It's that time of year when I'm digging up beds, amending soil and planting for next year. I've been experimenting with organic fertilizers, stuff like blood meal, bone meal and fish emulsion and meal.
As I'm working the animal product based organic fertilizers into the soil, it occurs to me that it would be really really hard for a Vegan to farm organically. Most organic fertilizers are based on rendered animal products. Even manure is an animal product, and if a Vegan can't eat milk or eggs or wear wool, why would they be able to use cow waste to fertilize soil?
I suppose a vegan could rely exclusively on crop rotation, compost and plant based fertilizers (there are a few) but that would be very difficult and would require a fair amount of land. They pretty much couldn't grow vegetables in their back yard, I'd imagine, unless they planned on letting their backyard garden lie fallow every other year.
It's odd, considering that I would classify most Vegans as environmentalist types, that Veganism may actually be somewhat at odds with sustainable agricultural practices. It's something that probably warrants a little research and more thought.
Of course, if you cornered me and asked me what I really thought, I'd tell you that my personal philosophy is that the ideal is a little from column A and a little from column B. And I'm definitely NOT a vegan, or a vegetarian for that matter.
2 comments:
They get the manure from the horse that plows the field and the cow that provides them with the milk... oh wait...
*ding* *ding*
We have a winner!!
Really, like everything else in the world, it's more complicated than most people want to believe.
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