AN ECOFEMINIST CRITIQUE OF WENDELL BERRY AND BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Current evidence suggests that the first animal domesticated by humans is the dog, and that this relationship is thus the longest relationship between humans and a domesticated animal. It took longer to domesticate sheep and goats, the ruminants those dogs help herd and protect. And now llamas, like dogs, have become commonly used to protect herds of sheep. Domesticated about six thousand years ago, llamas and alpacas are members of the camelid family native to the Americas. Found in the Andes, they reside in Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador. The llama was domesticated from the guanaco and the alpaca from the vicuna. Valued as pack animals and for their wool, meat, and manure, these animals were well cared for and revered until the arrival of the Spaniards in the 1500s disrupted these relationships and the llamas and alpacas were replaced with sheep. At the same time, the wild guanaco and vicuna were hunted for their pelts and to remove them in order to make room for the sheep (“Llama History”). Interest in the alpaca’s wool and the llama’s ability as a guard animal resulted in their importation to the United States. For the most part, however, they remain a hobby animal here. Sheep and goats, however, have been used as sources of food and fiber since the first Europeans arrived in North America and are on their way to facing the same kind of industrial farming methods that most other livestock in the United States experience.
Sheep and goats were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent about thirteen thousand years ago (11,000 BCE; DeMello 86). Early domestication was more on the herding than on the farming model. The process of domestication would have covered some range of decades, with kept goats and sheep still interbreeding with wild goats and sheep. While it can be difficult to disentangle the competing methods and assessments of their evolutionary past, scientists posit at least three separate domestication events, followed by various migrations with humans. Hunting of wild goats and sheep was one early source of meat, and hunting continued for some time after domestication. People hunted primarily in the winter when the domesticated herds birthed young. Given uncertainty about how many of these domesticated kids and lambs would survive, it was wiser to hunt the wild goats and sheep that came down from the hills as the snows arrived (G. Stein).
PHOTO 3. Guard llama at 90 Farms. Photo by Danielle Palmer.
Wild goats tend to be social in the winter and more solitary in the summer. Goat herds are controlled by a dominant female except during mating season; males live in bachelor bands except when they join the females for mating. The general grazing range of a goat is fourteen square miles. In addition to grazing and browsing, they take time to dust bathe and bed down at night. They generally live nine to twelve years, reaching sexual maturity around two and a half years old. Goats are more independent than sheep, who prefer to herd together (Bradford). Nonetheless the physical and social nature of wild sheep is similar to that of the goats. Their lifespan is typically thirteen to fifteen years and they reach sexual maturity between two and four years of age. The males and females live separately except during breeding season in the fall. They will browse like the goats but prefer to graze when grass is available. The males establish a hierarchy through their displays during the rut. The females establish their own hierarchy as well and ewes form groups to protect the lambs, whistling at predators.
Sheep and goats are hardy and can graze and browse on plants not generally eaten by humans. Valued mostly for their milk, blood, wool, and dung, ruminants were one important source of food in areas where the climate did not support farming. In farming communities, these same animals could glean the fields after harvest and supply manure to renew those same fields. They were highly valued and used as money and a status symbol (DeMello 88). Humans began spinning wool around 3500 BCE, increasing the value of sheep and goats. Many of the first sheep to arrive in North America were used for both wool and meat, and by 1664 there were ten thousand sheep in the colonies, with laws requiring teaching children to spin and weave (“Sheep in History”). When England objected to the colonies exporting wool and restricted the raising of sheep, raising sheep and producing wool became revolutionary acts, and the export of breeding sheep was prohibited. In addition to creating political upheaval, these animals had a big impact on the ecosystems into which they were introduced. For instance, from the beginning wolves were seen as dangerous predators that needed to be eradicated in order to protect sheep. Rather than enclose and protect sheep, the idea was to make “the wild” safe for the sheep. Goats, too, largely roamed the woods and fields—damaging apple trees as their numbers grew (Anderson 101, 109, 147–48). First introduced to North America by the Spanish colonists in the sixteenth century, goats became another important source of meat and milk for early settlers. Many also became feral.
Mohair fiber from Angora goats makes up the bulk of fiber from goats, with cashmere being important as well (“National Animal Health”). The Wool Act of 1954 provided subsidies for mohair production, but those payments were phased out between 1993 and 1996, and Angora numbers dropped by two-thirds between 1997 and 2002. A study of small producers (those with 500 or fewer goats) in the United States found that only 1.5 percent of farms are primarily focused on fiber, with another 1.5 percent harvesting some wool despite a primary focus on meat or dairy. Of U.S. Angora goats, 76 percent are in Texas, where herds average 250 goats; Arizona is second for Angora production, with herds of 500 on average. Angora goats are usually shorn twice a year—the younger the goat, the finer the hair. Unlike mohair, cashmere does not come from a specific breed of goat, but from the soft underdown of the hair that some goats produce. This can be harvested as the goat naturally sheds, but larger producers shear the goats. Limited processing capacity in the United States constrains this market and it is hard to know how many goats are kept for this purpose, as these goats fit the milk and meat categories as well.
