The Environment
The current problems:
Almost all egg production currently depends on the use of soya in the hens’ feed, as a high protein source to help them produce so many eggs. The problem is our demand for soya as livestock feed is causing land to be cleared to grow more and more soya. This is destroying natural habitats and so the homes of wild animals, as well as releasing greenhouse gasses and fuelling climate change.
What’s more, livestock feed uses human-edible cereals which could feed humans directly. Plus, all the grain that’s grown to feed hens uses up land that could grow food for humans directly. This is a wasteful use of the planet’s limited resources because not all the calories from the hens’ feed is converted into human food (hens will use up lots by growing and moving etc). We could feed more people on the planet, and free up more land for nature, if we grew (and people ate) more plant-based food rather than feed to create so much meat, milk and eggs.
On top of all this, we waste so much food throughout the whole supply chain: e.g. at the farm, at the supermarket, and in people’s homes. Food waste globally exceeds 1.3 billion tonnes annually. When this goes to landfill, it emits huge amounts of global greenhouse gases as it rots: food waste is a major contributor to climate change, as well as a shameful waste of land, water and other resources.
Leaf & Feather’s solutions -
Eco Eggs:
Leaf & Feather is on a farm that doesn’t use synthetic fertilisers or pesticides, which increases soil health and biodiversity, helping soils to capture and store carbon to fight climate change. These organic principles are a way of working with nature at the centre, instead of fighting nature by using chemicals.
Leaf and Feather, however, goes above and beyond this, through the way I feed my hens. The girls are fed on a local ‘waste’ product, in the form of organic oats not suitable for human consumption. The oats that don’t meet the specification for human consumption (due to grain size) would be wasted if they weren’t fed to the hens. The farm this oat ‘waste’ comes from is just 15 minutes from the hens’ doorstep, therefore reducing the emissions involved in the hens’ feed – commercial feed contains ingredients from overseas.
Using local food waste not only recycles this waste back into the food chain in order to feed us, but it also means land doesn’t have to be used to grow hen feed – instead it can be freed up to grow human food, and/or provide space for nature. And by not feeding the hens soya, no deforestation or other types of habitat destruction is implicated in Leaf and Feather eggs.
I also feed my hens insect larvae. I grow the larvae of black soldier flies on some of the waste organic oats, and other fruit and veg waste from the farm. Over the course of a couple of weeks they turn from tiny maggots into big juicy grubs – rich in oils and protein, and representing an entirely natural food source for the hens, unlike soya. Seeing the hens joyfully run and fly towards me when they see me carrying their tray of grubs tells me just how much they love this food – they were made to scratch around the land looking for tasty insects just like these ones. So, the insects help me recycle the food waste back into the food chain too.