[HN Gopher] Most of the world's grain is not eaten by humans
___________________________________________________________________
Most of the world's grain is not eaten by humans
Author : sndean
Score : 74 points
Date : 2022-06-25 18:07 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| A staggering amount of California's water is used for alfalfa,
| which gets shipped to China to feed cows. In essence, we are
| allowing certain farmers to sell CA's water to China.
| innagadadavida wrote:
| Agriculture consumes a lot of water in this drought stricken
| state. The worst part is that many of these farms pump water
| from the ground thereby collapsing underground aquifers. This
| is an irreversible change and has caused the Central Valley to
| sink by several feet over the last few decades. There is zero
| political will to solve this. Instead we waste time and energy
| on pointless green initiatives, desalination and harassing
| homeowners to stop watering lawns. Keep in mind the labor used
| to grow these plants is imported as well.
|
| California is a very wealthy state and giving up some of these
| agricultural businesses to other states and maybe even to our
| poorer southern neighbors will be an overall good thing with
| minimal loss in tax revenues. These lands should be used to
| grow trees instead.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| On top of that, that water is heavily subsidized by CA tax
| payers!
| sitkack wrote:
| Don't worry, CA can't do it forever as that water is coming out
| of a giant underground sea that is collapsing, it will never
| fill up again.
|
| https://energyskeptic.com/2021/aquifer-decline-in-california...
|
| https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/c...
|
| https://revealnews.org/article/9-sobering-facts-about-califo...
| stainforth wrote:
| The profits that went to a few human owners of that
| agribusiness should be clawed back
| mcdonje wrote:
| The alfalfa is also used for cows grown in CA for CA residents.
| That's also a bad thing. Cow farms should be significantly
| limited in arid climates. There are ecologically better
| alternatives.
| krasin wrote:
| >The alfalfa is also used for cows grown in CA for CA
| residents. That's also a bad thing. Cow farms should be
| significantly limited in arid climates
|
| Technically, from what I understand, it's enough to limit
| alfaalfa in arid climates. The location of cow farms does not
| matter much after that, in terms of water usage.
|
| What's also good is that enforcing alfaalfa regional
| restrictions is super easy - a satellite photo would be
| enough to spot a field, and there's not enough margin to have
| any organized crime to fight back.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| If you're pumping water to grow grass in the desert just for
| the beef, there are better uses for the water.
|
| However, cows have the unique ability to turn grass into
| protein, so if all an area can grow is grass, cows are a
| great way to get calories out of it. Properly allowed to
| graze freely, cows can be a net improvement on a particular
| ecology as a carbon sink (manure is an improvement to the
| soil), but shipping the harvested grass to feedlots is indeed
| an ecological disaster.
| Retric wrote:
| You get more protein per X acres eating corn than feeding
| that same corn to cows and eating the cows.
|
| If you prefer meat then chicken is worse than eating corn
| but still much better than cows. We eat beef because it's
| delicious and that's it's only advantage at scale.
| Maursault wrote:
| There are way too many cows, man, and all because of
| marketing and greed.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Greed only plays a supporting role here.
|
| Gluttony is the cardinal sin more to blame.
| orionion wrote:
| The grass family contains over 9,000 species distributed
| throughout the world. Of that, 35 have been cultivated as
| cereals. Of these, the following are important today: Barley,
| Corn, Goat grass, Millet, Oats, Rice, Sorghum, and Wheat.
|
| Of the important grains and/or cereals listed above, only corn
| (maize) is a New World native. Corn is an important member of the
| grass family.
|
| Corn (Zea mays) was domesticated from a wild plant called
| teosinte (Zea mexicana) about 7000 years ago. This species was
| considered sacred and was central to Mayan creation myths. Famous
| Mayan images show an earth god sprouting from the corn stalk.
|
| Corn is the most efficient of the modern cereal grains in
| converting water and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates. Maize
| formed the basis for the Mayan, Aztec, and Inca civilizations in
| the New World.
|
| Corn, beans, and squash were planted together by early native
| Americans in companion planting to benefit all three species.
| There is no wild plant or evidence of one that resembles corn
| with giant husked ears; besides the ears, teosinte and corn look
| very similar.