While goat milk is a growing market, the primary market is for meat. Of U.S. goats, 60 percent are meat goats, and 36 percent are milk goats (“Goats”). The meat industry grew from 600,000 in 1992 to about 2.5 million in 2014. Texas, Tennessee, and California are the top goat meat–producing states, while California leads the way in dairy goats. The average herd size of meat goats is between twenty-eight and thirty goats. There are at least eleven recognized breeds of goats raised for meat in the United States; Boers, Kikos, and the Spanish goat are the most numerous. While goats have remained largely unspecialized producers of wool, milk, and meat, some breeders are now focusing on the Boer to increase meat production (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service). Some goats are used to graze unwanted weeds and vegetation. This not only provides “weed control” but also supplies the farmers with income before the goats reach slaughter weight. Alternative work includes using them as pack animals and in research. Their small size and gentle nature make them desirable for research and the teaching of surgery and other procedures. They are used in research on rheumatoid arthritis, HIV, myotonia, and immunology (Fulton et al. 21). While their commercial and biomedical use is growing, goats seem to have remained mostly an animal kept for personal use—for milk and meat.
Sheep, however, took on commercial value for both their wool and their meat early on and competed with cattle for grazing space. California, Colorado, and Wyoming are the top wool-producing states, but the United States produces less than 1 percent of the world’s wool. Direct marketing of wool to spinners is the best way for U.S. producers to make money. Some of the contemporary concerns with wool production include the methods of shearing the sheep, mulesing, tail-docking, and castration. Castration and tail-docking are welfare concerns connected to most sheep farming and will be discussed later in the context of specific farms. Shearing and mulesing are specific to wool production. Concerns about shearing involve the speed of the process. When shearers go fast to get through a whole herd, the sheep are often handled roughly and cut. They also may not be offered sufficient shelter or a blanket after they are sheared. Skilled shearers and ranchers can avoid these problems. Mulesing involves removing skin from the hindquarters of sheep in an effort to prevent flystrike. This is when flies lay their eggs around the buttocks of the sheep and the larvae burrow into the sheep—causing death. The mulesing procedure is most commonly performed on the now popular Moreno sheep, who have deeper folds in the skin on their hindquarters, and it is done without numbing or pain relief. Breeding sheep with less wrinkled skin is an alternative many are now pursuing, thanks to public concern about mulesing.
While sheep and goats are a dominant meat animal on the world market, in the United States they represent a smaller niche market. But it is a growing market. Some of my earliest experiences with livestock were with sheep. As mentioned in chapter 1, my oldest sister had sheep as part of a 4-H project and I often fed these sheep. I wouldn’t say I formed any particular relationships with them, but when the butcher arrived I tried to save two of them. Ten years later my parents bought two sheep to feed and slaughter. They were kept in the horse barn and became a “chore” for me. When they were slaughtered I felt some relief at getting my barn back. Once they were gone, however, I missed them. In my family a signature meal was leg of lamb with “crispy potatoes” that cooked under the meat and were covered in the drippings. I loved the potatoes and I ate some of the lamb.
Many in the United States do not eat lamb, though. Changing demographics provide the USDA with hope for growing the market and suggest to farmers that they focus on various ethnic markets and specific religious holidays. Given the small size of the market, meat sheep have been raised on a small scale. Much like grass-fed cattle operations, sheep farmers graze small flocks and time breeding so that slaughter can take place around holidays like Easter. While many still have this picture of sheep farming in mind when they choose to purchase lamb for themselves or their dogs, lamb is increasingly coming from commercial feeding operations that copy the system in place for industrial cattle. Schoenian writes, “In some parts of the US, lamb feeding is a seasonal enterprise, occurring primarily in the fall and winter, after pastures have stopped growing and crop residues are available for grazing. In other areas (e.g. Texas, Colorado, and the Corn Belt), lamb feedlots operate year-round.” While there is increasing segmentation of breeding and feeding, many farmers still raise and feed their own lambs. Those who operate primarily as feeders must be able to cover the purchase price of the lambs as well as the feed. While grain is a common way to finish lambs, it is not the only method. They can also be finished on crop aftermaths, pelleted rations, and by-product feeds. The versatility of the sheep makes their feeding affordable and can limit their environmental impact. When they eat by-products they help eliminate the “waste” involved in other crop and meat production. This is one reason the first partnerships between these ruminants and humans began.
Given their long partnership, sheep, goats, and humans share a number of diseases. Q-fever is caused by bacteria present in the milk, feces, and placenta of infected goats and can infect humans who inhale contaminated dust. Toxoplasmosis is caused by a parasite transmitted by cats that causes abortions in goats, sheep, and humans. According to the CDC, toxoplasmosis is a major cause of deaths attributed to foodborne illness. Sore mouth is a common skin disease in sheep and goats that is caused by a pox family virus—highly contagious for humans. Brucella bacteria cause brucellosis in pigs, cattle, bison, sheep, goat, dogs, and humans. Pinkeye covers a number of contagious infections that spread between domesticated animals (sheep, goats, cattle, horses, and dogs) and humans. Unpasteurized milk products are the most common way for humans to be affected, and this will be discussed in the next chapter, on dairies.
