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I read things like this and wonder what will move the tipping point to plant-derived sources of essential amino acids (thus protein) adequately to stop farming

I read things like this and wonder what will move the tipping point to plant-derived sources of essential amino acids (thus protein) adequately to stop farming animals.

inetknght 7y ago
Plants can also become ill.
- geddy 7y ago
  ...from contact with contaminated water, which is contaminated with things like animal shit, from farms. Plants don't just get horrendous diseases - nearly all of these outbreaks can be traced back to animal agriculture in close proximity.
  - inetknght 7y ago
    Plants can be infected with viruses, bacteria, fungus, and of course pests. It doesn't all come from contaminated water either.
    - geddy 7y ago
      Read the top comment here. Animal agriculture is extremely destructive to the environment, and unsanitary conditions in factory farms are par for the course.
  - GlenTheMachine 7y ago
    This is really, really incorrect. Many, if not most, of the major crop plant diseases have nothing to do with animal agriculture. Wheat rust, potato blight, fire blight in fruit trees, citrus greening, verticillium wilt, various other fungal and bacterial pathogens — none of which have anything to do with factory animal farming.
    - stevespang 7y ago
      Ag Degree here: Yours is totally fake news bogus. All crop diseases have everything to do with animal farming because these diseases of crops influence the prices of the crop grains being fed to the animals to produce them . . .
    - geddy 7y ago
      When is the last time there was a major outbreak of potato blight that made thousands of people sick? The diseases I'm referring to here are the ones that are making humans sick on a large scale, like E. coli for example. I'd think it was obvious given the context. But then again this is hackernews so being pedantic about everything is par for the course.
      - GlenTheMachine 7y ago
        I agree with your point that E. coli outbreaks are closely coupled to animal agriculture, and I apologize if I appeared pedantic. That was not my intent. The thing is, E. coli isn’t a plant disease. It’s a human pathogen that gets on plants and then makes humans ill. But the plant was never infected by the germ — in the same way that if you share a fork with someone who has a cold, you could get infected. But you wouldn’t say that the common cold was “a kitchen utensil disease”. In addition, E. coli is a very minor player in terms of human deaths compared to actual plant diseases. Plant diseases to be very, very concerned about are the ones that attack major crops and reduce or eliminate yield. Then people starve. Starvation kills many more people than E. coli. This is why wheat rust is such a big deal.
dirtyid 7y ago
China has rich tradition of vegetarian cuisine due to Buddhism but pork is still a significant cuisine staple. China is already nominally food secure i.e. it can feed everyone on domestic production but absolute food security is a huge focus for central planners and from what I've gleaned, the goal is still to provide enough domestic animal production vs pivot to plant proteins. Although Chinese fake meat research is also trending. At the end of the day it's cultural, I think long term it would be easy to encourage more vegetarian diets in China because vegetarian Buddhist diets is associated with health and Chinese demographics is skewing older for the foreseeable future. Combined with lack of comprehensive health safety net and people will eventually skew towards less animal protein.
- baybal2 7y ago
  > China has rich tradition of vegetarian cuisine Doesn't seem to me like that at all. Chinese under 40 are bigger protein eaters today than even Germans and Americans
  - dirtyid 7y ago
    Tradition as in there is a lot of already developed Chinese vegetarian dishes to draw from if there is to be a vegetarian resurgence. They're not popular in contemporary Chinese consumption culture but there's no need to reinvent meat.
- mrpopo 7y ago
  > China has rich tradition of vegetarian cuisine due to Buddhism This is less and less true. Chinese meat consumption increased nearly 3-fold in the 1990-2013 period (from 25kg/y/cap to 62kg/y/cap). Meanwhile, meat consumption in the EU during the same period has started reducing from 85kg/y/cap to 81kg/y/cap. The trends have been continuing since 2013. Of course, the USA is off the charts, at 115kg/y/cap, but the meat obsession there is totally unsustainable, unhealthy and insane IMO. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-consumption-vs-gdp-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-consumption-vs-gdp-p...
  - 7y ago
colechristensen 7y ago
Poorly managed plant diseases are just as prevalent and often even harder to control and eradicate. Animal agriculture won't stop. This disease process eliminates bad management and corrupt inefficient government.
- jjtheblunt 7y ago
  Are plant diseases less communicable to humans (and animals in general) ?
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    I don't know if this is a good faith question or not. But of course the concern isn't people getting diseases from plants. Crop yields go down and in some cases the resulting grain becomes poisonous to people or animals which can in some cases cause disease (fungal most often).
    - jjtheblunt 7y ago
      good point, as i didn't word it correctly at all: how tricky is it to control diseases _among_ plant cultivars?
  - Dumblydorr 7y ago
    You're correct. Pigs are very similar to humans anatomically, and biochemically mammals share a LOT of genetics, so its much easier for mutations to lead to species hopping pathogens. This is one reason why Eurasian cultures dominated historically speaking: they'd lived with livestock for much longer and evolution crafted those human populations to have numerous immunities that isolated, non livestock holding communities didnt have.
    - colechristensen 7y ago
      Put in another way or with another interpretation: the arms race between disease and immune system in the animal-human-disease relationship led to very powerful diseases which the humans carried in their populations but were not largely affected by. When the Europeans started crossing oceans to contact very different civilizations they brought the diseases which themselves committed genocide because the new populations hadn't had the same difficulty or interactions with animals and diseases.