|
| Columbus took corn to Europe on the first voyage but it did not
| gain wide attention.
|
| Native Americans had over 100 uses for the corn plant and its
| fruits.
| https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethnobotany/food/grains.sh...
| samatman wrote:
| Which is a very good thing indeed, because it makes our food
| system robust by operating at a large caloric surplus.
|
| When crop failures lead to rising grain prices, ranchers respond
| by not buying as much grain for their animals. The result is less
| Prime-grade beef and a whole lot more grain available.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| In reality, rich countries are still buying all the grain they
| can to feed their livestock and carry on as before, just a bit
| more expensive, while the poorer populations experience the
| real shortages.
| samatman wrote:
| In reality, the United States is the largest exporter of
| calories in the world, and the overwhelming source of direct
| food aid, and has been since WWII.
| tillinghast wrote:
| This is giving the dystopian chills when I consider that
| the Uber-wealthy proponents of population reduction (Bill
| Gates) are buying up crop land. Long game?
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| That is a contradiction to my statement in what way? Do you
| think the United States is the only wealthy country? The
| fact is that the war in Ukraine is leading to shortages and
| those are felt by the poorest, not the richest.
| codefreeordie wrote:
| Most of the world's grain is eaten by humans' food.
|
| We're really really good at efficiently producing grain --
| especially field corn (which is not super desirable as human food
| without significant processing), and we grow lots of animals of
| all sorts. Naturally, when we can, we feed those animals on field
| corn -- they don't complain, and it's the cheapest food we can
| produce for them.
|
| In the US we also subsidize corn pretty heavily, which has biased
| us towards maximizing efficiency on this crop rather than on some
| other grain. It's unclear to me whether we would have become more
| efficient with some other grain (in terms of food calories out
| per unit of resources/land in) had we produced as durable of an
| economic incentive to do so -- but regardless, it would still be
| a grain of some sort that ended up being the caloric efficiency
| maximum product, and therefore what animal feed would end up
| being.
| goodpoint wrote:
| You keep repeating the word "efficient" but there is nothing
| less efficient than animal farming. By far.
|
| Both in terms of land, water and energy usage.
| baisq wrote:
| Is there any way of obtaining beef that is more efficient
| than cow farming?
| codefreeordie wrote:
| Nope. Especially given the extent to which "cow" is a thing
| that we created because we wanted more/better beef.
|
| Over centuries, we have become increasingly efficient at
| producing beef, and are extremely efficient at it. It is
| probably not possible to be much more efficient using
| whole-plant crops and growing whole-animal beef.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Eh, beef, maybe, but the math basically comes down to: wheat,
| 4 million calories per acre, corn, 15 million. Take that 15
| million calories of corn and feed it to chickens for a 3:1
| calorie exchange and you've got 5 million calories of chicken
| per acre.
|
| It's more complicated than that, but corn yields are so high
| that they can overpower the otherwise inefficiency of meat
| production.
|
| Potatoes are as good as corn, and rice nearly so, but just
| from a land usage perspective chicken is no worse than eating
| wheat bread.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Fascinating! I had no idea corn was so calorific. Do you
| know how the inputs compare? As in are the amounts of
| fertilizer and pesticides similar?
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| > which is not super desirable as human food without
| significant processing
|
| I see this repeated all the time. Is making cornmeal or
| cornflour really that much more involved than wheat flour,
| semolina, or rolled oats?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| It isn't really relevant anymore because the food source is
| much more diverse than what it used to be, but when some
| western people started cultivating corn, and feading mostly
| out of it, they started to suffer from acute lack of
| tryptophan and vitamin b3, called pellagra, causing millions
| of death over several centuries.
|
| Mesoamerican civilizations built on top of corn had a
| specific corn processing step called nixtamalization, which
| avoided the issue altogether, but unfortunately wasn't
| imported along with corn during the colonizations of the
| Americas.
|
| But as long as you can get enough tryptophan and vitamin b3
| otherwise, corn is completely fine as a main source of
| energy.
| codefreeordie wrote:
| No, probably not. Mostly it gets said because sweet corn _is_
| tasty when prepared simply as a whole food, and it 's what
| most people think of when they see the word "corn".
