Why I Farm

I was a vegetarian for ten years, and have only recently begun consuming more animal products (including pork, chicken and beef raised by my neighbors). I'm slightly embarrassed by some of the critical responses to this article, and think we're squandering an excellent opportunity to have a meaningful conversation about the "cost" of food, be it animal or vegetable.

Vegans and vegetarians have always done good work and have boldly taken on the challenge of thinking about the moral and ethical implications of their diet, but I wonder if they (or if any of us) really go far enough? While I often hear meat eaters wrestling with their decision to kill or consume killed animals, most non-meat eaters I know happily graze without much consideration of seasonality, food miles or environmental impacts, at least beyond a mild attachment to the organic label. This lack of ambivalence is troubling.

Also, while I agree with Bryan's notion that taking responsibility for death adds life to his life, I'm also troubled by the article's attempt to reconcile the killing, as though it can be thought through once and be done. For me, as I now eat and in some cases kill animals, I am both troubled by this choice AND feel that it is the most responsible and honest life that I've discovered. I'm somewhat reassured and terribly challenged by this quote from Wendell Berry, referenced in the recent "Chicken Harvest" article:

“To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. When we do it knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, destructively, it is a desecration.”

I would very much appreciate a turning of the tables here - why don't we all comment on what is most ethically challenging about the eating life WE'VE chosen? Don't know, can't say? You haven't thought hard enough.

Thanks for a thought provoking essay, Bryan.

Thanks, Kevin. - Bryan

I enjoyed your article Bryan. I would have to agree with you that knowing how the animals that supply our meat are treated is an important thing for us to consider. We should show respect for any living creation, be it animal or plant, but all things are put here for a purpose. We don’t condemn the wolf for eating the dear for that is all apart of nature. So many of the comments to you bewilder me. Not that I do not understand their viewpoint but when you compare eating meat from a cow to eating your mother or college roommate that leaves me scratching my head. Thanks for a very insightful article.

The fact that our existence depends on the suffering and death of other living things is not a “moral difficulty,” in my opinion. Other creatures will use my body for nutrition someday. Fair trade. I see it as part of the indescribable poignancy and beauty of life.

It does seem like a moral imperative, to me, that we don’t squander life or diminish its variety and richness unnecessarily.

My point is that vegetarianism and veganism are admirable spiritual disciplines with their roots in compassion, but they are not morally superior to eating meat any more than a cow is morally superior to a wolf.

Veganism is often inspired by compassion for living things. I applaud that compassion. But when the vegan or vegetarian accuses the meat-eater of a lack of compassion, I take exception. I know and care about the animals I eat. I know I am responsible for their death - and their life.

Just because you don’t know the family of foxes destroyed by the plow doesn’t make you any less culpable for their destruction.

- Bryan

Brian, if I understand you correctly, your point seems to be that there are necessary evils involved in raising and harvesting crops. And from your article I gather, from its pathos, that you believe there are some such evils involved in raising livestock as well.

Therefore, since both methods of food production are morally problematic in their own ways, your conclusion is that you should partake of the products of both methods? Slaughter the animals for meat and blight the land for crops? Or do you not eat any crops, seeing as how they are produced in "biological wastelands," as you say?

You see, what I don't understand is why you list problems in a situation while implying at the same time that these things are somehow not problems. With meat you say that there is "more death in your life," and that this fact results in you feeling that there is "more life in your life." Maniacal serial killers also feel this way. With crops you say that their growth and harvesting is somehow "agricultural fascism," yet we can safely assume that you do in fact eat plants.

Are there any moral dilemmas in your life that actually cause you to act in a way other than by instinct? Or are your actions, in general, unaffected by your objective recognition of the moral difficulties involved therein?

Thanks to everyone for chiming in!

For those who don't form a natural distinction between eating another species and eating our own species, I don't really have much to say. I think nature gives clear instructions on this. Very, very few predators systematically consume their own species. A few do, admittedly. We are not, by nature, one of them.

I guess I'll have to disagree with those who claim their vegan lifestyle harms fewer creatures. The pasture is a natural environment, a natural habitat for many species and they thrive there. The plowed field is a biological wasteland suitable, by design, for one species and one species only - a species that exists only to provide nourishment for human beings.

If you're looking for an agricultural symbol for fascism, there you have it.

- Bryan

This article is very inspiring. Thanks for writing it.

I have been a vegan for over ten years, and consider myself to be a fairly even-tempered, philosophically-minded individual. As such, I agree completely with what Will has already said with regard to this article, but would take one of his points a step further.

Rather than compare these livestock to cats and dogs, why not compare them to our human friends, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers? You've shared good times with these people, watched them grow, shared laughs together. But, hey, a man's gotta eat, right? Time to kill Dear Ol' Mum and get her in your belly!

It does not matter how well you treat these animals if you kill them in the end anyway. If, after four great years of college together, I decide to kill my best friend, is that somehow more morally correct than Auschwitz was?

If, Mr. Welch, you get to know these animals so well, develop a deep compassion for them, how is it that you become so easily resigned to the role of executioner? Answering this question is the apparent point of this article, yet it fails utterly to do so.

When you feel and care for a plant as much as to an animal you
whould feel the same amount of sadness while you are cutting off
and eating the fruit. they are both living thinks.and they both
deserve to live. but we have no choise. otherwise we wont live. and
BTW humens are meant to eat vegtables fruit and meat as our
primmates do.

In reference to Bryan Welch column on farming, many years ago I
moved from the city to the country and began farming, including
raising animals to feed my family and profits, as well as growing
grains and a large vegetable garden. At the time I considered
myself an environmentalist but there was a feeling in me that was
uncomfortable when considering the final outcome of the farm
animals. When I discontinued raising the animals and concentrated
my efforts on the vegetable gardens and fruit orchard, I became
much more internally at peace with my lifestyle. Consuming animals
for food is NOT necessary for the human species and is the largest
contributor to global destruction. We free ourselves to life a more
peaceful existence once we transistion to a plant based lifestyle.
ahimas, jerry cook

As a Buddhist and as a 30-year vegan, I take profound exception to
Brian Welch's outrageous statement, "There’s a Buddhist wisdom in
the stockman’s cool compassion." His entire article, Why I Farm,"
is an attempt to co-opt the word compassion. This has been
happening a lot lately, with the "happy meat" offerings in upscale
markets that try to make people more comfortable with the
completely unnecessary cruelty they are directly causing to
sensitive creatures by their choice to eat animal-sourced foods. We
live in a culture where we are indoctrinated to see beings as
commodities to be used and mere meat to be eaten, and this tragic
desensitization breeds ethical numbness as well as a mentality of
violence, reductionism, and exclusivity. Welch does not need to eat
these animals! We would be outraged if he was writing about killing
dogs and cats for food the way he is talking about killing cows and
pigs. Do these animals love life less than our pets? Obviously not,
but we care less about them and their interests and their terrible
suffering. I say this to Welch: Please stop trying to cloak your
cruelty and indoctrinated taste in Buddhist or "spiritual" terms.
It is neither. You are up against an unyielding dilemma. Pull your
finger off the trigger, unclench your grip from the knife, pull
your hands out of the guts of tortured animals and switch to a
plant-based diet. That takes real courage. Then you'll begin to
understand compassion. As you are now, you are just a herding
slave, following 8,000 years of indoctrination. Sincerely, Dr. Will
Tuttle