Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Thoughts and Reflections: Mother Cow


Mother Cow



              Since tractors are rare in India oxen are used to plow and pull carts and cows are needed to breed the oxen . Cows also provide milk and farmers consider cows as pets.  Cow dung has lots of different functions.  If you mix dung with water it turns into a paste which can be used as a floor in a house.  Dung are also used for cooking and as a fertilizer for plants. Cows turn waste products on farms and in cities into dung.  Cow hides from dead cows are used to make leather.  They people who make the leather sell the meat from the dead cows to Muslims and Christians. The author feels like the real economic reason why cows are sacred is because when there is a famine the cows need to be kept alive.  If the cows are eaten during a famine there won't be any cows left after the famine ends.  If they eat the cows now to keep from starving they but starve later because there won't be any cows left.  In America there are huge mechanized dairy farms where each cow provides a lot of milk.  India there are a lot of small farms with only one or two cows where each cow only provides a little milk.  American farms require a lot of energy while Indian farms use very little.  India is more environmentally friendly because they use natural resources to maintain their farms and use no chemicals.  America uses a lot of artificial hormones and chemicals for farming. Indians use their cows more efficiently than because they use almost no artificial fertilizer and energy. Eating meat is not an efficient way to make food.  In India they eat very little meat.  




               http://andreas.com/india.html

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