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| I mostly see it as a bad faith argument for why the only
| possible productive use of x fraction of land is for
| growing feed and herding cattle and didn't know the 'animal
| feed corn' and corn as a grain for people are the same
| crop.
|
| If it's basically the same level of involvement as as
| bleached flour, then the only real relevant issues are how
| to source a balanced protein so you don't have to eat half
| a kilo of carbs when you don't need the energy and how
| distructive other micronutrient sources are.
| h2odragon wrote:
| A little bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization
|
| Best use of maize, IMO, is fermentation. Let the yeast have
| it first, take off the volatiles, then feed the mash
| leftovers to tasty critters.
| finiteseries wrote:
| Neither cornmeal nor cornflour are nixtamalized, but
| historically most consumed corn was before the
| inexperienced European colonizers began using it.
| [deleted]
| 988747 wrote:
| It's really not about that, corn products are simply bad for
| health - too much sugar, to little more valuable nutrients.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Cornmeal is less than 1% simple sugars, as is cornflour.
| While it's not great compared to high fiber low gi sources
| like brown rice or sweet potato, it's not sugary at all.
| You have to split the polysachharides somehow to make it
| into sugar.
|
| Of course if you spend extra time, money and energy turning
| your relatively ordinarily healthy grain (which is
| admittedly a low bar) into sugar you spend more time, money
| and energy and wind up with sugar. It's no different from
| wheat in that regard other than you should maybe add a bit
| more fiber to the meal.
| logifail wrote:
| > It's really not about that, corn products are simply bad
| for health - too much sugar, to little more valuable
| nutrients
|
| For the majority, sure. In our immediate family I have to
| disagree, after many months of (undiagnosed) illness, and
| after several trips to hospital, my son was recently
| diagnosed with Coeliac[0].
|
| Now corn products are now a key component of his diet.
|
| [0] https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-
| disea...
| [deleted]
| fortran77 wrote:
| I've started eating barley a couple of times a week, which is
| used primarily as an animal grain. I've found it makes a great
| alternative to rice or quinoa.
|
| From Wikipedia:
|
| > Globally 70% of barley production is used as animal fodder,[4]
| while 30% as a source of fermentable material for beer and
| certain distilled beverages, and as a component of various foods.
| It is used in soups and stews, and in barley bread of various
| cultures. Barley grains are commonly made into malt in a
| traditional and ancient method of preparation.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Beef and barley soup is excellent.
| messe wrote:
| Lamb shanks, barley, and a good stout or porter are fantastic
| ingredients for a stew.
| jogjayr wrote:
| Black bean, bacon (turkey bacon, for me), and barley stew is my
| go-to Instantpot meal. I like to imagine I'm eating at a tavern
| in a vaguely D&D/Middle-Earth-esque setting. Sometimes I add
| turnips too.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Try buckwheat and rye as well.
| hinkley wrote:
| I grew up in a land where 95% of the farms grew the same two
| crops and it was unsettling if you think about it. When mosaic
| virus started to become a problem here there were a number of
| stories published about how few grains represent most of our
| calories and two epidemics happening in the same year or couple
| of years could put us into a very, very bad situation.
|
| I decided probably 20 years ago that the simplest thing I could
| do was to eat multigrain bread, based on the observation that
| it's not just acres of alternative grain that matter in a
| situation like this, it's experience with grains that matter. A
| farmer who has grown 5 acres of millet for a decade can easily
| ramp that to 50, 100, and his neighbors can impose upon him for
| advice to do the same (probably the next year or the year after
| since farmers gonna farm).
|
| But if you don't know anyone who grows millet or sorghum or
| chia or whatever, it's going to take you years to sort that
| out, and if you're older you might just decide to try to avoid
| having to change at all.
| argella wrote:
| We're all going to be living on cricket powder in 20 years.
| baisq wrote:
| Or in 8 years, according to the 2030 Agenda.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Ssh you're letting the cat out of the bag on Soylent's pivot
| petermcneeley wrote:
| But if we eat the animals that eat the grain arnt we kinda eating
| the grain... like indirectly? If I grind the grain into a kinda
| dust and then let tiny organisms eat the dust and then cook those
| organisms am I eating grain?
| danhak wrote:
| About 90% of energy is lost from one trophic level to the next
| ephbit wrote:
| With modern urban lifestyles requiring (for many people) a
| lot less calories than ancient lifestyles of running around
| some great plains this is actually a feature to some degree
| for many people
|
| People need to take up protein. If the protein comes with
| significantly more calories than they burn, they're more
| likely to gain weight.
| [deleted]
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| You are, but you're eating far more grain than you would
| otherwise be as there are huge energy losses (the animals
| expend energy being alive after eating the grain) than if you
| at the grain directly.
