23 ms·

Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans

185 points by sndean 4y ago

hamilyon2 4y ago
Can we produce carbohydrates for animal consumption usung industrial chemistry?
codefreeordie 4y ago
Most of the world's grain is eaten by humans' food. We're really really good at efficiently producing grain -- especially field corn (which is not super desirable as human food without significant processing), and we grow lots of animals of all sorts. Naturally, when we can, we feed those animals on field corn -- they don't complain, and it's the cheapest food we can produce for them. In the US we also subsidize corn pretty heavily, which has biased us towards maximizing efficiency on this crop rather than on some other grain. It's unclear to me whether we would have become more efficient with some other grain (in terms of food calories out per unit of resources/land in) had we produced as durable of an economic incentive to do so -- but regardless, it would still be a grain of some sort that ended up being the caloric efficiency maximum product, and therefore what animal feed would end up being.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > which is not super desirable as human food without significant processing I see this repeated all the time. Is making cornmeal or cornflour really that much more involved than wheat flour, semolina, or rolled oats?
  - 988747 4y ago
    It's really not about that, corn products are simply bad for health - too much sugar, to little more valuable nutrients.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Cornmeal is less than 1% simple sugars, as is cornflour. While it's not great compared to high fiber low gi sources like brown rice or sweet potato, it's not sugary at all. You have to split the polysachharides somehow to make it into sugar. Of course if you spend extra time, money and energy turning your relatively ordinarily healthy grain (which is admittedly a low bar) into sugar you spend more time, money and energy and wind up with sugar. It's no different from wheat in that regard other than you should maybe add a bit more fiber to the meal.
    - logifail 4y ago
      > It's really not about that, corn products are simply bad for health - too much sugar, to little more valuable nutrients For the majority, sure. In our immediate family I have to disagree, after many months of (undiagnosed) illness, and after several trips to hospital, my son was recently diagnosed with Coeliac[0]. Now corn products are now a key component of his diet. [0] https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-diseases/celiac-disease https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-disea...
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - codefreeordie 4y ago
    No, probably not. Mostly it gets said because sweet corn is tasty when prepared simply as a whole food, and it's what most people think of when they see the word "corn".
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      I mostly see it as a bad faith argument for why the only possible productive use of x fraction of land is for growing feed and herding cattle and didn't know the 'animal feed corn' and corn as a grain for people are the same crop. If it's basically the same level of involvement as as bleached flour, then the only real relevant issues are how to source a balanced protein so you don't have to eat half a kilo of carbs when you don't need the energy and how distructive other micronutrient sources are.
  - h2odragon 4y ago
    A little bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization Best use of maize, IMO, is fermentation. Let the yeast have it first, take off the volatiles, then feed the mash leftovers to tasty critters.
    - finiteseries 4y ago
      Neither cornmeal nor cornflour are nixtamalized, but historically most consumed corn was before the inexperienced European colonizers began using it.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        To have "nixtamalized" maize appears to be what ingredients lists call "processed with lime". Pellagra epidemics have arisen through failure to process with lime. The Mayans got their cooking water from out of cenotes, skylights of limestone cave systems, which might have made it naturally nixtamalizing. Were their grinding stones of limestone? (The grinding platform, the metate, was not.) Don't know what the Navaho did or do.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - littlestymaar 4y ago
    It isn't really relevant anymore because the food source is much more diverse than what it used to be, but when some western people started cultivating corn, and feading mostly out of it, they started to suffer from acute lack of tryptophan and vitamin b3, called pellagra, causing millions of death over several centuries. Mesoamerican civilizations built on top of corn had a specific corn processing step called nixtamalization, which avoided the issue altogether, but unfortunately wasn't imported along with corn during the colonizations of the Americas. But as long as you can get enough tryptophan and vitamin b3 otherwise, corn is completely fine as a main source of energy.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  You keep repeating the word "efficient" but there is nothing less efficient than animal farming. By far. Both in terms of land, water and energy usage.
  - baisq 4y ago
    Is there any way of obtaining beef that is more efficient than cow farming?
    - codefreeordie 4y ago
      Nope. Especially given the extent to which "cow" is a thing that we created because we wanted more/better beef. Over centuries, we have become increasingly efficient at producing beef, and are extremely efficient at it. It is probably not possible to be much more efficient using whole-plant crops and growing whole-animal beef.
  - saalweachter 4y ago
    Eh, beef, maybe, but the math basically comes down to: wheat, 4 million calories per acre, corn, 15 million. Take that 15 million calories of corn and feed it to chickens for a 3:1 calorie exchange and you've got 5 million calories of chicken per acre. It's more complicated than that, but corn yields are so high that they can overpower the otherwise inefficiency of meat production. Potatoes are as good as corn, and rice nearly so, but just from a land usage perspective chicken is no worse than eating wheat bread.
    - diordiderot 4y ago
      Fascinating! I had no idea corn was so calorific. Do you know how the inputs compare? As in are the amounts of fertilizer and pesticides similar?
      - saalweachter 4y ago
        Not really; there's also the complication that you don't actually feed your chickens straight corn. Because chickens need protein in their meal, it's more like, 2 acres of corn and 1 acre of soybeans, for 36 million calories from 3 acres to get 12 million calories of chicken for a chicken-per-acre calories of 4 million. You also get your chicken manure as a fertilizer out at the end, but then, if you were already collecting your humanure it's probably not a net gain. From a pure land usage standpoint, you're still better off if we're getting most of our calories from corn, potatoes and rice directly. Once you start adding in necessary protein, you can either subsist on soy, or feed that soy with corn to chickens and pigs (which have a worse feed ratio compared to chickens, but can supplement on food waste to reclaim calories that would otherwise go to waste) for roughly similar food-per-acre footprints.
- baisq 4y ago
  >Most of the world's grain is eaten by humans' food. Evidently. It's like when, talking about how there are too many cars, they make a separation between "cars" and "humans", as if cars weren't driven by humans. It's very basic manipulation.
  - morsch 4y ago
    You can reduce the number of cars without reducing the number of people. Human beings can, in fact, exist without a car. We can also reduce the amount of livestock we keep without reducing the number of people, by consuming less of it. This seems really obvious. How is it manipulation?
fortran77 4y ago
I've started eating barley a couple of times a week, which is used primarily as an animal grain. I've found it makes a great alternative to rice or quinoa. From Wikipedia: > Globally 70% of barley production is used as animal fodder,[4] while 30% as a source of fermentable material for beer and certain distilled beverages, and as a component of various foods. It is used in soups and stews, and in barley bread of various cultures. Barley grains are commonly made into malt in a traditional and ancient method of preparation.
