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Chickens beat dogs in sustainability
Peter Korn, Pamplin Media Group
Urban chickens top green pecking order
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… are urban chickens really sustainable?
They definitely are as producers of food, say West and others, because local production is a critical component of sustainability.
“In terms of egg harvesting, it doesn’t get any closer than walking out your back door,” Nardelli says. Not only do home-produced eggs mean Nardelli doesn’t have to expend gasoline on a trip to the supermarket, but the eggs don’t need to be trucked to the supermarket from a factory farm, where they likely would have been raised with hormones, antibiotics and pesticides.
Portland code allows city residents to keep up to three chickens without needing a permit. No roosters – with their morning wake-up calls – are allowed. But hens produce eggs without roosters.
Other area cities, including Forest Grove, ban raising chickens inside city limits.
Nardelli says he can “free-range” his chickens in the back yard, where their excrement helps fertilize his plants. And the chickens peck around for insects, so they double as natural exterminators. In some cultures, Nardelli says, farmers keep their chickens in a mobile pen that they move each day, letting the nitrogen-rich poop settle on different crops. But Nardelli warns that the nitrogen content is so high it needs to be mixed with straw or other materials for use as fertilizer.
Clearly, urban chickens, which lay about one egg per day, provide a sustainable upgrade over store-bought eggs. But most of Pistils’ customers keep their chickens as pets. So it only seems fair to compare their sustainability to other pets. Dogs, for instance.
(12 February 2009)
Little Livestock for Urban and Suburban Gardens
Sharon Astyk, Casaubon’s Book
For most people with a medium sized yard, a little livestock will allow you to do a little more with your space than you can probably do without them. It isn’t a perfect equation, of course, they take up space, cost money and consume food. But often, the net return, the net pleasure of the experience, and the quality of the food, manure and environment means you get more than you put in. One of the most important things you can do is keep records, so you know that you are getting more back than you put in.
When you get livestock, however, you need to ask yourself some questions.
1. What do I really expect from them? Am I being realistic? – There usually is no perfect creature out there. The perfect goat, the perfect chicken breed – maybe they exist, maybe not, but what really matters are your expectations.
2. Am I a livestock person? Animals require your attention every day. When it is freezing out, the rabbits may need their water replaced 3 or 4 times a day. The chickens molt and stop laying. Everything escapes occasionally and has to be chased around. Even if you plan to eat an animal, that’s no excuse (in fact, IMHO, it is less excuse) for not keeping it warm, safe, healthy and well cared for during its life.
(12 February 2009)
Most environmentally friendly form of animal protein?
Leo Hickmann, Guardian
How on earth do you go about accurately comparing the environmental impacts of a mouthful of cod versus a mouthful of steak? One yardstick is to compare the amount of energy it takes to produce one calorie of each form of animal protein. Once you have established this figure, it is relatively straightforward to calculate the associated greenhouse gas emissions. In the case of traditional farm-reared animals, this broadly equates to working out how much energy is used to produce the various “inputs”, such as animal feed and heating. With fish, things get a bit more complicated. If you’re looking at wild fish trawled from the ocean rather than farmed, then you need to calculate how much fuel is used to catch each calorie of fish protein.
A 2006 study by researchers at the University of Chicago’s Department of the Geophysical Sciences examined the “energetic planetary footprints” of various diets and, in doing so, listed the typical emissions associated with each form of animal protein. The results show a huge variation between the species. Grain-fed beef (13.82g of “CO2 equivalent” per Kcal), pork (9.03g) and lamb (25.97g) cause, by far, the most emissions. No real surprises there except, perhaps, the high total for lamb, which many might assume would need less feeding and attention than, say, a cow. Intensively reared chicken (the sort that would send a shiver down Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s spine) cause far fewer emissions by comparison – just 1.67g per Kcal.
(12 February 2009)
