Sanctuary Movements, part 8

Farms vs. Animal Rights

In the U.K., the Government’s Chief scientific advisor, John Beddington, was characterized in Country Life as suggesting that “the amount of land available could only be increased through deforestation, which nobody wants.”²⁸

Together, between the projections of the U.K. and New Zealand, this scenario becomes reminiscent of the good Reverend Thomas Malthus, whose draconian predictions of mass starvation, did, in fact, take place, specifically in China and Ireland during the course of the 19th century. Moreover, in the absence of good population policies (see Dancing Star Foundation video) in nearly half of all countries, we have seen a continued trend towards more than two children per family worldwide, and a continuing increase that, as yet, has no food remedy, particularly in countries like New Zealand that have all but dashed the prospects for genetically modified foods to increase yields²⁹, not that anyone was looking to New Zealand to save the world from hunger. If anything, New Zealand’s statistics from its potent agricultural sector are the envy of most other nations. Consider the Rodale Institute report from 2003: since the demise of most subsidies in the country, New Zealand agriculture has grown aggressively in terms of its income generation for the nation’s GDP and farmers themselves; farm labor losses have been supplanted by gains from rural eco-tourism; productivity was up by nearly 6% per year between 1986 and 2003; while most of the world’s developed nations saw a 31% subsidy from their respective governments, New Zealand enjoyed a mere 1% advantage; and, most telling, 55% of all exports came from 90% of its agricultural production, whilst domestic consumption was almost entirely satisfied by that same domestic engine of rural output.³⁰ This would also suggest a very rosy tale but for the animal rights consideration underlying an otherwise impressive Act Locally mindset. But the telling mismatch between that rural energy (amplified by New Zealand’s and now most nations’ attempted embrace of the Clean, Green mantra) and the biological bottom-line is stark and confused.

Malthus’s projections were not limited to the 19th century. Most recently, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s measurement of global “undernutrition” cited 1.02 billion people deemed to be undernourished, a “sizable increase from its 2006 estimate of 854 million people.”³¹ Given the vast underpinnings of pollution, obesity, and cruelty arising from the exploitation of animals, and the ever increasing gap between well-fed individuals and those who are not, it is all too clear that there is much work ahead in the realms of compassion and basics of what it will take for any nation or community to come to terms with the biosphere and our humble role within it.

Part 7: The Farm Animal Conundrum
Part 1: Jaguar Sanctuaries: an example of dissension (the beginning)

28. ibid.
29. See “Media briefing — GMO debate,” 24 November 2008: “A media briefing on the GMO debate linked to the Ad hoc working group on the 24th of November and the Environment Council on the 4th of December 2008,”
30. See “Farming without subsidies?” by Laura Sayre, Rodale Institute, . Accessed 11/19/2009.
31. See “World hunger Facts 2009,”; See also “Resource Base Erosion and Sustainable Development in South Asia,” by Akmal Hussein, JSTOR: “Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 25, No. 33 (Aug. 18, 1990).

Excerpt from the forthcoming Dancing Star Foundation book, God’s Country: The New Zealand Factor, by Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison
©Dancing Star Foundation 2010