few problems which remain concern refilling and emptying. These operations could also be programmed and stored in the machine’s memory. In the future, all a farmer running an industrialised farm has to do is to enter a map of the area to be cultivated and a list of the tasks to be performed into the machine’s computer memory.
I support this development despite its partial contradiction with points 1 and 2 above. I do not approve of automation if it predominates in agriculture. This would not be desirable. Even though it is rational to modernise the mechanisation of mass production in agriculture, there should also be the white stripe of the zebra containing small-scale, humane methods of cultivation. This is essential to give a spiritual and humane content to man’s life and to enrich the environment, not to make production more efficient (Figure 39).
Figure 38. Finnish unmanned tractor at work, summer 1995
Regional division of production
From the point of view of plant-based food production in Europe, excessive production in France and low self-sufficiency in Italy can be considered disadvantages. The tonnage of plant-based foods transported here and there within the continent is larger than that for animal-based foods. Hence the idea of self-sufficiency in my suggested land use plan concerns both animal and plant-based foods. The ideal area under cultivation in France, for example, would be much smaller than the present total of pasture and arable land. On the other hand, to achieve self-sufficiency Holland would have to use 70 per cent of its total area for the production of food, and both Belgium and Germany 50 per cent. The only places in Europe, which, even after the reduction in population, would be unable to be feed themselves would be Belgium and Holland. This is due to the essential size of the built area, the need for conservation, and the land required for energy generation, but above all because of overpopulation.
Figure 39. Polish farmer at work, summer 1995
In respect to regional self-sufficiency in food in the plan for regulating land use, one exception is made. Ten per cent of the land mass of Holland is compensated with an equivalent area from Denmark (4 300 square kilometres). The plan assumes that the productivity of these countries is the same – both are in the top league. As regards the other countries, the plan envisages complete self-sufficiency within existing national boundaries. On the basis of the above, the areas needed to meet the demand for plant-based foods have been calculated for the different regions of Europe (Figure 40). No excess production of food is allowed in the plan. The total area required is 25.1 million hectares.
The existing division into cultivable land and pastures (Figures 41 and 42) will not exist in the plan, as the total cultivable area consists of a combination of land reserved for animal or plant-based food (Figure 43).
It is useful to observe that the planned cultivable area is much smaller than the existing total for cultivable land and pastures. There are many reasons for this. The plan envisages a population some 5 per cent smaller than now, the consumption of animal-based foods is assumed to be 7 per cent lower, but the yield from cultivable land will have increased by 5-10 per cent. Even so, these do not explain everything. Most significantly, the present output of pasture land is only a half or a third of the theoretical levels proposed in the plan.
Food production and the towns
Agriculture is more of a way of life than any other form of production. The objective of the plan is a Europe which has not lost its contact with human traditions. It is just so that this way of life can be preserved that a part of food production will be small-scale and semi-vocational. In practice this has only limited possibilities.
The inhabitants of large cities cannot even produce a fraction of their own food. On the outskirts of the smaller towns people could have allotments, but these have a utopian rather than a practical significance. Small-scale, non-industrialised farming which produces food in significant quantities is only possible in the countryside. It is also realistic to produce fruit and vegetables in small gardens, but grain and its processing into flour and bread is far too laborious for even the most dedicated eco-enthusiast.
The feeding of the large cities is a problem that has to be solved separately. When thinking about attitudes, it would be a good idea if farms were located on the outskirts of towns. City-dwellers would then appreciate the value of clean air and the importance of the new, non-polluting forms of transport. As there is a daily traffic in food, it would be best if, like timber, it was produced near at hand. Later on, in connection with the planning of large cities, examples are given of the need to put food production under ground.
Figure 40. The land required in the different regions of Europe to produce the plant-based foods proposed in the plan
It is realistic to believe that most food production, especially of cereals, will be highly industrialised and automatised. There is no reason to fantasise that in the future wheat or something similar will be produced by hand or even with primitive tools. Although industrial farming must be clean, sustainable and environmentally friendly, it can also be modern and mechanised.
One question that is quite independent of automatisation, is the continuous tilling of the soil and the use of fertilizers and pesticides. These matters must be planned for the whole of agriculture, not according to the principle of sustainable development, but sustainable preservation. The condition of the soil should be guarded so that it does not become exhausted in the years and decades to come.
For this matter to be solved, Europe must categorically adopt the principle of strict preservation. Land is not the property of individuals or even nations, and no one may be allowed to ruin it. A law binding all the countries of Europe will safeguard the condition of the soil everywhere, from all generations and in all countries.
