The Need for Meat
With its newest agrarian reform, the European Union has nailed its colors to a sustainable agriculture. In times of climate change and looming worldwide hunger crises this seems to be a necessary decision. Until 2020, 43 billion euros will also find their way to Germany through the program. But while initiatives like the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) try to foster the development of a sustainable agriculture on the national level, topics like industrial livestock farming and meat consumption do not play a role in German international politics.
By Lisa Duhm
The scene is idyllic. The Henke family's farmhouse overlooks endless fields of grain that swings slowly back and forth under the warm summer sun in Lower Saxony, Germany. Blackbirds overtrump each other's singing, while the family's dog dozes lazily next to the front door. Nothing tells about what is inside the enormous gray barns behind the farmstead. The Henke family owns an industrial livestock farm, producing 40.000 pigs inside their barns every year.
Industrial livestock farming has not only been discussed over the last years for the smell of the animal's manure that clings to nose and clothes alike. The consequences for the animals themselves are drastic, as animal rights activist groups constantly point out. On a farm like Henke's, every pig is granted 0.5 m2 of space on average. Animal agriculture also has a “very substantial contribution to climate change and air pollution, to land, soil and water degradation and to the reduction of biodiversity,” a report by the FAO stated as early as 2006. In 2010, the UNEP proposed the world go vegetarian, in order to reduce meat production's disastrous impact on the environment.
Today, despite this knowledge, Germany still is the largest European meat producer with roughly 60 million pigs slaughtered per year. As stated by the Deutsche Fleischwarenindustrie e.V (German Meat Products Industry Association), meat products from Germany make up 26 percent of the European production. The number of animals kept in industrial livestock farms is growing annually by approximately three percent. While on the national level the issue is widely debated, internationally, it does not play a role in German politics: there is not one project of the German development cooperation that deals with the issue of factory farming. To understand why this is so, one has to dig deeper, beneath the vegetarian choice on the menu, and get one's hands bloody, just as Nadine Henke does when she assists her sows during labor.
The Consumer's Choice
Inside the barns, Nadine Henke is performing strenuous work. One of the piglets has not got out quick enough, now Henke is rubbing its back and blowing its nose to bring it back to life. “I want every single one of them to live,” she says. Every one of her 1.250 breeding sows are held in horizontal position by their stalls so they cannot accidentally crush their piglets to death. Every one of the 40.000 piglets that will stay with Henke for the next four weeks will then be sold to a feedlot operation. Five months and 120 kilograms of weight gain later, they will be ready for slaughter. What she does here is what the consumer wants her to do – this is Henke's clear conviction. “People want to buy cheap meat of good quality. That's what we produce.”
Family Henke's hog feeding farm is one of 30.000 in Germany. Theoretically, there is one pig for every third German citizen and a chicken for every second one. Nearly all of these animals are produced in industrial livestock farms like Henke's. Germans like to eat meat, and they like it cheap. Four whole cows, four sheep, twelve geese, 37 ducks, 46 pigs, 46 turkeys and 945 chickens: This is what the average German consumes during his life, according to the Fleischatlas 2013 (Meat Atlas 2013). Surprisingly, by European standards, this only makes them mid-level meat-eaters. In Denmark, the front-runner in meat-consumption, the average citizen eats 20 percent more meat.
One of the consequences of the intense need for meat is that economically, industrial livestock farming is of great importance to Germany. Between 1998 and 2008, the number of employees in animal husbandry doubled, while generally the agricultural sector registers a decrease in work force. Today, the sector accounts for only 0.9 percent of the gross value, however, it reached an output value of 53 billion euros in 2011. Compared to other German economic branches, the agricultural sector is one of the big players. Between 2001 and 2010, German meat exports doubled due to a higher demand on the world market.
When Nadine Henke sells her pigs after four weeks of intensive feeding, she is paid an average 65 euros for each of them. After subtracting all costs, the net profit per pig is only two to three euros. Currently Netto, a German discount supermarket, offers half a kilo of minced pork for 1,79 euros. Henke does not know where her pigs' meat is sold in the end. But she knows as well as everybody else that this price level can only be kept up when meat is produced cheaply – and this works best in industrial livestock farms at the moment.
European Innovation Partnership: More and Better from Less
“Of course, something about the way we produce meat has to change. The way meat is produced nowadays is completely out of balance,” says Dr. Michael Schrörs from the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in Lower Saxony. “And indeed, in Lower Saxony, we are now heading for a change of direction not only as far as industrial livestock farming is concerned but also in terms of animal and environment protection.” The Ministry wants a so-called ‘sanfte Agrarwende’ (soft agricultural turnaround) and explains it that way: If there is no change, industrial livestock farming will lead inevitably to a vicious circle: too little space for too many animals, too much manure and animal waste, too much nitrate pollution of soils and water and also too much use of antibiotics in the stables which foster resistance of bacteria to antibiotic medicines. “We have to get away from that,” says Schrörs.
At the moment, he is trying to get the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) running. The program, sponsored by the European Union, is supposed to start this September. Farmers and scientists are called upon to get together in so-called operational groups and find innovative solutions for a more sustainable agriculture. “We want to foster sustainable farming that achieves more and better from less. One very important part is the manure management of industrial livestock farms,” Schrörs explains.
The EIP will be financed by rural development programs. Part of the money also comes from the huge European innovation initiative ‘Horizon 2020’. For the coming seven years, the EU will spend nearly 80 billion euros on projects that foster sustainable innovation in all realms. In this spirit, the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU (CAP) has also been reformed. 6,2 billion euros will be spent every year on the German agriculture, to make it “more competitive and sustainable,” as it says on the official website of the EU.