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| Eat your gruel peasant, the planet needs it
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| In 70 something years we went from 60% forest coverage of earth's
| land mass to 30%. I can't help but wonder how it would be without
| any animal agriculture.
| bmitc wrote:
| It is a really depressing reality that we have carved out. It
| isn't even clear to me at all what we've gained through this
| destruction. It also isn't clear if the Green Revolution was a
| net long-term benefit.
|
| You might be interested in the book _Against the Grain: A Deep
| History of the Earliest States_ by James C. Scott. I have it
| sitting on my desk and have watched some talks by the author,
| but I haven 't gotten to the book yet.
| RhysU wrote:
| That is an excellent book.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Would you happen to have any links to the talks you
| mentioned?
| sorenjan wrote:
| Humans and our domesticated animals really dominate the planets
| resources. I wonder how long it can sustain us mistreating it
| like we do.
|
| "Humans and their livestock represent 96% of all mammals on
| earth in terms of biomass, whereas all wild mammals represent
| only 4%"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_%28ecology%29#/media/F...
|
| "The standing biomass of domesticated poultry, mostly chickens,
| has been calculated as 5 Mt C, about three times higher than
| the total biomass of all wild bird species combined"
|
| https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.180...
| hinkley wrote:
| Someone about ten years ago worked out that the snows of
| Kilimanjaro are fed by the vegetation upwind from the mountain.
| Whatever global warming is doing, deforestation is doing
| faster.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Do you have data/source for this? Interested in learning more,
| didn't think it was this much.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| Sorry I'm writing this on my phone holding a baby, so not the
| best situation for in depth research. The numbers I quote are
| from memory based on watching the latest David Attenborough
| documentary. Not a great reference, I know.
|
| Edit: highly recommend the documentary though.
| Fezzik wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/world-lost-one-third-forests
|
| and the rate at which we deforest and destroy grassland to
| make grazing land is ever-increasing.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Thanks very much for posting. I'd point out that the
| numbers from that very useful link are wildly, wildly
| different from what the parent commenter posted:
|
| 1. The graphs appear to be showing that 29% of the Earth's
| land surface is "barren land", i.e. deserts, glaciers,
| rocky terrain, etc. In 1900, 48% of the NON barren land was
| forests, so 34% of the Earth's total land was forested.
|
| 2. In 2018 the percentage of forested non-barren land was
| down to 38%, or 27% of Earth's total land.
|
| 34% to 27% of total land area from 1900 to 2018 is a major
| difference from the parent commenter's assertion of "In 70
| something years we went from 60% forest coverage of earth's
| land mass to 30%".
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/IofL0
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20220624002902/https://www.econom...
| fortysixdegrees wrote:
| padjo wrote:
| Or do both!
| zamfi wrote:
| The problem with this kind of post is not, as you might
| surmise, that people disagree with the notion that reducing
| meat consumption is helpful from an emissions perspective.
|
| It is that the binary presentation implies an either-or when in
| fact both are helpful.
|
| Plus it just shits on people and nobody likes that.
| heretogetout wrote:
| Isn't the math clear that meat consumption requires more
| emissions than non-meat consumption, on average (as in per
| calorie)?
| nradov wrote:
| You should probably sit still and not move around too much
| in order to minimize the number of calories you need to
| stay alive. If that's the metric we're optimizing for,
| anyway.
| heretogetout wrote:
| This is the sort of childish reply I see when folks talk
| about emissions from meat consumption/production. What's
| next, are you going to tell me that every steak I don't
| eat you'll eat two more? That's a classic.
| zamfi wrote:
| Did I say somewhere that meat consumption is not
| problematic?
| heretogetout wrote:
| I'm responding to "people disagree with the notion that
| reducing meat consumption is helpful from an emissions
| perspective". People may disagree but it's like
| disagreeing that 100 > 1 -- who cares what they think?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| depends on the meat and the non-meat.
