9 ms·

Another lovely fact is that more plant mass is eaten by the animals grown for food than humans, so the plant production problem is non-existent. At least when i

Another lovely fact is that more plant mass is eaten by the animals grown for food than humans, so the plant production problem is non-existent. At least when it comes to human consumption.

slothtrop 6y ago
Well plant production for meat includes things like soybeans and corn. While they're non-perishable it's not what those in food-insecure places would want to eat. Grains yes, but I hazard malnutrition is owing to lack of other food sources. On the local level I think companies lobby against redistributing excess foods for free to keep prices high. Something's got to give, either food waste is drastically diminished or we redistribute all of it.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  Redistributing crops for free means creating a catch-22 situation guaranteeing they will never have local farmers. Why be a subsistence farmer or cash cropper when the local market is flooded with free food?
  - slothtrop 6y ago
    Those in need aren't "the market". Notwithstanding that, farmers are often subsidized anyway.
yostrovs 6y ago
Are you saying that here in Texas, the dry, tall grass eaten by the longhorns could be more efficiently processed by poor people?
- Zigurd 6y ago
  Are you saying that grass fed beef is a significant portion of the market?
  - yostrovs 6y ago
    Grass fed livestock is indeed a large portion of the world's meat consumption. Places like Argentina, Brazil, New Zealand, England, Texas have a great deal of cows, sheep, and goats walking the land and not fed through a trough. Please account those in your calculations of what it would take to replace a cow with a pile of corn.
    - Zigurd 6y ago
      Labelled grass fed beef that has not seen a feedlot is under 1% of the US market. It is also a dubious proposition that grass fed beef has any environmental advantages. At best it will find a niche as a luxury product as meat is replaced by plant-based foods.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        Much of it is also unpalatable.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      Even in Argentina, the amount of beef that is purely grass-fed has dwindled. The popular image of standard Argentinian beef coming from bulls roaming the pampas has been obsolete for at least a decade now. Argentinian beefs are now fed maize etc. on feedlots like in most other developed countries.
  - missedthecue 6y ago
    93% of a cows diet is grazed grass. Only the finishing faze involves corn
    - Zigurd 6y ago
      Feedlot cattle more than double in weight in under 200 days. Beef cattle are slaughtered at under 24 months. How could 93% of a feedlot animal's diet be grazed grass?
randomdata 6y ago
> the plant production problem is non-existent. 1. Not all dirt is equal. Land being able to grow some kind of plant matter does not mean that the land is suitable for growing plants humans will eat. 2. The plants animals eat are easy to process mechanically at huge scale. The plants humans eat, not so much. It's far from a solved problem. Meat is the historical solution.
- cogman10 6y ago
  > Land being able to grow some kind of plant matter does not mean that the land is suitable for growing plants humans will eat. I don't agree. Ground that can grow animal food pretty much always can grow a human food. I know of no exception (particularly for high production foods). About the only exception I can think of is undeveloped grazing land in the mountains. However, that's such a small percentage of the food that goes into feeding livestock that it's hardly worth mentioning. Most of our meats don't come from animals living on mountain ranges, that's too expensive. It takes ~2 acres to pasture a single cow if you don't actively farm that pasture. On the flip side, that same 2 acres if farmed can easily feed about ~2 cows. In other words, you cut your land requirements in half if you don't pasture your cows. > The plants animals eat are easy to process mechanically at huge scale. The plants humans eat, not so much. Humans do require a bit more processing of their foods than animals do, but not much and not enough to introduce any sort of scaling problem. Certainly not more costly than meat processing. Most meat processing requires manual interaction which is super expensive. On the flip side, plant based processing is pretty much completely automated. About the only part that isn't 100% automated is transport (and usually harvesting, though that's changing fast). As with everything, manual processes are the most expensive part of anything because humans cost a lot of money. Meat is a solution to the energy density problem. Meats are high in protein and energy which makes for a good winter food for farmers (so long as you can keep it cold, it will last a long time).
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    > Most of our meats don't come from animals living on mountain ranges, that's too expensive. It's also an ecological mess. Cows aren't native to North American mountain ranges and are tremendously destructive. Also, native predators get hunted to protect the non-native cattle which causes an even bigger environmental mess. > On the flip side, that same 2 acres if farmed can easily feed about ~2 cows. Yes? But it's a terrible practice. The cows end up piled atop each other in big barns waste deep in their own shit. Then they end up draining the barns into massive shit ponds which have to be filtered with large RO systems. The densely packed cattle are in such poor health they are over-medicated to prevent disease and that medication ends up in the food chain. Pasture raised beef is just much better. I'd just as soon we limited how much total beef was raised and did it in pastures rather than corn-fed barn raised beef. Its more humane and while it's not been proven, the large amounts of antibiotics in barn raised beef is almost certain to have effects on humans who eat that beef.

