Life in the country today

Tuesday 8th June 2010
Animal farming is just about the only reliable source of income for people who live in the countryside. They use the ‘resources at hand’. They farm animals, sometimes because the profits are better than from plant-growing and sometimes because the land can only support animal grazing. The more marginal the land the more cattle and then the more sheep will be ‘run’. Using the land, converting its energy for our use, is the name of the game. When the ‘converter’ is an animal it is regarded merely as a machine for ‘using the land’. The cruelty factor has exponentially increased over the past 60 years owing to competition for valuable markets. There has been a vast explosion of (hungry) populations in urban concentrations. The ever-present threat of someone else exploiting the market has made intensive farming inevitable.