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It will be hard to give up my fertilizer-fed beef.
(1) [Thing] is bad for the world (2) But I want it. This is the recipe for the road we are on.
I only eat 100% grass-fed beef, and I believe the world would be better without corn fed abominations.
Well, we can feed ourselves a lot better rapidly by: - Drastically reducing food waste. In the United States, food waste is estimated at 30-40% https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs - Shift away from animal based protein rapidly. Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of calories https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets... . (don't…
Animal based protein does not need fertilizer to be grown and it may not be carbon-intensive. Plant based protein is basically putting oil in the ground and getting crops back. It's intellectually disgusting how you try to put a round peg in a square hole.
Reality is the opposite of what you said.
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Please stop repeating the falsehood that animal pastures can somehow be transmuted into high yield crops for the human food supply: about 1/3rd of farmland in the US can never be transformed into suitable farmland for that task, and this accounts for most of the land used for pasture. If we're having problems maintain soil fertility levels now, imagine if we needed 2-3x the fertilizer to transform unsuitable land int…
The objection I've usually heard is less about farm land being used for pasture instead of growing crops, and more about the amount of crops that have to be grown to feed the cattle... Growing corn to feed cows to feed humans is massively less efficient than growing corn to feed humans, or at least that's how the story goes. Is there not an efficiency problem there that we could improve on? (Not an expert in this are…
Another factor is cattle feed is often poor quality human food, so the reject stuff. That wheat that was harvested a bit early to avoid storms and no good for the flour is great for cattle.
Also, to the main topic of this thread, I wonder if its good for food security we grow extra crops to feed livestock. If there is a food supply shortage, cattle can go to slaughter and there is plenty of extra corn or other about for humans. We eat less meat for a few years while we fix the supply chains type thing.
The way we see supply shortages from COVID, Id hope we never become too efficient in the food supply chain. The consequence of something creating lower food production is far worse than limited computer chips. Its not a system we want to be over optimised for the good times.
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Most predators that eat exclusively large prey don't number in the billions. Any reason you are averse to eating bugs specifically?
I second this - cow based protein and cricket based protein both supply adequate value in an average human diet - why is there such a stigma against one versus the other?
But seriously its not stigma, its cuisine preference.
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Please stop repeating the falsehood that animal pastures can somehow be transmuted into high yield crops for the human food supply: about 1/3rd of farmland in the US can never be transformed into suitable farmland for that task, and this accounts for most of the land used for pasture. If we're having problems maintain soil fertility levels now, imagine if we needed 2-3x the fertilizer to transform unsuitable land int…
1/3rd of the US farmland being used for pasture and 80% of global crops being fed to livestock are not mutually exclusive on their own. Edit: Surprisingly our world in data has a breakdown of land uses (which includes grazing) but not of crop use. This study[0] says that about 40% of global crop use (by calories) is used to feed livestock and that it takes about 3.7 crop calories for 1 calorie of animal product. So y…
if that farmland could be used to make human food, which is a lot more remunerative, they already would.
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I don't believe the argument is that the acreage for animal pastures would be converted, but rather the acreage for the crops they eat would be converted. Or is that in error as well?
Not at all. Those fields are now fertilized with cow manure, though. Without the cattle, you'd need more artificial fertilizer for the crops you intend to feed humans with. Would it be good for the environment? Quite possibly. Would it result in more fertilizer available on the market? Not really.
In 2012 you could feed 570 million people with the crops that go into the "green" ethanol scam: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/01/162127460/do... I'm not opposed to farm subsidies as part of food independence for national security, but please do not call it "green".
The government took over, for example, the manufacture and maintenance of tractors, and also selected people nearly at random to maintain them.
The one guy he interviewed said something to the extent that the tractors barely last a year before breaking. The people who designed them were incompetent, the people who used them were incompetent, and the people who maintained them were incompetent. Not that it mattered, the oil they used was basically sludge.
I'm getting to the point where I'm struggling to believe Hanlon's Razor. Especially when the most extreme environmentalists seem to align with Thanos' ideas about resolution to climate issues.
The coming years will be "fun" (and I mean bad, to be clear).
In 2012 you could feed 570 million people with the crops that go into the "green" ethanol scam: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/01/162127460/do... I'm not opposed to farm subsidies as part of food independence for national security, but please do not call it "green".
If all the land and resource that goes into feeding cows is used for crops, a lot more people can be supported. It has never been a lack of global food shortage, it is always regional anyways.