Why Sustainable Stockfree?
The basics are explained below, but farming and ecosystems are complex and diverse. There will be nuance depending on where you live and the climate you're growing food in. When it comes to major issues, a solution for one typically is not the solution for all.
Two pigs rescued from the meat industry enjoy scratches and affection at their forever home in a sanctuary.
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By not relying on the products from industrial animal agriculture and slaughter, we can reduce the number of animals who are bred and raised in animal feeding operations (known as AFOs) as production units rather than as individual, sentient beings. Further, AFOs are known for harming both the communities they exist in and the slaughterhouse workers who have to take thousands of lives daily.
Producing enough food does not need to depend on systematic cruelty. Sustainable stockfree agriculture shows people how we can still nourish ourselves with delicious food while reducing the harm we cause others.
Thousands upon thousands of onions left to rot after harvest on an industrial farm due to being the wrong size for commercial sale.
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By returning to diverse, small scale systems, stockfree agriculture can reduce food waste by ensuring even the "ugly" produce is harvested and the plant residues like leaves and stalks get composted to feed the soil rather than left as unusable waste. It can allow excess food to be donated to those in need rather than left to mold. Smaller systems have the capacity to focus on waste reduction and reuse what they can rather than industrial systems where it is sometimes more profitable to throw thousands of pounds of food away.
Growing food sustainably doesn't have to happen on a farm. You can start with a few pots on a patio or even indoors in a sunny window. Get a small composter or a worm bin, and you'll be well on your way to a stockfree bounty!
Tens of thousands of pounds of potatoes in storage: these will provide the fries to one US fast food chain for a single day.
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While extremely centralized food production like this is efficient, it also has a high risk of creating food shortages if any single point of the food supply chain fails. Local food systems help prevent failures by shortening the distance between producer and consumer and ensuring that if there's a failure in some part of the system, multiple competitors will be available to help fill the gaps created rather than the near monopolizations which currently exist.
By focusing on small scale, stockfree, and diverse farming systems, we can practice methods which allow our farms and gardens to intermingle and coexist with the surrounding environment rather than decimate and suppress it. We can rewild millions of acres of current farmland. We can plant native berries and plants to preserve the crops of our heritage and ancestors while reducing the spread of invasive crops.
Sustainable stockfree is the recognition of how our food system can exist within the planetary boundaries rather than be a major cause for exceeding them.
Intercropping with flowers attracts pollinators such as native bees, butterflies, and more which can support a stronger, healthier local ecosystem beyond the farm while improving yields on the farm.
A few of the 3,000 dairy cows who live their entire lives on concrete and manure at this small-scale, family-owned dairy farm in Washington state.
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By supporting sustainable stockfree, we can move away from creating millions of pounds of untreated animal waste which run off into our streams and waterways. We can combat ocean eutrophication as well as the deforestation and biodiversity loss which goes into clearing the land to grow the food for the billions of animals we currently raise and slaughter annually. Even stereotypical pastured animals require significant amounts of land and compete with wildlife for resources. By going stockfree, we can eliminate a lot of the competition between farming and nature.
By allowing some crops to go to seed, growers can support pollinators with the flowers, save seeds to become more self-reliant rather than relying on industrial or distant "seed farms", and use the plant residues created for compost to feed back to the soil.