EnviroLink Forum

You keep forgetting overpopulation, ralfy.
" food shortages from AGW droughts and >too many people< will force more people into a less meat diet or even vegetarianism. Food shortages will also drive some to poach wild game to extinction or low numbers. It will drive others to wars, and still others to cannibalism.
Food shortages will lead to malnutrition and compromised immune systems, which leads to more disease. Food shortages will drive people to use soils totally up(no organics left) and use poor soils prone to desertification. It will drive more people to slash and burn more forests for short term soil and high CO2 output. The more people, the more food shortages, until the effects of water loss, soil loss, and cheap energy depletion cause large reductions in yields and distribution with the mass die off of humans.
Large areas will be devoid of even bugs to eat as the "horsemen" pass, leaving human skeletons and bone fragments behind."

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"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”
― Chief Seattle

First, I want to say that I hate trying to read posts with nested quotes! There are a number of topics I never got around to responding to because they contained broken quote boxes. Now, as for this argument that reducing meat and dairy consumption will not provide us a little more breathing room to get control of food production and water consumption requirements, I can't see any logic behind this premise! You presented the fact that our present system of industrial agriculture produces a lot of wastes that animals can eat but we cannot, and your source never did give a breakdown of the numbers - - specifically, HOW Much would the addition of vegetable wastes add to the present animal feed mixes, which appear to mostly contain food that we can AND DO eat. And besides that, some of the products they identify as "wastes" were used for other purposes before the advent of oil-based agriculture, and we could easily return to them, rather than continue referring to them as wastes and trying to add them to animal feed. That was the point of straw-bale construction for example! Straw had a lot of important functions before modern agriculture, and could easily be used for insulation and even building construction itself in some applications as noted in that Wikipedia article.


No! The point is that natural existing plants, including the higher yielding hybrids developed more recently, were more adaptable to environmental variations than these Frankenfood GMO hybrids that Monsanto is creating, which are specifically targeted for certain environments. Natural adaptation will not respond faster, and we have to face the prospect that, if the Holocene Epoch is really ending, commercial agriculture may be impossible virtually everywhere! Some recent articles I've read from archaeologists and botanists studying the earliest artifacts of human engineering - such as the temples at Gobekli Tepe in Eastern Turkey over 12,000 years ago, show us that paleolithic hunter/gatherers were already domesticating grains like rye and even dates and other plants. But, they were not able to settle in one place and farm because the climate would swing from temperature extremes too rapidly. So, they would just scatter their seeds at various altitudes in hilly locations and go back at regular intervals when they expected some of them to mature and be ready for harvest. This hit-and-miss form of agriculture kept them constantly on the move, so they never set up permanent camps, even in areas they considered sacred- like Gobekli Tepe - which contained statues and crude temples, but no houses or signs that they had ever stayed at the location for more than a few days at a time. If this Pleistocene or worse - kind of variable climate is what we are returning to, there is no point to arguing about what kind of agriculture we should have, because nothing we would do would be capable of supporting 7 billion people!


Since you mention it, I have read that devout Hindus and Sikhs who come over here from India have health issues because our grains contain very little of the insects and animal wastes you mention...in comparison with what they had been eating in their homeland under less rigorous growing and storage methods. That may be an argument for eating insects - since the conversion ratio from plant to animal protein is much higher than even chickens can provide, but I don't see how it extends to a justification for the beef and poultry industries.


As it stands today, U.S. agriculture in the heartland is increasing fed with water from irrigation. And wherever those wells are dug, they end up drawing down the Oglala Aquifer, which could start reaching its end as soon as 2030 - what then?

And when you step back and look at the bigger picture, what effect on the biosphere does having 70% of state lands devoted to monoculture farming do? I don't know if that number includes other human activity like roads and cities, but the latest numbers globally are that 40% of the Earth's photosynthesizing plants are grown by humans for human purposes. It's not hard to understand why animal extinctions are galloping along at an estimated 200 species per year when we take this into consideration. We are simply using too much, and not leaving enough of the overall biosphere for all of the other plants and animals that are also necessary to maintain the recycling functions of the biosphere on a sustainable basis. The overall problem of the environment looks so big and all-encompassing, I wonder if we are just plunging into a mass extinction like the P/T, except at an accelerated rate. Is it even possible to turn this ship around, or are we all...at least our next generations doomed eventually as oceans turn anoxic and kill off most of the remaining life on Earth?

