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Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

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Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#221

Post by HelloMcFly »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #208
arghwhat wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, some land is not suitable for agriculture. No, this does mean that having cattle is a neutral usage as each cattle requires agriculture to feed for 3-4 years before they are slaughtered. Yes, cattle emissions are largely from the food. No, this is not just grass that was already there and would decompose anyway - the majority of agricultural production is to feed cattle and would not be necessary without (the ef…

> Yes, meat protein is a great source of nutrition. No, it is not magically better than equivalent vegetarian nutrition. It’s not magic, but the protein from animal sources is just scientifically better than protein from plant sources. If you want to compare the nutritional benefits of different protein sources you need to account for how bioavailable they are. Some plant sources aren’t bad, but none are as good as a…

That paper would suggest to me that perhaps eggs are as animal as we need to get. I agree with your specific point here, but it feels like a small thing when considering the overall societal and environmental cost of animal protein (esp. beef, pork, lamb).

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#222

Post by AmericanChopper »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #221
AmericanChopper wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, meat protein is a great source of nutrition. No, it is not magically better than equivalent vegetarian nutrition. It’s not magic, but the protein from animal sources is just scientifically better than protein from plant sources. If you want to compare the nutritional benefits of different protein sources you need to account for how bioavailable they are. Some plant sources aren’t bad, but none are as good as a…

That paper would suggest to me that perhaps eggs are as animal as we need to get. I agree with your specific point here, but it feels like a small thing when considering the overall societal and environmental cost of animal protein (esp. beef, pork, lamb).

If you tried to get all your calories from eating eggs, your diet would have too much fat and not enough carbs. In reality you need a balanced and varied diet, and the world couldn’t support 7 billion people all deciding to get their protein intake from one specific food item anyway. Animal products are simply better at providing the protein you need. You _can_ get all of it from plant based sources (I’m not sure whether it would be theoretically possible for all humans to adopt such a diet), but it’s more difficult. Meaning if you want to meet your nutritional requirements without having a big calorie excess, you have to plan your diet very carefully, and implement a highly restrictive program. If you want to do that without eating highly processed foods such as soy protein isolate (which is a popular dietary restriction), then you’re going to have an even harder time.

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#223

Post by adrianN »

runsWphotons wrote: post #216
ramblenode wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a kind of "wronger than wrong" fallacy [0]. Yes, not all pasture land is suitable for cereal crops. But that doesn't negate the fact that most livestock production does present an inefficient tradeoff when optimizing for nutrition and land/climate impact. This is because a) a large portion of cereal crops are diverted to feed livestock and b) very little livestock comes from natural pasture land. So only a mi…

"Arable land that could be used to feed humans..." Is there a shortage of food for humans? I dont think there is a supply issue, rather where famines occur it seems political?

If we needed less land to feed humans we could instead use the land to sequester carbon and provide habitats for wild animals, e.g. by planting forests.

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#224

Post by bolangi »

hinkley wrote: post #174
photochemsyn wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methane is something like 25 times as effective at absorbing outgoing infrared radiation in the Earth's atmosphere relative to carbon dioxide, but there is > 200 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere as methane (1.9 ppm vs 420 ppm). https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/increase-in-atmospheric-me... So the net effect of all the methane is about 50 ppm. About 30% comes from fossil fuels. This leaves a big burp relative to p…

And melting permafrost.

And liquifying undersea methane hydrate ice.

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#225

Post by thaumasiotes »

Sebguer wrote: post #210
thaumasiotes wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, he said, imagine what kind of perennial (plants that live multiple years) food plants we could have, if we invested similar 6000 years of effort to perfecting perennial food plants. Like fruit trees and nut trees and whatever. Well, that's something we've already done. So I'd say we'd end up with the fruits and nuts that we have right now. What are we supposed to be imagining?

This is an obtuse read of the author's point, which is apply what we've done to fruit trees and nut trees to perennial staple foods.

The author is saying we should apply the techniques we've used on grains to fruit trees. That is ridiculous, because, obviously, we already do that. We always have.

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#226

Post by tfourb »

DuckFeathers wrote: post #215
richardw wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The grass/food that cattle eat, what would happen to it if let to decompose ?” It would decompose (once) and then natural habitat would return because we need less of that land, capturing carbon more permanently because it’s released more slowly. In Brazil, exactly the opposite is happening: deforestation to feed cattle. Are you arguing for that deforestation?

>Are you arguing for that deforestation? Not the same user but I will argue for deforestation any day. Humans are grassland creatures and trees are our enemy. Trees shadow the grass and affect our natural habitat. Even elephants know this and get rid of trees when they see them. [1] In fact, when the wooly mammoths went extinct, Pleistocene Park turned from a grassland to a forest, and now an ecological disaster [2].…

That's just dump. If you really want to over simplify human history, we are Savanna creatures, and Savannas contain plenty of trees and other perennial plants. I also don't get why you are bringing elephants into this, especially because there are whole sub-species of elephants that are adapted to forest-dwelling.

