Balancing Brazil's Forests + Cows

(Image from NYT video)

I just watched a great video from The New York Times... "Brazil's Forests: Reducing Deforestation to Fight Climate Change". Unfortunately, they do not have a direct link, but if you go HERE and then look for this video I am sure it will pop up.

One thing is for sure... GMO corn and soy are destroying too many things. If only they would stop feeding corn + soy to cattle! Aside from being "cheap", and cheap only in the short term- it makes NO sense.

(Cows...as nature intended)

A cow's natural diet is grass. They are grazers and should be able to roam freely outside. They eat and poop all day long. It makes for a good fertilizer.

When cows eat corn it messes everything up. In a nut shell... it is not their natural diet, their gut flora gets all messed because of it, and they cannot digest their food. This unnatural diet (grains) makes them vulnerable to sickness, which is partly why they are given antibiotics. The other reason is because most are in cramped feedlots suseptible to disease.

The cows are given hormones because it will make them grow faster since they need to kill (yes- very sad, but part of nature I'm afraid) them sooner as their life expectancy drastically goes down due to living in these conditions and eating this diet. This is the same for all feedlot animals. This is the same for us as well. Grains are hard on our bodies as well. Limit it. Try spelt and do not eat GMO.

(Corn we eat. Corn cows + animals eat. Soy animals eat.)

We listened to a great interview the other day... oneradionetwork.com (it's free- you just have to sign up) with Patrick Timpone and Jerry Brunetti and they talk at length about this. Check it out- was really interesting and very informative. Also, if you haven't already check out the movie, King Korn please do. They also talk at length about what happens to the cow when it eats corn too and the corn industry in general.

(Cows in a Feedlot. Image from here)

I also wanted to mention the whole climate change and cattle thing. Cows have been blamed for what perhaps the oil companies need to take care of... There probably is too much methane and I agree that their waste pollutes the rivers (think of what our waste does). But there should be a BIG differentiation between grazing cows and those in feedlots.

Cows are basically soil producers which grown healthy fruit trees, vegetables and so on. We need them. What we do not need is feedlots, with animals being fed an unhealthy diet, filled with hormones and antibiotics. Who wants to eat that stuff anyways??? Think of what it does to you if it does that to the animal- eeks!!!!

The real culprit I think is the vast amount of corn and soy being grown. It is completely unnecessary! It is not good for the animals, it is not good for us, and it is not good for the soil. It actually depletes the soil as many chemicals are used since there is no biodiversity- they are stripping it of it's nutrients. Look at the list of ingredients in the store... I bet you will find "high fructose corn syrp" and "soy" in almost everything. People should limit their consumption of meat as well... and will have to if it is going to be "au natural" (ie all grazing animals).

All in all the whole system needs allot of work. It has to be brought back to nature. The good thing is there are people out there doing it the natural way. Support those local farmers who are against chemical farming and feedlots. Let's get it back on track.