Dan Barber: How I Fell in Love with a Fish

     Dan Barber is a foodie who believes the current American agribusiness model for producing food is outdated, inefficient, and wasteful. First we over-fished the sea, and now man-made fish farms are highly polluting, have inefficient protein return ratios, and result in poor tasting fish. The best fish this man has ever tasted - the fish he fell in love with - comes from a ecologically based fish farm in Veta la Palma, Spain. Quite contrary to traditional American fish farms, this one actually purifies the water that comes through it and is completely self sustaining. The ecosystem within it has thrived to the point that it's become one of Europe's largest bird sanctuaries, and the owner doesn't even mind that they're eating some of his fish. Barber would urge America to adopt a similarly ecologically friendly agricultural system.
     But is this a reasonable request? The land that this Spanish fish farm is based on was a marshland before it was further flooded. Its conditions were already conducive to that of a wetland. Presumably the algae and some of the other important aquatic lifeforms were already somewhat established before it was transformed into a fish farm. How many other examples of farms like this exist in Europe? Is it fair to say that Miguel, the Spanish fish farmer, is an ingenious biologist with a greater ability than any other to create a self-sustaining farm, or did he just know how to recognize an ecosystem simply begging to thrive when he saw it? How many regions in America have the capability to thrive to the same extent with such little maintenance? I would venture a guess that most facilities trying to replicate Miguel's farm would need a little more spoon-feeding. 
     Fish farming is also very different from many other kinds of farming. Take cattle farming for example. In order to have a cattle farm as ecologically friendly and self-sustaining as Miguel's farm, even a small herd of cattle would require a large plot of land to freely graze. If we stopped grain-feeding cattle as well, each cow would not produce nearly as much meat as does the current mass-produced albeit unhealthy and mistreated cow. Reducing population density of animals on farms would also require more time and effort to collect the fewer resources (milk, eggs, the animals themselves, whatever), making all food even more expensive than it already is. 
     But all of this is not to say that I disagree with Barber. The current industrialized form of agriculture which the United States adheres to is a disgusting example of waste, pollution, and mistreatment of animals. I recently did a relatively extensive research paper on factory farming to build an argument for vegetarianism, and I learned more about it than I would have liked to. Without going into too much detail, I'll just toss out a few facts: factory farms produce the equivalent of 5 tons of waste for every American per year; livestock in this country produces 130 times more waste than the entire human population of the United States; livestock consumes 20 millions tons of protein every year but yields significantly less; 10's of 1,000's of chickens are housed on each factory farm, giving less than 1 square foot of space to each bird; every second in the U.S., 287 chickens, 3.68 pigs, and 1.12 cows are slaughtered. But that's enough rambling on (and I didn't even horrify you with any details of the slaughter process). My point is, I agree with Barber on the point that industrialized farming is wasteful and inefficient. Furthermore, I believe it to be a violation of basic ethics. Smaller, more ethically friendly farms would not only be healthier for the environment for also for the animals and, in turn, the people eating them. I support small farms 100%. I even worked on one for the last four years. But taking better care of livestock means a significantly greater investment of time and results in a more expensive product. Would people be willing to make this compromise? Would we even be able to sustain the entire population with such a radically different system? As lovely as this idea is of every farm being like Miguel's, how realistic is it? Would it even be possible? Or would we quickly fall back down the track of attempting to make it more efficient through industrialization of agriculture? The chickens vote small farms, but no one wants to listen to them. 


This blog is based on a TED Talk by Dan Barber: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html