As are humans, by the way. Plenty of human civilizations have historically specialized to live in heavily forested biomes, ranging from the rain forests of the tropics to the boreal forests in northern Europe, the North America and Asia. Agroforestry as a practice goes back thousands of years in both the old and the new world.

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#227

Post by tfourb »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #192
ericpauley wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, rice also provides ~20% of global caloric needs, so this isn’t necessarily an outsized contribution.

I couldn't give a damn about carbon emissions, provided people have food.

Why not have both low carbon emissions and enough food for everyone? We have the technology.

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#228

Post by CuriousCosmic »

ramblenode wrote: post #197
wolfgangK wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish there was a name (that I knew of) for this logical fallacy of using precise quantities of meaninglessly confused categories. What do you think "farmland" is ? Our ancestors who knew how to raise cattle and farm cereals for millennia were surviving on the verge of starvation : why do you think that was ? Were they so dumb they'd rather die of hunger than convert some of their grazing pastures to cereal a…

This is a kind of "wronger than wrong" fallacy [0]. Yes, not all pasture land is suitable for cereal crops. But that doesn't negate the fact that most livestock production does present an inefficient tradeoff when optimizing for nutrition and land/climate impact. This is because a) a large portion of cereal crops are diverted to feed livestock and b) very little livestock comes from natural pasture land. So only a mi…

I think one of the bigger questions than "why does the US raise so much livestock" is "why doesn't the US raise bison & buffalo instead of cows"?

I'd imagine a lot of the US' livestock needs could be handled by just re-wilding pasture lands with native plant and animal species (including bison). And just as a guess I'd imagine it'd be more sustainable than trying to raise cows.

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#229

Post by numpad0 »

contingencies wrote: post #77
twawaaay wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced (I grew up on a farm). It is usually harder to get rid of any weeds when your crop is growing on the field. After harvest, you just get rid of everything, turn the soil (but I don't know anything about rice farming) and you kinda get a fresh start. ON THE OTHER HAND, we already have robots that can easily identify weeds with a camera and zap them with lasers or other shit. Which just seems so much…

With typical rice farming in Asia, you see manual transplanting of each seedling in to small fields by women and children. This is back-breaking work and extremely slow. I can't think of another crop both this widely cultivated and painstaking. Therefore, not having to do this is a huge win. China has a multitude of climatic areas. Some harvest rice once per year, others two or three times per year. Even within Yunna…

Rice planting machines exist, doesn’t look much different from home lawnmowers. IIRC, in spring farmers make a batch of rice sprouts on disposable cups, load them into this, and it lays them down as the old man drives across his field back and forth.

0: https://youtube.com/watch?v=uS54w2ZH-OE

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#230

Post by arghwhat »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #208
arghwhat wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, some land is not suitable for agriculture. No, this does mean that having cattle is a neutral usage as each cattle requires agriculture to feed for 3-4 years before they are slaughtered. Yes, cattle emissions are largely from the food. No, this is not just grass that was already there and would decompose anyway - the majority of agricultural production is to feed cattle and would not be necessary without (the ef…

> Yes, meat protein is a great source of nutrition. No, it is not magically better than equivalent vegetarian nutrition. It’s not magic, but the protein from animal sources is just scientifically better than protein from plant sources. If you want to compare the nutritional benefits of different protein sources you need to account for how bioavailable they are. Some plant sources aren’t bad, but none are as good as a…

Quoting your linked paper:

> Vegetable proteins, when combined to provide for all of the essential amino acids, provide an excellent source for protein considering that they will likely result in a reduction in the intake of saturated fat and cholesterol.

> [..] When the more accurate PDCAAS scale is used, soy protein was reported to be equivalent to animal protein with a score of 1.0, the highest possible rating (Hasler, 2002).

> Soy is a complete protein with a high concentration of BCAA’s.

So not only does the paper say that soy protein is a "complete" protein like beef, it scores soy higher than beef in Table 1 (which only gets a score of 0.92!), and states that it has associated health benefits (several mentioned throughout the paper).

Whey also scores a 1.0 for the curious, suggesting we do not have to eat the cow to get its protein.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the paper studies protein uptake efficiency and coverage ("quality") in the context of elite athletes and their very high protein requirements that range from difficult to dangerous to maintain (the paper mentions concerns of cardiovascular issues and bone loss risk when using beef protein for example). These concerns do not apply to those without extreme dietary needs.

Even if you cannot eat soy, the concerns of coverage or quality of individual protein sources are largely irrelevant when combined with a varied diet that contains more than one source - arguably a requirement to discussing dietary health, and suggested by the paper as a solution.

So while the reference to the paper is good, it is important to read it - thoroughly - in its intended context.

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