Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans • Hacker News Board

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#101

Post by saalweachter » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 11:37 PM UTC

diordiderot wrote: post #83

saalweachter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, beef, maybe, but the math basically comes down to: wheat, 4 million calories per acre, corn, 15 million. Take that 15 million calories of corn and feed it to chickens for a 3:1 calorie exchange and you've got 5 million calories of chicken per acre. It's more complicated than that, but corn yields are so high that they can overpower the otherwise inefficiency of meat production. Potatoes are as good as corn, and r…

Fascinating! I had no idea corn was so calorific. Do you know how the inputs compare? As in are the amounts of fertilizer and pesticides similar?

Not really; there's also the complication that you don't actually feed your chickens straight corn. Because chickens need protein in their meal, it's more like, 2 acres of corn and 1 acre of soybeans, for 36 million calories from 3 acres to get 12 million calories of chicken for a chicken-per-acre calories of 4 million. You also get your chicken manure as a fertilizer out at the end, but then, if you were already collecting your humanure it's probably not a net gain.

From a pure land usage standpoint, you're still better off if we're getting most of our calories from corn, potatoes and rice directly. Once you start adding in necessary protein, you can either subsist on soy, or feed that soy with corn to chickens and pigs (which have a worse feed ratio compared to chickens, but can supplement on food waste to reclaim calories that would otherwise go to waste) for roughly similar food-per-acre footprints.

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#102

Post by lvl102 » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 11:40 PM UTC

Seems we need to reduce world population by 1/2 or more. Aren’t we at least contracting in developed countries? Anyway to ask India/China to stop growing so fast?

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#103

Post by CodeSgt » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 11:43 PM UTC

tcfhgj wrote: post #87

photochemsyn wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally see this argument pushed by vegans whose central issue is really animal rights, which is a valid concern, but the claim that a 100% vegan world, all other things being unchanged, would be one free from fossil-fueled global warming is simply not true. Generally speaking the claim is that significant amounts of agricultural energy go into growing grain for animals, and that domestic animal populations resul…

> but I don't think 'fixing the climate' is really a very strong one. and why is that?

They say why in the rest of the comment.

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#104

Post by madboston » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 11:45 PM UTC

stainforth wrote: post #78

sitkack wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, CA can't do it forever as that water is coming out of a giant underground sea that is collapsing, it will never fill up again. https://energyskeptic.com/2021/aquifer-decline-in-california... https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/c... https://revealnews.org/article/9-sobering-facts-about-califo...

The profits that went to a few human owners of that agribusiness should be clawed back

But everyone will die with happy thoughts of making those few rich.

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#105

Post by tedk-42 » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 11:45 PM UTC

jazzyjackson wrote: post #69

mcdonje wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alfalfa is also used for cows grown in CA for CA residents. That's also a bad thing. Cow farms should be significantly limited in arid climates. There are ecologically better alternatives.

If you're pumping water to grow grass in the desert just for the beef, there are better uses for the water. However, cows have the unique ability to turn grass into protein, so if all an area can grow is grass, cows are a great way to get calories out of it. Properly allowed to graze freely, cows can be a net improvement on a particular ecology as a carbon sink (manure is an improvement to the soil), but shipping the…

Surely the methane they produce far outweighs any carbon sink benefits

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#106

Post by WheatM » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 11:46 PM UTC

mcdonje wrote: post #48

wintermutestwin wrote: post #8

A 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.

The alfalfa is also used for cows grown in CA for CA residents. That's also a bad thing. Cow farms should be significantly limited in arid climates. There are ecologically better alternatives.

No post body was provided.

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#107

Post by bsder » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 11:48 PM UTC

lvl102 wrote: post #102

Seems we need to reduce world population by 1/2 or more. Aren’t we at least contracting in developed countries? Anyway to ask India/China to stop growing so fast?

Easy. Educate women.

As soon as that happens, the reproduction rate falls below the replacement rate.

The problem is that global society is actually not ready for a population that shrinks instead of grows. Many of our institutions are effectively pyramid schemes that rely on more people entering the bottom and paying for them than pull out money and exit from the top.

(Side note: I believe China is actually falling. There have been significant programs attempting to get women to have more children. Between education and "one child" (which is no longer in force) China has some demographic issues ahead.)

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#108

Post by ncmncm » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 11:49 PM UTC

orionion wrote: post #34

The grass family contains over 9,000 species distributed throughout the world. Of that, 35 have been cultivated as cereals. Of these, the following are important today: Barley, Corn, Goat grass, Millet, Oats, Rice, Sorghum, and Wheat. Of the important grains and/or cereals listed above, only corn (maize) is a New World native. Corn is an important member of the grass family. Corn (Zea mays) was domesticated from a wi…

Official US agricultural policy and habitual farming practice have made growing maize together with beans and/or squash, tomatoes, and peppers nearly impossible to do competitively. That could be fixed with policy changes that would be fought by the biggest agribusinesses.

Corn is among the most efficient natural converters of sunlight into chemical energy useful to the plant (with some left over for the farmer), but photovoltaics beat it by up to 10x. Capturing CO2 and producing glucose, starch, ethanol, and kerosene by an organic chemical process could be much more productive, by any measure, than via corn, which must anyway also grow stalk and leaves. The power could come from solar panels sharing fields with vegetable crops (e.g. tomatoes and peppers) that benefit from the shade they would provide by multiplying yield, and with wind turbines which take up very little ground footprint.

Combining solar, wind, farming, and chemical processes yields much better results than keeping them separate.

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#109

Post by imtringued » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 11:49 PM UTC

newsclues wrote: post #94

tillinghast wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is giving the dystopian chills when I consider that the Uber-wealthy proponents of population reduction (Bill Gates) are buying up crop land. Long game?

Long game is either population control or world domination.

Owning all the land is world domination.

Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

#110

Post by AussieWog93 » Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 11:51 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #93

jazzyjackson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're pumping water to grow grass in the desert just for the beef, there are better uses for the water. However, cows have the unique ability to turn grass into protein, so if all an area can grow is grass, cows are a great way to get calories out of it. Properly allowed to graze freely, cows can be a net improvement on a particular ecology as a carbon sink (manure is an improvement to the soil), but shipping the…

You get more protein per X acres eating corn than feeding that same corn to cows and eating the cows. If you prefer meat then chicken is worse than eating corn but still much better than cows. We eat beef because it’s delicious and that’s it’s only advantage at scale.

The whole point of GP's post is that you can't grow corn everywhere. There is some soil that only supports grass, and the most efficient way to extract nutritional value from this land is through grazing animals.