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Raising SOME animals in SOME places is an efficient way to produce protein, including dairy – like zebu cattle and goat, hardy animals that graze on land that w
by manoDev 3y ago
Raising SOME animals in SOME places is an efficient way to produce protein, including dairy – like zebu cattle and goat, hardy animals that graze on land that will grow nothing. There are human populations outside the western bubble surviving with minimal resources for a long time thanks to that.
Raising large quantities of animals in the rhythm necessary to feed meat daily to a large population is irrational and creates these shortcomings.
IMO animal agriculture is just another one of those topics that, if you really deep-dive, turns into a discussion of overpopulation and capitalism.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoIt's not an overpopulation problem. When you hit "the world can't support everyone living the way we live" the problem is with the way we live, not with everyone living. We can easily provide healthy nutritious food to everyone and many many more. Just not in the form that we are currently choosing for ourselves.
- hcarvalhoalves 3y agoDefine “easily”. Seriously, if you ever dealt with land in your life, you would know agriculture is anything but “easy”. It only exists in today’s shape and form thanks to fossil fuels, massive government incentives and cost externalities.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoOK fine it's hard we still have to do it though you can't just throw up your hands and say "eugenics time!" It still seems pretty clear to me that the problem is resource overconsumption, not simple overpopulation. Let's address that first bit first then see where we are.
- hcarvalhoalves 3y agoThe problem is you can’t discuss consumption without addressing the population. The current economic model simply pushes the rest of world to consume at the unsustainable levels of a North American or European citizen. One of those will have to give.
- CameronNemo 3y agoReducing population size indiscriminately is not eugenics.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoWell when you put it that way it certainly sounds like a reasonable & restrained plan.
- triyambakam 3y ago> animals that graze on land that will grow nothing You must not literally mean nothing, but I still don't understand where the nutrients are supposed to come from if the land is so poor that food crops won't grow, yet there is supposed to be enough nutritious grass for grazing?
- hcarvalhoalves 3y agoOf course I mean figuratively. Humans don’t have a rumen, so our capability of extracting energy from vegetables is much more limited, basically we need starch (grains or tubers). These animals can feed on grass where these nitrogen-intensive crops won’t grow without fertilizers.
- timeon 3y ago"everyone should stop eating meat" is red herring. People often point out outside of "western bubble" so they can get rid of responsibility inside that "bubble". Really poor people do not eat meat in scale that is now so common in rich countries.
- PeterisP 3y agoTrue, but in the last few decades so many people world wide have stopped being so poor that they do not eat meat in large scale. In China, meat consumption per person has increased more than sixfold since 1980, getting close to EU levels, and that is a natural outcome of Chinese people becoming less poor; the same is likely to happen elsewhere around the world unless some factor keeps the developing world so poor that they can't afford to do so.