Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual

by Yvon Chouinard

We need to go back to the old ways of fishing, too, with ancient, selective-harvest techniques. In the case of salmon, where healthy, sustainable populations mingle with endangered stocks on the high seas, we can choose to harvest from areas where we know exactly which fish we’re catching. We can work to take down dams, stop open-water fish farms, and wean ourselves from destructive hatchery practices. Free-flowing rivers with naturally abundant salmon runs will produce more fish at lower cost and preserve the riparian ecology at the same time. We need to go back to the old ways of raising animals for food as well. Long before industrial feedlots, growth hormones, and antibiotics came to dominate the livestock industry, there were simpler, healthier ways to produce meat for the table. Free-range, organic livestock produces better, more nutritious meat, creates fewer greenhouse gases, and allows animals to live a more natural, dignified life. In some cases, such as freely roaming bison, the animals themselves actually contribute to the recovery of wild ecosystems. If we go back to these old ways, we win on three levels: First, we produce food that tastes better and is better for us. Second, we reduce unemployment—a lot of the conflict around the world has, as its source, the lack of meaningful work for generations of people displaced by technology. And finally, organic agriculture and responsible harvest and husbandry represent our best shot at saving the planet.

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