Hats off to Dr Herman van Schalkwyk, CEO of the AMT, for including a contribution by Philip Lymbery, author of Farmageddonand CEO of Compassion in Worldwide Farming, at the AMT Conference in the week just passed.
The book and the presentation pose serious questions to future scenarios of agriculture.
Included in the opening slides by Lymbery was one of penguins, victims of recent trends in agriculture: food which is in their diet has been removed (to feed animals in industrial farming) and this has led to some very hungry penguins.
We were expecting more challenges from the audience which included a prominent GMO activist and several agribusinesses. In the end, there were two contributions from the floor. The first, a good-natured, humorous enquiry whether penguins preferred white or yellow maize (corn). The second, a professor from the University of the Free State, thanked Lymbery for his presentation and said he felt agriculture in this country had not reached the same levels of industrialisation as elsewhere in the world, but that the presentation was a welcome marker to be borne in mind for the future.
We don’t know if we agree completely with the last sentiment (there are several intensive meat production enterprises is this country). Nonetheless, it is International Animal week this week (4 to 10 October) and the question about how we treat our animals is one the globe faces, not just this week but every week!
