FERN’s Friday Feed: The chicken conundrum
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Chicken can be climate-friendly, but we’re eating it all wrong
The Atlantic
“Every piece of realistic climate advice—the kind that could actually be adopted by a critical mass of people—is a compromise between the very best thing we can do and what we already do,” writes Eve Andrews. “And because of the distance between those two poles, that compromise is bound to be frustrating in some way for pretty much everyone. Somehow, a climate-conscious diet must simultaneously recognize the need to greatly cut carbon emissions and limit deforestation and accept that the human appetite for animal protein cannot simply be ignored. To that end, I believe that we have lost our way on poultry. Chicken is both undersung as a protein with a relatively small carbon footprint and overeaten in its blandest forms, the dreaded boneless breast or sauce-vehicle wing.”
‘Green roads’ help control floods, buffer drought, and boost irrigation
Yale Environment 360
“Green Roads for Water is the brainchild of Frank Van Steenbergen, a Dutch geographer and MetaMeta’s director,” writes Ben Goldfarb. “While working on irrigation projects in Pakistan in the early 1990s, van Steenbergen first encountered ‘gabarbands,’ stone terraces likely built by farmers millenia ago to capture water and soil from seasonal rivers during monsoons. The gabarbands were proto-dams, but their sinuous paths across ancient streambeds also reminded van Steenbergen of roads, which tend to gather water along their surfaces. In the years that followed, he began to wonder: Why not use roads to direct and collect water in desirable locations, rather than undesirable ones?”
Crayfish culture
Stranger’s Guide
“There is only one recipe for a traditional Swedish crayfish feast. You fill a pot with water, beer, salt, sugar and handfuls of dill flower,” writes Brett Martin. “After boiling, you allow the crayfish to soak and cool in the brine. They are served cold with slices of crusty bread and wedges of salty-sweet Väseterbotten cheese. And, of course, aquavit. By comparison, the ritual of consuming the crayfish is elaborate. First, you lay the creature on its back, claws splayed, press your lips against its belly almost tenderly and give a quick suck, inhaling a clean, briny blast of juice. With a quick twist, you remove the head, then turn to the tail, prying out the sweet pink meat with your thumbs. Next are the claws, each of which contains a morsel of flesh that is extracted by wiggling and detaching the bottom pincer. Finally, before moving on to the next specimen, you place the head of the previous one on the edge of your plate, facing outward, to show how many you’ve eaten.”
What are farm animals thinking?
Science
“You’d never mistake a goat for a dog, but on an unseasonably warm afternoon in early September, I almost do. I’m in a red-brick barn in northern Germany, trying to keep my sanity amid some of the most unholy noises I’ve ever heard. Sixty Nigerian dwarf goats are taking turns crashing their horns against wooden stalls while unleashing a cacophony of bleats, groans, and retching wails that make it nearly impossible to hold a conversation. Then, amid the chaos, something remarkable happens,” writes David Grimm. “One of the animals raises her head over her enclosure and gazes pensively at me, her widely spaced eyes and odd, rectangular pupils seeking to make contact—and perhaps even connection. It’s a look we see in other humans, in our pets, and in our primate relatives. But not in animals raised for food. Or maybe we just haven’t been looking hard enough.”
What if farmers had to pay for water?
The New York Times
“The strawberry, blackberry and raspberry fields of the Pajaro Valley stretch for 10 miles along the coast of California’s Monterey Bay, jeweled with fruit from April through early December. The valley’s 30,000 acres of farmland are also ruffled with emerald lettuces, brussels sprouts and varieties of kale, bringing in roughly $1 billion in revenue to the region each year. All that abundance doesn’t come cheap,” writes Coral Davenport. “While American farmers elsewhere have watered their crops by feely pumping the groundwater beneath their land, growers in Pajaro must pay hefty fees for irrigation water — making it one of the most expensive places to grow food in the country, if not the world.”