a.a.e.v. and t.p.a. are regularly visited by a number of vegetarians who
assert their dietary choice: 'saves animals' or is 'less cruel' than an
omnivorous diet.

the facts are that modern cereal grain production comes at a cost of
_several deaths per pound_, whereas grass-fed meat production, whether
from production agriculture or hunting is counted _several *pounds* per
death_.  

it is absolutely inescapable that from death comes life, and
agriculture: is, always has been, and always will be a bloody, bloody
business, and anybody who believes by eating a pound of pasta instead of
a pound of venison, free-range chicken or grass-fed beef they are
'saving a life' is (charitably) severely misinformed.

studying *organic* production is instructive: intuitively (if not always
correctly) people believe organic = 'better, healthier' (although
organic *can* be ‘better, healthier', it is not, necessarily), and the
number of included collateral deaths - while considerably fewer than in
'conventional' production - are much more visible; more personal; more
illustrative for those who favor responsibility and information when
diet becomes intertwined with beliefs and values.

this case study of collateral included deaths is a refinement and
extension of an earlier post to a.a.e.v.  additional information and
analysis is included in this iteration.

---------
although i no longer straddle a tractor or herd a combine, i have driven
both - literally - thousands of miles.  i am still engaged in
agribusiness, and we have organic as well as conventional farms, organic
'truck farms' and ranching operations.  in production agriculture, i am
most familiar with: rice, grain sorghum, cotton, sunflowers and
soybeans.  the facts, data, assumptions and conclusions, while developed
on two organic rice farms (900 and 160 acres) and one 'conventional'
rice farm of 1340 acres in colorado county, texas, are probably
more-or-less applicable to other cereal grains grown in other locales.  

production on the organic farms is ±3500 pounds/acre for the jasmine
farm (900 ac) and somewhat less on the shortgrain farm (160 ac), while
on the 'conventional' longrain farm, it is ±10000 pounds, annualised.
our organic jasmine operations produce seed rice and none of it goes
(directly) from our farm to your table (although it does indirectly and
we thank you for your [indirect] patronage).  the organic shortgrain
production is used in non-food manufacturing.

because of the positive economics of organic retail sales and ability to
produce, we will be adding an additional 1500-2000 acres of organic rice
production within the next three-five years.  although organic is
considerably more of a pain-in-the-ass to grow, the r.o.i. is better
than twice that of conventional rice, and, in some cases, retail sales
are 5x over wholesale.

--------
a conservative annualised estimate of vertebrate deaths in organic rice
farming is ~20 pound.  conservative number. (the arithmetic follows and
the derivative methodology is available).  

this works out a bit less than two vertebrate deaths per square foot,
and, again, is conservative.  for conventionally grown rice, the gross
body-count is *at least* several times that figure.  collateral included
deaths from 'conventional' agriculture are more inferential than from
'organic' production (explained later) and, although the number of
deaths is fewer in organic v. conventional, they are more visible in
organic production.

the vertebrate deaths come from: frogs, toads, anole lizards, shrews,
voles, mice, rats, snakes, a couple of kinds of turtle, cat, rabbits,
skunk, nutria & muskrats, raccoons, possums, deer, pheasant, quail,
pigeon, cattle egrets, sparrows, starlings, waxwings, ....  although all
of these are not harvested *every* time, or even most times, they are
the 'regulars.'  occasionally a: turkey, canvasback, teal, heron,
mallard, black duck, coot, spoonbill, crow, hawk, kite, buzzard ... is
shredded, as is the occasional feral pig or lost calf, coyote or dog.

for information, an acre has 43,264+ square feet.  the vast majority of
the deaths are (as one would imagine): frogs, toads and anole lizards;
rodents and insectivores.