Figure 41. The cultivable areas of Europe in 1995
Figure 42. The pasture areas of Europe in 1995
Figure 43. Agricultural areas planned for Europe. (See Appendix I for calculations)
GREENHOUSES AND FISHING
Eva Struoga loves her greenhouses and the tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers, parsley and dill growing in them. The small eco-village in south Lithuania where she lives is not the only place in Europe that enjoys the famous top-quality vegetables the Struoga family nursery produces. Struoga tomatoes and Struoga cucumbers are appreciated by gourmets throughout the continent. Their reputation is the result of uncompromising and persevering toil. The fertilizers used are carefully analysed, the quantity and quality of water the optimum result of numerous tests carried out at different times of the year. The soil is always of the right composition, and even the earthworms are happy with their lot.
The genetic pedigree of the tomatoes is as noble as any royal family’s. Struoga vegetables have been given the highest possible grade, A1, and to Eva’s professional pride, receive the same honour from year to the next. Many of the secrets have come from her parents, who spent decades developing these delicious vegetables in this northern clime known for its long spring days full of light and warmth.
So it’s quite normal when a high official in France, the security chief for energy production, offers his guests Struoga tomatoes one beautiful May evening in the year 2035.
Greenhouse farming
In many European countries today, the majority of tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers, cauliflower, lettuce and strawberries are grown in greenhouses, and their yields are greater than those cultivated in fields. The results can appear quite startling: hundreds of tonnes of vegetables a year from an area no larger than a hectare. Even when you know that vegetables are mainly water, the results are no less impressive. Due to the high productivity of greenhouse cultivation, and its special use of energy, it is worthwhile considering the subject separately. Theoretically, greenhouse farming offers the northern part of the continent the possibility of producing everything it now imports from tropical countries: bananas and oranges, coffee, tea, cocoa and tobacco. The only problem here is the amount of energy it would need. Even growing vegetables in the north consumes a great deal of energy for heating the covered areas.
The widest use of greenhouse cultivation today is in the most populous country of Europe, Holland, where some hundred square kilometres of land is heated under glass. True, most of this is for flowers not food. Nevertheless, the quantity of vegetables produced in Holland, either by type or in absolute numbers, is impressive. The possibility of similar cultivation in all parts of the continent is born out by the excellent yields obtained in chilly Finland.
Petra Penninx runs a nursery in Helenaveen, Holland, with some 10 500 square metres under glass. The family has specialised in red peppers (Figure 44). Altogether there are four people working the farm. The largest greenhouses growing red peppers in Holland are 7 hectares in size. The average annual yield is 30 kilos per square metre and most of the produce is exported.
Hothouse farming is a year-round occupation. Planting takes place at the beginning of the year, the first crop is in March and the last in December. According to nutritional recommendations, Europe needs some 50 million tonnes of vegetables a year. The area required – assuming a realistic yield of 300 tonnes per hectare of which 60 per cent is produced under heated conditions – would be about ten times the present area under glass in Holland. In the land use map of Europe (Figure 1) this would appear as a tiny dot. As half of the greenhouses in Holland now produce flowers, the area required would actually be twenty times the food producing area.
The problems of greenhouse cultivation concern the energy balance. It is estimated that the annual plant-based food crop is about 300 tonnes per hectare and 220 kilocalories per kilo. A huge yield like this would only produce 7.8 kilowatt hours per hectare per annum of nutritional energy, about one eighth of the solar energy available from the same area when generated by solar panels and converted into electricity. The real problem concerns the energy used in heating the greenhouses. At the latitude of Holland, a kilo of oil is required to produce one kilo of tomatoes. The energy content of oil is 40 times the nutritional energy value of the tomatoes. As people do not consume crude oil, an unprecedented amount of nonrenewable resources are used growing food in this way. The ratio is unhealthy and shows why it pays to import bananas from Central America.
In north Finland the amount of energy used in heating is about the same as in Holland, but the yields are only 60-70 per cent of the Dutch level. Nevertheless, greenhouse farming is considered worthwhile in Finland, not in terms of energy but money. Absent from both calculations is the amount of energy used in building the greenhouses, transporting the produce, heating the shops and so on. The ratio between the energy content of crude oil and tomatoes is therefore even more unfavourable. The environmental balance is also affected by many other factors, such as the amount of C02 released into the atmosphere.
