The Labor Day is a good time to happily talk to friends who are also lucky to have leave.
A stroll on the sunny ridges of the Jura and the prospect of a beautiful grill favor the exchange is well known. This time, the discussion took an unusual turn, engaging in the environmental impact and the food efficiency of organic pasture beef and that … snails.
Last year and this spring, I found myself, in spite of myself, in the shoes of a breeder of gastropods feeding on the tender plants that I try to grow in my garden. Once a day and without doing anything, my tour allowed me to pick up hundreds of these vegetarian molluscs, not to eat them, but to place them in a wasteland plot far from my vegetable garden.
Who of the two is the most effective? The most ecological? The grazing and raw beef peacefully on our mountains or the snail clearing brambles and plants?
The other agronomist present calculated that in terms of the animal’s efficiency, reported to the lively weight of the gastropod and brought back to the number of individuals per hectare (I give you the details), the snail was much more efficient than the quadruped. We all stayed Babas.
When an guest raised the question of food yielding insects, the debate was providentially stopped: the beef coast was right. And it is drooling with pleasure and ruminating on all these calculations that we tasted this magnificent country dish.