- diogenescynic 4y ago
  Beef and barley soup is excellent.
  - messe 4y ago
    Lamb shanks, barley, and a good stout or porter are fantastic ingredients for a stew.
- R0b0t1 4y ago
  Try buckwheat and rye as well.
- hinkley 4y ago
  I grew up in a land where 95% of the farms grew the same two crops and it was unsettling if you think about it. When mosaic virus started to become a problem here there were a number of stories published about how few grains represent most of our calories and two epidemics happening in the same year or couple of years could put us into a very, very bad situation. I decided probably 20 years ago that the simplest thing I could do was to eat multigrain bread, based on the observation that it's not just acres of alternative grain that matter in a situation like this, it's experience with grains that matter. A farmer who has grown 5 acres of millet for a decade can easily ramp that to 50, 100, and his neighbors can impose upon him for advice to do the same (probably the next year or the year after since farmers gonna farm). But if you don't know anyone who grows millet or sorghum or chia or whatever, it's going to take you years to sort that out, and if you're older you might just decide to try to avoid having to change at all.
karmakurtisaani 4y ago
In 70 something years we went from 60% forest coverage of earth's land mass to 30%. I can't help but wonder how it would be without any animal agriculture.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Someone about ten years ago worked out that the snows of Kilimanjaro are fed by the vegetation upwind from the mountain. Whatever global warming is doing, deforestation is doing faster.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  Do you have data/source for this? Interested in learning more, didn't think it was this much.
  - karmakurtisaani 4y ago
    Sorry I'm writing this on my phone holding a baby, so not the best situation for in depth research. The numbers I quote are from memory based on watching the latest David Attenborough documentary. Not a great reference, I know. Edit: highly recommend the documentary though.
  - Fezzik 4y ago
    https://ourworldindata.org/world-lost-one-third-forests https://ourworldindata.org/world-lost-one-third-forests and the rate at which we deforest and destroy grassland to make grazing land is ever-increasing.
    - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
      Thanks very much for posting. I'd point out that the numbers from that very useful link are wildly, wildly different from what the parent commenter posted: 1. The graphs appear to be showing that 29% of the Earth's land surface is "barren land", i.e. deserts, glaciers, rocky terrain, etc. In 1900, 48% of the NON barren land was forests, so 34% of the Earth's total land was forested. 2. In 2018 the percentage of forested non-barren land was down to 38%, or 27% of Earth's total land. 34% to 27% of total land area from 1900 to 2018 is a major difference from the parent commenter's assertion of "In 70 something years we went from 60% forest coverage of earth's land mass to 30%".
wintermutestwin 4y ago
A staggering amount of California's water is used for alfalfa, which gets shipped to China to feed cows. In essence, we are allowing certain farmers to sell CA's water to China.
- innagadadavida 4y ago
  Agriculture consumes a lot of water in this drought stricken state. The worst part is that many of these farms pump water from the ground thereby collapsing underground aquifers. This is an irreversible change and has caused the Central Valley to sink by several feet over the last few decades. There is zero political will to solve this. Instead we waste time and energy on pointless green initiatives, desalination and harassing homeowners to stop watering lawns. Keep in mind the labor used to grow these plants is imported as well. California is a very wealthy state and giving up some of these agricultural businesses to other states and maybe even to our poorer southern neighbors will be an overall good thing with minimal loss in tax revenues. These lands should be used to grow trees instead.
  - Jistern 4y ago
    California will never, ever, ever run short of water... unless the Pacific Ocean dries up. Cheap electricity will result in cheap desalination. The sky is not falling.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      running short of water does not mean you have nothing to drink, it means famine. madagascar has terrible famine right now, becauae there is no rain. In Syria, all crops that are not irigated have died. current irrigation water is free. You cant use water from desalination, because it takes many tons of water to grow one kilo of food, and tens of tons of water to grow a kilo of beef. that would drive up prices more than 10x, which menas famine. you people just don't understand the shitstirm that's coming one the crops fail on two important crop producing nations simultaneously
      - 4y ago
petermcneeley 4y ago
But if we eat the animals that eat the grain arnt we kinda eating the grain... like indirectly? If I grind the grain into a kinda dust and then let tiny organisms eat the dust and then cook those organisms am I eating grain?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- michaelbuckbee 4y ago
  You are, but you're eating far more grain than you would otherwise be as there are huge energy losses (the animals expend energy being alive after eating the grain) than if you at the grain directly.
- danhak 4y ago
  About 90% of energy is lost from one trophic level to the next
  - ephbit 4y ago
    With modern urban lifestyles requiring (for many people) a lot less calories than ancient lifestyles of running around some great plains this is actually a feature to some degree for many people People need to take up protein. If the protein comes with significantly more calories than they burn, they're more likely to gain weight.
    - ephbit 4y ago
      Not sure why this got down voted. Maybe because it can be read as if I were arguing in favor of eating more meat. I am not. I am just pointing out why primitive advice such as "Just replace the meat in your diet with grain" might lead to new problems. People should stop reducing this discussion to the matter of calories. As far as I know people who eat too little protein, overeat on stuff like grains for this very reason. The body wants the protein.
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/IofL0 https://archive.ph/IofL0 http://web.archive.org/web/20220624002902/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/06/23/most-of-the-worlds-grain-is-not-eaten-by-humans http://web.archive.org/web/20220624002902/https://www.econom...
fortysixdegrees 4y ago
- padjo 4y ago
  Or do both!
- zamfi 4y ago
  The problem with this kind of post is not, as you might surmise, that people disagree with the notion that reducing meat consumption is helpful from an emissions perspective. It is that the binary presentation implies an either-or when in fact both are helpful. Plus it just shits on people and nobody likes that.
  - heretogetout 4y ago
    Isn't the math clear that meat consumption requires more emissions than non-meat consumption, on average (as in per calorie)?
    - zamfi 4y ago
      Did I say somewhere that meat consumption is not problematic?
      - heretogetout 4y ago
        I'm responding to "people disagree with the notion that reducing meat consumption is helpful from an emissions perspective". People may disagree but it's like disagreeing that 100 > 1 -- who cares what they think?
        ncmncm 4y ago
        What it says is > "not ... that people disagree"
        4y ago
orionion 4y ago
The grass family contains over 9,000 species distributed throughout the world. Of that, 35 have been cultivated as cereals. Of these, the following are important today: Barley, Corn, Goat grass, Millet, Oats, Rice, Sorghum, and Wheat. Of the important grains and/or cereals listed above, only corn (maize) is a New World native. Corn is an important member of the grass family. Corn (Zea mays) was domesticated from a wild plant called teosinte (Zea mexicana) about 7000 years ago. This species was considered sacred and was central to Mayan creation myths. Famous Mayan images show an earth god sprouting from the corn stalk. Corn is the most efficient of the modern cereal grains in converting water and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates. Maize formed the basis for the Mayan, Aztec, and Inca civilizations in the New World. Corn, beans, and squash were planted together by early native Americans in companion planting to benefit all three species. There is no wild plant or evidence of one that resembles corn with giant husked ears; besides the ears, teosinte and corn look very similar. Columbus took corn to Europe on the first voyage but it did not gain wide attention. Native Americans had over 100 uses for the corn plant and its fruits. https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethnobotany/food/grains.shtml https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethnobotany/food/grains.sh...
