Veganic Agriculture: As Green as it Gets

June 20, 2008

People in the United States have rarely suffered for lack of food. It has been hypothesized that the first humans to settle permanently in North America over 10,000 years ago followed massive herds of big game animals. The first Europeans to arrive on the continent in the 1600s found the soil so bountiful that they created a holiday—colonial records tell of three days of feasting—quite a remarkable feat for a colony of religious separatists dissatisfied with the purity of the existing English Church.

Even in the depths of the Great Depression, when many people were still unable to afford food at record low prices, soup kitchens and other aid organizations kept starvation in check; though many went hungry, almost none starved to death. Even now, American harvests are so plentiful the the government pays many of them not to produce, to keep prices high and farms profitable.

With this great prosperity and supply has also come tremendous diversity of food options. The United States’ status as a melting pot nation has brought cultures and cuisines from all over the world to its cities and towns. Along with different foods have also come different methods of production; while a vast majority of foods eaten today are produced through environmentally-unfriendly industrial agricultural practices, a new movement is offering perhaps the lowest impact of any farming method yet devised.

It’s called veganic agriculture, and it acts as a sort of fusion between existing organic farming and a vegan diet. Throughout the farming process, no animal matter is used, not even manure for fertilization. Instead, composted plant matter is used to provide the soil with vital nutrients. The movement traces its roots to Europe, where smaller agricultural plots and a closer connection between producer and consumer have always garnered more interest in food production methods.

The practice has been popularized in the United States through the efforts of local farmers, like Don Bustos, of New Mexico, who reveled to the Associated Press that he was initially inspired by a former US Secretary of Agriculture. “"He was talking about ways to protect the safety of our food system,” recall Bustos. “But to me you still have things like e-coli and salmonella from manure. Now, I use no manures, no bone meals, blood meal, no pesticides, nothing."

Aside from reducing the threats posed by microbial organisms in animal-based manure, veganic farming also prevents hormones, antibiotics, and other chemicals manure-producing animals in confined animal feeding operations are exposed to from passing into vegetables, or running off into local water supplies. Veganic methods also provide an effective model for agricultural carbon reduction, as no feed is required to produce the green manures that fertilize veganic crops.

Photo by thebittenword