It seems the World is short of compassion...

Imagine travelling in a vehicle crammed so full with other passengers that you have no space to sit down – OK, underground transit systems in rush hour tick that box. 

But then imagine that the journey is 18 hours long, over hundreds of miles, perhaps involving a sea crossing which could be bumpy and uncomfortable. It is stifling hot outside and within the vehicle and you are given no comfort stops, for loos and refreshments.

Then imagine that we are talking about sheep, or cattle. The stench within the soiled truck can be overwhelming, the pitiful bleating heartrending. By the end of the journey there are up to a hundred or more sickly, exhausted, and stressed animals, that may even on arrival at their destination be unloaded into overcrowded “fattening barns”, devoid of sunlight and green pastures, perhaps for up to a month or so before being taken for slaughter.

What a fate. No animal should be allowed to suffer like this.

Farm animals can experience pain and distress just like us, and they can also know contentment and well-being.

According to the website of Compassion in World Farming, over 40 billion animals worldwide are confined in factory farming systems which prevent them from doing what animals do naturally. How cruel is that?

If we insist on eating animals we really do owe it to them that they do not have to suffer so much in their lives. 

But this is what happens all the time when animals are forced to travel may miles before slaughter. In the UK live exports are a particular horror that is currently being addressed by Compassion in World Farming.  

It may seem almost irrelevant to be worried about animal suffering when we cannot even deal adequately with the immense suffering of fellow human beings, innocent children in Syria for example.

But both matter. A truly compassionate heart doesn’t differentiate – a compassionate heart must hold a deep concern for all sentient beings, human or otherwise.

It seems we are very short of compassion in our world.

For more information you can go to the websites of Compassion in World Farming and The Humane Society of the United States.

Please care about our animals. Please consider supporting organic farming if you must eat meat. Please consider eating less meat, even going vegetarian. Please find compassion in your heart for these creatures that do not have a voice, other than a pitiful bleat or bellow when life is not treating them well.

Small scale organic farming can feed the world

There is an American advertisement: “You have a vote; you vote 3 times a day; Change is possible.”

Following on from my last post on Chinese farmers, this next piece sprang to mind. Because organic, small scale, local farming CAN feed the world.
I was at a conference organised by The Faraday Institute last year and Peter Melchett was speaking of our eating habits. He has been policy director of the Soil Association, the UK’s main organic food and farming organization, since 2001, as well as running an 890-acre organic livestock and arable farm. He gave us plenty of cause for optimism and hope, by showing us examples of where our behavior has been changed, towards a more organic lifestyle. We are in the grip of a false assumption, he said, that we cannot control our current food situation – that cheaper foods, less wildlife, lower animal welfare, lower nutritional content, are inevitable consequences of our need to feed a growing world population. A sound ecological system can feed the world, and organic farming is a significant part of that model. A UN initiated report, not reported widely enough, shows us that organic farming can feed the world. We don’t need factory farming. We can change our food culture, change our shopping habits, educate the young in good food, show them how to grow it themselves...

The rest is very much down to us.

You have a vote; you vote 3 times a day; Change is possible.

The photo: Might look a mess to us but for the pigs it's heavenly bliss!

See Novak, Sara. "UN Report Released: Can Organic Farming Feed the World?" 03 January 2012. HowStuffWorks.com. 06 March 2012.


and the Report itself: Agro Ecology and the Right to Food.

Organic farming CAN feed the world

Good news from Planet Green for all those struggling to convince the skeptics that factory farms are the only was forward – and good news for the animals! I quote: “The hold out for many of those that cling to conventional farming has often been that it will be impossible for organic farming to feed the world. It's more expensive and the crops aren't as strong, right? Wrong. This is far from the truth according to a new UN study reported on Civil Eats.”

I quote again from the planetgreen.com site: “According to the report, Agro-ecology and the Right to Food, organic and sustainable small scale farming could double food production in the parts of the world where hunger is the biggest issue. Within five to 10 years we could see a big jump in crop cultivation.
“We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations,” Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and author of the report, said in a press release. “The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development.”

