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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 th

by 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.
    - myshpa 3y ago
      > the idea that we could have a modern society with 40-70% of people shifting to agricultural labor is on its face ridiculous I never said we'd need 40-70% of people in the agriculture. I've talked about the possibility of the increase upto aproximately 4% , with a pool of 40-70% people to choose from. Is it clearer now? > you seem to be dead set on having an argument with me about something I'm not saying Ditto :) > 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. This has triggered my response. I can't agree with that at all. There's no need to revert to high land and labor input methods. I'll simplify a lot. We could grow more veggies and fruit, plant more nut orchards to replace milk, grow more legumes to replace meat, on smaller fields separated with rows of productive and nitrogen fixing trees (agroforesty) and reforest more lands to let biodiversity rebound and work with it, not against it ... nothing that is particulary hard and nothing of that means that billions would have to die. It would need new (smaller) electric machines and more workers, but maybe 1-2 times more, not 20 times more.
jononomo 3y ago
I only eat steak. It is simply the best food for human flourishing.

by Loic 3y ago

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.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    > the idea that we could have a modern society with 40-70% of people shifting to agricultural labor is on its face ridiculous I never said we'd need 40-70% of people in the agriculture. I've talked about the possibility of the increase upto aproximately 4% , with a pool of 40-70% people to choose from. Is it clearer now? > you seem to be dead set on having an argument with me about something I'm not saying Ditto :) > 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. This has triggered my response. I can't agree with that at all. There's no need to revert to high land and labor input methods. I'll simplify a lot. We could grow more veggies and fruit, plant more nut orchards to replace milk, grow more legumes to replace meat, on smaller fields separated with rows of productive and nitrogen fixing trees (agroforesty) and reforest more lands to let biodiversity rebound and work with it, not against it ... nothing that is particulary hard and nothing of that means that billions would have to die. It would need new (smaller) electric machines and more workers, but maybe 1-2 times more, not 20 times more.

jononomo 3y ago

I only eat steak. It is simply the best food for human flourishing.