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Any reason not to have rye on your "important today" list?
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Official US agricultural policy and habitual farming practice have made growing maize together with beans and/or squash, tomatoes, and peppers nearly impossible to do competitively. That could be fixed with policy changes that would be fought by the biggest agribusinesses. Corn is among the most efficient natural converters of sunlight into chemical energy useful to the plant (with some left over for the farmer), but photovoltaics beat it by up to 10x. Capturing CO2 and producing glucose, starch, ethanol, and kerosene by an organic chemical process could be much more productive, by any measure, than via corn, which must anyway also grow stalk and leaves. The power could come from solar panels sharing fields with vegetable crops (e.g. tomatoes and peppers) that benefit from the shade they would provide by multiplying yield, and with wind turbines which take up very little ground footprint. Combining solar, wind, farming, and chemical processes yields much better results than keeping them separate.
samatman 4y ago
Which is a very good thing indeed, because it makes our food system robust by operating at a large caloric surplus. When crop failures lead to rising grain prices, ranchers respond by not buying as much grain for their animals. The result is less Prime-grade beef and a whole lot more grain available.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  In reality, rich countries are still buying all the grain they can to feed their livestock and carry on as before, just a bit more expensive, while the poorer populations experience the real shortages.
  - samatman 4y ago
    In reality, the United States is the largest exporter of calories in the world, and the overwhelming source of direct food aid, and has been since WWII.
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      That is a contradiction to my statement in what way? Do you think the United States is the only wealthy country? The fact is that the war in Ukraine is leading to shortages and those are felt by the poorest, not the richest.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - samatman 4y ago
        Every time! I don't talk to dishonest people. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=bayesian_horse%20vegan&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
        cheese_goddess 4y ago
argella 4y ago
We’re all going to be living on cricket powder in 20 years.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Ssh you’re letting the cat out of the bag on Soylent’s pivot
- baisq 4y ago
  Or in 8 years, according to the 2030 Agenda.
Zpalmtree 4y ago
Eat your gruel peasant, the planet needs it
- weregiraffe 4y ago
  You WILL live in a pod, you WILL eat bugs, you WILL never touch a woman, you WILL cope and seethe on 4chan.
stefantalpalaru 4y ago
lvl102 4y ago
Seems we need to reduce world population by 1/2 or more. Aren’t we at least contracting in developed countries? Anyway to ask India/China to stop growing so fast?
- bsder 4y ago
  Easy. Educate women. As soon as that happens, the reproduction rate falls below the replacement rate. The problem is that global society is actually not ready for a population that shrinks instead of grows. Many of our institutions are effectively pyramid schemes that rely on more people entering the bottom and paying for them than pull out money and exit from the top. (Side note: I believe China is actually falling. There have been significant programs attempting to get women to have more children. Between education and "one child" (which is no longer in force) China has some demographic issues ahead.)
  - workah0lic 4y ago
  - DoreenMichele 4y ago
    Educating women isn't enough. Women also need reproductive rights -- something that just took a hit in the US -- and the ability to support themselves. I'm not remembering/finding the rest of that list of 4 or 5 items.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    > Easy. Educate women. Since men are physically more powerful, you also need a society with laws and people that will protect women and women’s rights. Women’s rights to mate with who they want, when they want, how they want, and earn income and be financially independent to be able to make those decisions independently.
    - rexpop 4y ago
      Educating women is the most effective way of equipping them to protect their own interests. To enlighten yourself, consider reading Federici's "Revolution at Point Zero" and Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed."
Fargoan 4y ago
Go vegan
- causasui 4y ago
  Yeah but my ancestors natural human history circle of life top-of-the-food chain indigenous people crop deaths protein deficiency b12 free-range cage-free humanely-killed cow overpopulation lions and gazelles moral relativity plants feel pain canine teeth bacon is delicious though
  - uxcolumbo 4y ago
    Ha… good one… seems you dealt with this topic many times before. Add slaughterhouse workers and PTSD to the mix.
    - cheese_goddess 4y ago
      You guys are so eloquent and persuasive, it's incomprehensible why everyone has not joined your ranks already. Btw, congratulations for sneaking real problems like B12 and other nutrient deficiencies suffered by vegans in with all the straw men: > Most vegans show adequate B12 levels to make clinical deficiency unlikely but nonetheless show restricted activity of B12 related enzymes, leading to elevated homocysteine levels. Strong evidence has been gathered over the past decade that even slightly elevated homocysteine levels increase risk of heart disease and stroke and pregnancy complications. https://www.vegansociety.com/resources/nutrition-and-health/nutrients/vitamin-b12/what-every-vegan-should-know-about-vitamin-b12 https://www.vegansociety.com/resources/nutrition-and-health/... My bingo card says: "Typical irresponsible dismissal of the health risks of a vegan diet".
      - causasui 4y ago
        None of those are straw men; I've heard every single one, including one of my favorites "cow overpopulation" from you "cheese goddess" specifically. The same way plenty of farm animals are supplemented with b12 for later human consumption, it's mindlessly easy to get the adequate amount of b12 in a vegan diet. Tons of vegan food come fortified, and if not, a 1000mg supplement once a week couldn't be simpler. Both the American Dietetic Association[0] and British Dietetic Association[1] confirm that a well-planned vegan diet is healthy for all stages of life. _My_ bingo card says: someone whose entire life and identity has been in animal agriculture takes personal umbrage to the notion that their lifestyle is immoral and destroying the planet. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/ [1] https://www.bda.uk.com/resource/vegetarian-vegan-plant-based-diet.html https://www.bda.uk.com/resource/vegetarian-vegan-plant-based...
zoomablemind 4y ago
> "... a Russian naval blockade has prevented past harvests from reaching their destinations. The loss of this output has caused already high grain prices to surge. The World Food Programme warns that 47m people are at risk of hunger as a result." I understand that the point of the article is about reallocating and tightening up the belts of consumption, so to speak. However, how about exerting more pressure onto the aggressor which russia openly is? The world needs to recognize russia's actions as deliberate and premeditated steps to cause the collapses in food supply chains. This is not opportunistic, but rather a calculated policy, just as it is with gas and oil supply. It's not about the cattle, it's about the "humans" in charge of the kremlin!
- roenxi 4y ago
