- Friday, March 6, 2020
- 1:30 PM–2:30 PM
- Science Building 010
Guest Speaker: David Dornbos, Calvin University (Department Chair- Biology Department)
Your 'Steak" in the Planet- Implications for Environmental Health
There is increasing concern that using confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), antibiotics, and feed grain monocultures to produce the meat we eat creates environmental health problems. It is also generally believed that the crop and animal monocultures of industrialized agriculture are both incredibly efficient and required to feed a growing human population, creating a daunting sustainability dilemma. This is only an apparent dilemma, however, because an optimum dietary pattern for humans can be fully consistent with an agroecological food production system that integrates plant polycultures, animals, and native biodiversity. While agroecological systems will reduce labor efficiency, they increase the capacity to produce quality calories, are more cost effective and sustainable than industrialized feed production systems when including externalized costs and benefits.
