Twenty-first International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Mass production of pork and beef presents environmental problems that may not be solvable. In this essay, I detail these problems drawing from a two-year research project comparing mass-production hog-beef production in the Midwest United States and mass-production beef-dairy production in Ireland. In my analysis, the ecological-environmental problems, which are catastrophic, are connected to economic, political, and social conditions, assumptions, and mythologies. Ultimately, arriving at sustainability in agriculture is a matter of deep and relentless interdisciplinary pursuit which must synthesize disciplines. I endeavor to make this clear. A major part of the interdisciplinary focus is cultural and involves how Irish and United States citizens understand their own environments and landscapes, which further involves aesthetics and ecological history. Cultural understanding of the environment is, in turn, a crucial element in environmental justice. I then argue that mass-production makes use of cultural biases that distort the understanding of the ecology and landscape. I conclude with a philosophical analysis of the manner in which “innovation” in mass-production agricultural is itself the result of a cultural bias which further supports the underlying concepts and practices of mass production.