We were able to visit several farms that focused on raising sheep. Fido’s Farm, as the name implies, is primarily a place for dogs—herding dogs. Chris Soderstrom has just over two hundred sheep (and a few ducks) on one hundred acres near Yelm, Washington. This land was originally part of a two-hundred-acre, seventy-five-cow dairy. When Soderstrom was looking for land she wanted dairy land because “dairy land would have good grass.” She continues to support the grass, and the bedding from the sheep’s winter barn is composted and used on the hay-producing fields. In this way the sheep help “grow their own food.” This is important to Soderstrom as “hay robs the land, while grazing adds to the soil.”
The sheep are Coopworth and North Country Cheviot. They are wool sheep, but Soderstrom said there is no profitable market for the wool: “It takes too much time to shear, sort, pack, and transport.” She breeds these sheep primarily because they make good mothers. She said, “They are good at converting grass to milk. They can give birth (even to triplets) on their own, outside, and keep the babies safe.” The ewes teach the lambs how to shelter during bad weather and how best to graze a pasture. The rams (who are generally desirable for fiber farming) “move on” so that new blood can be introduced to the breeding program. For the rest, Soderstrom selects some for the herding program. Those who make it earn their living giving herding lessons and in sheepdog trials. Lesson sheep get used regularly. Some secure a long life by being good at starting young dogs. The sheep used for trials are used more sparingly for lessons and, while they do have the added stress of traveling to trials, at a trial the length and number of runs on any given day is monitored and minimum rest periods enforced. Those who aren’t selected for the herding program are sold for meat.
Soderstrom slaughters about one hundred lambs a year at twelve to eighteen months of age. Fido’s Farm has worked to develop a market for older lamb, which is called hogget. As with many of the cattle operations we visited, Soderstrom often sells lambs while alive and there is joint ownership until slaughter. The farm owns shares in the USDA slaughter truck run by the Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative. While this would make on-farm slaughter a possibility, they don’t slaughter on the farm. They take lambs to the slaughter truck when it is on the other side of Yelm—the nearest town. Soderstrom said that the herding customers “don’t want to watch.” Ironically, dog food companies are the main market for this meat and the bulk of the lambs go to a USDA processing plant for this purpose.
Sheep at Fido’s Farm have their tails docked and the male sheep are castrated. Soderstrom said that they used to castrate the males between two and four weeks of age. The idea was to let them get a bit stronger before stressing them. But she looked into the standards for Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) and now castrates within the first three days. While they are not AWA certified, they want to use the best practices. Soderstrom said they “had good results with less stress for the animals.” They don’t use painkillers, as this would introduce a toxic chemical into the sheep’s system, and Soderstrom said it wasn’t necessary because “[they] just cut off the circulation. You don’t use a knife like you do with pigs.” As mentioned, they do dock tails, though Soderstrom would like to move away from that practice. The main reasons for docking are to cut down on flies bothering the sheep and so the sheep are cleaner at the time of slaughter, but there is little research to support the practice. Soderstrom said the European Union had moved away from docking tails since “whether the tails are docked or not they still clean under belly and rear before slaughter.” The USDA reports that about 80 percent of lambs have their tails docked. For the tails and the castration Soderstrom uses an elastration band that cuts the blood supply to the tail or testicles, which then die and slough off. There is debate about whether this is a humane procedure. Research does show that the lambs feel pain, mostly at the time the band is applied, and this could be addressed with anesthesia at the time of application.
At Fido Farm they crutch the sheep—that is, remove the wool around the tail and between the rear legs—in September or October. They shear sheep in March. Soderstrom was in a quandary when we visited, as the man who did the shearing had just decided to quit the business. He came from Wales to shear sheep and could do the whole flock in a day and half. Castration, tail-docking, and shearing are the most stressful events faced by the sheep at Fido’s Farm. Otherwise they are in social groups out on pasture for most of the year. There is a barn for shelter when the weather is bad, and they are fed hay as needed. When sheep give birth, they are kept in quieter parts of the farm. Dogs and people work to monitor any potential predators (some sheep are lost to coyotes, but the worst loss was to a neighbor’s dog).
While this is a farm that raises sheep, the main focus is dogs. Soderstrom said, “All the dogs are working dogs. They are seen as partners; they are part of a team that must work together. It’s like a dance.” In the end, though, the various aspects of Fido’s Farm can’t be separated. Soderstrom served as an organic inspector, and this impacts how she farms. She has a degree in animal husbandry and livestock experience. Her father was a poultry farmer and she used to run a goat dairy during “the goat cheese craze.” She was interested in pig and cattle farming, but it is difficult to farm pigs on the West Coast. The costs of bringing in feed and of shipping the pigs to the slaughterhouse are prohibitive. She said she’s glad she got out of the dairy and never started with the pigs: “The welfare of pigs in our current industry is unconscionable and inhumane. The livestock industry, given its large scale, has become horrible. Humane farming can only be done on a small scale. You can’t expect to make small farm practices work on a large scale. Livestock are humans’ partners, just like the dogs, and deserve the same respect.”
