4 ms·

Would you rather scores of others die than give up on irrational habits like eating beef? Would you rather be counted amount the attrition?

wyager 12y ago
>Would you rather scores of others die than give up on irrational habits like eating beef? That's a completely false dichotomy. There's nothing irrational about eating beef from a resource standpoint. For example, if we were to allow the Market to act efficiently (which we might not (which would actually be irrational, from my standpoint)), the resource requirements of raising beef would 100% guaranteed make it impractically expensive to eat, and there would be no issue. As it stands, beef is already rising in cost much faster than other forms of meat! See http://www.buedelmeatup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/chart-retail-meat-prices.gif http://www.buedelmeatup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/chart...
Spooky23 12y ago
Beef isn't irrational. Ranching in Nevada probably is. It's a market problem. Because of the way water rights were allocated, it's cheap to do wacky things like farm the desert. You can very easily farm beef cattle in places where water is abundant... Places like New York, Kentucky, etc, just not at the scale as on massive plots of empty land.
- cscurmudgeon 12y ago
  Pasting mmanfrin's comment: It's specifically Beef that is the massive drain. Chicken/Pork/other meats are magnitudes of orders more water-conscious per calorie. (Pork uses 75% less, and is yet the most wasteful of water outside of cows/bovine)[1]. Beef is astoundingly wasteful of water. You could take an hour-long shower and it would use about the same amount of water needed for a pound of beef. [2] and [3]. [1] http://gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-wat.. http://gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-wat.... [2] http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.f.. http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.f.... [3] http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2012/03/virtual-water-real.. http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2012/03/virtual-water-real.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8117761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8117761
  - Spooky23 12y ago
    Beef used to be more expensive as compared to chicken. It's cheap now because you can buy near worthless land and turn it into feedlots and ranches. Those scale that you can operate on with modern, subsidized agriculture is unstoppable. A farm in upstate NY is 50-500 acres. A ranch in the high desert may be 50 miles^2. Also, the land isn't empty in the east, and people won't put up with the smell of thousands of cattle. Stop giving away water to desert farmers. Prices will rise, and demand will shift to places where water is plentiful.
genwin 12y ago
> Would you rather be counted amount the attrition? Do I have a choice?

wyager 12y ago

>Would you rather scores of others die than give up on irrational habits like eating beef? That's a completely false dichotomy. There's nothing irrational about eating beef from a resource standpoint. For example, if we were to allow the Market to act efficiently (which we might not (which would actually be irrational, from my standpoint)), the resource requirements of raising beef would 100% guaranteed make it impractically expensive to eat, and there would be no issue. As it stands, beef is already rising in cost much faster than other forms of meat! See http://www.buedelmeatup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/chart-retail-meat-prices.gif http://www.buedelmeatup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/chart...

Spooky23 12y ago

Beef isn't irrational. Ranching in Nevada probably is. It's a market problem. Because of the way water rights were allocated, it's cheap to do wacky things like farm the desert. You can very easily farm beef cattle in places where water is abundant... Places like New York, Kentucky, etc, just not at the scale as on massive plots of empty land.

cscurmudgeon 12y ago
Pasting mmanfrin's comment: It's specifically Beef that is the massive drain. Chicken/Pork/other meats are magnitudes of orders more water-conscious per calorie. (Pork uses 75% less, and is yet the most wasteful of water outside of cows/bovine)[1]. Beef is astoundingly wasteful of water. You could take an hour-long shower and it would use about the same amount of water needed for a pound of beef. [2] and [3]. [1] http://gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-wat.. http://gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-wat.... [2] http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.f.. http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.f.... [3] http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2012/03/virtual-water-real.. http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2012/03/virtual-water-real.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8117761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8117761
- Spooky23 12y ago
  Beef used to be more expensive as compared to chicken. It's cheap now because you can buy near worthless land and turn it into feedlots and ranches. Those scale that you can operate on with modern, subsidized agriculture is unstoppable. A farm in upstate NY is 50-500 acres. A ranch in the high desert may be 50 miles^2. Also, the land isn't empty in the east, and people won't put up with the smell of thousands of cattle. Stop giving away water to desert farmers. Prices will rise, and demand will shift to places where water is plentiful.

genwin 12y ago

> Would you rather be counted amount the attrition? Do I have a choice?