We can live a few minutes without air. We can live a few days without water. We can live a few weeks without food. But to live, everybody needs all three, all our lives.
The air and water are given freely by nature, but food is not so easily come by. To feed the present human population it must be wrested from the earth using all the ingenuity and knowledge and resources we have.
As dairy farmers, we provide several kinds of food, but voices are raised saying we are the country's worst polluters. When the Pike River methane gas explosion occurred, my husband's first comment was, "Who put the cows in the mine?" Because as far as the public heard, only cows produce methane.
Just like humans, our cows defecate, urinate, flatulate and burp. But all the cows' greenhouse gases have been paid for up front, as every blade of grass grown to feed the cows has spent its life madly sucking in carbon dioxide and giving out oxygen.
As not every blade of grass goes through the cow, some is spare, to add to the payment, as are the hedgerows and shelterbelts and woodlots and weeds grown by that cow owner.