Here, I would argue, Soderstrom represents some of the key aspects of the pragmatist ethic sketched earlier. She has identified what she finds to be problematic with industrial agriculture and approaches farming in a different way. But her own practices are also evolving as she experiments with different approaches that might improve the lives of the animals and the land. Fido Farm is an intertwined whole made up of pieces that impact and support each other. Soderstrom is unwilling to participate in livestock production that reduces animal beings to mere things to be grown quickly and slaughtered efficiently. She sees this as violating the nature and needs of the animals, harming the land and wildlife, and “transforming the human from skilled stockperson to wage worker” (reminiscent of Sukovaty at the Crown S). Instead, she has found a way to respect and improve the land by respecting and meeting the needs of the sheep and dogs. She is also increasing communication between humans and the animals. While it might seem that the well-being of the dogs is prioritized, I don’t think this is so. Sheep can be stressed or harmed when used in herding. The first thing Soderstrom teaches her students is how to “read the sheep” so that they can ensure the sheep’s well-being. She said, “Sheep deserve to feel safe and at peace during herding. We need to make sure the dogs understand what the sheep are feeling. Ultimately our job is to tell the dogs what to do based on what we observe about both the dog and the sheep.” Under these conditions the sheep are not harmed and actually benefit from the physical and mental exercise. The sheep learn and often outsmart the humans and their dogs. While comfort and protection are an important obligation of humans with regard to domesticated animals, the well-being of these same animals sometimes is improved by physical and mental stress. This can boost their immune systems, solidify social bonds, and promote learning and flexible problem solving for the sheep, dogs, and humans involved. The activities at the farm also increase the health of the land, water, and wildlife. To be sure, some aspects can still be improved, and Soderstrom continues to experiment and change. All the animals involved (sheep, dogs, and humans) are seen as valuing creatures deserving of respect, and Soderstrom works to make sure such respect is central to the practices of Fido’s Farm.
One thing that might be critiqued from the pragmatist perspective is the slaughter of the sheep. On-farm slaughter would decrease the risk of injury and stress in transport and reduce the use of fossil fuels. The sheep are transported to the slaughter truck to spare the humans the sight, sound, and smell of their death. This allows the humans to evade this reality and their responsibility in the deaths of the sheep and promotes the illusion that humans are not enmeshed in the full cycle of life and death. If the humans involved don’t eat such animals, their dogs almost certainly do. Further, the activity of herding relies on the use and death of sheep, and not facing that reality is a kind of moral evasion. It is like thinking that milk and egg products don’t involve the death of animals (a fact that is discussed later). The same is true for having healthy land. The land thrives with some amount of grazing and manure. Several of the farms already discussed composted the by-products of slaughter to use to increase the fertility of land or to feed wildlife. The processes feed each other and sustain life.
While it was her ability to work with the dogs that “drug me back into livestock,” Soderstrom says, she primarily sees herself as a grass farmer. “Sheep didn’t evolve to eat grains. They eat a mix of greens.” Because of their diet, they depend on healthy pastures. At the time of our visit in 2014, the largest field was twenty-six acres, with the next-largest being twelve. Electric fencing allows her to section the pastures by soil type and move the fence line when needed to prevent overgrazing. Soderstrom allows overgrazing only when there is a grass type she wants to get rid of quickly. She likes “working with the land she has.” For instance, at first she wanted to remove blackberries (blackberries are on the list of noxious weeds and classified as an invasive species in Washington). But sheep like to eat blackberries. So she uses the sheep to manage the blackberries rather than try to remove them. They also like the roses and dandelions.
She’s glad she’s saved this land from being a housing development. Soderstrom said the farm benefits everyone, as it supplies a source of food, provides activities for dogs and their people, helps filter the water that goes into the groundwater, and supports wildlife. Several bald eagles nest in the area, as well as hawks, ducks, and geese. She leaves the sedge unmowed for the birds and doesn’t allow anyone to hunt, though Soderstrom has been seen chasing off coyotes on her ATV. Soderstrom talked about the “good feeling of being on the land and seeing all the biodiversity” (including insects). She said the farm’s current setup meets her personal standards for how livestock should be managed, and she likes how they are treating the land.
While Fido’s Farm is focused on sheep, Mountain Stream Farm, run by Laura Faley in Mt. Vernon, Washington, is more diverse. During our conversation she also focused on stewardship of the land and the various animals she raises. She said, “The two need to go together because animals provide food and resources to enrich our lives; the soil and plants are the substrate for the health of the whole. Humans must take responsibility for caring for these interrelated systems.” But she does not “just let nature do as it wants.” She said they worked hard to manage the forest, keep the streams flowing, cut through the blackberries, and weed the garden. “Invasive species of vegetation need to be controlled.” She thinks that with domesticated animals there is an added level of responsibility. Echoing Kimberley Smith (chapter 5), she said, “Domesticated animals do better in captivity. They rely on us for food and care.” At the time of our visit she had ninety sheep and sixteen horses on forty acres of leased land near her house. Up the hill at her house she had pigs, turkeys, ducks, chickens (for meat and eggs), and a few more horses. She had rabbits too but said they were just for “the petting zone,” as she can’t yet use them for meat until she finds someone to process them. Most of the animals she raises for meat or eggs are heritage breeds that have been (or will be) discussed elsewhere. Here I briefly discuss the sheep.
