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Those shortcomings are more relevant to intensive, wrong, unregulated and mindless practice. There is a form of farming which keeps those shortcomings contained
by mdp2021 4y ago
Those shortcomings are more relevant to intensive, wrong, unregulated and mindless practice. There is a form of farming which keeps those shortcomings contained - with different costs (but also with different quality).
- sharkjacobs 4y ago> Yes, but animal agriculture can be less harmful if you do less of it
- mdp2021 4y agoI beg your pardon? It is not just a matter of "raising less animals", it is also (and mainly) a matter of raising them sensibly.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoIt is mostly a matter of raising less animals. No other factor or approach or combination of them can address these things alone, reduction is a necessary step. Defining any of this as "sensible" is an error imo. In a sense it's certainly sensible to have the goal of providing accessibly-priced meat to every member of a large country. Each step along the way is sensible, I'm sure. But then we end up here and there is nothing sensible about it. The sheer scale required to provide all that flesh is nearly profane in its own right. There is simply and frankly no way to do it responsibly at the scale we've chosen to do it. It seems meat will either remain built on human, animal and ecological exploitation at an incomprehensible scale, or it will revert to a rare and expensive luxury mostly available only to an economic elite. I haven't seen a compelling vision of any alternative.
- davidjones332 4y ago[flagged]
- OJFord 4y agoThat's only a paraphrasing to the extent that it means higher cost, which means lower demand, which means lower supply. It's not the point that was made, and the 'harm saving' would be greater than proportional to the consequent reduction in supply (ceteris paribus).
- randomdata 4y agoTell us more about the form of farming that contains the high energy consumption shortcoming listed above. As a crop farmer, even a comparatively small reduction in energy availability from a cloudy year can cause a noticeable impact on yields. I wonder what we would eat if we saw a dramatic decline in available energy.
- CuriouslyC 4y agoHe's probably referring to one of a variety of permaculture setups that integrates animals and a food forest into their operation. Carbon zero and super cheap to maintain, but challenging to setup and harder to sell some of the products.
- randomdata 4y agoStill incredibly energy intensive. I honestly cannot think of any food that isn't, at least indirectly if not directly, so I want to know more about these farming practices that can contain the energy need.
- CuriouslyC 4y agoThere is a spectrum of permaculture that ranges from low yield totally self managing systems where you basically hunt and forage, to high yield partially automated systems that almost look like slick modern farms. Those low yield systems can still be very productive, but you have to go get it, so it's obviously more of a subsistence farmer or agritourism thing.
- randomdata 4y agoNone of this addresses the intense energy requirements. Even the self-managed permacultures would have little chance of survival if the bulk of the energy received was removed.
- myshpa 4y ago
- Pxtl 4y agoRight, but the amount of meat we could get from non-intensive agriculture is likely an order of magnitude lower, meaning an order of magnitude rise in price.
- myshpa 4y ago> Those shortcomings are more relevant to intensive, wrong, unregulated and mindless practice On average 90 percent of meat and eggs raised in the U.S. come from CAFOs https://mostpolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/ScienceNote_CAFOs.pdf https://mostpolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/...
- rhn_mk1 4y ago"Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations"
- MrMan 4y ago[dead]