death by manure

I have to admit, of all the hazards associated with concentrated manure pits found in industrial livestock operations, death was not the first to come to mind. I initially thought this graphic would belongs in the over-cautionary menagerie at Safety Graphic Fun.

Apparently, death by manure is a significant hazard. Farm workers can asphyxiate quickly from breathing in toxic gasses from sealed underground pits, or from drowning in above-ground manure lagoons. What a way to go, eh? Nationwide, about 20 people die every year from breathing in hydrogen sulfide, a gas unique to concentrated manure pits that are not exposed to the air. Two years ago, this gas claimed the lives of an entire Mennonite family, as the father attempted to unclog a manure pit pipe, and after he collapsed, his family members died trying to rescue him.

That snippet of news also made me think of how many people believe that just because something is "Amish made," it is must be high quality and environmentally sustainable. I grew up around Amish communities, and know first-hand that they are not immune to the problems of the modern world -- things like drug addiction, teen pregnancy, and dishonest business practices. I've encountered Amish families who believe that animals are property, something God has given you to take care of but not care about, and for whom this belief translates into treatment of livestock that is much harsher than I would personally find acceptable. There are, of course, many outstanding Amish and Mennonite family farms, but a label identifying the town or religious preference of its maker does not automatically denote wholesomeness.

dirt

Last night we watched Dirt! The Movie for free on Hulu. The cartoon characters and message of hope made a nice change from the somewhat depressing agricultural documentaries we've been watching lately.

Two snippets I took away from this movie:

"Kids don't play in soil. They play in dirt."
One of the people interviewed in this movie has made his life's work helping kids find greener places to play. He pulls up concrete in playgrounds so they can become dirty, living places -- in other words, the kind of places where kids actually like to hang out. He says that some people were shocked, asking where children would take recess if their play area wasn't encased in a lifeless layer of "clean." (Maybe those neighborhood parents need to take a gander at Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv's book which argues exposure to nature, unstructured play, and dirt is critical to childhood development?) I can't help but recall a neighborhood child who, watching us dig carrots through the fence we shared when we lived in the city, asked, "Why'd you put those carrots in the dirt?" While his innocence regarding the way plants grow was comically forgivable, honestly, I was somewhat impressed that in the age of packaged meals, he still recognized a raw carrot as food. And what's with university professors insisting that you call dirt "soil," as if changing the word somehow makes you sound more intelligent, and feel more distant from that stuff beneath your feet on which all life depends?

"There is no such thing as waste until it's wasted."
The folks interviewed about compost included people in Maine who were making a good living composting fish waste leftover from fishermen. This waste had previously been dumped into the ocean, with no one the wiser, until eventually the EPA decided to tell them they weren't allowed to do that anymore. Without a cheap place to dump their refuse, the fishermen became interested in whether it could be brought onto the shore to be composted and feed plants, "like the Indians used to do." Well, of course! For me, this story made a good illustration of just how much living, decaying stuff goes to waste, every day, all over this country and surely the world. Massive, gi-normous, mind-boggling amounts of stuff. Stuff that should be in the soil, but isn’t. Stuff that shouldn’t be killing the fish in the Gulf of Mexico, but is. Fish guts, lawn clippings, leaf litter, human waste, Smithfield lagoons of pig manure, and of course, millions of tons of artificially created nitrogen dumped indiscriminately across the great plains, all washing down into our drinking water. We have a waste problem, and we have a fertilizer problem, which is insane when Mother Nature has already created a perfectly round system where these things are not problems but complimentary solutions.