Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
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Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
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Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#2Most of the world's grain is eaten by humans' food.
We're really really good at efficiently producing grain -- especially field corn (which is not super desirable as human food without significant processing), and we grow lots of animals of all sorts. Naturally, when we can, we feed those animals on field corn -- they don't complain, and it's the cheapest food we can produce for them.
In the US we also subsidize corn pretty heavily, which has biased us towards maximizing efficiency on this crop rather than on some other grain. It's unclear to me whether we would have become more efficient with some other grain (in terms of food calories out per unit of resources/land in) had we produced as durable of an economic incentive to do so -- but regardless, it would still be a grain of some sort that ended up being the caloric efficiency maximum product, and therefore what animal feed would end up being.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#3I've started eating barley a couple of times a week, which is used primarily as an animal grain. I've found it makes a great alternative to rice or quinoa.
From Wikipedia:
> Globally 70% of barley production is used as animal fodder,[4] while 30% as a source of fermentable material for beer and certain distilled beverages, and as a component of various foods. It is used in soups and stews, and in barley bread of various cultures. Barley grains are commonly made into malt in a traditional and ancient method of preparation.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#4In 70 something years we went from 60% forest coverage of earth's land mass to 30%. I can't help but wonder how it would be without any animal agriculture.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#5Most of the world's grain is eaten by humans' food. We're really really good at efficiently producing grain -- especially field corn (which is not super desirable as human food without significant processing), and we grow lots of animals of all sorts. Naturally, when we can, we feed those animals on field corn -- they don't complain, and it's the cheapest food we can produce for them. In the US we also subsidize corn…
> which is not super desirable as human food without significant processing
I see this repeated all the time. Is making cornmeal or cornflour really that much more involved than wheat flour, semolina, or rolled oats?
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#6Most of the world's grain is eaten by humans' food. We're really really good at efficiently producing grain -- especially field corn (which is not super desirable as human food without significant processing), and we grow lots of animals of all sorts. Naturally, when we can, we feed those animals on field corn -- they don't complain, and it's the cheapest food we can produce for them. In the US we also subsidize corn…
> which is not super desirable as human food without significant processing I see this repeated all the time. Is making cornmeal or cornflour really that much more involved than wheat flour, semolina, or rolled oats?
It's really not about that, corn products are simply bad for health - too much sugar, to little more valuable nutrients.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
> which is not super desirable as human food without significant processing I see this repeated all the time. Is making cornmeal or cornflour really that much more involved than wheat flour, semolina, or rolled oats?
It's really not about that, corn products are simply bad for health - too much sugar, to little more valuable nutrients.
Cornmeal is less than 1% simple sugars, as is cornflour. While it's not great compared to high fiber low gi sources like brown rice or sweet potato, it's not sugary at all. You have to split the polysachharides somehow to make it into sugar.
Of course if you spend extra time, money and energy turning your relatively ordinarily healthy grain (which is admittedly a low bar) into sugar you spend more time, money and energy and wind up with sugar. It's no different from wheat in that regard other than you should maybe add a bit more fiber to the meal.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#8A staggering amount of California's water is used for alfalfa, which gets shipped to China to feed cows. In essence, we are allowing certain farmers to sell CA's water to China.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#9I've started eating barley a couple of times a week, which is used primarily as an animal grain. I've found it makes a great alternative to rice or quinoa. From Wikipedia: > Globally 70% of barley production is used as animal fodder,[4] while 30% as a source of fermentable material for beer and certain distilled beverages, and as a component of various foods. It is used in soups and stews, and in barley bread of vari…
Beef and barley soup is excellent.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#10But if we eat the animals that eat the grain arnt we kinda eating the grain... like indirectly? If I grind the grain into a kinda dust and then let tiny organisms eat the dust and then cook those organisms am I eating grain?