People living in the countryside moaning about rural life

[SuePreemly]

I live in a village. New housing estates have gone in recently. Since then we've had complaints on the local FB page about:

Horse poo on roads
Crow scarers in the field being loud
Slurry smells
Dust during combine season

What on earth do people who move into a rural village surrounded by fields expect?

They're always on about having "consideration for others" on their posts, whilst showing none to the place and people whose work involves it 🥴

I'm vegan because I see animals as living beings with value more than our convenience

Do you like food?

Slurry is a vital part of producing your food. It recycles waste products and makes good use of it.

Stop using it and where will you put it? We can’t cope with human waste as it is.

Stop using it and what will you use to fertilise the fields instead? There’s already major issues with chemical fertiliser being very expensive.

Stop using slurry and food prices will quadruple.

‘Everyone’ is not going vegan. 2.5 million of the population are vegan. For perspective, 8 million UK adults are illiterate. Doesn’t mean we are all going to be illiterate.

You’re vegan but want the world to use more chemicals to produce food? That’s insane.

i suggest you try an experiment- go out in your garden, dig yourself a vegetable patch and try growing your own food. You’re not allow to enrich the soil with horse manure or peat compost (because you care for animals and peat usage kills animals) and you’re not allowed to buy general peat free compost as that’s not scalable to farm level.

good luck.

@RandomButtons I don't have a garden so I would use cotton wool in water, just adding nutrients

You’d rather we open up infenate open cast mines to mine phosphorus and potassium ores than use freely available slurry.

Open cast mines destroy all wildlife in that area.

chemical fertiliser kills insects (which in turn kills off birds and other wildlife depending on insects as food).

Run off from overuse of chemical fertiliser destroys aquatic life as it runs off into rivers.

You really don’t understand the complexities of food manufacturing and wildlife preservation.

Organic high welfare farming is the way forwards - and guess what, that means slurry spreading as it’s the perfect organic fertiliser.

Please feel free to try that 100% organic and report back.

You best source cotton wool not grown with slurry spreading mind.

Our world is in serious trouble, predominantly due to the use of too many chemicals. Bees and other pollinators are dying off due to the use of pesticides, and without pollinators, we don’t have crops that produce food. Pollinators move from plant to plant to pollinate then so they fruit (produce the part we eat). We need less chemicals not more.

If you are a vegan or vegetarian, these are the crops that will suffer. And if you are a meat eater, then what do you suggest happens to all the shit produced by cows, sheep, pigs, chickens etc? If we continue the chemical driven intensive farming methods of the last 50/60 years, we will end up with a world that starves. Unless we all eat chemical laden ‘food’ made in a laboratory, which will basically make us humans even more unhealthy than we are already!!! Suggest reading Chris Van Tulken’s ‘Ultra Processed People’ for a little eye opener on that.

I hate to break it to you but do you know that thousands of animals are shot every day to keep them off the crops?

We'd use treated human waste instead. Look at the work being done at SLU in Sweden re harvesting urine.

Oh jeez, cotton wool! I suggest you look at the environmental impacts of growing and processing cotton. Just because it's a plant product it doesn't make it environmentally neutral.

I can see no one is going to agree with me, I feel like an alien sometimes

YANBU. I live in a village and also loan a horse. There are regularly arguments on the village face book with individuals complaining about horse poo on the roads and also on the local bridle path. They complain that the poo is unpleasant when they want to walk or cycle there. Note that this is a designated BRIDLE path, its in the name!.

By this argument there won't be any farm animals in a vegan future, there'll be no rationale for hedges to ķeep stock in and food producers will grub them out for efficiency's sake. So nowhere for nesting birds or small wildlife. Just nutrient-starved, phosphate-fertilised arable land, with water run-off poisoning rivers, so no fish, aquatic life or their food chain.
Livestock have been fertilising fields with shit as long as there have been farmers. A thousand years ago it was done via field rotation by which crops and livestock alternated. In the year when fallow land was grazed, it was fertilised by the animals ready for the next year's crops.

I dont think it’s the people aspect that’s the issue. It’s the amount they shoehorn in, the lack of amenities that come with the amount they put in and just the lack of thought.

It’s like they put the field dimensions into a computer program, it maximises dwelling numbers and they put these little boxes in. No thought to what a village needs, architecture or adding value to anything but their pocket.

No one cares that you’re vegan. Many of us want best welfare for all animals.

You need to do a lot of research into vegan food production and what is required. If you care for animals and don’t want to kill then surely that covers bees, birds, insects too? They are living sentient beings that don’t deserve to die for the sake of easy vegetable and plant crops.

Many of us want a holistic approach to best outcomes for all living creatures. Organic farming is the best way to achieve this. As others have stated, really the best solution is using human waste - processing urine and sewage to fertilise crops. It produces excellent results.

@RandomButtons We cannot do that, think about what you are saying. Have you ever heard about this theory where for example you catch a spider in a glass, then the glass forever has remnants of spider in it

What the actual?

Eh?

I think instead of spouting forth about cotton wool etc (are you talking about hydroponics?) and the environmental disaster that is cotton growing etc maybe have a read up on regenerative farming. Maybe a trip to Knepp estate too.

We probably do need to eat less meat but higher quality in terms of welfare/environmentally sustainable meat. So local, organic meat. It's not cheap (see my local farm shop) but my word it's delicious.

Veganism is a huge moral and health based hot potato.

Besides which, maybe stop derailing this thread, unless of course you live in the countryside in which case you might have to consider yourself fair game (pun intended) 😂

What? You catch the spider and release it so what ‘remnants’ are left? And you’d wash it out. What theory is this?

We can’t do what? I know many successful high welfare organic farms.

Of course it’s impossible to to prevent any harm to wildlife- any time you plough the ground to plant wheat or vegetables or harvest crops you’ll take out a few insects, but nothing comparable to the wildlife killed by spraying chemical fertiliser.

human waste can and is used already as fertiliser. Don’t worry - it smells a lot worse than slurry

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/58654125.amp

Just respond with a “sorry but this is rural living!”….

This thread has taken a turn to the bizarre.

It has only served to confirm my view that most vegans have no idea about food production.

But not someone who eats organic food obviously. How do you think "organic" happens? I'll give you a hint....it doesn't involve man-made chemical fertilizers.

Er, no it doesn't. Not if you put it through the dishwasher or wash it thoroughly in soapy water.