  How will 'exerting more pressure' help? We may already be past the point where there is a good solution but the best approach so far would be de-escalation, negotiation and cooperation in an attempt to avoid all this. Every attempt to exert pressure has put the west in a less favourable position. More pressure has built an energy crisis in Europe; rivals in Asia awash with cheap gas and contributed to a global food shortage. This was a series of own-goals. The US should have taken a few deep breaths over the last few years and dialled back the anti-Russia sentiment rather than burning relations with Russia in an attempt to inconvenience Trump. Unless the plan is to trigger World War III the West's strategies can only be said to be failing. This could have been a 2nd Iraq invasion instead of becoming the mega-crisis that is unfolding.
  - zoomablemind 4y ago
    >...Every attempt to exert pressure has put the west in a less favourable position. There's a largest war started by russia (8 years ago!) and going on in the middle of Europe with a threat of use of nuclear weapons. As evident by now, russia is uncapable of maintaining any trustworthy agreements with any other nation, let alone its neighbors. It openly laughs at any civilized rule of law principles and considers this a weakness. It may not seem that way on a distance, but this war is against the West, against its values, its societies, and its economies. The whole world already feels the blows. Russia is increasingly acting as a rabid dog. The 'anti-russian sentiment' is a product of its own making, not for the first time in its imperial history. How does one deal with a rabid dog that brought itself to your yard? Asking the dog to deescalate? Abandoning your yard? Letting the dog into the house? This dog is driven by a violent agony and the violence will eventually tear it apart. But meanwhile someone needs to fend it off and contain. Ukraine so far is fending the rabid russia with its own flesh and blood. The war is on. Can the world exert more pressure? Not dragging feet with delivering the offered weapons. Not diluting the sanctions. Not agreeing to buy the stolen grains or harboring the russian assets. Consolidating and be decisive against the aggressor instead of making this Yankees' business or, worse, let the rabies take over Ukraine...
uwagar 4y ago
meat eating is destroying the planet.
- cheese_goddess 4y ago
  That is patently false. It is burning fossil fuels that is destroying the planet by contributing almost 75% of the global Greenhouse Gas Emissions: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#sector-by-sector-where-do-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-come-from https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#sector-by-sec... Please don't spread dangerous lies! By saying that meat is destroying the planet you're distracting from the true source of climate change: oil.
  - throwanapple 4y ago
    Biodiversity loss also counts as destroying the planet. Don't let climate change distract you from other sources of planet destruction. There's this concept called planetary boundaries.
    - cheese_goddess 4y ago
      > Don't let climate change distract you from other sources of planet destruction. Not a good wording. Climate change is a major driver of biodiversity loss. In general, there isn't any problem we're facing right now that's worse than climate change any way you look at it.
      - throwanapple 4y ago
        Not saying climate change isn't important, just that these systemic issues are interlinked and should be addressed together. We won't last long without healthy ecosystems.
        cheese_goddess 4y ago
        No objection there from me. I'm just saying that as far as I understand it, one important reason why climate change is bad is that it directly affects ecosystems. That we also destroy ecosystems directly must also be stressed as you say. And the two are indeed interlinked, for example habitat destruction causes both biodiversity loss and decreased ability to bind carbon. This "land use change" is a major source of emissions from agriculture and industrial farming is the main reason for it, for example rainforests razed to make space to grow soya to feed to cows. So yeah. I think we agree more than we disagree on that.
LittlePeter 4y ago
The charts in the article are PNG images. Yet the text in the charts is separate and is superimposed on the chart in precise position. How is this done? Is the journalist manually CSS-positioning the text? Is there a library? An internal Economist tool?
- lordgrenville 4y ago
  Asked a couple of days ago about a different article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31873761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31873761
cvccvroomvroom 4y ago
Drive south from Austin and head towards San Marcos. All of that short corn is "cow corn" for obvious climate change fart factory purposes.
cheese_goddess 4y ago
> Some grain by-products, such as maize husks, are unsuitable for human food. And feeding grain to animals does generate food for people indirectly, in the form of milk, meat and eggs. However, this process is highly wasteful. For every 100 calories of grain fed to a cow, just three emerge as beef. Along with other feed crops and pasture, rearing animals also uses land that could produce human food. But we don't only need calories. In fact we already produce and eat many more calories than we need (but we distribute them unevenly so that a third of the world eats too many and 2/3s not enough). The reason we feed all this grain to animals is so that they turn it into nutrient-dense meat, dairy and eggs. Those are rich in micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) that we can't get as well from grains (or not at all like B12 vitamin). So maybe farming looks "inefficient" if you consider only calories, but when you consider nutrients in general, meat (including seafood), dairy and eggs are actually the most efficient source of those we need to stay healthy and thrive. But even if we only count calories, the amount of cropland that we would free for rewilding if we stopped farming meat completely and produced no meat from ruminants, no pork or poultry, no dairy, and no eggs, is miniscule: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets#more-plant-based-diets-tend-to-need-less-cropland https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets#more-plant-based-d... In short, we'd go from 1.17 billion ha of cropland for farming animals and growing crops, to using 1 billion ha of cropland. That's a tiny change and it would most likely quickly need to grow as the global population increases. And it's such a tiny change because most of the land used to farm animals, or grow grains for animal feed, is not cropland, but pasture, which is for the most part not suitable for growing crops.
- concordDance 4y ago
  But a drastic decrease in pasture still gives lots of rewilding.
- throwanapple 4y ago
  Do you have sources for claiming animals are the most efficient source of those micronutrients? Where do those animals get those micronutrients from? Why do they still need to be injected with supplements like vitamin B12? Why do you discount use of pasture for rewilding?
blindmute 4y ago
Why is this a problem, exactly? 1. We already produce way more food than the entire world can eat, even if it were distributed equally 2. When population begins butting up against the limits of food production, demand for cheaper plant based food will rise. Most will be unable to afford meat, making the meat market naturally shrink itself for economic reasons. Likewise if meat becomes too expensive due to resource constraints. 3. At the point where population exceeds food supply, there will be at worst 1 generation of starvation, and then population will stabilize to have enough food 3a. Infinite growth of the population is not sustainable or desirable. Even if meat were banned, this same story will eventually happen again with any vegetable that is less calorie efficient to grow. Do we want 30 billion people eating literally one food, or 25 billion eating a varied, though less land efficient diet? At some point, the world will have to accept that there isn't enough food to have 3 children. At that point, when the 2 child policy is global, what kind of diet should be possible? We can stretch it so that we're all eating literally one crop and there's absolutely nothing more we can do to feed the world, but hopefully we stop breeding a bit earlier than that, to end with one where people can still enjoy meat.

