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Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

nytimes.com

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Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#181

Post by Fnoord »

ip26 wrote: post #157
simonsarris wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reverse global deforestation for grazing cattle Have you read about the deforestation from palm oil, canola oil, and coconuts that feed vegans? It's not clear to me eating meat in the USA, especially local meat where I am in New England, is comparatively worse. (Ironically I'm "deforesting" a former field of small pines to restore it to sheep grazing this year. But I do not think this ecologically destructive: ulti…

I have. I do my damndest to avoid palm oil & friends. There's definitely local meat that's fine for the planet. As far as I'm aware, the trouble is the bulk of the market, the high-volume bottom-dollar part of the market. The industrial beef grown on soy & corn. It's the McDonalds patty, not the quarter buck in the freezer at grandma's. As for your sheep field, pasture is not really the most carbon-rich soil. But, ma…

McDonalds's burgers are not 100% meat anyway. They contain soy. Same with your average hamburger.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#182

Post by Fnoord »

I recently conducted a report and presentation about reducetarianism (though in my own language).

There are 3 main reasons why people go vegetarian, vegan, or reducetarian (the former 2 are a subset of reducetarianism): environment, animal welfare, and health.

Re: "Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?". My conclusion to based on the research I performed is:

Yeah, we can, and not only that we can also reduce the Co2 footprint by avoiding eating cattle. Alternatives which are size efficient are chicken and insects (such as grasshoppers and mealworms). However, chicken have a CNS, and if you grow more chicken, more chicken suffer, so this is a pro environment yet anti animal welfare argument.

What is going to be good for the environment is using solar energy, using electric cars (to go to the grocery store). Because the transport from (very efficient, huge) transport ships has less impact on environment than you going to/from grocery store by (conventional) car.

What is going to be good for animal welfare is growing & consuming less animals with a CNS. Alternatives such as insects or lab meat.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#183

Post by black-tea »

fyfy18 wrote: post #176
ghthor wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that is such an anti earth practice. How can we change this type of insanity? How can we protect our own guts?

Voting with your wallet is a good start. In the EU there are strict requirements on what can be labeled ecological, including the use of the EU ecolabel. I believe the US has similar labelling. If you local supermarket doesn't have a suitable stock of ecological supplies, write to them and ask for some, or start shopping at an organic shop.

Oh yeah? And what about restaurants takeaways, canteens etc. which people consume about as much as they do home cooked food? Those places will always be buying the cheapest, most unethical food possible.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#185

Post by seszett »

black-tea wrote: post #183
fyfy18 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting with your wallet is a good start. In the EU there are strict requirements on what can be labeled ecological, including the use of the EU ecolabel. I believe the US has similar labelling. If you local supermarket doesn't have a suitable stock of ecological supplies, write to them and ask for some, or start shopping at an organic shop.

Oh yeah? And what about restaurants takeaways, canteens etc. which people consume about as much as they do home cooked food? Those places will always be buying the cheapest, most unethical food possible.

Here (Lille, France and Antwerp, Belgium) it is quite easy to find restaurants, takeaways, food trucks, etc, that offer food made from either locally sourced, organic or ethical ingredients, or all of those at the same time.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#186

Post by visarga »

stale2002 wrote: post #143
naravara wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(one tractor working in a big field is a lot more economical than 1200 humans working in 1200 gardens). Sure. But 1200 humans working in 1200 gardens is also a lot more economical than 1200 humans sitting at home playing Fortnite all day because there are no jobs. The idea of employment guarantees as welfare policy has been getting traction, and programs like this where raw output isn't the main goal would be good c…

> is also a lot more economical than 1200 humans sitting at home playing Fortnite all day because there are no jobs No it is not. I personally care about people being able to do what they want with their free time. The situation you describe is only "efficient" if you value everyone's free time and happiness at 0. I care about people's happiness, on the other hand. The main goal of society should be to provide people…

On the contrary, I think it would be a great benefit to people if they could be more self reliant / not as dependent on state and corporations to survive. I prefer self reliance to more leisure time.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#187

Post by Fnoord »

tashoecraft wrote: post #39
dilap wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a mirror-image question: What will it take to convince vegetarians that a meat-based diet is actually the healthiest way to eat, and that meat can be raised in humane, environmentally-friendly ways? :-) Edit: This a serious question. Down voting is hardly a productive form of dialog.

