Tell me your just joking Rhrosty! If not tell me about your methods in getting something to eat.

I have many fruit trees, exotic & native, it makes the house paddock colourful, but not productive. Yes colourful, but not from fruit, but birds.

If you want production of edible fruit there are a few things you must do.

1/ you must spray the things every 7 & 14 days to control fruit fly grubs & diseases.

2/ you must water profusely most years, or most small fruit will drop off, & what remains will be small & hard.

3/ You must fertilize regularly & often, or the fruit will definitely not be palatable.

You must cover the trees with nets, or the lorikeets, king parrots crows, magpies & possums will make sure you have nothing to harvest.
I get particularly annoyed the way crows will decide to have some lemon.

They will pick a hole in one, decide it's nor very nice, then try another. This goes on until every lemon is destroyed. The magpies do something similar to mandarins.

Even if you like eating around what all these pests have left you, it will have cost you multiples of the cost of buying the same fruit, produced by one of those dreadful factory farmers, [orchardists] who knew what they were doing, & produced something edible.

I've got some backyard chooks, just 5 hens. Enough for eggs for two homes but not meat.

I grew up on a farm with a mixture of livestock but having the chooks has been a reminder of just how much personality they have and how much they love getting out in the garden and having a scratch around. The enclosure they live in has space to scratch in, it has shelter, constant access to food and water, it get's sunlight and has plenty of room but when I open the door to go in they come running to try and get out that door.

Come nightfall they will be back in snuggled together ready for sleep and when the door is left open during the day they wonder in and out. I don't know what happens in their heads but it is clear that they love being out in the open scratching up some ground to look for bugs (despite having plenty of food available). It's clear that when they don't get out they miss it.

Anyone thinking that keeping chickens/hens/chooks in a permanently cramped barn or even worse a small cage is not committing a massive act of cruelty needs to find a way to spend some time with some chooks who do get outside.

The answers to the worlds food needs won't be easy, the pretense that factory faming is not going to bother the animals involved won't help us come up with the best possible answers.

R0bert

Unfortunately it is a silly article. There are substantial drivers for intensive animal raising, not least the ability to provide meat at a reasonable cost to consumers. However, that comes with very substantial issues about how it is done. Sadly, this article didn't really address either.

I think those opposed to so called factory farming, had best come to terms with some realities.

Firstly, within ten to twenty years, farmers wil be paying someone $50 an hour to collect eggs. The packers will be similar money, the truck driver, the shop assistant and so on. Unless of cause we accept the fact that food must be affordable, or alternatively, if you have strong opposition, you can grow your own, thats assuming you can afford the water.

I am of the opinion that if you are strongly opposed to factory farming, then buy free range, but leave the rest of us alone.

Personally, I don't have a problem with factory farming as these Animals are purpose breed.

Sarnian,

I normally applaud displays of irony; but in your case (having read you before) I'm just not sure if it is!

The underlying assumptions here are that:

a) cities MUST GROW in numbers of people presumably so the author, vested interests in tow, can get even richer

b) food is the only factor in the WELL-BEING and SURVIVAL of large populations, when FREE-ENERGY is that X-Factor. When the main free-energy source, oil, becomes scarce around 2025, feeding large populations will be the least worry. People killing each other in Mad-Max petrol queues and hunting down and revenge-killing politicians as a favourite sport will be front and centre.

c) that this cycle of bigger cities, more people, bigger disregard for life can go on INFINITELY on a finite resourced planet. Presumably the author will endow his descendants in perpetuity with the right to determine the future of all others by up-sizing their their cities too.

The only people interested in larger populations are selfish women and sexually insecure men. We need politicians who can assure us that any factory farm will be exclusively staffed by those who proclaim a wish for bigger populations. Barry O'Farrell should be responsible for hamburger mince from cows as a testament to his belief in sustainable large populations for Sydney. Sydney, whose current air pollution problems, without his extra 2 million Indians, reflects a pure Grieneresque wickedness.

What all this says about our current crop of Big Australia, BIG leaders and their big sycophants is TELLING. And I thank the author for bringing it to all our attentions.