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Where is there more livestock than people?

erdavis.com

21–30 of 116 posts

Re: Where is there more livestock than people?

#21
In response to the question in the headline: the Netherlands, pretty much everywhere. Over 5x as many as people [1], even after substantial decline last year.

Their droppings are causing us environmental problems, which is currently a hot(-button) topic.

[1] https://longreads.cbs.nl/nederland-in-cijfers-2021/hoeveel-l...

Re: Where is there more livestock than people?

#22

It would be nice to repeat the maps using weight. The weight of a cow is like 700Kg (1500 pounds) and the weight of a chicken is like 3Kg (6 pounds). So a cow is like 250 chickens. (Can someone with CGI abilities make a gros image of a cow made of 250 chickens?)

I think it would be more useful to track weight produced. This statistic is probably hard to track...

A good proxy would be to multiply the number of animals by the Animal Unit Equivalents (AUE).

Re: Where is there more livestock than people?

#23

I grew up in a small town and spent a lot of time driving through cows > people counties through college and young adulthood - every visit back to my parents meant seeing lots of cattle on the way. At grocery stores I would see packaging for “grass-fed beef” or “free-range” and honestly I thought it was like a joke that farmers were pulling on city people, like “gormet hand-picked potatoes” or “premium plastic” or so…

I had a similar experience on that drive from SF to LA. I remember a UPS truck driving by me and the man inside wearing a face mask (this was pre COVID). I thought it was the weirdest thing. A few miles later though and you hit stench. It's hard to do it justice in a comment. Saying it's the foulest thing I've ever smelled really fails to capture it.

Re: Where is there more livestock than people?

#24

This is sad. The scale of animal subjugation and suffering is hard to comprehend.

Have no idea why you get downvoted, but I did notice few times now how HN crowd doesn’t know much about veganism or appreciates people who think animal agriculture is cruel. Ah yeah, and also terribly destructive: https://youtu.be/LaPge01NQTQ

Maybe because it's a biased POV, that doesn't take into account that the isssue is simply being human, nobody can call themselves out or blame some activity more than others.

For example many vegans and animalists own pets to "save them from cruelty"

But

Loss and others of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that free-ranging domestic cats (mostly unowned) are the top human-caused threat to wildlife in the United States, killing an estimated 1.3 to 3.7 billion birds and 6.3 to 22.3 billion mammals annually.

And that's only in the US...

Wild life is a constant threat to our life style, like it or not, being a modern human in modern society means being responsible for animal suffering even if you don't personally eat them.

For example in my country the war on hunters (mainly by radical animalists) produced that

Roughly 2.3 million wild boars roam around Italy, with roughly 20,000 in the area of Rome, according to farm trade group Coldiretti. And while African swine fever can't be transmitted to humans, it can infect and kill domestic pigs

Re: Where is there more livestock than people?

#25

This is sad. The scale of animal subjugation and suffering is hard to comprehend.

Have no idea why you get downvoted, but I did notice few times now how HN crowd doesn’t know much about veganism or appreciates people who think animal agriculture is cruel. Ah yeah, and also terribly destructive: https://youtu.be/LaPge01NQTQ

I don’t see evidence that the HN crowd as a whole doesn’t know much about veganism. Are you measuring knowledge about veganism via adoption of veganism?

From a few years back:

“Ask HN: Have you gone vegan or vegetarian?” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13985006

Re: Where is there more livestock than people?

#27

I grew up in a small town and spent a lot of time driving through cows > people counties through college and young adulthood - every visit back to my parents meant seeing lots of cattle on the way. At grocery stores I would see packaging for “grass-fed beef” or “free-range” and honestly I thought it was like a joke that farmers were pulling on city people, like “gormet hand-picked potatoes” or “premium plastic” or so…

I had a similar experience on that drive from SF to LA. I remember a UPS truck driving by me and the man inside wearing a face mask (this was pre COVID). I thought it was the weirdest thing. A few miles later though and you hit stench. It's hard to do it justice in a comment. Saying it's the foulest thing I've ever smelled really fails to capture it.

Good ole Coalinga... That towns major exports include factory farming and prison... basically hell lol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalinga,_California

Re: Where is there more livestock than people?

#30
post #21

In response to the question in the headline: the Netherlands, pretty much everywhere. Over 5x as many as people [1], even after substantial decline last year. Their droppings are causing us environmental problems, which is currently a hot(-button) topic. [1] https://longreads.cbs.nl/nederland-in-cijfers-2021/hoeveel-l...

Alternatively it’s a manufactured problem, designed to require the goal of halving the livestock.
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