Denmark
5.8 million people, 13.5 million pigs
Where is there more livestock than people?
31–40 of 116 posts
Re: Where is there more livestock than people?
#32I 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…
Even in pastureland country, cattle typically spend winters packed together in feedlots and are fattened in feedlots on a largely corn-based diet before slaughter. Depending on who is doing the labelling, cattle which were pastured before this fattening process may still be sold as "grass-fed".
Sometimes the packed wintercows are fed grass (those big bales rolled up are quite heavy - and expensive).
Re: Where is there more livestock than people?
#33This 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 actually see a lot of stuff about vegan and vegetarian diets on HN.
Re: Where is there more livestock than people?
#34I'm I the only one that is really bothered by the grammar mistake? In a headline too. I'm seeing it more and more often, even in the news.
Re: Where is there more livestock than people?
#35It 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).
Calories could be a good measure - a whole chicken appears to be about 1200 and a cow between 500,000 and 600,000 - so a cow is about 500 chickens or so.
Re: Where is there more livestock than people?
#36I 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…
Even in pastureland country, cattle typically spend winters packed together in feedlots and are fattened in feedlots on a largely corn-based diet before slaughter. Depending on who is doing the labelling, cattle which were pastured before this fattening process may still be sold as "grass-fed".
isn't the corn based diet unique to the United States, since corn is a subsidized crop?
Re: Where is there more livestock than people?
#37I was surprised the lack if sheep areas. Is lamb not a popular meat in USA? Just looked up wool production and didn't realise how much Australia produces: https://blog.bizvibe.com/blog/textiles-and-garments/top-10-l...
It’s too hot for them in most of the agricultural centers in the USA. Plenty of goats though.
Goat milk is relatively common, but I've not seen goat meat for quite awhile.
Lamb is available most places, but usually more expensive. Walmart carries it!
Re: Where is there more livestock than people?
#38I 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…
Even in pastureland country, cattle typically spend winters packed together in feedlots and are fattened in feedlots on a largely corn-based diet before slaughter. Depending on who is doing the labelling, cattle which were pastured before this fattening process may still be sold as "grass-fed".
For accuracy, for winter that's really climate dependent. Plenty of geography supports year round outdoor cattle if not the majority. Often they will live outdoors for winter but require feed. This is likely to be majority hay with some supplemnt than feedlot type treatment. And not an expert but I believe some large operations will even truck cattle arond, so have summer pastures north and head south for winter type thing.
Re: Where is there more livestock than people?
#39Doesn't New Zealand have more sheep than people?
Yes, but the same applies to pretty much any country with agricultural food animals.
Which makes sense if you work it out - unless a country would only eat the largest animals (cows) you find that people eat more than one animal a year, and so there must be more than that. (Cow, estimated 500,000 calories, 2,500 per day recommended, cow lasts 200 days - even then if you were to eat mainly cow you'd need more than eaters because they take more than 200 days to mature; but nobody eats pure cow.)
I guess in theory you could eat one chicken per 8 weeks and barely keep it balanced, as you can grow a meat chicken in that time.
Re: Where is there more livestock than people?
#40Wisconsin. If you get a chance, come and smell our dairy air.
Or come and freeze in the land of cheese.