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Well then lets no plant Barley to feed humans, let's use something else. The thing is a good portion of the surface of the Earth is covered with agricultural fi
by vfc1 7y ago
Well then lets no plant Barley to feed humans, let's use something else. The thing is a good portion of the surface of the Earth is covered with agricultural fields, most of them aimed at feeding cattle, not humans.
It's a bit insane if we think about it. I doubt that conversion from barley to chicken is so efficient. There is more nutrition in barley than the protein, there are carbs as well and fiber and micro nutrients that would be good for humans, besides only the protein.
A better comparison would be in calories, considering the waste of slaughtering the chicken and all the parts with don't eat, plus all the waste produced by the chicken and the water used.
- NickBusey 7y agoNot plant Barley? Hate to tell you, but when they said 'malting' that means 'malted barley' as in the primary ingredient in beer. We are not going to stop planting that any time soon.
- bryanlarsen 7y agoFeed barley also yields almost 2X that milling wheat does on dryland Canadian prairie, so switching species rather than variants doesn't change the argument. And if you want to use calories instead of grams of protein, be my guest. It'll just help my argument. Chickens eat unhulled barley; the hull is almost half the weight of the kernel. Humans eat hulled barley and still a good chunk of its calories are indigestible fiber. That may help your digestive system but you're not extracting any energy from it.