Another lovely fact is that more plant mass is eaten by the animals grown for food than humans, so the plant production problem is non-existent. At least when it comes to human consumption.

slothtrop 6y ago

Well plant production for meat includes things like soybeans and corn. While they're non-perishable it's not what those in food-insecure places would want to eat. Grains yes, but I hazard malnutrition is owing to lack of other food sources. On the local level I think companies lobby against redistributing excess foods for free to keep prices high. Something's got to give, either food waste is drastically diminished or we redistribute all of it.

zdragnar 6y ago
Redistributing crops for free means creating a catch-22 situation guaranteeing they will never have local farmers. Why be a subsistence farmer or cash cropper when the local market is flooded with free food?
- slothtrop 6y ago
  Those in need aren't "the market". Notwithstanding that, farmers are often subsidized anyway.

yostrovs 6y ago

Are you saying that here in Texas, the dry, tall grass eaten by the longhorns could be more efficiently processed by poor people?

Zigurd 6y ago
Are you saying that grass fed beef is a significant portion of the market?
- yostrovs 6y ago
  Grass fed livestock is indeed a large portion of the world's meat consumption. Places like Argentina, Brazil, New Zealand, England, Texas have a great deal of cows, sheep, and goats walking the land and not fed through a trough. Please account those in your calculations of what it would take to replace a cow with a pile of corn.
  - Zigurd 6y ago
    Labelled grass fed beef that has not seen a feedlot is under 1% of the US market. It is also a dubious proposition that grass fed beef has any environmental advantages. At best it will find a niche as a luxury product as meat is replaced by plant-based foods.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      Much of it is also unpalatable.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    Even in Argentina, the amount of beef that is purely grass-fed has dwindled. The popular image of standard Argentinian beef coming from bulls roaming the pampas has been obsolete for at least a decade now. Argentinian beefs are now fed maize etc. on feedlots like in most other developed countries.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  93% of a cows diet is grazed grass. Only the finishing faze involves corn
  - Zigurd 6y ago
    Feedlot cattle more than double in weight in under 200 days. Beef cattle are slaughtered at under 24 months. How could 93% of a feedlot animal's diet be grazed grass?

randomdata 6y ago

> the plant production problem is non-existent. 1. Not all dirt is equal. Land being able to grow some kind of plant matter does not mean that the land is suitable for growing plants humans will eat. 2. The plants animals eat are easy to process mechanically at huge scale. The plants humans eat, not so much. It's far from a solved problem. Meat is the historical solution.

cogman10 6y ago
> Land being able to grow some kind of plant matter does not mean that the land is suitable for growing plants humans will eat. I don't agree. Ground that can grow animal food pretty much always can grow a human food. I know of no exception (particularly for high production foods). About the only exception I can think of is undeveloped grazing land in the mountains. However, that's such a small percentage of the food that goes into feeding livestock that it's hardly worth mentioning. Most of our meats don't come from animals living on mountain ranges, that's too expensive. It takes ~2 acres to pasture a single cow if you don't actively farm that pasture. On the flip side, that same 2 acres if farmed can easily feed about ~2 cows. In other words, you cut your land requirements in half if you don't pasture your cows. > The plants animals eat are easy to process mechanically at huge scale. The plants humans eat, not so much. Humans do require a bit more processing of their foods than animals do, but not much and not enough to introduce any sort of scaling problem. Certainly not more costly than meat processing. Most meat processing requires manual interaction which is super expensive. On the flip side, plant based processing is pretty much completely automated. About the only part that isn't 100% automated is transport (and usually harvesting, though that's changing fast). As with everything, manual processes are the most expensive part of anything because humans cost a lot of money. Meat is a solution to the energy density problem. Meats are high in protein and energy which makes for a good winter food for farmers (so long as you can keep it cold, it will last a long time).
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > Most of our meats don't come from animals living on mountain ranges, that's too expensive. It's also an ecological mess. Cows aren't native to North American mountain ranges and are tremendously destructive. Also, native predators get hunted to protect the non-native cattle which causes an even bigger environmental mess. > On the flip side, that same 2 acres if farmed can easily feed about ~2 cows. Yes? But it's a terrible practice. The cows end up piled atop each other in big barns waste deep in their own shit. Then they end up draining the barns into massive shit ponds which have to be filtered with large RO systems. The densely packed cattle are in such poor health they are over-medicated to prevent disease and that medication ends up in the food chain. Pasture raised beef is just much better. I'd just as soon we limited how much total beef was raised and did it in pastures rather than corn-fed barn raised beef. Its more humane and while it's not been proven, the large amounts of antibiotics in barn raised beef is almost certain to have effects on humans who eat that beef.