The sheep are Suffolk X, bred to finish on grass. Faley feeds some grain so that they finish a little faster. Suffolks are black-faced sheep known for their meat and wool. They are naturally polled (so no need to dehorn) and have no wool on their head and legs (so no need to crutch). They are known to be good mothers, capable of birthing on their own. These characteristics make them easy to keep in an outdoor flock. Like Soderstrom, Faley docks their tails by applying an elastic band when they are just a few days old. Unlike Soderstrom, Faley slaughters and butchers on-site. They also shear the sheep, sell the wool, and host their own fiber sale. Her sheep farming is part of her stewardship of the land and the animals. According to Faley “stewardship requires animals to fulfill a telos, or purpose.” The gene pool, the food chain, and the companionship of the creatures are all related and included in her sense of “stewardship.” The gene pool is important practically and aesthetically. Practically, it is important to have diversity in the gene pool in order for a species to survive various health and environmental pressures and crises. As industrial agriculture has progressed, it has focused money and research on a more and more limited gene pool. Heritage breeds have survived on small farms that work to help preserve the desired variety. Aesthetically many of the heritage breeds are prettier. (Her sheep are very cute!) Aesthetics of taste relate to stewardship of the food chain as well. Many of the heritage breeds taste different from animals raised on industrial farms. Faley told us about someone who bought her meat chickens and finally could make chicken soup that tasted like her grandmother’s. The same recipe had not yielded the same taste until she had a chicken more like the chicken that the recipe had been built around. Preserving these tastes and connections is important to Faley. In fact, the farm website states, “We enjoy gourmet cooking and gourmet foods. We are convinced that the best tasting food begins with the best ingredients we can find. It is our goal to raise the best-tasting meat you have had. We believe the best-tasting meat comes from happy, contented, well-fed animals.” In addition to valuing the taste of these animals’ meat, though, Faley values these animals for companionship. Heritage breeds are known for their physical hardiness and their intelligence. She said, “They have not lost the ability to think for themselves and adapt to changing conditions.” While this can present challenges to farmers who want them to “just be eating machines,” she said, “the strong personalities and intelligence often make these breeds fun and interesting companions.”
The land is also included in Faley’s idea of stewardship: “The soil and the plants are the substrate for the health of the whole system.” She talked about the cycles of the land: the sun helps the grass grow, as does the soil; the grass helps feed the soil, as does the manure from the animals; the soil, fertilized by the animals’ manure, grows the grass to feed the animals, and so on. She doesn’t use chemicals on her soil or plants. Her land also includes some forested areas. When we asked how the forest fit into these farm-focused cycles, Faley said, “The world should be enjoyed; so we cut paths for hiking and hope to maintain the streams. Management and care are of great import.” The birches and alders growing on the ranch are managed and cut. She saw what she was doing with her land as very different from what was happening at a development site nearby. Faley told us that the “developer” had built a detention pond that flooded a house below. The salmon stream was also disrupted and diverted. She did not see this kind of development as any form of responsible stewardship but rather as something that put profit ahead of healthy productivity and long-term care. She told us has she had a list of fifteen priorities inside her house and the “money priority” is close to last on the list.
Yet while Faley may be preserving the land as grass and forest (and keeping it from becoming more houses), she turns animals into products and sells them for profit. Death is something that is regularly experienced here. It is the ultimate fate even of the animals who are productive, and if an animal is not productive then death is the more immediate result. Faley said that all the animals on the ranch do some work. Most are there to produce eggs and meat. The dogs are work dogs; there were three shepherd dogs and one coon dog at the time of our visit. She has since added Turkish Kangal dogs—livestock guardian dogs—to keep her sheep safe. The horses were a bit different. They don’t really earn their keep, but she did use them in a natural horsemanship program that teaches people a different way of relating to animals. The idea is to work with the nature of the horse in a clear and kind way. Building communication that goes both ways is important. While the horses gain the benefit of being cared for into their old age (something denied most of the other animals living—and dying—at the farm), this focus on building bonds, meaningful communication, and kindness does apply to all the animals there. This is why she keeps the rabbits and some Silkie chickens as part of the petting zone. She said, “It’s important for children to experience this kind of connection.”
In the United States today it is unusual to find people who seek connection with the animals they eat. As we saw at Fido Farm, many find it troubling to connect their eating (or their dog’s) with the death of particular knowable animals. Even as some want to escape industrial animal agriculture, most still do not want to know the particular individuals they will be eating while they are alive. Faley’s approach provides an interesting counterexample to this tendency and so to Carol Adams’s notion of the absent referent and mass terms (discussed in chapter 4). In short, when using mass terms like sheep or chicken the animals involved are abstract and not individualized. Adams says, “Behind every meal of meat is an absence: the death of the animal whose place the meat takes. This is the ‘absent referent.’ The absent referent functions to cloak the violence inherent to meat-eating, to protect the conscience of the meat eater and render the idea of individual animals as immaterial to anyone’s selfish desires. It is that which separates the meat eater from the animal and the animal from the end product.” The individual animals are the “absent referent” as they are made invisible by the mass term to make it easier for people to consume them. Adams writes, “The function of the absent referent is to keep our ‘meat’ separated from any idea that she or he was once an animal, to keep something from being seen as having been someone, to allow for the moral abandonment of another being” (Adams, “Sexual Politics of Meat”). While Adams calls for veganism (for reasons discussed in chapter 9), Faley calls for people to deepen their connection with the very animal beings they consume. She is also encouraging people to more fully understand what is necessary to provide food (animal and plant) in a sustainable way. She shares the commitment to help do so with Linda Neunzig at 90 Farms.
