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1. Without "chemicals" over 1/2 the people on the planet would starve. These "chemicals" are pulled from thin air - that is, the ammonia process.
2. Will you trade your $10 bills to me for $1 bills....one for one? Well, that is what you are doing with beef and some other meats. In fact, the ratio is higher - you feed them 15 lbs of soybeans and corn, etc. protein for one pound of beef protein.
3. Predator and Prey - sounds nice and maybe a supplement for a tiny portion of the world's population, but the idea of the BILLIONS eating wild meat is a fantasy.....
Eating lower on the food chain is the single "average" thing that most can do to assure a better environment and more food to go around. After we get there (and we are well on the way), then we can discuss other details.
How so? The Soil Web Food Chain provides and sustains more biomass per acre than your "ammonia from thin air" which is basically a fossil fuel process at this time. In FACT the chemical process your describing REDUCES the amount of biomass per acre, killing almost everything off except the target plant.
2. Does not make any sense. Feed lots and feeding Rumen animals starches just is not the way to go. We need Rumen animals to be healthy and they need to eat grass and have enough land per acre to be sustainable.
3. Predator and Prey is how nature survives.
4. the food chain is a balance of niche energy consumption.
How long has the Alabama football team been known as The Crimson Tide? It's not a new phenomenon and has nothing to do with agricultural practices.
This whole thread is full of fantasies, wish fulfillment dreams and outright false info.
While a forest or a well watered, tall grass prairie may (or may not) have a higher calorie content than a mono-culture row crop field, most of it can't be utilized by H. sapiens. Eating meat is much more efficient nutritionally than trying to harness the Sun's energy by eating plants. We just can't digest them well.
Vegans more healthy? I wonder what Caesar's legions or the first pioneers here would say about that? They were scared to death of the much bigger, stronger & healthier Germans & Indians they encountered. Caesar documents that fear explicitly in his "Gallic Wars" history. Those two groups, BTW, rarely ate anything other than meat.
Why do vegans think they are being humane when tearing the limbs off living creatures, or when devouring the unborn children of those creatures, or when uprooting & chopping up those creatures to obtain nutrition? Double standard.
Cattle are often raised using three "chemicals"-- antibiotics, estrogen ("growth hormone") and a beta-agonist, chemically similar to albuterol, a well known, safe asthma medication. (BTW- there's 16x more estrogen in a serving of potatoes than in a serving of beef) These three additives add 50-100 lb to a beef carcass, or ~ $100 profit/head for the rancher-- that's the difference between profit and break even for him. Why should he continue in business just to break even in a good year at the risk of going broke in a bad year? Food security, anyone?
There is nothing "un-sustainable" about modern ag practices. As someone mentioned above, we get nitrogen from the air. The atm is 70% nitrogen. We get minerals from rocks. Any shortage of rocks?
Pesticides do not increase ag yield-- they guarantee a consistent ag yield. Ever watch "Little House on the Prairie?" They had some problems with pests & failed crops in the old days.
Citified TreeHuggers really oughta spend a little time on a farm.
Did you read the thread? No one is arguing over not eating meat. I'm all for it.
I just want it to be sustainable.
The UNSUSTAINABLE part of modern agriculture, which this thread is about, is that plants can get all the nutrition from the soil as long as the SOIL IS MANAGED to provide nutrients to plants. This is fact. And modern agriculture DOES not create SOIL it creates dirt.
You cannot grow anything in DIRT because it is devoid of life. You will rely on chemicals to grow your food and kill off any flying insect that you need to pollinate.. not to mention symbiotic relationships that nature has evolved in that whatever section of land you decide to kill off all life and grow your monoculture tasteless and unsustainable crop.
Energy and chemicals from fossil fuel based processes provide your sustenance at this point, don't you think there is a better way?