185 points by sndean 4y ago

Can we produce carbohydrates for animal consumption usung industrial chemistry?

Most of the world's grain is eaten by humans' food. We're really really good at efficiently producing grain -- especially field corn (which is not super desirable as human food without significant processing), and we grow lots of animals of all sorts. Naturally, when we can, we feed those animals on field corn -- they don't complain, and it's the cheapest food we can produce for them. In the US we also subsidize corn pretty heavily, which has biased us towards maximizing efficiency on this crop rather than on some other grain. It's unclear to me whether we would have become more efficient with some other grain (in terms of food calories out per unit of resources/land in) had we produced as durable of an economic incentive to do so -- but regardless, it would still be a grain of some sort that ended up being the caloric efficiency maximum product, and therefore what animal feed would end up being.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> which is not super desirable as human food without significant processing I see this repeated all the time. Is making cornmeal or cornflour really that much more involved than wheat flour, semolina, or rolled oats?
- 988747 4y ago
  It's really not about that, corn products are simply bad for health - too much sugar, to little more valuable nutrients.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Cornmeal is less than 1% simple sugars, as is cornflour. While it's not great compared to high fiber low gi sources like brown rice or sweet potato, it's not sugary at all. You have to split the polysachharides somehow to make it into sugar. Of course if you spend extra time, money and energy turning your relatively ordinarily healthy grain (which is admittedly a low bar) into sugar you spend more time, money and energy and wind up with sugar. It's no different from wheat in that regard other than you should maybe add a bit more fiber to the meal.
  - logifail 4y ago
    > It's really not about that, corn products are simply bad for health - too much sugar, to little more valuable nutrients For the majority, sure. In our immediate family I have to disagree, after many months of (undiagnosed) illness, and after several trips to hospital, my son was recently diagnosed with Coeliac[0]. Now corn products are now a key component of his diet. [0] https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-diseases/celiac-disease https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-disea...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- codefreeordie 4y ago
  No, probably not. Mostly it gets said because sweet corn is tasty when prepared simply as a whole food, and it's what most people think of when they see the word "corn".
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    I mostly see it as a bad faith argument for why the only possible productive use of x fraction of land is for growing feed and herding cattle and didn't know the 'animal feed corn' and corn as a grain for people are the same crop. If it's basically the same level of involvement as as bleached flour, then the only real relevant issues are how to source a balanced protein so you don't have to eat half a kilo of carbs when you don't need the energy and how distructive other micronutrient sources are.
- h2odragon 4y ago
  A little bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization Best use of maize, IMO, is fermentation. Let the yeast have it first, take off the volatiles, then feed the mash leftovers to tasty critters.
  - finiteseries 4y ago
    Neither cornmeal nor cornflour are nixtamalized, but historically most consumed corn was before the inexperienced European colonizers began using it.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      To have "nixtamalized" maize appears to be what ingredients lists call "processed with lime". Pellagra epidemics have arisen through failure to process with lime. The Mayans got their cooking water from out of cenotes, skylights of limestone cave systems, which might have made it naturally nixtamalizing. Were their grinding stones of limestone? (The grinding platform, the metate, was not.) Don't know what the Navaho did or do.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- littlestymaar 4y ago
  It isn't really relevant anymore because the food source is much more diverse than what it used to be, but when some western people started cultivating corn, and feading mostly out of it, they started to suffer from acute lack of tryptophan and vitamin b3, called pellagra, causing millions of death over several centuries. Mesoamerican civilizations built on top of corn had a specific corn processing step called nixtamalization, which avoided the issue altogether, but unfortunately wasn't imported along with corn during the colonizations of the Americas. But as long as you can get enough tryptophan and vitamin b3 otherwise, corn is completely fine as a main source of energy.
goodpoint 4y ago
You keep repeating the word "efficient" but there is nothing less efficient than animal farming. By far. Both in terms of land, water and energy usage.
- baisq 4y ago
  Is there any way of obtaining beef that is more efficient than cow farming?
  - codefreeordie 4y ago
    Nope. Especially given the extent to which "cow" is a thing that we created because we wanted more/better beef. Over centuries, we have become increasingly efficient at producing beef, and are extremely efficient at it. It is probably not possible to be much more efficient using whole-plant crops and growing whole-animal beef.
- saalweachter 4y ago
  Eh, beef, maybe, but the math basically comes down to: wheat, 4 million calories per acre, corn, 15 million. Take that 15 million calories of corn and feed it to chickens for a 3:1 calorie exchange and you've got 5 million calories of chicken per acre. It's more complicated than that, but corn yields are so high that they can overpower the otherwise inefficiency of meat production. Potatoes are as good as corn, and rice nearly so, but just from a land usage perspective chicken is no worse than eating wheat bread.
  - diordiderot 4y ago
    Fascinating! I had no idea corn was so calorific. Do you know how the inputs compare? As in are the amounts of fertilizer and pesticides similar?
    - saalweachter 4y ago
      Not really; there's also the complication that you don't actually feed your chickens straight corn. Because chickens need protein in their meal, it's more like, 2 acres of corn and 1 acre of soybeans, for 36 million calories from 3 acres to get 12 million calories of chicken for a chicken-per-acre calories of 4 million. You also get your chicken manure as a fertilizer out at the end, but then, if you were already collecting your humanure it's probably not a net gain. From a pure land usage standpoint, you're still better off if we're getting most of our calories from corn, potatoes and rice directly. Once you start adding in necessary protein, you can either subsist on soy, or feed that soy with corn to chickens and pigs (which have a worse feed ratio compared to chickens, but can supplement on food waste to reclaim calories that would otherwise go to waste) for roughly similar food-per-acre footprints.
baisq 4y ago
>Most of the world's grain is eaten by humans' food. Evidently. It's like when, talking about how there are too many cars, they make a separation between "cars" and "humans", as if cars weren't driven by humans. It's very basic manipulation.
- morsch 4y ago
  You can reduce the number of cars without reducing the number of people. Human beings can, in fact, exist without a car. We can also reduce the amount of livestock we keep without reducing the number of people, by consuming less of it. This seems really obvious. How is it manipulation?

fortran77 4y ago

I've started eating barley a couple of times a week, which is used primarily as an animal grain. I've found it makes a great alternative to rice or quinoa. From Wikipedia: > Globally 70% of barley production is used as animal fodder,[4] while 30% as a source of fermentable material for beer and certain distilled beverages, and as a component of various foods. It is used in soups and stews, and in barley bread of various cultures. Barley grains are commonly made into malt in a traditional and ancient method of preparation.