Depending on their definition of humane, nothing. To some vegetarians, they don't really care about what the healthiest way to eat is if it comes at the cost of killing animals. So the argument of "oh well it's the healthiest way" doesn't even effect the argument. I'm sure we could produce more meat, raised in more sustainable ways, but that would involve people taking a major decrease in the amount of meat they eat.…

I've been a vegetarian (and vegan). Now I considered myself a reducetarian.

There are 3 motivations why people follow such a diet or lifestyle: environment, animal welfare, and health. It is important to realise the interests of these motivations aren't always aligned.

As an example, consider the difference of impact with regards to eating less cow or eating less chicken. If we'd eat less cow, the Co2 footprint would be lower compared to chicken due to required more land and more methane gas from cows however it'd be good for animal welfare since less cows suffer since one cow provides far more meat than a chicken. Conversely, the bio industry's chicken farm's are very efficient regarding space and size however many more animals per human meal are required so more chicken suffer.

Another example I like is rennet and gelatine. Gelatine is by-product. Not one animal less is going to get killed because you eat a gelatine pudding because there's an excess of gelatine. So avoiding gelatine in order to increase animal welfare is inefficient. Rennet, per whole cheese, very little is required from the stomach of the (male) calve, and males are pretty much useless anyway since you need females for the milk. If you eat cheese with rennet regularly then a very low amount of calves die due to that. However technically, it isn't vegan nor is it vegetarian.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#188

Post by jillesvangurp »

There is a lot of innovation around high tech farming in places other than than the country side. With hydroponics, you can grow all sorts of stuff anywhere you can supply water, energy, and the right nutrients. People are growing herbs in underground abandoned subway stations, old industrial facilities, on roofs, deserts, etc. The reason is that it works really well and you can get great yields if you can micromanage the conditions in which plants grow.

Food production is fundamentally an energy problem; not a land problem. Using cheap electricity, you can desalinate water, pump nutrients around, generate light and control the temperature.

Eating meat is a problem given the vast resources needed to produce it. However, there's a lot of innovation in developing synthetic meats. Lab grown meat is becoming a thing. I'm talking about actual muscle tissue grown in labs. There are also many plant and mushroom based meat alternatives that are getting better and more popular. In short, we might eat a proper steak for nostalgic reasons once in a while in a few decades but we'll have plenty of alternative protein sources to supplement our diet with on a day to day basis. And making out-competing popular meat products like a big mac isn't exactly rocket science. The whole point of stuff like that is that it is industrialized low quality stuff. Most of the meat we're eat isn't exactly high quality stuff.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#189

Post by chadcmulligan »

vegasdew wrote: post #79
chadcmulligan wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating meat is way easier than eating balanced vegetarian imho. I've cut down on my meat lately and it does require more time and involvement to eat vegetarian. E.g. an easy dinner is bbq a steak and chuck out some salad, done. Our entire society is based on convenience of eating meat, to get the same from a vegetarian diet is a lot harder to learn, you really have to want to. I still eat fish and eggs for this reaso…

It is not that difficult, just a matter of taste/preferences. There are 10s of veggies which you can cook in all combinations and with spices. Add bread, rice and you'll have dozens of dishes with all nutrients.

> There are 10s of veggies which you can cook in all combinations and with spices. Add bread, rice and you'll have dozens of dishes with all nutrients.

I don't think thats true - I've known a number of strict vegetarians (vegans?) and they've often problems with low B12 and iron. Eggs/fish a bit of chicken and a bit of meat make it way easier, but the amount required is way less than the amount of meat most people eat. As in many things the answers in the middle imho.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#190

Post by Chyzwar »

agsdfgsd wrote: post #144
hinkley wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your correlation is a bit backward there, but then you're in good company. In living soil, not the dirt most agriculture is growing on, plants are trading sugars for water, minerals, and/or protection with symbiotic fungi and nitrogen fixing bacteria. These microbes don't like tilling. Soil structure and the organisms break down, releasing carbon into the atmosphere. It's very hard to bring them back, especially to t…

It is actually very easy to bring them back, but you can't go ahead and then kill them a week later and expect any benefit. Stop tilling and spraying and put down some compost and you've got your microorganisms back and the food to get them through until the first plant roots are well established to keep it going from there. The thing that is hard to bring back is the thousands of years of accumulated topsoil that we…

Either tilling or herbicides. It is not that simple to say stop tilling. No-till might become viable when we have farming robots that can deal with weeds. I think the bigger problem is moving away from crop rotation to monocultures.
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