Speaking of fantasies:
"former sports editor of the Birmingham Age-Herald, is credited with coining the phrase "Crimson Tide" in an article describing the 1907 Iron Bowl played in Birmingham with Auburn a heavy favorite to win. The game was played in a sea of red mud which stained the Alabama white jerseys crimson"
So there is your "red tide" fantasy.....burst. But my guess if that you don't learn from facts since it's much easier to know everything....and disagree with science, biology and even common sense....
Red Tide was never big up in Alabama anyway.....so it's doubly far out that you made such a wild "guess". May I asked exactly where you pulled that particular "reasoning" out from? I'm interested in how propaganda like that spreads...really!
"Eating meat is much more efficient nutritionally than trying to harness the Sun's energy by eating plants"
This is a complete falsehood when it comes to actual science and the modern world. You are "correct" in the sense of eating a Mastadon or Bison may have been beneficial to small populations....wild animals which didn't need to be fed crops to grow.
Modern man has little in common with our ancestors - those fatty meats cause us to develop gout, die young of clogged arteries and become obese.
Do you really think the US Obesity problems isn't linked to heavy consumption of meats?
We could delve into the details of how plant based proteins need a bit of diversity (supplements of vitamins, amino acids or the like) to be "complete" , but this has been going for a long time. That's why your breakfast cereals are "fortified".
But back to "feeding the world" and "energy-in vs. energy out". All things being equal, that beef protein uses 6 to 15X as much energy as the pinto beans, soy-based products, wheat and other sources of protein.
And we are not talking a small difference - we are talking BIG time extra energy and land use.
SUMMARY - AND CONCLUSION - In most all cases of modern civilization, eating lower on the food chain will result in vast energy savings as well as greatly reduced pollution of land, water and air. Period.
Therefore, the premise of the OP is false. Being a Vegetarians (not Vegan, but Vegetarian) is the single simplest thing one can do to change the food equation. Even those who eat meat and stick with the chicken, turkey and fish are helping greatly....
How is the premise false? Your talking about eating vegetables because of energy content, and meat and whatever.
I am talking about a balanced sustainable food chain that involves building SOIL, in that soil a rich
biology that creates a symbiotic relationship between the life that needs it. Fungus, bacteria, insects and animals that feed on grass and predators that feed on the animals that feed on grass.
Biology has thousands of years of evolution and "field study" of what is sustainable and what is not.
How is the premise false? Your talking about eating vegetables because of energy content, and meat and whatever.
I am talking about a balanced sustainable food chain that involves building SOIL, in that soil a rich
biology that creates a symbiotic relationship between the life that needs it. Fungus, bacteria, insects and animals that feed on grass and predators that feed on the animals that feed on grass.
Biology has thousands of years of evolution and "field study" of what is sustainable and what is not.
.
No disagreement here on the building up of soils and other various related matters.....
However, two important points...
1. You have to build up much LESS soil (which means less pollution, energy, etc) for plant-based diets.
2. "thousands of years of evolution and field study" are all done for.....firstly, real science and chemistry didn't exist until recently and, secondly, once the world population exceeded a billion (or less) we had to throw all existing "natural" ideas out the window.
Thousands of years of evolution created nice flu viruses that would kill off 10% of our population were it not for our "false trickery" of very modern medicine and science.
Referring to the good ole days doesn't work any longer.....having a pig in your backyard you fed scraps and moldy grain to isn't the model. It may have been efficient at one time and place. It may still be efficient in parts of Africa and other places.
But it has little to do with 7+ billion people.
The fact is still the fact. Plant based...and, or, efficient animals bred for such purposes (poultry) are vastly more energy efficient and therefore require less....
This is self-evident. I don't know how anyone can even debate it. You cannot have your MickieD's without rain forest being illegally cut down and vast importation from other countries...as well as cheap subsidized monoculture of corn, etc.
Why do vegans think they are being humane when tearing the limbs off living creatures, or when devouring the unborn children of those creatures, or when uprooting & chopping up those creatures to obtain nutrition? Double standard.
No disagreement here on the building up of soils and other various related matters.....
However, two important points...