diogenescynic 4y ago
Beef and barley soup is excellent.
- messe 4y ago
  Lamb shanks, barley, and a good stout or porter are fantastic ingredients for a stew.
R0b0t1 4y ago
Try buckwheat and rye as well.
hinkley 4y ago
I grew up in a land where 95% of the farms grew the same two crops and it was unsettling if you think about it. When mosaic virus started to become a problem here there were a number of stories published about how few grains represent most of our calories and two epidemics happening in the same year or couple of years could put us into a very, very bad situation. I decided probably 20 years ago that the simplest thing I could do was to eat multigrain bread, based on the observation that it's not just acres of alternative grain that matter in a situation like this, it's experience with grains that matter. A farmer who has grown 5 acres of millet for a decade can easily ramp that to 50, 100, and his neighbors can impose upon him for advice to do the same (probably the next year or the year after since farmers gonna farm). But if you don't know anyone who grows millet or sorghum or chia or whatever, it's going to take you years to sort that out, and if you're older you might just decide to try to avoid having to change at all.

karmakurtisaani 4y ago

In 70 something years we went from 60% forest coverage of earth's land mass to 30%. I can't help but wonder how it would be without any animal agriculture.

hinkley 4y ago
Someone about ten years ago worked out that the snows of Kilimanjaro are fed by the vegetation upwind from the mountain. Whatever global warming is doing, deforestation is doing faster.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Do you have data/source for this? Interested in learning more, didn't think it was this much.
- karmakurtisaani 4y ago
  Sorry I'm writing this on my phone holding a baby, so not the best situation for in depth research. The numbers I quote are from memory based on watching the latest David Attenborough documentary. Not a great reference, I know. Edit: highly recommend the documentary though.
- Fezzik 4y ago
  https://ourworldindata.org/world-lost-one-third-forests https://ourworldindata.org/world-lost-one-third-forests and the rate at which we deforest and destroy grassland to make grazing land is ever-increasing.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    Thanks very much for posting. I'd point out that the numbers from that very useful link are wildly, wildly different from what the parent commenter posted: 1. The graphs appear to be showing that 29% of the Earth's land surface is "barren land", i.e. deserts, glaciers, rocky terrain, etc. In 1900, 48% of the NON barren land was forests, so 34% of the Earth's total land was forested. 2. In 2018 the percentage of forested non-barren land was down to 38%, or 27% of Earth's total land. 34% to 27% of total land area from 1900 to 2018 is a major difference from the parent commenter's assertion of "In 70 something years we went from 60% forest coverage of earth's land mass to 30%".

wintermutestwin 4y ago

A staggering amount of California's water is used for alfalfa, which gets shipped to China to feed cows. In essence, we are allowing certain farmers to sell CA's water to China.

innagadadavida 4y ago
Agriculture consumes a lot of water in this drought stricken state. The worst part is that many of these farms pump water from the ground thereby collapsing underground aquifers. This is an irreversible change and has caused the Central Valley to sink by several feet over the last few decades. There is zero political will to solve this. Instead we waste time and energy on pointless green initiatives, desalination and harassing homeowners to stop watering lawns. Keep in mind the labor used to grow these plants is imported as well. California is a very wealthy state and giving up some of these agricultural businesses to other states and maybe even to our poorer southern neighbors will be an overall good thing with minimal loss in tax revenues. These lands should be used to grow trees instead.
- Jistern 4y ago
  California will never, ever, ever run short of water... unless the Pacific Ocean dries up. Cheap electricity will result in cheap desalination. The sky is not falling.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    running short of water does not mean you have nothing to drink, it means famine. madagascar has terrible famine right now, becauae there is no rain. In Syria, all crops that are not irigated have died. current irrigation water is free. You cant use water from desalination, because it takes many tons of water to grow one kilo of food, and tens of tons of water to grow a kilo of beef. that would drive up prices more than 10x, which menas famine. you people just don't understand the shitstirm that's coming one the crops fail on two important crop producing nations simultaneously
    - 4y ago

petermcneeley 4y ago

But if we eat the animals that eat the grain arnt we kinda eating the grain... like indirectly? If I grind the grain into a kinda dust and then let tiny organisms eat the dust and then cook those organisms am I eating grain?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
michaelbuckbee 4y ago
You are, but you're eating far more grain than you would otherwise be as there are huge energy losses (the animals expend energy being alive after eating the grain) than if you at the grain directly.
danhak 4y ago
About 90% of energy is lost from one trophic level to the next
- ephbit 4y ago
  With modern urban lifestyles requiring (for many people) a lot less calories than ancient lifestyles of running around some great plains this is actually a feature to some degree for many people People need to take up protein. If the protein comes with significantly more calories than they burn, they're more likely to gain weight.
  - ephbit 4y ago
    Not sure why this got down voted. Maybe because it can be read as if I were arguing in favor of eating more meat. I am not. I am just pointing out why primitive advice such as "Just replace the meat in your diet with grain" might lead to new problems. People should stop reducing this discussion to the matter of calories. As far as I know people who eat too little protein, overeat on stuff like grains for this very reason. The body wants the protein.

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/IofL0 https://archive.ph/IofL0 http://web.archive.org/web/20220624002902/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/06/23/most-of-the-worlds-grain-is-not-eaten-by-humans http://web.archive.org/web/20220624002902/https://www.econom...

fortysixdegrees 4y ago

padjo 4y ago
Or do both!
zamfi 4y ago
The problem with this kind of post is not, as you might surmise, that people disagree with the notion that reducing meat consumption is helpful from an emissions perspective. It is that the binary presentation implies an either-or when in fact both are helpful. Plus it just shits on people and nobody likes that.
- heretogetout 4y ago
  Isn't the math clear that meat consumption requires more emissions than non-meat consumption, on average (as in per calorie)?
  - zamfi 4y ago
    Did I say somewhere that meat consumption is not problematic?
    - heretogetout 4y ago
      I'm responding to "people disagree with the notion that reducing meat consumption is helpful from an emissions perspective". People may disagree but it's like disagreeing that 100 > 1 -- who cares what they think?
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        What it says is > "not ... that people disagree"
        4y ago

orionion 4y ago

The grass family contains over 9,000 species distributed throughout the world. Of that, 35 have been cultivated as cereals. Of these, the following are important today: Barley, Corn, Goat grass, Millet, Oats, Rice, Sorghum, and Wheat. Of the important grains and/or cereals listed above, only corn (maize) is a New World native. Corn is an important member of the grass family. Corn (Zea mays) was domesticated from a wild plant called teosinte (Zea mexicana) about 7000 years ago. This species was considered sacred and was central to Mayan creation myths. Famous Mayan images show an earth god sprouting from the corn stalk. Corn is the most efficient of the modern cereal grains in converting water and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates. Maize formed the basis for the Mayan, Aztec, and Inca civilizations in the New World. Corn, beans, and squash were planted together by early native Americans in companion planting to benefit all three species. There is no wild plant or evidence of one that resembles corn with giant husked ears; besides the ears, teosinte and corn look very similar. Columbus took corn to Europe on the first voyage but it did not gain wide attention. Native Americans had over 100 uses for the corn plant and its fruits. https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethnobotany/food/grains.shtml https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethnobotany/food/grains.sh...