I read things like this and wonder what will move the tipping point to plant-derived sources of essential amino acids (thus protein) adequately to stop farming animals.

inetknght 7y ago

Plants can also become ill.

geddy 7y ago
...from contact with contaminated water, which is contaminated with things like animal shit, from farms. Plants don't just get horrendous diseases - nearly all of these outbreaks can be traced back to animal agriculture in close proximity.
- inetknght 7y ago
  Plants can be infected with viruses, bacteria, fungus, and of course pests. It doesn't all come from contaminated water either.
  - geddy 7y ago
    Read the top comment here. Animal agriculture is extremely destructive to the environment, and unsanitary conditions in factory farms are par for the course.
- GlenTheMachine 7y ago
  This is really, really incorrect. Many, if not most, of the major crop plant diseases have nothing to do with animal agriculture. Wheat rust, potato blight, fire blight in fruit trees, citrus greening, verticillium wilt, various other fungal and bacterial pathogens — none of which have anything to do with factory animal farming.
  - stevespang 7y ago
    Ag Degree here: Yours is totally fake news bogus. All crop diseases have everything to do with animal farming because these diseases of crops influence the prices of the crop grains being fed to the animals to produce them . . .
  - geddy 7y ago
    When is the last time there was a major outbreak of potato blight that made thousands of people sick? The diseases I'm referring to here are the ones that are making humans sick on a large scale, like E. coli for example. I'd think it was obvious given the context. But then again this is hackernews so being pedantic about everything is par for the course.
    - GlenTheMachine 7y ago
      I agree with your point that E. coli outbreaks are closely coupled to animal agriculture, and I apologize if I appeared pedantic. That was not my intent. The thing is, E. coli isn’t a plant disease. It’s a human pathogen that gets on plants and then makes humans ill. But the plant was never infected by the germ — in the same way that if you share a fork with someone who has a cold, you could get infected. But you wouldn’t say that the common cold was “a kitchen utensil disease”. In addition, E. coli is a very minor player in terms of human deaths compared to actual plant diseases. Plant diseases to be very, very concerned about are the ones that attack major crops and reduce or eliminate yield. Then people starve. Starvation kills many more people than E. coli. This is why wheat rust is such a big deal.

dirtyid 7y ago

China has rich tradition of vegetarian cuisine due to Buddhism but pork is still a significant cuisine staple. China is already nominally food secure i.e. it can feed everyone on domestic production but absolute food security is a huge focus for central planners and from what I've gleaned, the goal is still to provide enough domestic animal production vs pivot to plant proteins. Although Chinese fake meat research is also trending. At the end of the day it's cultural, I think long term it would be easy to encourage more vegetarian diets in China because vegetarian Buddhist diets is associated with health and Chinese demographics is skewing older for the foreseeable future. Combined with lack of comprehensive health safety net and people will eventually skew towards less animal protein.

baybal2 7y ago
> China has rich tradition of vegetarian cuisine Doesn't seem to me like that at all. Chinese under 40 are bigger protein eaters today than even Germans and Americans
- dirtyid 7y ago
  Tradition as in there is a lot of already developed Chinese vegetarian dishes to draw from if there is to be a vegetarian resurgence. They're not popular in contemporary Chinese consumption culture but there's no need to reinvent meat.
mrpopo 7y ago
> China has rich tradition of vegetarian cuisine due to Buddhism This is less and less true. Chinese meat consumption increased nearly 3-fold in the 1990-2013 period (from 25kg/y/cap to 62kg/y/cap). Meanwhile, meat consumption in the EU during the same period has started reducing from 85kg/y/cap to 81kg/y/cap. The trends have been continuing since 2013. Of course, the USA is off the charts, at 115kg/y/cap, but the meat obsession there is totally unsustainable, unhealthy and insane IMO. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-consumption-vs-gdp-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-consumption-vs-gdp-p...
- 7y ago

colechristensen 7y ago

Poorly managed plant diseases are just as prevalent and often even harder to control and eradicate. Animal agriculture won't stop. This disease process eliminates bad management and corrupt inefficient government.

jjtheblunt 7y ago
Are plant diseases less communicable to humans (and animals in general) ?
- colechristensen 7y ago
  I don't know if this is a good faith question or not. But of course the concern isn't people getting diseases from plants. Crop yields go down and in some cases the resulting grain becomes poisonous to people or animals which can in some cases cause disease (fungal most often).
  - jjtheblunt 7y ago
    good point, as i didn't word it correctly at all: how tricky is it to control diseases _among_ plant cultivars?
- Dumblydorr 7y ago
  You're correct. Pigs are very similar to humans anatomically, and biochemically mammals share a LOT of genetics, so its much easier for mutations to lead to species hopping pathogens. This is one reason why Eurasian cultures dominated historically speaking: they'd lived with livestock for much longer and evolution crafted those human populations to have numerous immunities that isolated, non livestock holding communities didnt have.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    Put in another way or with another interpretation: the arms race between disease and immune system in the animal-human-disease relationship led to very powerful diseases which the humans carried in their populations but were not largely affected by. When the Europeans started crossing oceans to contact very different civilizations they brought the diseases which themselves committed genocide because the new populations hadn't had the same difficulty or interactions with animals and diseases.