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> But we ignore the negative externalities – the cost to our health, and to ecosystems, and to the sustainability of civilization long-term Agriculture product

• ch4s3 3y ago
  You could boil all of this down to the fact that our current best effort at feeding 9 billion people has a lot of unfortunate externalities. If your proposal is to revert back to high land and labor input methods, then maybe it would make a difference insofar as a few billion people would probably starve. For my part, I'd prefer we try innovating our way through it.
  • Loic 3y ago
    No. Just reduce your meat consumption to about 1kg per month or less. You can still enjoy a really good steak from times to times and you reduce your load on the ecosystem massively. This is orthogonal to the way you produce food.
    • ch4s3 3y ago
      That's quite the presumption about MY consumption. Moreover the word "just" is doing a lot of work here. I'm responding primarily to the overall land use picture here. Agriculture even as efficiently as we're doing it now takes a lot of space, even removing most meat from the equation.
      • myshpa 3y ago
        > You could boil all of this down to the fact that our current best effort at feeding 9 billion people has a lot of unfortunate externalities. Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471 A global shift towards healthy and more plant-based diets, halving food loss and waste, and improving farming practices and technologies are required to feed 10 billion people sustainably by 2050, a new study finds. > If your proposal is to revert back to high land and labor input methods, then maybe it would make a difference insofar as a few billion people would probably starve. Not necessarily. The crop lands we already have would be sufficient to feed the whole population. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets Sustainable and regenerative agriculture is entirely possible. You may want to explore practices such as natural, syntropic, permaculture, and agroforestry farming, to name just a few. While it may require more knowledge and labor, advancements in technology and automation could potentially mean only a slight increase in the workforce, from around 2% to maybe upto 4%. The benefits would be enormous. And with 40-70% of jobs being bullshit jobs I'm not even afraid we would fill those positions. It's just a matter of regulation and preferences. > For my part, I'd prefer we try innovating our way through it. Plant-based diets are an innovation. Restorative agriculture would require new machinery, agroforestry, smaller fields instead of vast monocultures, the incorporation of companion/nitrogen-fixing plants and compost instead of artificial fertilizers, among other changes. Many things would need to change. > I'm responding primarily to the overall land use picture here. Agriculture even as efficiently as we're doing it now takes a lot of space, even removing most meat from the equation. This is a very illustrative picture. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-Land-Use-01.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-Land... Animal ag. brings just 18% of calories and 36% of proteins, while destroying and polluting so much. We should dedicate the land to forests (carbon sequestration) and to the restoration of biodiversity.
        • ch4s3 3y ago
          My whole point and I discussed this up thread is that things like restorative agriculture and agroforestry require a fuck-ton more human labor. > The benefits would be enormous. And with 40-70% of jobs being bullshit jobs I'm not even afraid we would fill those positions. It's just a matter of regulation and preferences. This is total nonsense. When most people worked on farms, food comprised more than 30% of peoples' budgets. The idea that we could have a modern society with 40-70% of people shifting to agricultural labor is on its face ridiculous. You're making a utopian argument here and hand waving away the real problems involved in sending so many people back to agriculture. > Plant-based diets are an innovation Nowhere am I arguing against plant-based diets. You're arguing against a straw man. I'm also not anywhere here or at any point saying that the status quo of human calorie composition is ideal. I said that as it stands, our best effort to date to feed 8+ billion people has AT PRESENT negative externalities. I agree that problems are worth addressing, and you seem to be dead set on having an argument with me about something I'm not saying.
    • jononomo 3y ago
      I only eat steak. It is simply the best food for human flourishing.
• jampekka 3y ago
  Quite obvious solution to these would be to transition to plant based diet which would reduce agricultural land use by 75%. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
  • hattmall 3y ago
    But what do we need the land for? There's tons of empty land, grazing animals are beneficial for the land. Why would we need 75% more empty land?
    • ch4s3 3y ago
      To steel man a bit here, grazing isn't necessarily a win for biodiversity and then there is all of the land that used to produce supplemental feed. Its a set of problems worth considering, even as I disagree with the myopia of the link riddled comment above.
    • myshpa 3y ago
      > But what do we need the land for We should reforest most of that land. It was previously mostly forested anyway, and doing so, together with a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, would enable us to store enough carbon to halt global warming, restore biodiversity, and repair the water cycle to prevent droughts. https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation#the-world-has-lost-one-third-of-its-forests-but-an-end-of-deforestation-is-possible https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation#the-world-has-lost-... > grazing animals are beneficial for the land Not really. https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/grazed-and-confused/ https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/grazed-and-co... https://newrepublic.com/article/163735/myth-regenerative-ranching https://newrepublic.com/article/163735/myth-regenerative-ran... https://grist.org/climate-energy/cattle-grazing-is-a-climate-disaster-and-youre-paying-for-it/ https://grist.org/climate-energy/cattle-grazing-is-a-climate...
    • digging 3y ago
      > There's tons of empty land Your premise is flawed... outside of Antarctica, there's not really much empty land on earth.