bell-cot 4y ago
Any reason not to have rye on your "important today" list?
ncmncm 4y ago
Official US agricultural policy and habitual farming practice have made growing maize together with beans and/or squash, tomatoes, and peppers nearly impossible to do competitively. That could be fixed with policy changes that would be fought by the biggest agribusinesses. Corn is among the most efficient natural converters of sunlight into chemical energy useful to the plant (with some left over for the farmer), but photovoltaics beat it by up to 10x. Capturing CO2 and producing glucose, starch, ethanol, and kerosene by an organic chemical process could be much more productive, by any measure, than via corn, which must anyway also grow stalk and leaves. The power could come from solar panels sharing fields with vegetable crops (e.g. tomatoes and peppers) that benefit from the shade they would provide by multiplying yield, and with wind turbines which take up very little ground footprint. Combining solar, wind, farming, and chemical processes yields much better results than keeping them separate.

samatman 4y ago

Which is a very good thing indeed, because it makes our food system robust by operating at a large caloric surplus. When crop failures lead to rising grain prices, ranchers respond by not buying as much grain for their animals. The result is less Prime-grade beef and a whole lot more grain available.

bayesian_horse 4y ago
In reality, rich countries are still buying all the grain they can to feed their livestock and carry on as before, just a bit more expensive, while the poorer populations experience the real shortages.
- samatman 4y ago
  In reality, the United States is the largest exporter of calories in the world, and the overwhelming source of direct food aid, and has been since WWII.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    That is a contradiction to my statement in what way? Do you think the United States is the only wealthy country? The fact is that the war in Ukraine is leading to shortages and those are felt by the poorest, not the richest.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - samatman 4y ago
      Every time! I don't talk to dishonest people. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=bayesian_horse%20vegan&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
      - cheese_goddess 4y ago

argella 4y ago

We’re all going to be living on cricket powder in 20 years.

selimthegrim 4y ago
Ssh you’re letting the cat out of the bag on Soylent’s pivot
baisq 4y ago
Or in 8 years, according to the 2030 Agenda.

Zpalmtree 4y ago

Eat your gruel peasant, the planet needs it

weregiraffe 4y ago
You WILL live in a pod, you WILL eat bugs, you WILL never touch a woman, you WILL cope and seethe on 4chan.

stefantalpalaru 4y ago

lvl102 4y ago

Seems we need to reduce world population by 1/2 or more. Aren’t we at least contracting in developed countries? Anyway to ask India/China to stop growing so fast?

bsder 4y ago
Easy. Educate women. As soon as that happens, the reproduction rate falls below the replacement rate. The problem is that global society is actually not ready for a population that shrinks instead of grows. Many of our institutions are effectively pyramid schemes that rely on more people entering the bottom and paying for them than pull out money and exit from the top. (Side note: I believe China is actually falling. There have been significant programs attempting to get women to have more children. Between education and "one child" (which is no longer in force) China has some demographic issues ahead.)
- workah0lic 4y ago
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  Educating women isn't enough. Women also need reproductive rights -- something that just took a hit in the US -- and the ability to support themselves. I'm not remembering/finding the rest of that list of 4 or 5 items.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > Easy. Educate women. Since men are physically more powerful, you also need a society with laws and people that will protect women and women’s rights. Women’s rights to mate with who they want, when they want, how they want, and earn income and be financially independent to be able to make those decisions independently.
  - rexpop 4y ago
    Educating women is the most effective way of equipping them to protect their own interests. To enlighten yourself, consider reading Federici's "Revolution at Point Zero" and Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed."

Fargoan 4y ago

Go vegan

causasui 4y ago
Yeah but my ancestors natural human history circle of life top-of-the-food chain indigenous people crop deaths protein deficiency b12 free-range cage-free humanely-killed cow overpopulation lions and gazelles moral relativity plants feel pain canine teeth bacon is delicious though
- uxcolumbo 4y ago
  Ha… good one… seems you dealt with this topic many times before. Add slaughterhouse workers and PTSD to the mix.
  - cheese_goddess 4y ago
    You guys are so eloquent and persuasive, it's incomprehensible why everyone has not joined your ranks already. Btw, congratulations for sneaking real problems like B12 and other nutrient deficiencies suffered by vegans in with all the straw men: > Most vegans show adequate B12 levels to make clinical deficiency unlikely but nonetheless show restricted activity of B12 related enzymes, leading to elevated homocysteine levels. Strong evidence has been gathered over the past decade that even slightly elevated homocysteine levels increase risk of heart disease and stroke and pregnancy complications. https://www.vegansociety.com/resources/nutrition-and-health/nutrients/vitamin-b12/what-every-vegan-should-know-about-vitamin-b12 https://www.vegansociety.com/resources/nutrition-and-health/... My bingo card says: "Typical irresponsible dismissal of the health risks of a vegan diet".
    - causasui 4y ago
      None of those are straw men; I've heard every single one, including one of my favorites "cow overpopulation" from you "cheese goddess" specifically. The same way plenty of farm animals are supplemented with b12 for later human consumption, it's mindlessly easy to get the adequate amount of b12 in a vegan diet. Tons of vegan food come fortified, and if not, a 1000mg supplement once a week couldn't be simpler. Both the American Dietetic Association[0] and British Dietetic Association[1] confirm that a well-planned vegan diet is healthy for all stages of life. _My_ bingo card says: someone whose entire life and identity has been in animal agriculture takes personal umbrage to the notion that their lifestyle is immoral and destroying the planet. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/ [1] https://www.bda.uk.com/resource/vegetarian-vegan-plant-based-diet.html https://www.bda.uk.com/resource/vegetarian-vegan-plant-based...

zoomablemind 4y ago

> "... a Russian naval blockade has prevented past harvests from reaching their destinations. The loss of this output has caused already high grain prices to surge. The World Food Programme warns that 47m people are at risk of hunger as a result." I understand that the point of the article is about reallocating and tightening up the belts of consumption, so to speak. However, how about exerting more pressure onto the aggressor which russia openly is? The world needs to recognize russia's actions as deliberate and premeditated steps to cause the collapses in food supply chains. This is not opportunistic, but rather a calculated policy, just as it is with gas and oil supply. It's not about the cattle, it's about the "humans" in charge of the kremlin!