- when cutting the rice, there is a (visual) green waterfall of frogs
and anoles moving in front of the combine.  sometimes the 'waterfall' is
just a gentle trickle (± 10,000 frogs per acre) crossing the header,
total for both cuttings, other times it is a deluge (+50,000 acre).
never is it a drought; rarely a mist.

sometimes, the number of frogs swimming across the cutter-bar is so
massive, we have to change to a different length header or reduce travel
speed of the combine - there is just too much rice lost by being pressed
into the rather thickish 'paté arroz con gracielà' which travels across
the screens, rather than falling into the hopper as good grain should.

these numbers may sound extreme to those who believe there is a wildlife
de- population crisis, but considering one can casually see 10-20-30+
frogs (and several anoles) within the top few inches of a foot stand of
rice, the numbers making gracielà paté are trivial.

most times, judging from the visible continuous population swimming
across the header, it is somewhere between 10K & 50+K per acre
harvested.  a good, reasonable, annualised (but still conservative)
number of amphibian and anole deaths through the combine is 35,000 of
all species harvested per acre, combined average for two cuttings.  in
spite of these seemingly large numbers, far, far more frogs & lizards
escape than are combined.  i would guess that the 35,000 amphibian
deaths represents less than 20% of the total population, and probably
far less, but that is just a guess - plenty, plenty, plenty escape to
enjoy a different fate.

        [methodology:  it takes 7 passes with a 30' combine to cut an acre
(208' x 208').  For ‘gentle trickle', to digest 7,000 frogs in that acre
(7,000 1st cutting + 3,000 2nd cutting for a total of 10,000), means
1000 unlucky (slow, bad jumpers, sleeping, ...) frogs in the 6240 sq.ft.
that constitutes *one* pass, or one per 6+ sq.ft. or 5 per lineal foot
of travel.

        for the ‘average' (35,000 divided 25k & 10k), the numbers are ~3500 per
pass (first cutting); one for every 1½ sq.ft.; and ~17 per lineal foot
of travel.]

most amphibians are harvested during the first cutting. during the early
fall second cutting, the population is not as great, so the body count
is lower during the second bite at the apple (so to speak), so the
35,000) is front- loaded.

- rodents and insectivores get hammered pretty much year-round, with all
the dirt work, cultivation and harvesting activities and, for rice
specifically, the cycle of flooding and drying the fields.  i have seen
responsible estimates of rodent/insectivore population of 9-35 square
meter, and i think the 35/meter is probably more accurate (in this area,
anyhow) judging from the 500 yard-long, foot-wide windrows of drowned
grey and brown on the lee-side levee whenever the rice is first
flooded.  very conservatively - since nobody sees plowed-up or planed-in
mice (whose deaths have to be substantial in number) assume 3/4th of one
collateral included death per square foot, or ±33,000 rodents and
insectivores killed per acre of production.  again, this is a *very*
conservative measure and covers a lot of activity year-round.  the
*real* number of rodent/insectivore deaths probably well exceeds
two/square foot.    

- a lot of birds get combined-up, and nutria, and more than one or two
deer, but another substantial source of death during all operations is
being crushed & buried.  the tires on tractors and combines are 42"
wide, and there are two on each side.  there is no way to tell how many
frogs, toads, snakes, turtles, ... get blended into the mud, but it is
not an insignificant number.  other than amphibians and
rodents/insectivores, the numbers of other deaths is difficult to assign
a competent number, but the number is not small.

-------
the arithmetic:  for 3,500 pounds/acre harvested, there is a toll of
35,000 amphibians and 33,000 rodents and insectivores (3/4 per sq. ft. x
43,000 sf/acre), or 68,000, plus, say, (to make the math easy while
still being conservative) 2,000 from mud-mixed frogs and snakes + birds
+ nutria and muskrats and cats and turtles and coons and possums + ... +
..., or ± 70,000 deaths per acre of harvested, production-farmed organic
rice.  

this works out to ~20 deaths per pound of rice - conservatively.  

