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Once meat is eradicated in the name of agricultural efficiency, non-grain, non-bean vegetables will probably be next on the chopping block.
by blix 6y ago
Once meat is eradicated in the name of agricultural efficiency, non-grain, non-bean vegetables will probably be next on the chopping block.
- pvaldes 6y agoYou have a point here, yup. Some vegetables are luxury food, and less efficient than cattle. Replacing nature with monocultures is a problem. If we stop eating cattle for that, there is not moral room to keep eating chocolate, for example. Or coffee
- blix 6y agoBased on some rough napkin calculations, the caloric efficiency by land of broccoli is about the same as industrial meat. Optimizing diet for land efficiency probably does not produce healthy diets. You can find strong evidence for this trade-off in the changes of average human health at the advent of agriculture.
- arrosenberg 6y agoMuch lower water usage and impact on the land used though, even if it's bad soil and you have to use a ton of fertilizer.
- dilettantism 6y agoNot to mention broccoli probably doesn't feel the conscious terror of its imminent death.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago> Based on some rough napkin calculations, the caloric efficiency by land of broccoli is about the same as industrial meat. Not even close. Did you forget to consider the inputs into meat? If you want to check against someone else's math, here's a paper that claims we can increase global calorie availability by 70% by shifting crops grown for animal feed (40% of crops in USA btw) to crops grown for human consumption: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015/pdf https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034...
- blix 6y agoI did include the inputs, with the assumption of high efficiency feed for industrial meat production, i.e. a feed conversion rate of about 6. This paper is about shifting animal corn to human corn, not about shifting animal corn to broccoli. Corn produces about 6 times as many calories per hectare as broccoli.
- jamil7 6y agoNot this again, why is it always broccoli that gets brought up in this argument? Nobody is eating kgs broccoli per day to get their calories. Compare industrial meat with beans or rice.
- blix 6y agoThe point is that, as a source of calories, many vegetables are about as inefficient by land as industrial meat. Optimizing calories per unit land is an implicit or explicit goal of many of the comments throughout this thread. I think this is a poor optimization target and there are much better arguments against meat consumption that aren't also applicable to broccoli. I chose broccoli because it is my favorite vegetable and I eat quite a lot of it.
- jamil7 6y agoFair point! it was a bit of knee jerk reaction on my part as a previous thread I'd read on HN about climate an animal agriculture had the exact same broccoli point.
- vzidex 6y ago>Some vegetables are luxury food, and less efficient than cattle [Citation needed] I'll assume you're arguing in good faith, but this argument is a common straw man made by people who are against plant-based diets. In fact, the only case where you have a point is that the worst case for chocolate produces more emissions than the best case for beef [1]. Odds are that if you're eating beef in North America it comes from a factory farm [2], while people who advocate for plant-based diets are often for more sustainable farming practices too, and will try to buy chocolate/coffee/avocados/whatever in sustainable ways. Finally, the most important point is that it's not an either/or proposition - you can be _both_ for eating less meat, and producing plant products in more sustainable ways. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46459714 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46459714 [2] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-end-factory-f_b_1018840 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-end-factory-f_b_1...
- pvaldes 6y ago> [Citation needed] pvaldes, 2020 Some facts are so well stablished in human knowledge that there is not need to cite it. For example: "Some crops are more productive than other. Point". We, humans know it since 10.000 years ago. Anybody can see it with their eyes. Not need to repeat what Aristotle would say about it. Primary and secondary production, is a big fat chapter in any Ecology handbook. Any Plant physiology handbook will explain the differences between CAM and C4 plants If nobody is trying to produce a natural sized cow sculpture made of vanille beans, there must be a reason.
- vzidex 6y ago> Some facts are so well stablished in human knowledge that there is not need to cite it. So, your statement is true because you say that it's common knowledge that it's true? > Primary and secondary production, is a big fat chapter in any Ecology handbook OK, then kindly provide one of these ecology handbooks that proves your point > If nobody is trying to produce a natural sized cow sculpture made of vanille beans, there must be a reason What do you even mean by this?
- 6y ago
- duhuh 6y agoIf I eat seafood I rob from ocean species, illegal labor, the hungry poor, and the future. Sometimes, farmland represents the same problem, sometimes not. Seafood is an unsolved problem globally. It has no form of ethical consumption.
- missedthecue 6y agoMost seafood is produced and sold by the hungry poor. You're not doing them any favors by boycotting their goods.
- mping 6y agoNot in the short run but in the long run everybody would win. If you lower demand I assume people would find another way of living that would be more sustainable.
- duhuh 6y agoI don’t believe humans should operate as pure, replicators– doing any action for the chance to continue to exist. Fishing is global and global fishing runs on slave labor. I am doing them a favor. It’s called ethics for a reason. You are presented with 100 things you can eat. Seafood and cocaine are probably the most unethical. Why not skip them?
- defnotashton2 6y agoWhat impact have your decisions had on unsustainable farming practices? I'll wait
- duhuh 6y agoI have lessened the demand by myself and five people I was able to convince. It’s a question of ethics. What ethical stands have you taken? How are they helping?
- duhuh 6y agoI’m not sure why you’re being downvoted, but yes, as a society if we find that we are over-using resources, we should cut out those foods. We seem to value a human population numbered in the billions. Some foods won’t work for that population.
- rdtwo 6y agoI don’t really see us worrying about food scarcity any time soon. We still burn the bulk of our corn as gas until that changes I see no issue with calorie shortages
- blix 6y agoAs someone with dietary restrictions that prevent me from eating corn (among many other things), I do not find this argument very comforting.
- duhuh 6y agoThis is a thread about worrying about seafood scarcity already. Not-anytime-soon has arrived on a food-by-food basis. In the case of seafood, it’s an entire food group!
- tempsolution 6y agoYeah an interesting way of looking at things... Let's just multiply into the trillions and see what's left. I mean once you get to a trillion, you need to ration your food and cut the ones that are not sustainable, right? Ever thought about cutting the amount of people living on the planet to reasonable levels? But that would be obviously immoral, right? (Note: You wouldn't even have to kill anyone, the human lifespan will do that for you if you prevent people having more than one child on average)