Figure 44. Petra Penninx in her greenhouse
The conclusion is painfully clear: the use of oil in greenhouses must be stopped in Europe if this is the only way to heat them. When the quantity of vegetables required is divided by the population of the continent, another interesting conclusion is reached: the vegetables needed for each person could be produced from a greenhouse only 3 square metres in size. The provision of vegetables is not an economic problem for Europeans so long as the price of energy remains at its present level. However, when thinking about saving natural resources, the matter is somewhat more complicated. In order to support this method permanently, a new way of generating energy must be discovered.
In view of the above, greenhouse cultivation must be considered in the light of a new system of generating energy whereby solar panels do not convert the sun’s rays into electricity, but heat. As their annual energy output is 500 kilowatts per square metre of heat, a three square metre greenhouse would only need a two square metre solar panel. This could be installed on any side of a house facing south.
The problem comes with the storage of heat. The most practical solution would be to build the greenhouses on a thick layer of earth to insulate them from the cold, and which would store the heat generated during the summer. During the cold season the heat could be pumped out. Another more modern method is to store heat as hydrogen. When a greenhouse is built as a fixed part of a house, the storage problem would be solved as part of the overall energy question.
Greenhouse cultivation in Europe is an important part of the food industry because it only a small area is required per unit of nutritional energy, even if this includes the solar panels required for heating. Vegetables are healthy foods. Once the energy problem is solved, greenhouses will be the finest way to produce decent food throughout the continent.
Fishing
In addition to greenhouse cultivation, there is another minor branch of food production which, for the sake of completeness, must also be discussed: fishing and fish breeding. Both of these have mass industries. Of the land used to produce food, most is used for meat, and the least for fish. However, fish supplies – even according to recommendations – about 6 per cent of our requirement of animal-based foods.
Europeans fish the whole world. Poland, for instance, catches most of its fish off the east coast of South America, and France from the Indian Ocean. This does not mean that Poles eat Argentinean fish or the French Indian fish. The oceans are exploited according to another principle.
A state or fishing company does not need to be on a coast to indulge in deep-sea fishing. Switzerland could have as large a fishing fleet as Iceland. Once a fishing company considers some country as its domicile, it has its registered office there, and its owners are often nationals or companies of that country. The fleet fishes anywhere in the world where fish abound, and after a half-year spell of duty the crew are flown home and their work continued by a replacement crew. The most typical vessel is the trawler using drift nets or draw seines. Trawlers can measure up to a hundred metres, with kilometre-long nets catching 100 tonnes of fish a day. The ships do not put in to port, but transfer their catches at regular intervals to special carriers. They collect the fish from the open seas and take them to the buyers offering the best prices. Thus the fish caught by a Polish trawler could be carried by an American ship from the coast of Argentina to France where it is finally eaten.
The Polish company Dalmor, for instance, has its registered office in Gdynia. It operates a fleet of 17 vessels capable of freezing 750 tonnes of fish a day. Although it has fished all over the world, nowadays it concentrates off the west coast of Canada, the south Atlantic and the waters off New Zealand. Its catches are collected monthly by a carrier company with whom it has an annual agreement. The captains and crews are mainly paid an incentive wage. Each ship has a crew of about 80 men and the shifts are longer than on land. After six months at sea the crews receive a similar length holiday, and replacements are flown out on normal route flights. The ships are repaired overseas and seldom visit Poland. Whilst in Gdynia in summer 1995, I met Jan Gozdzikowski, the assistant manager of Dalmor, who told me that the last time one of the company’s vessels paid a visit home was eight years ago. The fleet is permanently at sea (Figure 45).
Figure 45. The Altair Seward of the Polish Dalmor fleet at harbour in Alaska. The photo was taken by the legendary Polish sea captain Tomasz “Lobo” Sobieszczanski
The fish is often filleted on board, frozen and transferred as such to the carrier or lorry, taken to the wholesaler and retailer, and finally the freezer in some restaurant. They are defrozen just before its time to pop them in the frying pan. Fresh fish is not obtainable from the oceans, but from small-scale fishing in the white stripe of the zebra. Fish can be packed in ice on small trawlers and sold fresh in the market of the nearest port. This kind of fishing, however, is not on the same world-wide, gigantic industrial scale as deep-sea fishing. Neither does it have any effect on the world’s natural resources. The fish catch for Europe is in the region of 12 million tonnes a year – and herein lies the catch.
