Drive south from Austin and head towards San Marcos. All of that short corn is "cow corn" for obvious climate change fart factory purposes.
Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
201–210 of 314 posts
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
About 90% of energy is lost from one trophic level to the next
With modern urban lifestyles requiring (for many people) a lot less calories than ancient lifestyles of running around some great plains this is actually a feature to some degree for many people People need to take up protein. If the protein comes with significantly more calories than they burn, they're more likely to gain weight.
Not sure why this got down voted.
Maybe because it can be read as if I were arguing in favor of eating more meat.
I am not. I am just pointing out why primitive advice such as "Just replace the meat in your diet with grain" might lead to new problems.
People should stop reducing this discussion to the matter of calories.
As far as I know people who eat too little protein, overeat on stuff like grains for this very reason. The body wants the protein.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#203The 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…
One issue with corn is that it is planted in rows, and leads to soil erosion. Soil is difficult to replace!
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That won't put the water back. Revenge is just the final form of prioritizing the comfort (or discomfort) of a handful of bad actors over the well-being of the other 99.9999% of the world. Punishing the perpetrators won’t put the water back in the same way punishing a murderer won’t bring the victim back. We don’t punish to make right. We punish to deter.
Are you suggesting the farmers are criminal? Unless they subverted the democratic institutions to benefit from bedrock water, punishing them IS the crime.
> Are you suggesting the farmers are criminal?
Yes! Enthusiastically, with vigor!
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#205The 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…
Why would agribusinesses object? (Curious, not disagreeing.)
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agriculture consumes a lot of water in this drought stricken state. The worst part is that many of these farms pump water from the ground thereby collapsing underground aquifers. This is an irreversible change and has caused the Central Valley to sink by several feet over the last few decades. There is zero political will to solve this. Instead we waste time and energy on pointless green initiatives, desalination and…
California will never, ever, ever run short of water... unless the Pacific Ocean dries up. Cheap electricity will result in cheap desalination. The sky is not falling.
running short of water does not mean you have nothing to drink, it means famine.
madagascar has terrible famine right now, becauae there is no rain. In Syria, all crops that are not irigated have died.
current irrigation water is free. You cant use water from desalination, because it takes many tons of water to grow one kilo of food, and tens of tons of water to grow a kilo of beef. that would drive up prices more than 10x, which menas famine.
you people just don't understand the shitstirm that's coming one the crops fail on two important crop producing nations simultaneously
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
why do you have to have your own solar panels? doesn't make any sense to me I agree however on biking (or public transport). I will always try to live max 15-20km away from work, such that I always can use a bike or a velomobile. Please don't try to make ad hominem arguments, thanks.
“Own” as in “not from a grid” not self-manufactured.
I understood. However this is rather counter productive as it requires more environmentally costly storage as well as solar capacity.
Additionally, it totally neglects all other sources of renewable energy.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#208A 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 water is owned by the farmers, not by California. Probably the state should eminent domain it, but I have no idea what it would cost to do so.
> The water is owned by the farmers, not by California
if there is no rain, they have no property. the idea that you can own something beyong laws of physics is amazing. it's like owning thoughts and ideas
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#209A 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.
this is not business, thus is vandalism. Its the same as if i go and rip apart public street furniture and sell them as metal scrap for profit.
Pillaging, exploitation, and destruction of the commons leading to ecological and societal degradation and eventual collapse has been documented as what capitalism does since there was a thing called capitalism
There's still plenty of boosters who will use fallacious arguments defending it that were just as tired hundreds of years ago.
Some people let their aspirations of greed blind them from what's clearly happening