Such good news!!

The Year I cycled from Vilnius to Warsaw for Marie Curie (2006)

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor," wrote the Scottish novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson in 1881. Everything that means most to us is to be found in that journey, rather than in the achievements, or the destination. Mind you, he would never have experienced the frustrations of the average plane journey these days, especially when it leaves you stranded in a foreign clime for days on end.
I wrote of aeroplanes and volcanoes and hurricanes the other day and wondered whether good may yet come out of the recent fiasco in European air travel following the Iceland volcanic ash plumes that blew across our normally crowded flight paths.

Apparently the answer is yes! Aside from the devastating and very real experiences of wedding plans ruined, business deals disrupted (does that matter so much?), vital life saving medical supplies delayed, travel insurance shocks, etc., many people have actually been able to relax into the situation or have shown huge resourcefulness in getting home. What is more, many have then said how they have appreciated the journeys by train and boat rather than above the clouds. The latter may, just may, be usually quicker, but you see so much more from the train or car (not so green!) window - or indeed from a bike!
Several years ago I cycled from Vilnius in Lithuania to Warsaw for Marie Curie Cancer Care: well not strictly true - I broke my elbow at the end of day 2 and was carried on the support bus from then on, along with a very damaged bike! As we travelled along the route we had plenty of time to see the countryside, the fields and woodlands and small hamlets;  even experienced some over generous hospitality from locals drinking at a roadside bar at one refreshment stop. Our leader was unhappy about the bottles of strong local beer that were being pressed into our hands by those more than slightly inebriated men - and this was only 11am! Myself, I was most interested in the gradual change from small family subsistence farming, from manual and horse driven implements and tethered cows, to larger fenced fields, small herds of cattle, and old tractors putting in an appearance as we came nearer to Warsaw.

We then caught a train from Warsaw to Krakow, from whence we flew home. That train journey was so interesting - as we rolled along through more beautiful scenery, seeing glimpses of rural life, snapshots of gardens and smallholdings, horse and cart carrying produce presumably to a local market. I didn't want to miss a single detail, wanted to watch out of the window throughout the journey, but people wanted to talk, to miss all this experience of a different culture in all its fascination as it flashed by. 
I love the journey. In a car I love to be able to take my time, to stop in villages, to visit churches along the way, to have a closer look at quirky things! On my bike I can see into gardens that we miss on a car journey, can see rabbits and birds at close quarters as there is no noise to frighten them away
I foresee a future where many more holidays will use overland and over-sea travel to a destination. Even have no destination - just a circular route taking in all the sights and sounds and history of a place. Perhaps we shall be forced to do more of this kind of holiday anyway - air travel is often very very far from being a green choice, and how many more runways must we build before the planners see the long term folly of further growth in air traffic?

Lord Northbourne, compassion in farming and spirituality

This is day 2 after submission of my completed ,manuscript and I am feeling an immense sense of anticlimax, it has to be said! I suspect this will soon be drowned out by the necessary checking of proofs, cover designs etc etc. But in this lull I can take advantage of the time to read other hitherto neglected books.

I have discovered a real gem! Lord Northbourne lived from 1896 to 1982, and was a farmer, painter, Olympic rower, and widely respected author on both ecology and religion. So reads the publisher's note on the back cover for "Of the land and spirit - the Essential Lord Northbourne on Ecology and Religion." This is an anthology drawn together from his books and articles. Long before Rachel Carson and her exposure of the dangers of chemicals in our food and our soil, in Silent Spring, Lord  Northbourne was recognising the need to respect the cycle of nature and the part we play in it, alongside his vision that the root of many of the world's problems was a loss of our spirituality and healthy relationship with the land. He first coined the term "organic farming" and supported Rudolf Steiner's similar principles in horti- and agri- culture. I shall come back to his work from time to time as I continue reading but his work is immensely interesting.

I think the pig was called Winston - he was very friendly and smelly!!