That would be because you did not present that premise, but the flawed premise that veganism was a better option. Removing the quotes also allows for the removal of the documentation of those nasty contradictions.



That would be due to the fact that data is not tracked very well. The jump to "waste" from "by-product" is another logical fallacy as well. Your data does not provide any factual break down of what is and is not consumable by humans, but rather makes some very flawed generalizations based on assumptions.



Assuming those uses are food related, which they are not, and that the benefit of such a conversion would be to provide the "breathing room" supposedly being the focus of the change.



It could if there were not better options, which seems to be the point you miss. The claim for veganism being a better food option falls on its face if the choice includes decreased food production in favor of the production of insulation.



You are saying "no" and then contradicting yourself in the explanation. The natural adaptation fails when compared to the ability to engineer adaptation to the environments specifically. Your personal bias not withstanding.



Not when crops can be adapted for the locations faster than the natural adaptations.



So the premise of a vegan diet assisting in the survival is false and our best hope is to develop better means to adapt crops faster.



You mean like the problems with lack of B-12 in their diet? That major problem with veganism because it cannot provide a natural source of B-12? The justification for the beef and poultry industries is not related to whether the vegans have health problems nor was that the point of the statement. You were pointing out the unusual portions of the animal diet and I was trying to point out some of those same items were in your diet now.



Where in the study is there a mention of the need for irrigation for these crops? Even if it were the case, how does eating what we can consume and using the rest as insulation or whatever, benefit our food supply in any fashion?



It has the same effect as if we consumed it and made insulation out of the by-products. This attempt at a deflection is weak at best.



Really? You are that clueless or just that desperate since the "you have a vested interest in the industry" gambit failed? Please explain how the conversion to vegetarianism, the title of this thread, would lead to less of this land being used for food production?

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With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

As if anyone bothers reading nested quotes! It's just an eyesore, especially when quote boxes get broken and it's impossible to figure out who said what. Some board admins will delete posts if whoever's debating don't do some pruning themselves, while a conservative forum I used to be on did the editing automatically so that only the last quotes could be reposted.


Blah blah blah blah! Most gardeners compost those "byproducts" for the following year. You try to make it sound like they have to be burned if they are not trucked into the feedlots. And you have presented as fact that the same level of animal husbandry can carry on with the same environmental impacts. Your first statement: The reason why livestock are loaded up on corn, soy and oats in the first place was so that production totals could be increased. If we go back to open pastures and grass-fed cows and pigs, the volume of beef, pork and chicken hitting the supermarket shelves would make a sharp reduction....along with much higher prices, which would be a good thing, since the ludicrous reality of the modern supermarket is that fresh fruits and vegetables usually cost as much, if not more per pound than meat does! And where is all of this pasture land going to come from now that cities, suburbs and highways, and monocrop farms have taken up most of the available land areas?

You should be able to figure out that there are no good options here! The frankenfood revolution is almost burned out and is not a longterm option anyway, while a return to pre-existing farming methods will not be able to match present production totals.


Every new technology -- including GMO's, has unforseen, unintended consequences.


I never claimed to be totally vegan; just that I have drastically reduced my consumption of animal products....and I am apparently getting enough to avoid any B-12 deficiency. But, I'm not going to let your twisting and spinning divert the number one issue - the North American diet has way to much animal products in it, contributing to heart disease, cancers, obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemics. We could easily get by eating some meat....probably not very much...once per week. A fraction of present meat consumption (I have avoided milk and dairy products previously anyway) would be plenty to get whatever nutrients we need specifically from animal sources. And since the subject of insects came up previously, there are places in Asia and Africa where certain insects are a regular part of the diet; and they have the most efficient plant to animal protein conversion ratio, so why not?