---------
for conventional farming, using every _________icide when needed, and in
the quantity indicated, the body count is at least an order of magnitude
higher, although the deaths are far less visible and timed differently.
quite a few critter can dodge john deere, not to many critter escape dow
and monsanto.  

one can stand between the larger organic field and the 1340 (~ a
quarter-mile apart) any time between april and july and hear the
difference.  in the organic field, you cannot discern an individual
frog.  it is an overgrown, jumbled layered cacaphony of croaks, cheeps,
grunts and miscellaneous ribbets.  on the 1340, one can hear individual
frogs and toads.  the difference is the billions of amphibian eggs that
were laid when the 1340 was flooded at the same time and in the same
fashion as the 900 didn't make many tadpoles and fewer frogs due to
applications of pesticides, insecticides, herbicides and fungicides.  

closer to harvest, after the application of other _________icides, the
1340 is nearly mute and still.  

the rodents and insectivores go the same route.  at the end of a row, in
the 1340, rarely does one see any significant number of small fuzzies
scurrying over the levee; in the organic fields, the end of the row
looks like a scene from ~ben~.

one can tell the difference after harvest, also.  on the organic field,
as the combine passes, the wall of birdlife: varieties of hawks and
kites, crows, buzzards, egrets, herons, ... descends to glean both
escapees and paté.  on the 1340, there are still quite a number of
birds, but nowhere near the covering of the organic side.

---------
none of these figures include displacement or deaths due to
transportation or infrastructure, nor any pest control measure during
storage or transportation, deaths from each of these necessary, related
activities are substantial.

nor are insect deaths counted, and insects are animals, too, but most
involved-in-body-count vegetarians prefer to ignore or minimise deaths
of other than cute and/or furry critters.

someplace in here several inescapable facts/conclusions should be noted:

- there is not only death in agriculture, there is a lot of death, and
the number of deaths (particularly visible deaths) are related to
populations more than farming practices.

- conventional agriculture results in many more, but more 'invisible'
deaths.  our conventional plot is across the road from our organic plot.
it is planted at the same time, in the same fashion with the same seed
and flooded with the same source of water; it starts out with the same
millions and billions of amphibian eggs. only a few thousand frogs are
harvested on the conventional side - they were all killed off as eggs,
tadpoles or juveniles by agricultural chemicals.

- we ‘manage' the whole area (larger than just the farms) in a pretty
relaxed fashion and we have a lot of wildlife in the non-agricultural
areas.  the number and variety of deaths is - at least partially - a
function of total area population and diversity.  we could reduce the
number of visible deaths by flogging the ecology into a monoculture, but
we prefer life and cycle-of-life over a sterile monoculture.

- every farming environment has a different mix of animals and the
largest number and largest variety, both, will be found in
semi-tropical, mixed ecology lands like we have.  monocultures will have
the smallest numbers and the smallest numbers of species.  the numbers i
have presented hold true in the gulf-coastal plains for machine-farmed
organic rice and may well vary in california and arkansas.

- if one desires to 'eat organic', i strongly urge research into what
your state considers' organic.'  'organic' produce is *very likely* not
as chemical-free as you might like to believe.

-------
are there ways to reduce collateral included deaths in modern production
agriculture?  not really, and not economically for the consumer.

some cosmetic reductions (at the cost of some *non*cosmetic increased
unit- production costs) can be made with more hand-work in smaller
fields using 'appropriate technology', but when tractors and combines
get involved, deaths go up, and the deaths increase as the size of
machines (or number of passes) increase.  

the overall animal population and mix in the area farmed has a lot to do
with what kind of deaths are seen, too.  this case study references a
semi-tropical mixed-use area with short-grass prairie, woods, row-crop
farming and rice cultivation.  there are more vertebrates of different
species in this ecosystem than there will be in an area that is
horizon-to-horizon monoculture.  where we will regularly harvest deer,
nutria and wild pigs, etc., all of these would not normally be expected
in northern california, for example.

from death comes life.  agriculture: is now, always has been and always
will be a bloody business.

buon apetité.