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And that point has no basis in reality. You obviously have no understanding of agriculture. What about all the centuries of growing food - around the world - without synthetic chemicals. How did people survive, just breathing air? .
Fertile Crescent history? Why do you think early American pioneers had to keep moving west? They played out the soil and had to find new fertility.... You cannot sustainably use animal manure for fertilizer-- all you're doing is moving the nitrogen drawn from the pasture and putting it in the crop land. Most N is lost from animals thru the urine-- not the manure. The urea in urine is quickly broken down to ammonia and evaporated back to the atmosphere. It's a losing game.
Earlier in the discussion people were writing that using plants for human food is more efficient than feeding animals-- simply not true. We can't digest plants like animals can. The protein in an acre of corn is enough for 9000 days worth of human need vs about 2000 days worth from beef raised on grass for a year....BUT cattle are not raised only on feed. That is only a supplement (even accounting for feed lots). The bulk of their food still comes from the plants (grass; corn is a grass) and not the plant seeds. We get ZERO from eating grass....the advantage of feed lots is that the cattle reach harvest weight sooner-- so more food from fewer acres over all.
And as others pointed out, animals can be raised on marginal land not suitable for growing crops. Better land use management.
If veganism was so great, why did early hominids evolve to become carnivorous? MotherNature has already told us the answer to the question about veganism. We just gotta listen to her.
We wont' complicate the issue further by discussing complete protein and digestibility. ..Or about the huge carbon footprint of growing and shipping veggies around so vegans can brag about how Green they are.
No one said we needed that many people, it's not up to us at this point to control population anyway. Family planning and a good economy, mature mothers and women in the workforce are enough to control population.
THIS! The UN has been onto this since the 80's, when they started a campaign for women's education; not just basic schooling, but access to higher education, as well. Their studies show that the number of births go way down, when women acquire higher ed, and family quality of life improves significantly.
Why do you think early American pioneers had to keep moving west? They played out the soil and had to find new fertility....
That's hilarious! So by your thinking, no one grows food any more on the east side of the country. A simple check of the most basic statistics shows otherwise.
Back to reality, they moved west due to the increasing population buying claims for land. Since people can't live on top of each other vertically, the only answer is to spread out horizontally. The only direction they could really go was west.
You've got some extremely basic history learning in front of you. Good luck.
That's hilarious! So by your thinking, no one grows food any more on the east side of the country. A simple check of the most basic statistics shows otherwise.
Back to reality, they moved west due to the increasing population buying claims for land. Since people can't live on top of each other vertically, the only answer is to spread out horizontally. The only direction they could really go was west.
You've got some extremely basic history learning in front of you. Good luck.
Guido's right. Soils in the cotton belt were worn out from years of mono-cropping. Appalachian soils are thin and marginal at best. So if you are a farmer in that scenario, why not move west to the black soils of Iowa and Illinois? Leave the worn out stuff behind. That's what my ancestors did.
Today we know the importance of crop rotations, and understand how soil fertility works and can be improved. We also have synthetic fertilizers, lime, and chemicals to deal with issues. They really didn't have any of those.
I'm not saying that more people = more need for land, which drove people west. Worn out and depleted soils were a big factor in the equation as well.
Fertile Crescent history? Why do you think early American pioneers had to keep moving west? They played out the soil and had to find new fertility.... You cannot sustainably use animal manure for fertilizer-- all you're doing is moving the nitrogen drawn from the pasture and putting it in the crop land. Most N is lost from animals thru the urine-- not the manure. The urea in urine is quickly broken down to ammonia and evaporated back to the atmosphere. It's a losing game.
Earlier in the discussion people were writing that using plants for human food is more efficient than feeding animals-- simply not true. We can't digest plants like animals can. The protein in an acre of corn is enough for 9000 days worth of human need vs about 2000 days worth from beef raised on grass for a year....BUT cattle are not raised only on feed. That is only a supplement (even accounting for feed lots). The bulk of their food still comes from the plants (grass; corn is a grass) and not the plant seeds. We get ZERO from eating grass....the advantage of feed lots is that the cattle reach harvest weight sooner-- so more food from fewer acres over all.
And as others pointed out, animals can be raised on marginal land not suitable for growing crops. Better land use management.