Not far from Mountain Stream Farm, in Arlington, Washington, Neunzig has “had sheep for over twenty years and birthed over two thousand lambs.” As the 90 Farms website says, this fifty-two-acre farm seeks to “provide a safe and educational agricultural adventure for children, and to supply healthy, naturally grown foods for families while including our own children in the lifestyle of the sustainable family farm.” Neunzig raises purebred Katahdin sheep. Unlike Faley, who uses her sheep’s wool for fiber, Neunzig likes this breed because of their lack of wool (they have fur instead). She said that “wool costs more to cut than can be earned from its sale.” The Katahdin are an intentionally created breed developed in Maine in the 1950s. The desire was to create meat-producing sheep that did not need to be sheared. This fits with the increasing specialization of sheep—to focus on meat or milk or wool. Developed as meat animals, Katahdins are known for their hair coat, meat production, flocking instinct, breeding capacity, and lack of horns. They do well in a variety of weather conditions and can tolerate parasites. The ewes are great mothers and lamb easily. The breed is good out in pastures since they thrive on grass and lambs are born vigorous and alert (“Breeds of Livestock—Katahdin Sheep”). Predation is a concern, so Neunzig keeps llamas with the sheep. The llamas kept their eyes on us while we were there, and when we came near the fence they stomped their feet.
PHOTO 4. Sheep at 90 Farms. Photo by Danielle Palmer.
She said the farm and the lambs are not certified organic because she would not make any more money than she does with her current customers. While she has used antibiotics when necessary (on sheep who were attacked by a coyote for instance), she is generally antibiotic-and hormone-free. This seemed to be more a practical position than a principled one. Noting the vulnerability of sheep to attack and disease she said sheep are basically animals “waiting for a place to die. By the time they are sick antibiotics don’t usually work.” The paperwork and extra costs were also factors she considered when choosing not to get certified as organic. She said, “It’s not worth the effort. I have a day job and don’t have the time. My customers know how I raise my sheep and do not mind that it’s not certified organic.” Neunzig has worked hard over the years to establish this sort of relationship with her customers. Along with sheep, she produces “all-natural, ethically raised” veal. She started this about eight years ago. She said she wouldn’t eat the veal at restaurants even though she “kills for a living,” and so she knows other people don’t want it either. She wanted to produce an alternative. Her calves are slaughtered at four to six months of age. This means they are slaughtered before they are weaned and so do not suffer the stress of weaning (very different from the veal calves on industrial dairies discussed in the next chapter).
Neunzig uses a number of dogs to help her move and manage the sheep and cattle. In fact, as with Soderstrom, dogs got her involved with raising sheep. Neunzig breeds corgis and got the sheep to work the dogs. She started breeding sheep because there weren’t many around, but there was a demand. Given the rarity of the Katahdin breed on the West Coast she uses artificial insemination to breed her sheep—ordering shipments of frozen semen. This evolved into producing meat herself. Since she knows the owner of the first mobile slaughtering unit in the area she was able to join their rounds, even though she is not within their normal boundaries. She butchers every month, but she doesn’t butcher on-site. While meat production is her focus, she still sells the “cream of the crop” sheep as breeding stock. These sheep do make good milking sheep, but she has no desire to attempt milking because she “has enough to do as it is.”
She sees humans as facilitating the “circle of life.” “We have to be a partner with nature. When farming we need to work with nature rather than against it. This means we must understand the nature of the land and the animals. We must observe natural cycles and attempt to replicate them on the farm. We need to look at how each thing functions in nature and think about how we can help it.” For instance, “cows aren’t meant to eat grain so don’t feed it. Let them eat grass.” She said that in nature everything is integrated: the animals’ manure, and offal from the slaughter, make compost to nurture the fields on which the animals feed. She encourages the barn swallows to stay and eat bugs and captures and uses the rainwater to water the fields. There have been three severe floods since Neunzig has owned the farm and she has to evacuate every animal during a flood. So she has put fourteen acres in the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (discussed in chapter 3) and planted it with about nine hundred native plants and trees in order to restore native habitat and help prevent this kind of flooding in the future. She is trying to work with nature to find ways to mitigate the problems caused by those who don’t take an integrated approach.
When talking about what inspired her to take on this life, Neunzig pointed to Wendell Berry. Berry inspired a number of the farmers in this study. He would be pleased with Neunzig’s focus on supporting farming in her own county. Berry is a poet, novelist, and environmental author who has done much to call attention to the problems with industrial farming and the promise of alternative approaches. Born in 1934, he grew up in Newcastle, Kentucky, working on his father’s tobacco farm. When his life as a professor of writing and literature brought him back to Kentucky, he bought a farm where he writes and farms to this day. His many poems, novels, and essays take on a range of issues from farming to war, soil erosion to globalization, coal to the death penalty.