roenxi 4y ago
How will 'exerting more pressure' help? We may already be past the point where there is a good solution but the best approach so far would be de-escalation, negotiation and cooperation in an attempt to avoid all this. Every attempt to exert pressure has put the west in a less favourable position. More pressure has built an energy crisis in Europe; rivals in Asia awash with cheap gas and contributed to a global food shortage. This was a series of own-goals. The US should have taken a few deep breaths over the last few years and dialled back the anti-Russia sentiment rather than burning relations with Russia in an attempt to inconvenience Trump. Unless the plan is to trigger World War III the West's strategies can only be said to be failing. This could have been a 2nd Iraq invasion instead of becoming the mega-crisis that is unfolding.
- zoomablemind 4y ago
  >...Every attempt to exert pressure has put the west in a less favourable position. There's a largest war started by russia (8 years ago!) and going on in the middle of Europe with a threat of use of nuclear weapons. As evident by now, russia is uncapable of maintaining any trustworthy agreements with any other nation, let alone its neighbors. It openly laughs at any civilized rule of law principles and considers this a weakness. It may not seem that way on a distance, but this war is against the West, against its values, its societies, and its economies. The whole world already feels the blows. Russia is increasingly acting as a rabid dog. The 'anti-russian sentiment' is a product of its own making, not for the first time in its imperial history. How does one deal with a rabid dog that brought itself to your yard? Asking the dog to deescalate? Abandoning your yard? Letting the dog into the house? This dog is driven by a violent agony and the violence will eventually tear it apart. But meanwhile someone needs to fend it off and contain. Ukraine so far is fending the rabid russia with its own flesh and blood. The war is on. Can the world exert more pressure? Not dragging feet with delivering the offered weapons. Not diluting the sanctions. Not agreeing to buy the stolen grains or harboring the russian assets. Consolidating and be decisive against the aggressor instead of making this Yankees' business or, worse, let the rabies take over Ukraine...

uwagar 4y ago

meat eating is destroying the planet.

cheese_goddess 4y ago
That is patently false. It is burning fossil fuels that is destroying the planet by contributing almost 75% of the global Greenhouse Gas Emissions: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#sector-by-sector-where-do-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-come-from https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#sector-by-sec... Please don't spread dangerous lies! By saying that meat is destroying the planet you're distracting from the true source of climate change: oil.
- throwanapple 4y ago
  Biodiversity loss also counts as destroying the planet. Don't let climate change distract you from other sources of planet destruction. There's this concept called planetary boundaries.
  - cheese_goddess 4y ago
    > Don't let climate change distract you from other sources of planet destruction. Not a good wording. Climate change is a major driver of biodiversity loss. In general, there isn't any problem we're facing right now that's worse than climate change any way you look at it.
    - throwanapple 4y ago
      Not saying climate change isn't important, just that these systemic issues are interlinked and should be addressed together. We won't last long without healthy ecosystems.
      - cheese_goddess 4y ago
        No objection there from me. I'm just saying that as far as I understand it, one important reason why climate change is bad is that it directly affects ecosystems. That we also destroy ecosystems directly must also be stressed as you say. And the two are indeed interlinked, for example habitat destruction causes both biodiversity loss and decreased ability to bind carbon. This "land use change" is a major source of emissions from agriculture and industrial farming is the main reason for it, for example rainforests razed to make space to grow soya to feed to cows. So yeah. I think we agree more than we disagree on that.

LittlePeter 4y ago

The charts in the article are PNG images. Yet the text in the charts is separate and is superimposed on the chart in precise position. How is this done? Is the journalist manually CSS-positioning the text? Is there a library? An internal Economist tool?

lordgrenville 4y ago
Asked a couple of days ago about a different article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31873761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31873761

cvccvroomvroom 4y ago

Drive south from Austin and head towards San Marcos. All of that short corn is "cow corn" for obvious climate change fart factory purposes.

cheese_goddess 4y ago

> Some grain by-products, such as maize husks, are unsuitable for human food. And feeding grain to animals does generate food for people indirectly, in the form of milk, meat and eggs. However, this process is highly wasteful. For every 100 calories of grain fed to a cow, just three emerge as beef. Along with other feed crops and pasture, rearing animals also uses land that could produce human food. But we don't only need calories. In fact we already produce and eat many more calories than we need (but we distribute them unevenly so that a third of the world eats too many and 2/3s not enough). The reason we feed all this grain to animals is so that they turn it into nutrient-dense meat, dairy and eggs. Those are rich in micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) that we can't get as well from grains (or not at all like B12 vitamin). So maybe farming looks "inefficient" if you consider only calories, but when you consider nutrients in general, meat (including seafood), dairy and eggs are actually the most efficient source of those we need to stay healthy and thrive. But even if we only count calories, the amount of cropland that we would free for rewilding if we stopped farming meat completely and produced no meat from ruminants, no pork or poultry, no dairy, and no eggs, is miniscule: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets#more-plant-based-diets-tend-to-need-less-cropland https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets#more-plant-based-d... In short, we'd go from 1.17 billion ha of cropland for farming animals and growing crops, to using 1 billion ha of cropland. That's a tiny change and it would most likely quickly need to grow as the global population increases. And it's such a tiny change because most of the land used to farm animals, or grow grains for animal feed, is not cropland, but pasture, which is for the most part not suitable for growing crops.

concordDance 4y ago
But a drastic decrease in pasture still gives lots of rewilding.
throwanapple 4y ago
Do you have sources for claiming animals are the most efficient source of those micronutrients? Where do those animals get those micronutrients from? Why do they still need to be injected with supplements like vitamin B12? Why do you discount use of pasture for rewilding?

blindmute 4y ago

Why is this a problem, exactly? 1. We already produce way more food than the entire world can eat, even if it were distributed equally 2. When population begins butting up against the limits of food production, demand for cheaper plant based food will rise. Most will be unable to afford meat, making the meat market naturally shrink itself for economic reasons. Likewise if meat becomes too expensive due to resource constraints. 3. At the point where population exceeds food supply, there will be at worst 1 generation of starvation, and then population will stabilize to have enough food 3a. Infinite growth of the population is not sustainable or desirable. Even if meat were banned, this same story will eventually happen again with any vegetable that is less calorie efficient to grow. Do we want 30 billion people eating literally one food, or 25 billion eating a varied, though less land efficient diet? At some point, the world will have to accept that there isn't enough food to have 3 children. At that point, when the 2 child policy is global, what kind of diet should be possible? We can stretch it so that we're all eating literally one crop and there's absolutely nothing more we can do to feed the world, but hopefully we stop breeding a bit earlier than that, to end with one where people can still enjoy meat.