If veganism was so great, why did early hominids evolve to become carnivorous? MotherNature has already told us the answer to the question about veganism. We just gotta listen to her.
We wont' complicate the issue further by discussing complete protein and digestibility. ..Or about the huge carbon footprint of growing and shipping veggies around so vegans can brag about how Green they are.
Early humans were never carnivorous, though. Their diet was predominantly plant-based with some meat for protein's sake, far less meat than is part of the standard modern Western diet.
Anyway, animal agriculture is terrible from a methane-emission and water-consumption standpoint. I can't speak to the arguments about the makeup of cows' current diets and how land-intensive they are, I don't know anything about that, but if cattle are grazing on marginal land, that land will become barren quickly and, by definition, we won't be able to regrow it very fast to feed more cattle. It really seems like a pretty reaching argument.
...but if cattle are grazing on marginal land, that land will become barren quickly and, by definition, we won't be able to regrow it very fast to feed more cattle.
Not necessarily. "Marginal land" in this case refers to land that isn't useful for growing row crops. It often grows grass quite well (as grass requires much less water than most row crops). The middle of my state (Nebraska) has exactly that sort of land in the Sandhills. It's useless for growing conventional crops, but excellent for cattle ranching. You can run cattle on that land forever as long as you keep the numbers in line with what the range can support. You can't grow any conventional crops on it at all, though. So running bovines on it (either bison or domestic cattle) is the only way to get any useful food off of that land.
Early humans were never carnivorous, though. Their diet was predominantly plant-based with some meat for protein's sake, far less meat than is part of the standard modern Western diet.
Anyway, animal agriculture is terrible from a methane-emission and water-consumption standpoint. I can't speak to the arguments about the makeup of cows' current diets and how land-intensive they are, I don't know anything about that, but if cattle are grazing on marginal land, that land will become barren quickly and, by definition, we won't be able to regrow it very fast to feed more cattle. It really seems like a pretty reaching argument.
You have apparently memorized the talking points taught at The Bambi School of Environmental Fantasies.
Modern cattle have replaced the natural ungulates (bison, elk, mountain goats, etc) that preceded them. No more methane, if you insist that is even important, now than earlier in history. The number of grazing ungulates in the American Midwest/west is amazingly consistent from pre-Columbian times to the present.
Proper attention to land management (stocking rate), a prime concern of ranchers, avoids over-grazing. Modern farmers & ranchers aren't as naïve as their city-dwelling critics.
If you want to go into the physiological adaptations of H.sapiens, from dentition, to enzymes, to intestinal & accessory glands, to endocrine, to skeletal & muscular metabolic factors to ocular, olfactory & cerebral cortical factors favoring a carnivorous life-style, I'm well prepared to instruct you....Only those fanatics holding veganism as a religion think Man was meant to be an herbivore.
Our Homo genus, the carnivores, and the Australopithecine genus, the herbivores, diverged from one another millions of yrs ago. Homo has mediocre little molars; Australopithecus had huge molars meant to grind plant material. The changes in our dentition to accommodate a meat eating diet allowed the more delicate changes in the dental arch & palate that then allowed us to develop speech. Our cerebral cortex, challenged by the complexities of hunting (how smart do you have to be to sneak up on grass?) facilitated our continued intellectual advances so that now we can produce our food without resorting to claws & fangs.
That's hilarious! So by your thinking, no one grows food any more on the east side of the country. A simple check of the most basic statistics shows otherwise.
.
Those who farm the older, eastern part of the US do so by virtue of using artificially produced nitrogenous fertilizer. Thanks for proving my point.
vegetarians have been around for 100s of years , at least in my family tree.
And I also think 2000 calories is a scam to sell more food.
The whole premise of this thread is that the key to our well being, is to acknowledge what nature has shown us through thousands of years of trial and error of biological life cycles to be sustainable.
Soil Health (Plant, fungus and microfauna), Predator - Prey relationships and all in good balance.
Like I said, there is far more biomass in 1 acre of natural grassland or jungle without the use of chemicals than there is in any modern agricultural farm. This is because plant, soil, fungus, etc are all in harmony and balance each other out exploiting the power of the sun without external inputs or dependencies.
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