Treat Meat Eaters Like Smokers!

[Born Hunter 17,975]

 

 

What these cranks don't realise is that if we all turned veggie it would only lead to more damaging intensive farming to supply us with the protein we need to live ...They really are a bunch of short sighted fuk nuts! ... I wonder how much land it would take to supply the same amount of say soya protein as the protein that's in 1 cow.

Atb

kanny

I think plant based foods are 4 times less intensive on the land than animal protein based foods, calorie for calorie. Whether we like it or not vegetarianism does seem better for the environment. That doesn't take into account the actual impact on the environment though, just how productive arable and livestock is in calories per acre.

But that's all it has going for it, the health arguments based on life expectancy stats get blown to bits when analysed properly, correcting for all the other factors associated with the general meat eating demographic.

Coming back to the environment, is it even conclusive that the methane produced from factory farming cattle has any significant effect on climate change?

Rubbish mate. Livestock replenish the land with dung etc arable removes the nutrients and does not replace them. Every single ancient culture from the sumerians to Indus valley that intensively farmed the land for arable destroyed the land still to this day! Only modern chemicals and rotation techniques stave off the inevitable

If all the nutrients were removed then crops wouldn't grow so that kinda kills that argument. And I did say it was too simple a fact to make a conclusion as to the actual environmental impact. Just because sheep shit in the fields doesn't mean their environmental impact is positive or even neutral.

[mushroom 14,274]

Check it out most of the land surrounding ancient cities is desolate and salted.

 

Animals don't rip out nutrients from the ground.

 

Another example it the american Midwest aka the dust bowl

[Born Hunter 17,975]

I don't disbelieve you about historical crop farming. But we're talking about modern crop farming. We're all set to starve imminently if you are correct.

 

So what if livestock farming doesn't rip the nutrients out of the ground? Does that mean it's good for the environment? Is shortly cropped grass good for ecology? Is huge scale deforestation good for ecology? Is having the bottom eaten out of every hedge and set aside good? Is a calorie inefficient means of food production good?

 

As I have said, I could be convinced by the environmental argument, but it's very complex.

[JDHUNTING 1,817]

and another point on that, what do they put on all the arable to keep it fertile? muck from livestock!

[mushroom 14,274]

I don't disbelieve you about historical crop farming. But we're talking about modern crop farming. We're all set to starve imminently if you are correct.

 

So what if livestock farming doesn't rip the nutrients out of the ground? Does that mean it's good for the environment? Is shortly cropped grass good for ecology? Is huge scale deforestation good for ecology? Is having the bottom eaten out of every hedge and set aside good? Is a calorie inefficient means of food production good?

 

As I have said, I could be convinced by the environmental argument, but it's very complex.

Like it or not it's better than mass global agriculture and has been proven through history.

 

And yes we are in imminent danger from lack of soil nutrients. This is only staved of because of chemicals

[Born Hunter 17,975]

 

I don't disbelieve you about historical crop farming. But we're talking about modern crop farming. We're all set to starve imminently if you are correct.

So what if livestock farming doesn't rip the nutrients out of the ground? Does that mean it's good for the environment? Is shortly cropped grass good for ecology? Is huge scale deforestation good for ecology? Is having the bottom eaten out of every hedge and set aside good? Is a calorie inefficient means of food production good?

As I have said, I could be convinced by the environmental argument, but it's very complex.

Like it or not it's better than mass global agriculture and has been proven through history.

And yes we are in imminent danger from lack of soil nutrients. This is only staved of because of chemicals

I haven't quite come to the same conclusion as you. Modern farming methods have not featured in history.

 

Chemicals.... you mean like chemicals that cow shit provides? Everything is a chemical no? Not sure why artificially keeping the ground fertile is worse than naturally?

 

Livestock farming as a means of food production is not as efficient as arable, calorie for calorie. So environmentally a lot less land would have to be farmed to provide the same number of calories. Therefore allowing more land to be completely dedicated to nature and not just farmed in a way that has nature as a second thought.