The most relevant of Berry’s work here is The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture published in 1977. One of his main points is that humans, plants, and animals are part of one another. He argues for a commitment to a particular place because he sees that “our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land.” He writes, “As we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot possibly flourish alone” (22). While he sees miners as not respecting this and so exploiting the land, he sees farmers as recognizing this interdependency and so as nurturing the land (7). This kind of “kindly use” requires an intimate knowledge of the land and special attention to soil fertility (32–33). He believes this is something that small, local farms can achieve and that large, industrial farms cannot. He notes that the industrial approach to farming is based on separation and specialization—a fragmentary way of thinking rather than one based in seeing unity and interdependence:
It is within unity that we see the hideousness and destructiveness of the fragmentary—the kind of mind, for example, that can introduce a production machine to increase “efficiency” without troubling about its effect on workers, on the product, and on consumers; that can accept and even applaud the “obsolescence” of the small farm and not hesitate over the possible political and cultural effects; that can recommend continuous tillage of huge monocultures, with massive use of chemicals and no animal manure or humus, and worry not at all about the deterioration or loss of soil. For cultural patterns of responsible cooperation we have substituted this moral ignorance, which is the etiquette of agricultural “progress.” (48)
Berry argues that while humans need to live off of the land, plants, and other animals, this should be done in a way that sees and respects our interdependence, or humans risk their own demise. This means, as we heard from several farmers, recognizing that death and decay are as much a part of life as are birth, care, and growth (56).
Berry makes this point when talking about soil. He sees the soil as that which holds communities together. It creates life out of death and decay; it heals and restores: “It is alive itself. It is a grave, too, of course. Or a healthy soil is. It is full of dead animals and plants, bodies that have passed through other bodies. . . . But no matter how finely the dead are broken down, or how many times they are eaten, they yet give into other life. If a healthy soil is full of death it is also full of life: worms, fungi, microorganisms of all kinds, for which, as for us humans, the dead bodies of the once living are a feast. Eventually this dead matter becomes soluble, available as food for plants, and life begins to rise up again, out of the soil into the light” (86). Berry does not see agribusiness or agriscience respecting this guiding insight of agriculture. His problem with the industrial approach is that it sees soil as a resource to use rather than as a living system that needs care—that it treats soil, plants, animals, and humans as machines and misses the reciprocal supporting relationships that exist among them all. For Berry, humans’ illusory sense of autonomy and mastery is problematic (87, 90, 98, 111). He notes that human bodies “are not distinct from the bodies of plants and animals, with which we are involved in the cycles of feeding and in the intricate companionships of ecological systems and of the spirit” (103). This view returns humans to being a part of nature rather than outside or above it: “While we live our bodies are moving particles of the earth, joined inextricably both to the soil and to the bodies of other living creatures. It is hardly surprising, then, that there should be some profound resemblances between our treatment of our bodies and our treatment of the earth” (97).
Berry worries that the industrial mindset treats our bodies and the earth as things to use. We use chemicals for short-term gain, without caring for the long-term health of humans or the earth. This is not a sustainable view. He writes, “The life of one year must not be allowed to diminish the life of the next; nothing must live at the expense of the source. Thus in nature the food species is dependent on its predator, and pests and diseases are agents of health; so populations are controlled and balanced” (93). Failing to recognize this, we produce food “at an incalculable waste of topsoil and of human life and energy, and at the cost of destroying communities and poisoning the land and the streams” (167). According to Berry, part of the reason for this failure to recognize the interdependence of life (and death) is to be found in the separation of the household from the production of food. Food is not grown at home and food is not made from raw ingredients. Rather, the home has become a place where food is consumed with no sense of what was required to produce it (51). Berry believes that this change took place when men were removed from the nurturing work on the land to work in factories. Nurturing came to be seen as belonging only to women. He writes, “Women traditionally have performed the most confining—though not necessarily the least dignified—tasks of nurture: housekeeping, the care of young children, food preparation” (113). As the industrial economy saw the real work as that which earned a wage outside the home, women’s status was diminished by this arrangement. Further, her nurturing came to be done by purchasing cleaning and cooking “gadgets” and providing easily prepared meals. This left her time to focus on being “fresh, cheerful, young, shapely, and pretty.” Even breastfeeding was removed from women, and formula was purchased (114–15). For Berry, the removal of men from their nurturing roles and connections to the home, along with the debasement of women’s contribution to the home, has resulted in the disintegration of marriage as a commitment to communities and places (118).
Berry worries that there can be no healthy love when the partners can’t do substantial labor in support of one another. On his account, sexual energy, when divorced from working for and with each other, comes to be both uncontrolled and unsustainable. This is exacerbated, for Berry, by the emergence of birth control. He equates the use of birth control with the use of chemicals on the land to remove pests and weeds. The use of birth control is accompanied by the further use of chemicals to “help” infertile women and infertile fields (132–32). He writes, “By ‘freeing’ food and sex from worry, we have also set them apart from thought, responsibility, and the issue of quality” (135). For Berry, this is not real freedom, and we need meaningful work in production and reproduction: “We are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of the plants, animals, materials, and other people we are working with. Such work is unifying, healing. It brings us home from pride and from despair, and places us responsibly within the human estate” (140). Berry’s response to this state of affairs is to urge people to grow their own food—if not on a farm, then in a garden. Ideally, this should be done with the respectful use of animal and human labor rather than machines, in order to help maintain (and restore) the health of the soil and reintegrate human and other animal beings into partnerships. Cooking should be done at home, using raw ingredients rather than prepared food.
While I respect this view, and know many who consider themselves part of a local and slow food movement, I do worry about some of the accompanying effects. Women still do more that 80 percent of the household labor in heterosexual partnerships, even if they also work outside the home. The call to add gardening, canning, and cooking from scratch often has the effect of further increasing this workload and adding a dollop of guilt for those who don’t manage to do it. For those not living in any kind of partnership, and doing all the household labor on their own, the workload is even higher. Single life doesn’t seem to enter into Berry’s view at all.
