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When you feed a cow you are essentially trading up. Animal meat is much more bioavailable and nutrient dense. Especially when they are eating grass on land unsuitable for crops.
I dont think so... It takes way more than 1 calorie of plant matter to generate 1 calorie of beef
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It's ok though. I like these threads on HN. Hopefully helps educate people. People on HN have a lot of skills to offer agriculture they likely aren't even aware of. Every article/discussion helps spread the message, hopefully. ETA: Most people don't understand agriculture or where their food comes from--HN no different. Only small % of people involved in agriculture _directly_
Alternatively, I would argue that much harm has been done to agriculture by the 'information' sector in general. Commoditizing and industrializing food production (a reduction to data and numbers) has caused most of the issues collectively known as the 'modern American diet'
Everyone saying 'we need to grow more crops!' needs to see that the futures markets deal with exactly this. As people see high futures prices for corn, they'll grow more corn because it's more profitable. Some farmers will switch from livestock to corn. Others who have storage facilities will make money by buying now to sell later and make use of the price difference. At a certain point, prices get too high for makin…
This switch can take too long and would need to take place in an industry often already razor tin margins thanks to big chains (which can contribute to inflexibility) and then plants take time to grow and depend on the seasons, etc. Also fertilisers go into both the livestock and the corn feed.
>Basically - there is no shortage because markets will do their job and mean there is always availability of all goods.
A shortage doesn't need to mean people are starving. If prices of staple foods go up enough it too causes societal unrest. (See Arab spring where bread prices went up, governments tried to protect their peg to the dollar, etc)
>The only time there will be a shortage is when governments do things like cap prices or restrict exports/imports.
Well here we see that happening when fuels and other components for fertilisers and some things like vegetable oils are affected by war.
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 rest is No. 2 yellow field corn, which is indigestible to humans and used in animal feed, food supplements and ethanol.
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I was reading the journals of Gareth Jones about his time spent in Soviet Russia and Ukraine, and find remarkable similarities to this sort of thing. 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 d…
Thanos’ ideas about everything were extremely silly. A halving of population would do nothing on any time scale. A small blip easily recovered by reproduction. People deserve better writing, even in comic book movies.
The population was half of 2020 in 1973 (1). Emissions were also half of now back then (2). That’s nearly 30 years of runway that Thano’s solution would provide. With today’s technology and rapid iteration, we could definitely do something better for climate change.
I’m not endorsing the method, but merely disagreeing with your assertion.
(1) https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-populat...
(2) https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi...
Mostly good comments in here. My take is we have at least 1-2 years of global supply of most grains. This is a completely political problem; its not like we're getting 2012 US Midwest levels of drought in back-to-back years (now THAT would be a crunch). Food waste is a problem, yes. Animal protein is not a problem. There is plenty of land in the US only suitable for grazing. Much better than that synthetic soup of Im…
This statement is wrong. Livestock grazes early in its lifetime, but is moved to feed lots and feed corn and soy to prepare for slaughter. The US spends a quarter of its corn crop on feeding animals, whereas less than 10% is directly feed to people. Animal protein is a significant opportunity cost to US agriculture.
When I was 17 years old I went to Sweden as part of a cultural exchange program (I'm from South America). One of the first things that shocked me was the sheer amount of food being wasted for no reason whatsoever.
In my country, even though I come from a privileged family, you can't shield yourself away from poverty. Throughout my entire life living with my parents I've seen people ring our door to ask for food. Personally, I NEVER waste any food, if I put something on my plate, I'll eat it unless it's rotten. And that goes for pretty much everyone I know. Every time I went out to eat with my parents, if there were any significant amount of food left, we would always ponder whether or not we would want to it later. If we decided we would not, we would take it anyway and find someone on the street who would.
While in Sweden, I lived with Swedish families and attended to a traditional Swedish high school. So I'd eat lunch at school and dinner with my host families. My first day eating lunch at school I was shocked, to say the least. I mean, yeah, the food was great, it's amazing that there is such a functional high-quality school system there, and so organized too; once you're done eating, you're supposed to take your plate, put any leftovers on a big trash bin, and give your plate to the lady who puts them into a industrial washer. The amount of food kids threw away was just staggering. And it's not a one off thing. It's a behavior, they put more food than they know they'll eat, every single day. It's not like they put a ridiculous amount of food on their plate and throw most of it away. It's like they don't even bother paying attention to how hungry they are, they just put whatever amount of food they feel like putting, and then throw away the rest. That goes even for drinks, they would serve a cup full of milk or water, and throw half of it away.
I know I'm talking about kids and teenagers, but they will grow up to be adults some day. And I saw that of many adults also. On of my duties as an exchange student was to connect both cultures, mine and the country I was being hosted by. I always tried to give people there a glimpse of what of poverty was and how privileged they were, and I always felt I never got the idea through. It felt sometimes they have a cartoonish idea of poverty and what it means to not have the money to pay for really basic things.
I'm not here to call anyone out. I just think there are times when the people are also part of problem, and I wanted to give a personal perspective.
Global food shortage always feels like "well, I'm not concerned many other countries will be hit first". Many countries will literally have issues, but the food will _also_ be a lot more expensive for all of us. The coming years will be "fun" (and I mean bad, to be clear).
Threads like these reminds me that HN is an overwhelmingly urban community with almost zero exposure to the agriculture sector
As someone who works in healthcare, it must be like a healthcare/medicine/biology thread popping up for me. You'll never see so many people so certain they were right despite lacking the most basic knowledge on the topic.