Thread by @LandworkersUK

1/ This @guardian article by @GeorgeMonbiot on pasture-fed meat is not only dangerously divisive within a movement already struggling to save the planet from env. destruction, poverty and runaway climate chaos, but it's also disappointingly misinformed 🧵
tinyurl.com/2s4dnsut

2/ Production & consumption of animal products MUST be reduced, but there's no need to eliminate it completely. Livestock are important to nutrition security,fertility rotations,conservation grazing of wildflower meadows, not to mention the livelihoods of small farmers worldwide

3/ #FoodSovereignty deeply embodies equity and “fair share” meaning for everyone to have a right to food and the means to produce what they need to nourish their communities we have to find a balance between land for livestock and land for other uses...

4/ ...so when we defend agroecological livestock farmers we're also defending the livelihoods of forestry workers, horticulture growers and arable farmers, all of whom contribute to our basic human needs and who therefore must be included in balanced and holistic land-use systems

5/ But isolating land-use as the most important criteria for assessing env. impact hides the bigger picture - agrotoxins, large machinery, intensive stocking numbers and excessive effluent also contribute to biodiversity loss - & all are impacts of industrial livestock production

7/ The article also fails to mention the destructive changes in land-use needed to produce feed for intensive livestock systems - notably deforestation in the #amazon rainforest for soy plantations

6/ We need to put an end to industrial, corporate controlled and input-driven industrial livestock farming, and work towards a future where meat production is small-scale, part of a mixed farm, and provides food for local communities who are connected to its production

6/ Yet this article completely ignores the potential for these small-scale agroecological alternatives - such as livestock in agroforestry systems AKA #silvopasture, or the potential of feeding food waste to animals…

7/… instead it chooses to attack the agroecology and organic movement, seeding division into our movement when the most important thing we should be doing now is pulling together behind a consistent and positive vision.

8/ Our Campaigns Coordinator Jyoti Fernandes has written a personal letter to @GeorgeMonbiot in response to this article and his new book, #Regenesis, urging for more nuance on the livestock issue.

You can read Jyoti's full letter here: landworkersalliance.org.uk/wp-content/upl…