Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

You got to love those optimists. I am going nearly deaf from the drums beating up for WW3. Russia has gotten one week to stop doing what it has not done. Can't help but wonder whether any one of us will still be around in 2020.

John

Family farms are better for sustainable meat production, as opposed to CAFOs, yet they're being decimated by Big Ag financially. The 8 percent used to grow food for direct human consumption could easily be ramped up by decreasing acreage for animal feed, but they keep wringing their hands over how to feed 9 billion

paul

Meat production is projected to double by 2020
More than two-thirds of all agricultural land is devoted to growing feed for livestock, while only 8 percent is used to grow food for direct human consumption
Consequences of increased global meat consumption on the global environment -- trade in virtual water, energy & nutrients
https://woods.stanford.edu/environmental-venture-projects/consequences-increased-global-meat-consumption-global-environment

Burgeoning appetite for meat. 50 years ago global consumption was 70m tonnes, by 2007 268m tonnes
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/04/daily-chart-17

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On 9/3/2014 6:47 PM, Mike wrote:

5407B6BA.8000304@mlxvi.org" type="cite">All so true. Another example is Australia. Most of the place is good for one thing only. That is kangaroos. But they kill the kangaroos and put on beef. And destroy the environment in the process.

And then there is this economy thing. And that screws everything up. :-)

Mike

On 04/09/14 10:35, John D'hondt wrote:

What you said makes some sense to me Mike but it also made me think : where exactly on earth are people increasing their meat eating and at what rate exactly? As far as I can see not in Europe, America or Africa as a whole. Not in India and most of Asia. China probably and some super rich and decadent Middle Eastern countries maybe, although a large part of their populations works for slave wages that won't allow much meat in their diet.

 

I think the big problem with meat is how it is "produced". I have got all kinds of life stock out on grass and nothing else. Our climate forces us to bring them in for winter but even then their diet is 95 % silage or hay (=grass). Gras is what grows best here and I don't think that this way contributes much to any environmental degradation, on the contrary. When we started here 30 years ago we needed 2 acres for one sheep and we needed to supplement their diet heavily in winter. Now one acre can maintain almost 3 sheep year round without supplementation except when there is thick snow on the ground. Ecologically we have seen a complete success but economically we are still failing. To make money from lamb sales you need to have 40 kilo + lambs as early as possible but at the latest in May. Our's are just about now topping out at over 40 kilos when prices are nose diving.

And it is really simple to force lambs up to over 40 kilos in May the industrial way. Take them off their mothers after just two weeks and put them in sheds to protect them from all weather and restrict their movement and feed them imported concentrates. Not good for the planet for several reasons. And this is the kind of "meat" they are talking about and neither myself nor my dog would touch it if you gave it to us for free. We know the difference very well.

 

Also, animal feed lots have been a huge environmental and ethical problem for a very long time and it is not a problem lurking just out of sight if people are going to increase meat intake at some point in the future.

 

John

I don't think anyone is saying don't eat meat. What they are saying is that if people *increase* meat eating at the rate at the rate that they are now then we will have a problem.

And, likewise no one is saying stop and everything will be rosy. They are merely saying that it will add to all the other things that we are doing and make things worse than if we hadn't.

By dismissing this research in such a flippent manner we risk missing the message.

If I said to you that your concern for the ocean food being wiped out because of Fukushima was stupid, since we were already overfishing and avoiding Fukushima would have made scant difference, you would probably react with indignation. And quite rightly, because Fukushima was another thing that added to the problems.

All of our problems exist because someone - somewhere - justified every action that took us some way towards our current situation.

Right now, the frackers are thinking what idiots we all are, protesting against fracking. Look at all the problems in the world not caused by fracking. They will be thinking "Our planet is being trashed in very many different ways and looking at one tiny facet and thinking that if this were changed things would improve is pure lunacy imo."

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