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"That's ridiculous. This shouldn't even be a debate. Even if you could use all the organic material that you have--the animal manures, the human waste, the plan
by chez17 17y ago
"That's ridiculous. This shouldn't even be a debate. Even if you could use all the organic material that you have--the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues--and get them back on the soil, you couldn't feed more than 4 billion people."
Quotes like this make me sad. This is so ignorant coming from a brilliant man. Organic or conventional farming isn't the issue. The way most Americans consume meat 3 times a day is the issue. It would be like having a debate on oil consumption in this country and two people were arguing about heating homes with oil and nobody ever brought up transportation. Eating meat 3 times a day isn't sustainable. Organic farming is. The way this debate is framed is just beyond stupid for how intelligent the people having it are. Everyone just assumes that meat 3 times a day is ok and it's the organic farming that isn't sustainable. This is laughable.
This isn't an all or nothing thing here. Eating meat in moderation is fine. This country (American) has a taste for federally subsidized, extremely cheap and unhealthy meat. That is the issue. Not farming.
- encoderer 17y agoTrue that. It's something like a 10:1 ratio for calories-in to calories-out on a cow or chicken. So to get 10,000 calories of Beef we have to feed a cow 100,000 calories of feed. And by feed, I mean corn....
- rjurney 17y agoMaybe he isn't ignorant. Maybe he realizes that removing meat from our culture is more difficult than engineering more efficient agriculture. But really - North America is so agriculturally wealthy that is can afford to eat any way it likes. Borlaug engineered hybrid crops that made it possible for the rest of the world to self-sustain. In most of the world people don't eat as much meat, and that is not changing - and it is there that his innovations were most helpful. They ended starvation by providing enough wheat and rice for everyone - nevermind that it isn't always distributed evenly - he ended the literal shortages. Anyway, this is changing. Look at meat's prominence in California (feed lots aside, I mean consumption) - much less than elsewhere. California leads, the rest of the nation follows.
- encoderer 17y agoIt's not a lack of agricultural wealth that should limit our meat intake. It's a lack of fossil fuel wealth. Raising cattle uses an enormous amount of fossil fuel. And even organically speaking, the only reason we have such cheap meat is a massive amount of subsidized corn. That's not good for the soil, it's not good for the environment, and it's certainly not good for the cows.