|
| There is carbon-negative beef, and there are plants that
| require enormous amounts of artificial soil additives.
| Probably the biggest factor is whether the meat comes from
| a ranch in your general area and if the bell-pepper in your
| salad was flown in from holland.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| meet the reality:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1Hq8eVOMHs&t=4s
| wyre wrote:
| There is no more time left for this kind of pragmatism. It
| doesn't matter it people disagree, the truth is supporting
| meat consumption is supporting industries that are actively
| killing us and the planet.
| zamfi wrote:
| I assume you are being serious, but the truth is that
| supporting ICE vehicle sales and the fossil fuel industry
| as a result is supporting industries that are actively
| killing us and the planet _also_.
|
| I sure hope you bike (or drive a conflict-free electric
| car, I guess?) and are powered by your own solar panels if
| you feel this way.
| diordiderot wrote:
| AHH a classic right wing gotcha
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-
| som...
| tcfhgj wrote:
| why do you have to have your own solar panels? doesn't
| make any sense to me
|
| I agree however on biking (or public transport). I will
| always try to live max 15-20km away from work, such that
| I always can use a bike or a velomobile.
|
| Please don't try to make ad hominem arguments, thanks.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Take my upvote, cause you're right!
|
| Also: don't drive a car to begin with. Use muscle power
| wherever possible. All weight that's not you and not your stuff
| and that's transported is a waste of energy.
|
| Moving a 2500kg+ car to transport a 100kg human to buy less
| than 20kg of groceries? Only humans could come up with that.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The solar panels don't do any harm. The issue is the people who
| think driving a fancy car make much of a difference in terms of
| their carbon footprint. Stop flying first class. Stop eating
| beef. And stop throwing water on dirt to support your golf
| addiction.
| oDot wrote:
| Or eat grassfed beef, which is grown consuming human-inedible
| grass that grows for free, instead of being fed human foods
| that have to be farmed.
|
| White Oak Pastures even claims to have a negative carbon
| footprint[0], according to a report by a third party which, if
| I remember correctly, also authored the report behind one of
| the vegan burger's sustainability claims.
|
| 0: https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/blog/carbon-negative-
| grass...
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Grass-fed beef is no real solution to the grain shortage. For
| one the meat is more expensive, for another there is a limit
| to the land that can be used as meadows but not for other
| crops.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Can you use the meadows above the tree line for
| agriculture? That's what they eat during the summer.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| As I said, there's a limit to such land, and a limit to
| how much cattle that can be raised on that land.
|
| There's a reason why cattle farming went from extensive
| to intensive methods.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| What? There's a limit to highlands? That entirely depends
| on where you live. ;)
| melling wrote:
| Well, providing supporting evidence would be helpful.
|
| After a quick look, the data doesn't seem to support your
| claim?
|
| https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
|
| I still get the feeling that 40% of the electricity globally
| being generated from coal is a far bigger problem.
|
| Because of the war, coal usage is actually increasing.
|
| https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/06/24/all-the-european-c...
|
| Those fancy Tesla's are helping move the world to EVs, which
| will help the world reduce the 100 million barrels of oil we
| use every single day.
| mahogany wrote:
| Asking genuinely: what point are you making with that EPA
| data? That switching our method of transportation is more
| impactful than switching our diet because transportation is a
| bigger chunk of the emissions pie?
| melling wrote:
| Transportation and electricity add up to 52% of emissions.
| All of agriculture is 11%. What part of that is meat? A
| little more than half?
| mahogany wrote:
| I see, thanks for the elaboration. You may be correct,
| but there is more nuance based on my reading of the
| report: in particular, the "agriculture" category is
| somewhat misleading. I read a bit of the report, so I
| might as well post my findings here :)
|
| "Agriculture" appears to measure the emissions generated
| directly from agricultural processes themselves, as well
| as "secondary" combustion inputs. This includes "enteric
| fermentation in domestic livestock, livestock manure
| management, rice cultivation, agricultural soil
| management, liming, urea fertilization, and field burning
| of agricultural residues". However, based on my reading
| -- please correct me if I'm wrong -- large parts of the
| agricultural process are included in each of the
| transportation, electricity, and industry categories.
