How to win over rural voters and save the environment

1.  Enact programs that enable them to survive economically;

2.  Let them know what you are doing;

3. Invite them to participate in planning the transition.

3.  Factors, Considerations, and Obstacles. If the people of the World are to survive and live decent lives, there is no way we can continue to live the way we presently live. An important step to stave off an ecological catastrophe and possible extinction involves agriculture and ranching:Our nation/world must change some of its eating habits, particularly with respect to our consumption of dairy products, meat, poultry, fish, and other animal products. In addition to their environmental danger they are detrimental to human health;

1. Dairy consumption is declining and will continue to decline. The imperative is to soften the transition to either farming or another environment-friendly employment;
2. These changes, supra, are necessary for health, environment and climate. Dairy farming must be cut back and made more humane. The government must aid dairy farmers and point them to several viable alternatives. The costs of changing from dairy farming to almost any other kind of agriculture are high. Dairy farming equipment has little in common with, for example, the equipment used in horticulture. That’s how it appears to me, although I am neither dairy farmer nor horticulturist;;
3. Government must aid rural areas by supplying financial aid to avoid hardship during the transition;
4. The use of fuel and fertilizer made from petroleum and natural gas, requirements of industrial farming, must be drastically reduced. There is no way to avoid this if we are to stabilize or reduce greenhouse gases;
5. Government must provide research to aid rural areas with knowledge and technology to make the transition away from environmentally destructive activities. The transition will render many businesses unprofitable, and their owners and employees must be aided, as I stated above;
6. A partial transition to animal powered agriculture will not only be possible, but it might be necessary;
7. In the long run (which is becoming shorter), the mass production of beef is not sustainable,¹ but world demand for beef is rising. Unfortunately, the beef industry has usually been  profitable, so widespread resistance to any moves to change its business model is likely. Much research will be necessary to determine the appropriate strategy to change minds, and much of that research must involve sociology and psychology. A ranchers' mindset is a universe away from a farmer’s mindset. The one thing we must avoid is for climate change itself to destroy the cattle business through destruction of either grazing lands or feed crops. The irony of the beef industry destroying itself by irresponsibly contributing to climate change is an irony too awful to contemplate.
8. A similar analysis applies to the poultry industry.²

Endnotes

1. Much of the cost of raising beef cattle is subsidized or externalized through depletion of aquifers, lack of safe disposal of animal waste, and the raising of feed grains, especially corn. Ranching is partly subsidized by the use of public lands at below-market rents. Corn is subsidized by requiring gasoline to include 10% alcohol. Antibiotics, used by ranchers and feedlots to stimulate growth, promotes bacterial resistance and thus constitutes a public health hazard.

2. Producers of industrial chicken give their chickens growth hormones and antibiotics to fatten and protect them from disease caused by the crowded and unsanitary conditions in which they are raised. Today mature chickens must be sold in 15–30 days or they will die from the effects of these substances. There is a growing recognition that these practices constitute a health hazard to consumers and there is supposedly work in progress to develop more benign substitutes.