Another person to espouse a similar view is Barbara Kingsolver in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. This book relays her family’s experience moving to a farm in Virginia, where they began to produce much of their own food and made a commitment to eat in season and as locally as possible for a year. Their property had fruit trees and they planted a garden and raised chickens and turkeys. The turkeys she decided to raise were a heritage breed—Bourbon Reds—and she eventually established a breeding population to help with the recovery of this breed. The only reason she seems to want to do this, though, is because they are a tasty bird with large breasts; she shows little respect for the animals themselves. When the turkeys first try to eat and drink they have to be shown how. “Oh, well, we don’t grow them for their brains,” she writes (88). She finds their “witlessness lovable” but is happy they won’t stay this cute as they are not pets (89). When starting her flock, she sees no issues with sending the chicks through the mail since they don’t need to eat for the first forty-eight hours. Later when her turkeys have trouble figuring out how to breed she laments the hatchery system that removes the mother from the equation but doesn’t seem to connect this back to how she received her young chickens and turkeys in the first place.
While she rightly notes that many things die in the production of any food and says we need to respect the plant and animal life that dies to feed humans (221), her respect seems limited to me. Turkeys who can forage like the Bourbon Red are not witless. Her lack of knowledge when it comes to their breeding behavior also shows that she didn’t feel the need to educate herself about these particular birds. While she has much to say about “vegetarians” who don’t know anything about livestock, her situation is not all that different. While she exhorts everyone to raise and cook their own food, she berates vegans and vegetarians for their “moral superiority” and “billowing ignorance” (223). She writes, “The farm-liberation fantasy simply reflects a modern cultural confusion about farm animals. They’re human property, not just legally but biologically. Over the millennia of our clever history, we created from wild progenitors whole new classes of beasts whose sole purpose was to feed us. If turned loose in the wild, they would haplessly starve, succumb to predation, and destroy the habitats and lives of most or all natural things” (223). While she’s right about the environmental hazards of turning these animals loose (not something generally being proposed) she is not correct that they would all just die. Populations of feral pigs, goats, and chickens attest otherwise. And the mindset that these animals’ “sole purpose was to feed us” is far from respectful. At the very least, the animals themselves envision their purpose as living a good life and raising young. While I agree that humans need to remember that animal life and death are necessary to grow plants and trees, this reality should not entail reducing those animals to beings who have no other purpose in order to make humans feel less bad about killing them. Like Neunzig, Kingsolver is also inspired by Wendell Berry. Berry’s work has, in fact, inspired many people to raise their own food. When this includes animals, though, lack of knowledge about these animals can result in much suffering. This is a point to which I will return in the chapter on poultry.
The other danger, I think, is that many inspired by Berry romanticize the farm life and underestimate the amount of work it takes to raise and prepare food on a year-round basis. Part of Kingsolver’s commitment to her year of food included cooking from raw ingredients. Kingsolver recognizes that some people may not be situated in a place where they can grow their own food (though she thinks most can have some kind of garden), but she thinks everyone can cook their own food. She knows that for many women this is a touchy subject as the women’s movement has worked hard to make it possible for women to work outside the home and not be responsible for all the work in the home. But she thinks this came with a cost and says, “When my generation of women walked away from the kitchen we were escorted down that path by a profiteering industry that knew a tired, vulnerable marketing target when they saw it. ‘Hey, ladies,’ it said to us, ‘go ahead get liberated. We’ll take care of dinner.’” While this sounded good to many, she thinks it is what allowed the move to industrial agriculture to take such a strong hold in the United States. She writes, “They threw open the door, and we walked into a nutritional crisis and genuinely toxic food supply. If you think toxic is an exaggeration, read the package directions for handling raw chicken from a CAFO. We came a long way, baby, into bad eating habits and collaterally impaired family dynamics. No matter what else we do or believe, food remains at the center of every culture. Ours now runs on empty calories” (127). She points to women in France and Spain who work but still shop on the way home to cook a meal. She urges women (and men) in the United States to stop seeing cooking as a chore and instead view it as an outlet for creativity, as one of the things we do for fun.
From an ecofeminist perspective, I am worried about Berry and Kingsolver essentially laying the blame for the growing domination of industrial farming and processed food on the women’s movement. I think it is important to note that Berry’s wife works on the farm and types his manuscripts; Kingsolver is supported in her gardening, farming, and cooking efforts with an income not available to all, a schedule that is more flexible than many people’s jobs allow, and a husband who regularly cooks and bakes bread. She moves beyond calling on people to prepare meals from raw ingredients to making things like bread, pickles, tomato sauce, and jam. These are necessary if one plans to eat locally during the winter. She also says people should make their own cheese. Ironically, while she is committed to understanding food as a process and participating in that process, this commitment falls short when it comes to cheese. While she admits to loving its taste, she is not willing to be tied down to the twice-a-day milking schedule that comes with dairy animals: “I couldn’t imagine, myself, having an unbreakable milking date with every five o’clock of this world” (160). But someone has to do that work. The cheese-making endeavor is not only time-consuming—it also takes one into the realm of dairies and the problems with milk. That is the topic of the next chapter.