On April 15, 1995, Brian Tobin, the Canadian Minister of Fisheries, instructed the media to set their alarm clocks to ring the following morning, meaning that something was about to happen. And what happened was that Canada expelled the Spaniards who had been fishing Greenland halibut off the Canadian coast. Several similar disputes over fishing limits have occurred during the last few years. China, Vietnam, Russia and Japan have all disputed fishing areas in the Pacific Ocean. The Argentineans have shot at Taiwanese fishermen in the South Atlantic and Peru has impounded Polish vessels. More fish wars are expected in the future. The longest dispute concerns the fishing limits of coastal states and their right to prevent foreign vessels fishing within that zone. It is in the interests of outsiders to have the limit as close to the coast as possible, whereas the coastal states wish to extend it far out to sea. This limit has been extended continuously over the years and is now 200 miles. As there is little fish beyond this limit, coastal states virtually control all the utilisable fishing waters and so can dictate terms. Developing countries are unable to guard their fish stocks as actively as the industrialised countries and are thus exploited.
The leading European fishing countries are Spain, Iceland, Norway and Denmark. Their combined fleets fish about half of the total catch (Figure 46). Although, for practical reasons, Iceland has been excluded from this book, because of its important contribution to the production and consumption of fish in continental Europe it is necessary to mention it here. Figure 46 clearly reveals two features. The first is that the per capita division of the catch between European countries is very uneven. It is enormous in Iceland compared to the countries listed in Figure 46 – about 6000 kilos per person per annum.
The second interesting feature is the ratio between the quantities of fish caught and those consumed, which in almost all countries shows a surplus. When comparing the catch and consumption of fish in Europe to the ideal recommendations in the food spectrum, it becomes clear that Europeans do not eat as much fish as they should. The recommendation is 30 kilos of fish per person per annum, which means a total consumption of 15 million tonnes. Europe is a net exporter of fish, not an importer. But this does not mean a geographical export of fish from Europe to somewhere else, only the movement of cash.
When thinking about greater equality in the world, then a low consumption is to be recommended because even a catch of 12 million tonnes is 2 million tonnes more than Europe should have according to its population. But if the catch is divided equitably, according to the surface area of continents, then we get a considerably lower figure; an annual catch and consumption quota for Europe of about 4 million tonnes. Europeans would no longer be able to mint money from our global waters, and fish restaurants would have to serve even smaller portions than now. The bounty of the seas is finite. This, if anything, proves that it is necessary to reduce the population of Europe.
The global fish catch is a little under 100 million tonnes and in recent years has declined slightly. The question concerns resources which are continuously diminishing due to over-fishing. It is estimated that over-fishing has already reduced the stock so that 20 per cent higher catches would be permanently possible if only the stocks were allowed to recover first. Fishing does not interfere with land use in Europe, but the undeniable prognosis is that if the world’s population increases and over-fishing continues, then the catches will fall even more. This can already be seen in absolute figures, particularly in the per capita intake of calories from fish. Not even prosperous Europe can observe the food spectrum recommendations.
Figure 46. The 1989 fish catch and 1992 consumption of fish for certain European countries
(Sources: FAO Yearbook, Fishery Statistics, 1995; Consumer Europe, 1993)
The problem can be partly solved by fish farming. The fish feed used in these farms is a mixture of fish meal and grain. The feed ratio is surprisingly favourable; about 1.5 kilos of dry feed produce a kilo of fish, even if that includes a lot of water. This is only one view. A far worse problem is one similar to that of pig slurry in Holland. Fish excreta pollutes the water and extensive areas have become eutrophic. Thus the shortage of fish cannot be rectified by large-scale fish farming. Dispersed in rural eco-villages, fish culture could make a serious contribution to our diet.
Fish farming is, unfortunately, becoming a large-scale industry. Huge companies, like the Swedish Farmocean, make colossal breeding chests, which are anchored, buoyed and equipped like lighthouses (Figure 47). The fish are fed in computer-controlled doses, and electronic sensors monitor the temperature, movement and oxygen content of the water. These chests can be anything up to 6 000 cubic metres and contain 150 tonnes of salmon, arctic trout or some other fish. China’s fish production of 20 million tonnes a year is largely based on fish culture. As the quantity of fish from the oceans decreases, so that from hatcheries increases. Unless this industry expands rapidly, we can anticipate an even sharper decline in the global fish catch.
Greenhouses and fishing make an important, if minor contribution to European food production. Unfortunately, they are not without their difficulties, and both suffer from unsolved environmental problems. The first is intimately bound up with energy production, the second with population growth. These basic matters require urgent and immediate solutions.
Figure 47. The dimensions of a large fish breeding chest / cage
(Source: Farmocean International AB)
