3 ms·

I, as a citizen of the US dependent on others growing this food on behalf of me, am fine with reduced yields and higher meat prices, to put more pressure on Rus

by coryrc 4y ago

I, as a citizen of the US dependent on others growing this food on behalf of me, am fine with reduced yields and higher meat prices, to put more pressure on Russia. I also wish we'd send in the big guns to put a lot more pressure in focused places.

jerf 4y ago
"Reduced yields" and "higher meat prices" is a benign way of saying "people may starve to death". What may be an inconvenience to you, a probably-rich person on the global scale, who can afford to outbid poor people when food gets short, is not necessarily just an inconvenience for others.
- furyg3 4y ago
  People do not need to starve to death. We use a ton of land to grow a ton of plants that we then feed to a ton of animals which we then feed to humans. Or we could, you know, just eat the plants. Calculations vary (a lot), but doing that could reduce global agricultural land use from 4 billion hectares to just 1.†. On top of that we're completely wasting 30-40% of the food we do produce.†† This is not to say that all meat consumption is 'inefficient'. Cattle can graze on land that is not suitable for farming, and animals generally eat more of the physical plants than we do (animals on a feedlot are often eating fibrous parts of the plant like stalks and stubble and not just the parts we humans like to eat). But there's no way around it, industrialized meat in its current form is an extraordinarily inefficient use of land and has terrible environmental consequences. Also relevant to any discussion on fertilizer is that excessive usage basically destroys the soil. We've moved away from time-tested methods of managing crops through things like crop rotation, cover crops, promoting natural vegetation in key areas... to over-tilling, over-fertilizing, mono-cropping, and this is taking its toil on the ground we use to farm. Fertilizer is also responsible for eutrophication (nutrient pollution) which destroys local ecosystems and poisons the water. Not to mention nutrition != calories. Fertilizer is absolutely a modern technological wonder which has allowed humanity to produce food at tremendous scale, and I would not argue that it does not have its place in farming. But the current singular focus on "more yield per hectare" is a very modern, naive approach to farming that throws out a ton of considerations, and is absolutely unecessary. † https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets †† https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs
FpUser 4y ago
>"I, as a citizen of the US" Come back when you are willing to starve to death as this is what millions in other countries are facing
notyourday 4y ago
> I, as a citizen of the US dependent on others growing this food on behalf of me, am fine with reduced yields and higher meat prices, to put more pressure on Russia. You are missing a critical piece of information here: what is your yearly income and what is your family size?

by coryrc 4y ago

jerf 4y ago

"Reduced yields" and "higher meat prices" is a benign way of saying "people may starve to death". What may be an inconvenience to you, a probably-rich person on the global scale, who can afford to outbid poor people when food gets short, is not necessarily just an inconvenience for others.

furyg3 4y ago
People do not need to starve to death. We use a ton of land to grow a ton of plants that we then feed to a ton of animals which we then feed to humans. Or we could, you know, just eat the plants. Calculations vary (a lot), but doing that could reduce global agricultural land use from 4 billion hectares to just 1.†. On top of that we're completely wasting 30-40% of the food we do produce.†† This is not to say that all meat consumption is 'inefficient'. Cattle can graze on land that is not suitable for farming, and animals generally eat more of the physical plants than we do (animals on a feedlot are often eating fibrous parts of the plant like stalks and stubble and not just the parts we humans like to eat). But there's no way around it, industrialized meat in its current form is an extraordinarily inefficient use of land and has terrible environmental consequences. Also relevant to any discussion on fertilizer is that excessive usage basically destroys the soil. We've moved away from time-tested methods of managing crops through things like crop rotation, cover crops, promoting natural vegetation in key areas... to over-tilling, over-fertilizing, mono-cropping, and this is taking its toil on the ground we use to farm. Fertilizer is also responsible for eutrophication (nutrient pollution) which destroys local ecosystems and poisons the water. Not to mention nutrition != calories. Fertilizer is absolutely a modern technological wonder which has allowed humanity to produce food at tremendous scale, and I would not argue that it does not have its place in farming. But the current singular focus on "more yield per hectare" is a very modern, naive approach to farming that throws out a ton of considerations, and is absolutely unecessary. † https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets †† https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs

FpUser 4y ago

>"I, as a citizen of the US" Come back when you are willing to starve to death as this is what millions in other countries are facing

notyourday 4y ago

> I, as a citizen of the US dependent on others growing this food on behalf of me, am fine with reduced yields and higher meat prices, to put more pressure on Russia. You are missing a critical piece of information here: what is your yearly income and what is your family size?