Frugal feeding and social justice

[CanadaEh]

I was looking for info on acorns and found this interesting spin on feeding your chickens frugally vs purchased grains/feed.

Basically by feeding them less or none of purchased grains or feed, and by not purchasing any eggs from chickens fed commercial grains/feed, you are refusing to put your big buck toward social injustice as to food prices in developing countries.

Aside from musing about strategies for maintaining my mini-flock in a worst case scenario, I see this as a social justice issue. We in the industrialized countries "go to the table" ahead of citizens in the developing world. We eat first, because we can afford to. Not only can we pay more for the most basic foodstuffs, such as grains, but we choose to eat animal products which are produced at the cost of a huge amount of grain - further driving up global market prices for these commodities. And after we've eaten our fill of grain-intensive meat or dairy or eggs, we then feed our pets with meat produced in an identical fashion. Thus we consume first, and consume more than the poor. My flock and my pets are no exception to this reality. Though they are pastured on our lawn, and we supplement what feed we buy with all sorts of food that would otherwise be wasted, our hens nonetheless eat grain that could have gone to the world market and contributed to lower prices for grain. My hens compete with impoverished families and hungry children, and they win by virtue of the money I have at my disposal.

So whatever I can do to come up with free food for my hens not only saves me money and makes my homestead less dependent on a fragile distribution system, it also brings a little more balance to the relationship between rich and poor countries. That's a real motivation. Gleaning acorns is fun for a while. But when it gets a little boring, or my back starts to ache, I push on just a little longer with the acorn hunt. Because I believe that actions - even small, imperfect, insufficient actions - have consequences. Even if I never see the results, I know that gleaning this food is the right thing to do.

source:
https://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2010/10/acorns-as-chicken-feed-revisited.html
(2 last paragraphs)

 

[123RedBeard]

Butt ... what about the poor deer, turkeys, pigs, squirrels, and others that depend on acorns for their food supply?

Stealing from them!

 

[CanadaEh]

Butt ... what about the poor deer, turkeys, pigs, squirrels, and others that depend on acorns for their food supply?

Stealing from them!

good point. So far my acorns came bagged together with fall leaves from their lawns by the less concerned citizens. Can collecting food scraps be devastating to worm population at the municipal composting facilities as well?