251–260 of 575 posts
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.
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I don't think food waste can be eliminated. I would even argue that there is threshold after which a decrease in food waste comes at the expense of quality of nutrition. Even in my university's restaurant, which feeds students on a massive industrial scale, I see food waste. But even in a much bigger scale, the amount was significantly less. Elimination of food waste is not practical and should not be a goal, you'll…
As with any engineering problem, the harder you push some constraints the more you'll have to pay with others. A university-scale cafeteria could greatly reduce food waste by fetching the food off of the plates the customers are done with and putting that food back into the cafeteria for the next customers. But there's reasons that's several violations of the health code. Something has to give at some point.
Where the food usually goes are into landfills where they produce dangerous accumulations of methane that can explode. Some folks have tried capturing that methane to burn, but if stuff can be made into compost, you’d need less synthetic fertilizers.
I mean, we have been depleting soil fertility through the use of synthetic fertilizers for decades. It’s been a self-destructive cycle. Perhaps some farmers might switch to practices that are not so dependent upon as much to external inputs … but even switching to things like no-till or using local inputs like manure, or using soil-regenerating practices like polycropping or integrated pest-control is going to take t…
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>Animal protein is not a problem. There is plenty of land in the US only suitable for grazing Only in the sense that you can theoretically produce meat that way, but in reality most meat is produced on CAFOs that use grain.
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It may not be up to your or mine standard, but it has proven successful at getting _quality_ meat into the mouths of millions.
Also, I would bet there aren't any cattle housed in a desert in the USA. They'd die immediately due to heat because no way anybody is paying for AC for _cattle_
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Nope. Go after ethanol if you want wasted corn. We like/need meat, and there is plenty of corn production or grazing land to accommodate that production. Something like 30-50M buffalo lived and grazed in North America before they were all killed. The ecosystem can most certainly sustain 30-50M cattle grazing. They wouldn't be as _profitable_ as corn-finished cattle, but they produce meat.
We don't need meat. And there are many price and institutional barriers to completely grass fed cattle. The primary being that slaughter is centralized to FSIS inspected facilities where most non-poultry spend their final weeks packed in eating soy and corn.
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Plant matter that we can’t eat and grows in areas we can’t farm.
In theory, I agree. However, this is only currently true for small parts of the beef supply chain in the US. The vast majority of meat tissue growth people eat here comes from factory farms. I don't have a major problem with meat eating when it's done sustainably and humanely. The real issue is that this is not the case for way too much of it now, and current meat production practices are yet another example of unsus…
So a truly microscopic fraction of the world's agriculture?
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Then factor in all the havoc caused by ethanol in gas ruining seals, not working well in small engines, etc. and it’s just totally non-sensical that this fraud has been allowed to happen.
I've heard of the seal issue but never seen any numbers on how widespread the damage is. Got any numbers?
We used to race go karts with Rotax engines, and the local series organizers decided to mandate 91 octane pump gas ("cost saving measure") as opposed to the VP racing fuel that the engine was designed to use.
The end result was that all the racers ended up having excessive carbon buildup in the cylinder, and would go through several sets of the fuel pump internals every year. The fuel pump is a pulse driven flexible element that the pump gas (containing ethanol) would just destroy.
Never had those issues with the ethanol free VP fuel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think food waste can be eliminated. I would even argue that there is threshold after which a decrease in food waste comes at the expense of quality of nutrition. Even in my university's restaurant, which feeds students on a massive industrial scale, I see food waste. But even in a much bigger scale, the amount was significantly less. Elimination of food waste is not practical and should not be a goal, you'll…
As with any engineering problem, the harder you push some constraints the more you'll have to pay with others. A university-scale cafeteria could greatly reduce food waste by fetching the food off of the plates the customers are done with and putting that food back into the cafeteria for the next customers. But there's reasons that's several violations of the health code. Something has to give at some point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Animal protein is not a problem. There is plenty of land in the US only suitable for grazing Only in the sense that you can theoretically produce meat that way, but in reality most meat is produced on CAFOs that use grain.
Quoted post unavailable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Excess agricultural capacity is generally a good idea. If we have zero excess in the system, then when a hiccup occurred we might find ourselves in famine. With corn-for-ethanol, the US gov is paying to keep farmland productive that has no human-or-livestock feed value. But you could imagine a situation where more human or livestock feed is needed (massive disruption of cropland, say), and in those or subsequent year…
Can't this corn-for-ethanol be used directly as livestock feed or even human food if needed? Also, I have no idea where i heard it, but i remember from somewhere, that pretty much all of the pet food has to be edible by humans too, "just in case" shit hits the fan..