Schrörs believes in the EIP. “I feel that we are entering a new phase in terms of sustainability. The focus is shifting toward a more efficient, but resource-conserving agriculture.” He has received promising ideas for the EIP funding already. One of the teams wants to deal with the recycling of manure. “This is a big problem here in the area. Lower-Saxony has a high concentration of intensive livestock farming, and all the animals simply produce too much dung and pollute our environment.” This is exactly where the EIP steps in. Scientists develop new solutions to regional problems and farmers profit directly from these innovations.
What sounds good in theory is not easy to put into practice, though. “To achieve the success we all want, one has to avoid one misunderstanding: There is no use just having a great vision in the beginning, developed at the top – and leave us, on the regional level, to put it into action. Because then it may occur that there is a big disagreement between Brussels and the regional level about financing.” In the end, the great vision is curtailed due to financial reasons. Schrörs has encountered this problem several times. “We are in an ongoing deliberative process. Right now, it's better to keep our feet on the ground and keep on negotiating.”
CAP reform misses its aim
Back in the barn, where the piglets' deafening cries demand more food, Nadine Henke only shakes her head about European deliberation and subsidies. “I don't get any financial help, because I don't grow the pigs' feed myself.” Now, with the new CAP-reform in action, every German farmer is paid approximately 280 euros per hectare annually. According to the Ministry of Nutrition and Agriculture, these direct payments make up 40 percent of the average farmer's income. However, this is only true for industrial livestock farmers who grow their own feed. Henke is clear about what the CAP reform means to her and her farm. “We won't change any of our practices. To European standards, I am not even considered a real farmer.”
The reform, even though it sounds good in theory again, misses its aim when it comes to industrial livestock farming. Today, a big proportion of the animals' feed is made up of soy, imported from South America or the US. Rarely does any owner of a German factory farm grow his animals' food himself anymore on a big scale. In its suggestions for a sustainable animal husbandry, the recent ‘Fleischatlas’ proposes making it obligatory for farmers to grow at least half of their animals' feed on their own farm. This would increase the EU's influence on industrial livestock farms. Right now, the CAP-reform does not have an effect on the sustainability of livestock farms, as Henke's example shows.
How to feed the World in 2050
For some time now, industrial livestock farming has not been a solely German or European problem. Also internationally, factory farms are becoming an ever-growing problem. By 2050, the world's population will have reached 9.2 billion. With the rising number of people living on earth, the demand for meat is also increasing. In 2009, a FAO study estimated that the annual meat production would have to reach 470 million tons to meet the projected demand in 2050, about twice as much as today. Right now, 33 percent of total arable land is already dedicated to feed-crop production. If we go on like this, more than half of the earth's surface will be used for animal feed production in no more than 36 years.
Dr. Michael Brüntrup, agrarian economist and senior researcher at the German Institute for Development Cooperation (DIE), is anxious about the looming hunger crisis. “The standard solution to this problem does not fit anymore. Even if we manage to extremely increase the productivity of the land we use today, the world will not be able to produce this amount of meat,” he says. Unfortunately, there is no easy way out. Abolishing livestock farming as a whole is simply not possible.
To achieve a sustainable circular flow economy, animals are essential: Their dung is needed to fertilize the fields. “Animal husbandry is extremely important for developing countries. For many people on this planet, it would be good and healthy to eat at least some meat.” The problem is the over-consumption of meat in the Western world and in the upcoming economies in the east. The recently released ‘Fleischatlas 2014’ states that the immense demand of China's and India's new middle class will account for 80 percent of the meat sector's growth until 2022. Despite these facts, currently the German development cooperation does not run a single project on the issue of industrial livestock farming. Why is this so?
Factory Farming: A Non-sexy Topic
For one, Brüntrup points out, the problem is that there is no clear definition of what sustainability really is. “Is it sustainable if a farmer can grow crops on his fields for 15 years? Or does it only become sustainable when he reaches 50 years? Or even 100?” Only when the term is defined can new projects can really be successful. Brüntrup understands the dialogue on sustainability on the international level as an ongoing process. In relation to livestock farming, however, it has got stuck, the expert proclaims. “We used to have a lot of projects on the topic, but recently, it has become unpopular, you could even say non-sexy.”
Due to climate change and its harsh consequences on the environment, regionally-adapted solutions are needed more than ever. But how do we find solutions for an issue that is not being discussed? “The farmers of the south do not have a voice in the boards of the German Development Cooperation. The dialogue on the international level is therefore different from the national one. There is nobody who raises his voice and says: Hey, this is an important topic, we need to talk about it!” Instead, the demonization of industrial livestock farming in Germany prevents the Development Cooperation from even touching upon the topic. If given the choice, it goes for the easy option and supports a women's group that grows vegetables somewhere in Africa rather than dealing with the growing pollution through factory farms in China. “You won't find public support for such a project unless there is a clear call for it from the countries and farmers in the south themselves,” Brüntrup is sure.
Back on Henke's farm, the pigs are buzzing with excitement. Loud squeals and grunts pass the news from one stall to the next. Today, a new window is inserted in one of their barn's walls. The pigs are able to see the outside world for the first time in their lives. However, this is not the goal the Henke's want to achieve with this project. “We want to be as transparent as possible on our farm. We want people to see what we do here, we don't want to be stigmatized anymore.”
Nadine Henke has nailed it. Transparency and an open, de-stigmatized dialogue: When tackling the problems that factory farming brings with it, this is the first and most important step. It has to be taken by the public, politicians and science alike. Only in this way, the change that is so badly needed will become possible.
Lisa Duhm has been working as a journalist for different print media in Germany. Her main interest is on stories on the environment, especially in relation to food consumption. Check out her blog Food Print.