| Thus the effects of agriculture would be seen downstream
| and upstream in these other categories. For example, any
| agricultural use of electricity is included in
| "electricity", not "agriculture".
|
| An aside on meat specifically: since meat production
| involves more inputs, such as feed, livestock, and
| additional processing, you would have to account for
| these when comparing to a non-meat diet. For example,
| every cow involves the transportation of the cow, the
| (industrial) production of fertilizers needed to grow its
| feed, the production of the materials to package the
| feed, the transportation of the feed to a facility for
| packaging, the transportation of the packaged feed to a
| farm, the transportation of the cow to a slaughtering
| facility, the refrigeration of the cuts of meat, etc. The
| emissions generated during these steps would belong to
| the transportation, industry, and electricity categories,
| not even counting the extra emissions included in the
| agriculture category. While all food production would
| have steps such as these, clearly there are more steps in
| meat production because there are more inputs.
|
| Now, back to the original point of transportation versus
| agriculture: the report says that 25% of the
| transportation category is "freight" -- I believe the
| shipping I described above would be included in this.
| However, to your point, around 60% of transportation is
| due to passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks, which is
| quite significant and likely mostly personal use (rather
| than agricultural), and that's where changing
| transportation methods can make a difference. I'm too
| tired to find what percent of industry and electricity
| are related to the agricultural process, but you would
| need to calculate this and compare it to personal
| transportation use in order to get a fair comparison.
|
| In my personal opinion, I think we should both reduce
| meat consumption and personal vehicle use. No need to
| pick favorites.
| zamfi wrote:
| Not the OP, but I'd guess: yes.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Sure, reducing animal product consumption is the most effective
| action one can take.
|
| It's also true that EVs are not a sustainable solution.
|
| But solar panels are not to be sneered at.
|
| There's a lot of evidence backing these 3 points up.
|
| Yet, individual lifestyle changes can only achieve so much. The
| world needs society-wide political change.
| hristov wrote:
| I downvoted you because doing one thing does not preclude doing
| the other. Using an electric car and solar panels is very good
| for the environment. You can also eat less/no meat in addition.
| justapassenger wrote:
| There're many ways people can reduce their impact on
| environment. Buying $60k+ luxury cars isn't one.
|
| Reducing amount of meat can be, but you can give a shit and
| reduce your impact much more while still eating a lot of meat.
|
| People screaming that unless you reduce meat intake you're
| killing earth are as narrowly minded focused on single issue as
| people screaming that unless you buy an EV, you're killing
| earth.
| [deleted]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I generally see this argument pushed by vegans whose central
| issue is really animal rights, which is a valid concern, but
| the claim that a 100% vegan world, all other things being
| unchanged, would be one free from fossil-fueled global warming
| is simply not true.
|
| Generally speaking the claim is that significant amounts of
| agricultural energy go into growing grain for animals, and that
| domestic animal populations result in methane emissions, so
| eliminating the animal populations means less methane and you'd
| also need less agricultural production as everyone would eat
| vegan diets, if I've spelled it out adequately.
|
| However, this doesn't change the need for electricity
| generation and transportation fuel to move food and materials
| around the world, or from farms to cities, or for industrial
| production and heating and cooling, so that's where the
| electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines and storage
| systems are needed so we can phase out the fossil fuels from
| the energy mix. Yes, that's going to be cheaper and more
| sustainable than trying to expand uranium fission.
|
| Furthermore, in the pre-industrial era in North America for
| millenia there were large populations of bison, estimated
| variously at perhaps 50% of the domestic cattle population
| (which is where the biogenic methane is coming from). For
| example:
|
| (2012) "Historic, pre-European settlement, and present-day
| contribution of wild ruminants to enteric methane emissions in
| the United States"
|
| _Overall, enteric CH4 emissions from bison, elk, and deer in
| the presettlement period were about 86% (assuming bison
| population size of 50 million) of the current CH4 emissions
| from farmed ruminants in the United States._
|
| There are plenty of decent arguments for eating less meat, but
| I don't think 'fixing the climate' is really a very strong one.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| > but I don't think 'fixing the climate' is really a very
| strong one.
|
| and why is that?
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