1. You have to build up much LESS soil (which means less pollution, energy, etc) for plant-based diets.
2. "thousands of years of evolution and field study" are all done for.....firstly, real science and chemistry didn't exist until recently and, secondly, once the world population exceeded a billion (or less) we had to throw all existing "natural" ideas out the window.
Thousands of years of evolution created nice flu viruses that would kill off 10% of our population were it not for our "false trickery" of very modern medicine and science.
Referring to the good ole days doesn't work any longer.....having a pig in your backyard you fed scraps and moldy grain to isn't the model. It may have been efficient at one time and place. It may still be efficient in parts of Africa and other places.
But it has little to do with 7+ billion people.
The fact is still the fact. Plant based...and, or, efficient animals bred for such purposes (poultry) are vastly more energy efficient and therefore require less....
This is self-evident. I don't know how anyone can even debate it. You cannot have your MickieD's without rain forest being illegally cut down and vast importation from other countries...as well as cheap subsidized monoculture of corn, etc.
The whole point is sustainability. Farming by building soil, then building on that to include a healthy relationship between grassland and annuals and animals and the biomass that sustains it all.. That is progress and can yield far more biomass than any industrial farming method of the second half of the 1900's.
The sun can provide enough energy to satisfy the hunger of the 10 billion people that will be living on earth in the years to come.
How much (or little) beef, per capita can be consumed and, for what interval, to be "sustainable"?
End result is I'll eat what I damn want. However, if a guideline were imposed like "1/2 lb of beef per day per adult", would that yield actual increases in soil quality?
There is no problem with food production. Worldwide, people have never been better fed. All races, all classes, all nations. The only exceptions are where extreme of incompetent political systems interfere: Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, Rhodesia.
Isolated environmental messes can be remedied easily when they occur. These have always accompanied food production and are better dealt with today than ever before.
In North America, Europe, Asia people have never had it so good when it comes to food. There would not be 5 or 7 billion people or whatever in the world if this were not true.
And the biggest nutrition problem would not be fat people.
How much (or little) beef, per capita can be consumed and, for what interval, to be "sustainable"?
End result is I'll eat what I damn want. However, if a guideline were imposed like "1/2 lb of beef per day per adult", would that yield actual increases in soil quality?
So a sustainable system would yield plenty of food, but the yield of meat would be less because the animals would be grass fed, which would be a healthier meat. No antibiotics would need to be used.
So the agricultural system would need to have a healthy pasture as part of the farm, with some soil building grasses.
There is no problem with food production. Worldwide, people have never been better fed. All races, all classes, all nations. The only exceptions are where extreme of incompetent political systems interfere: Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, Rhodesia.
Isolated environmental messes can be remedied easily when they occur. These have always accompanied food production and are better dealt with today than ever before.
In North America, Europe, Asia people have never had it so good when it comes to food. There would not be 5 or 7 billion people or whatever in the world if this were not true.
And the biggest nutrition problem would not be fat people.
Sustainable agriculture. No one said that we were not being fed. (Thank oil and fossil fuels for your fertilizers and chemicals)
The problem with food production today is that we are depleting soil, and becoming more and more reliant on chemical farming. Are future generations going to have issues? YES
Berkeley Food Institute - “With global food needs predicted to greatly increase in the next 50 years, it’s critical to look more closely at organic farming, because aside from the environmental impacts of industrial agriculture, the ability of synthetic fertilizers to increase crop yields has been declining.”
“It’s important to remember that our current agricultural system produces far more food than is needed to provide for everyone on the planet,” said Kremen. “Eradicating world hunger requires increasing the access to food, not simply the production. Also, increasing the proportion of agriculture that uses sustainable, organic methods of farming is not a choice, it’s a necessity. We simply can’t continue to produce food far into the future without taking care of our soils, water and biodiversity.”
There is a better way, shouldn't it concern us and not be left to those happy with the status quo?
Last edited by Werone; 09-12-2018 at 08:06 AM..
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