 

Grass fed animals still need a crop to feed them, the grass, in a completely unnatural field.

 

It's far more complex than you are making out.

Edited September 27, 2015 by Born Hunter

[mushroom 14,274]

No, chemicals like artificial fertilisers that are the only reason intensive farming exists. You don't need those to raise livestock.

 

Nature has its own examples of intensive livestock farming bison, wildebeest huge numbers that rape the land as they pass yet provide enough back for it to recuperate.

 

Intensive agriculture has no natural examples and as I've already shown with examples from ancient to modern times, removes more from the land than it's ability to recover.

[Born Hunter 17,975]

But you haven't shown anything of relevance to my mind because ancient cultures did not have the ability to put back into the ground the necessary nutrients for sustained farming. Not to mention I haven't actually seen anything solid to suggest the earth has been left sterile.

???

Could you point me at any info?

 

And you're still ignoring the damage that land farmed intensively for livestock does to the ecosystem. If crops are grown for them then it takes 4x as much arable land to be intensively farmed to provide the same amount of calories. That's more damage to the environment. If grass fed, then it's still using the land inefficiently and is still not anymore environmentally friendly imo. These heavily grazed fields are not diverse natural habitats.

 

Again, I could buy the environmental argument purely from an efficiency stance, it allows for much less land to have to be farmed.

 

It's more complicated than that though, as some land wouldn't lend itself to arable at all and there are many varied low impact methods of livestock farming.

 

I'm not saying anything is definite, just that it's complex and that I can see the environmental merits of arable over livestock.

[Brewman 1,192]

Animal husbandry in the UK and Ireland is a lot different to the likes of the USA and Argentina.

 

A greater percentage of animals roam the fields with the exception of white pigs which are intensively reared world wide though not always but mostly.

 

In the USA for example thousands of cattle are in sheds on the one farm. Their waste is collected from the stalls and as there are no fields to be sprayed with manure it is stockpiled in man made lakes that hold millions of tonnes of cow shite!

This is where the environment starts to suffer badly for miles around and the land can't be recycled.

Then there is the issue with the cattle being fed antibiotics for a lot of their time as they are kept in such proximity to each other. There is that much antibiotics in the meat food chain in America that people are immune to them by the time they actually need them when they themselves are ill.

Lastly they are mainly fed on a diet of soya so this crop is then intensively farmed without crop rotation and going fallow every 4 or 5 years. This in turn strips the land of nutrients thus needing extra chemicals to ensure the crop grows.

These farms are owned by large corporations who are only interested in prophet.

Interestingly lamb is quite rare there as they need fields to graze.

 

I always buy meat from the butcher so I know where it comes from.

There is probably enough land I the world for pasture and arable to Co exist beneficially for each other but big companies aren't interested because it costs more and employs more people. Regardless of it being healthier for the planet and her population.

 

A good book on the subject is Farmageddon which will explain it more accurately than I have.

[mushroom 14,274]

But you haven't shown anything of relevance to my mind because ancient cultures did not have the ability to put back into the ground the necessary nutrients for sustained farming. Not to mention I haven't actually seen anything solid to suggest the earth has been left sterile.

???

Could you point me at any info?

 

And you're still ignoring the damage that land farmed intensively for livestock does to the ecosystem. If crops are grown for them then it takes 4x as much arable land to be intensively farmed to provide the same amount of calories. That's more damage to the environment. If grass fed, then it's still using the land inefficiently and is still not anymore environmentally friendly imo. These heavily grazed fields are not diverse natural habitats.

 

Again, I could buy the environmental argument purely from an efficiency stance, it allows for much less land to have to be farmed.

 

It's more complicated than that though, as some land wouldn't lend itself to arable at all and there are many varied low impact methods of livestock farming.

 

I'm not saying anything is definite, just that it's complex and that I can see the environmental merits of arable over livestock.

Not exactly a journal but some good info

http://io9.com/how-farming-almost-destroyed-human-civilization-1659734601