Well guess what! That rainwater that's been absorbed by growing corn and grains will not seep into groundwater to recharge declining aquifers. Instead, that water will be exported out of the state in the form of cereal grains. This would not be a problem if it was not for the fact that long term climate trends show the interior of the U.S. drying out at a time when populations and farming are increasing. Certainly a lot, if not most of the reason is due to increasing water demands of growing cities and suburbs, but for the record, even rain-fed crops are not value neutral. This is why in some drought-stricken areas, home owners have had rainbarrels confiscated and banned, and aren't even allowed to collect the rain from their own roofs. http://redgreenandblue.org/2009/06/07/r ... -changing/

And, as for Iowa and Illinois, which supposedly receive all of their water from rainwater, that seems to be changing in this new era of global warming: http://thegazette.com/2012/07/28/some-i ... elp-crops/


No, and you should know enough to be able to figure out that natural fibers will have to be put back in use again if and when the oil economy comes to an end. I'm not arguing with trying to match present textile production levels which are ridiculously over-inflated because of our consumer-driven capitalist economic system. Clothing has become so relatively cheap that combined with the evil influences of ad-driven propaganda, consumers throw out clothes after wearing them a few times....something that would have been unheard of 50 years ago. But, once again, real solutions to existing problems today will not happen without a major change to our present way of life.

[/quote]
Speaking of clueless and rude! Go back to all of your lame arguments about how there's plenty of room to feed existing livestock on grass and provide some numbers about how this is going to be accomplished today!

If anyone is interested in looking at the larger picture globally regarding livestock-raisings impact on the environment, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization published a full report about five years ago called Livestock's Long Shadow: http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm

It appears some do and it works wonders for showing what was said when one attempts to claim otehrwise,



Then do not post the quotes when you post and you will be happy.



Quality reply, if one requires no credibiity to post.



No they do not. How many large scale production farms do you expect do their composting after they produce soy oil or corn syrup?



No, that would be more like your attempt in calling them waste products.



Not exactly, the effect on the finished product was also a big factor. The use of the by-products as feed lowers feed costs and gives the benefit to the finished product.



Yet the claim was the only solution was a vegan diet and this seems to contradict that claim. It is also wrong as the volume would not be as signifcantly reduced as you believe nor would the cost rise a significantly as you believe.



It is already in existence. Where do you think the animals are raised prior to being sold? This level of ignorance of the facts surrounding food production is why such articles are believed when they are so badly flawed.



The revolution for modified crops is not almost burned out, so the rest of your premise would fail if it actually related to that being the case. Why is it not a longterm option? Please feel free to give us a technical evalution as to why faster modification would not adapt faster than the natural process.



What do you expect these consequences to be that would cause the natural adaptations to be faster?



I have no problems with it, but you were the one using the "contamination" complaint against animal feed and the implied support of a vegaqn diet not I.



So we need to kill of all plants to allow the aquifer to recharge? Or are you trying to tell us that only these crops consume rainwater and not any vegetative cover?



Which could be at least partially offset by GMO crops designed to use less water and be mor edrought tolerant, right?



It seems the collection of rainwater from impervious surfaces is confused with preventing rainwater from being used by vegetation.



You should read the articles more closely, none stated all of any farmers in any location avoided the use of irrigation, especially in the changing weather patterns.



Different argument from that being undertaken though. This is a poor attempt at defelction form a flawed premise.



Nothing related to food production at all though.



That is what I was speaking of. Can you give a reasonable reply?



OK. There were ~613,733,000 acres being used for grazing in the US in 2007:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/datafiles/Major ... _state.xls

http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/landuse.html

The United States is blessed with more arable land than any other nation on earth. Still, only about one-fifth of our land area (382 million acres) is used for crop production. Grazing land for livestock accounts for about one-fourth of the privately held land in the U.S. (525 million acres). In spite of a growing population and increased demand for agricultural products, the land area under cultivation in this country has not increased. While advanced farming techniques, including irrigation and genetic manipulation of crops, has permitted an expansion of crop production in some areas of the country, there has been a decrease in other areas. In fact, some 3,000 acres of productive farmland are lost to development each day in this country. There was a 4% decline in the number of acres in farms that over the last decade. In 1990, there were almost 987 million acres in farms in the U.S., that number had been reduced to just under 943 million acres by 2000.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

You are wasting your time Wayne is a spin doctor for the industry.

who controls who takes part in this forum and what gets posted.

Yet you are still here and posting whatever you wish?


I am a "spin doctor" for the industry? Would that be the drug, medical research, food production, biotech, or what? I would agree that trying to deflect the discussion, using flawed logic, or having poor references will be a waste of time in such a discussion.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

yeah, there is actually a fairly low percentage of agricultural land suitable for growing human food. A vast majority of it is used for purposes that leave the land looking rather similar to the wild state including grazing, lumber forests, palm oil forests, rubber tree plantations and bamboo forests. Other then the few Asian people who think palm oil has special healing properties, most of that palm oil goes to non-food uses of vegetable oil (palm oil tastes unique). So, the vast majority of agricultural land is not for human food and thus increasing humans just means more of that land will have grazing animals on it. Much of the prairies around my area cannot grow crops due to the soil being too sandy and too dry. Grazing has to be done carefully or the grass gets killed and it does not grow back... sand dune time. Other areas I have seen with great soil but are only grazed are glacier dump areas. I helped one farmer try to break in that land. I was only supposed to remove rocks about the size of a dog as these were big enough to pull of cultivator shovels. This was the 5th year he had removed rocks from that field and we were removing about 2 tons of rocks per acre still. He had formed 10 miles of rock fence that was 8 feet high and 10 feet wide (just to get the rocks out of the way). And of course there is also the mountains and hills... I worked for a farmer who had invented a self-propelled seeder system because he needed to only use 6 foot wide equipment due to how steep the hills were. This extreme hilly area covers a large part of the USA and Canada and is the result of glacier action on certain soil types. These areas are no longer farmed in most places due to the need for bigger equipment as paying people to drive around in small equipment costs too much per grain harvested (especially now with higher fuel). Mountains provide the extra problems with under-ground bedrock sticking through the thin soil layer... not much you can do with the land other then trees as without trees the soil just dries up and blows away. Again, I worked for farmers in such areas and they were planting trees to hold the soil so they could graze the land. Radio transmitters were added to the cattle so they could find and shoot the cougars who were killing them. Many were killed from falling rather then predators. Thus mountains are not even very good for grazing. Vast areas of Russia and China have no topsoil and thus they cannot grow anything at all on that land... even grazing is not functional (even though they get similar rainfall as Canadian prairies called "semi-desert")

Leading water scientists


Out trumps your opinion and outdated data you post

you will be telling us your are a world leader in the field next

hidden agenda going on around here, defo

Can you put this into something that even remotely resembles a logical train of thought?

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

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I use red, not because of anger but to define my posts to catch rebuttals latter and it makes the quote feature redundent for me. The rest of you pick your own color.

Life is a time capsule we strive to fill with precious memories.

To feed an extra 2 billion people with climate change will be a problem regardless.



So not only 2 billion more people, but a western diet ... which includes a lot of waste fir some of those other 7 billion.



A reliable system of food trade? Not a vegetarian diet?

.

Ahhh, multiple options to reach the same goal, so that expalins a lot



So the production is not as much of a problem as distribution now and in the future if waste can also be reduced.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

_________________
I use red, not because of anger but to define my posts to catch rebuttals latter and it makes the quote feature redundent for me. The rest of you pick your own color.

Life is a time capsule we strive to fill with precious memories.

If he was, I get the feeling you'd argue with it still. It's amazing how some, when challenged, attack the challenger rather than simply responding appropriately.

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TANG SOO!

If the land is used for grazing, and ranchers shoot or poison unwanted animals, especially predators, that is not land that is in its natural ecological state. And the animals brought in to graze the land are often not suited for the natural vegetation in the location. The percentage of the entire biosphere's primary production that's been appropriated for human purposes (it doesn't matter much if it's stuff we're eating or not) is a staggering 40%. How much of this planet's ecosystems can be devoted to our purposes before we have hit the point where the system cannot maintain itself? No one knows, but we may find out in a matter of decades.
The Flow of Energy: Primary Production to Higher Trophic Levels
This gives us 58.1/149.6, or nearly 40% of potential terrestrial production (about 25 % of terrestrial + aquatic production). Caveat: These estimates are based on best available data and are approximate. They probably give the correct order of magnitude.
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globa ... yflow.html