Do angry vegans turn you against going vegan?

[littlebabyjesus]

Insects can be fed on all kinds of waste, including shit! I linked to a UN report that gives some details.

Agree about fish farming. The fish have miserable lives, their meat is poor quality due to those miserable lives, and something like a third of the entire worldwide catch goes to make fishmeal to be fed to farmed fish. Most of that fishmeal is perfectly good to be eaten directly by us. Fishmeal is even fed to basically vegetarian fish like tilapia, which is the height of folly. We really do do some fucking stupid things.

 

[xenon]

There's one in Bristol I've stopped eating at. They've hiked their large/small prices from £5/£3.50 to £7/£5 in the last 2 years. So at least someone's had a decent pay rise recently.

Which one is that?

I haven't had one in town for ages. Sometimes get one from the local kebabs shop

 

[mojo pixy]

It's Biblos. I bought falafel wraps from there regularly till one day I went in and a £5 wrap was suddenly £6 for no obvious reason and with no warning. Since then it's all gone up even more, though there are no new branches and none of the ones that exist are any bigger.

 

[AnnaKarpik]

I do

Farming is fucked in the UK. We have loads of land that is massively under utilised. Aging farmers. Supermarkets that made it uneconomic to produce various food stuffs. All well and good when we can afford import what we need, but we all know how great capatalsim is at looking after people right? This is even before we get in to the oil we eat (getting of the subject I know). So animal rights aside we have massive issues with food sovereignty and food miles. Massively dependent on fossil fuels. The idea we should eat meat with every meal is fucked.

So the plan? Where you can graze cows you can generally get 10 times the food produce if we grow vegetables. It will of course mean changing the way we eat and live.

I'm not going to give up eating meat, but think we could all do better for our own health and that of environment if we all eat less of it. So I'm going to continue to pay attention to the vegans. Because in between everything there is some tasty shit to be had.

Thing is, even assuming that this pasture isn't going to wash away into a river as soon as you start digging it, you won't keep getting ten times the food for very long unless you throw in artificial fertilisers. Less meat = better-cared for natural environment seems less and less obvious the more I think about it.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Thing is, even assuming that this pasture isn't going to wash away into a river as soon as you start digging it, you won't keep getting ten times the food for very long unless you throw in artificial fertilisers. Less meat = better-cared for natural environment seems less and less obvious the more I think about it.

It's interesting to me how many people here seem to assume that giving up meat would automatically lead to better environmental practices. The current most destructive practices are driven first and foremost by the destructive forces of capitalism. These are what need tackling and overthrowing. For me, a lot of the arguments are aimed at the wrong targets.

 

[NoXion]

I wonder how this would work.

It's all about ghost acreages.

Just lately as I investigate hydroponic food production, even after eliminating the obvious bullshit of vertical farms with LED lighting, I encountered massive enthusiasm for "aquaponics" - but even if you ignore the iffyness of keeping fish in tanks, the proponents aren't factoring-in the fish food - which, like animal feed, tends to be krill and "trash fish" (sic) harvested from distant seas ...

What will the insects be fed on ?

As LBJ pointed out, bugs aren't exactly fussy eaters. Using bugs would also make aquaponics more sustainable. As for vertical farming, as long as the energy used to run it is plentiful and carbon neutral, such as from nuclear or renewables, then I don't see how it being energy intensive is a problem.

 

[gentlegreen]

As for vertical farming, as long as the energy used to run it is plentiful and carbon neutral, such as from nuclear or renewables, then I don't see how it being energy intensive is a problem.

This guy grows veggies in space and has done the sums :-

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

tbf, globally many of those massive prairies are currently growing crops to be fed to livestock - for some the worst excesses of factory farming such as feedlot cattle rearing.

I'm also not so sure I see evidence that we're moving away from meat. In the rich world, without checking the figures, I'd be surprised if meat consumption isn't considerably up over the last 50 years. In China, meat consumption has grown enormously: according to the report mentioned here, up five-fold from 125 to 691 calories per day between 1971 and 2011. There are govt plans in China to reduce meat consumption, but it hasn't happened yet.

I'd also take issue with the idea of meat-based diets, aside from the odd tiny exception such as the Inuit. Most meat-eaters take in much less than 50 per cent of their calories as meat. This page gives a breakdown of calorie intake by country. If anything, globally our diets are more grain-based than anything, with meat/dairy/eggs less than 25 per cent combined.

I don't see evidence that the developing world is eating less meat, China in particular. (It should be noted that their meat consumption has been far lower than the US.) They're very busy buying major hog confinement operations in the Midwest US, or starting new ones. That doesn't indicate that they plan to lower meat consumption to me. I also noted that they've building high-tech hog confinement options like this:

Hog barns—stacked eight stories high. The photos from Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey traveled around the Twitter-verse lightning fast, raising eyebrows and slackening jaws of U.S. producers and industry leaders. We all want to know: “How do you manage that manure?”

Northey, on a trade mission with the Iowa Soybean Association in Guangxi, in south-central China, says the buildings were part of an expansion project with Chinese feed mill and pork producer Guangxi Yangxiang Co. (Click here for the company website. Translate the site to English at the top right.)

With land coming at a premium in China, pork producers are looking for ways to maintain animal production numbers, on fewer acres. The company already has a boar unit—1,500 boars, with plans to go to 5,000.

Northey said in another part of this mountain, they were building four high rises—each eight stories of sows with the ninth story for ventilation equipment.

“This was to be 30,000 sows on this side of the mountain, and another 10,000 sows just kind of across the mountain. All these animals are served by one feed mill.”

From the sow facilities, the 10-day to 3-week old pigs would be transported to nursery and finishing facilities farther down the mountain, or sold on contract to other producers.

“As far as they knew, and as far as we knew, this is the first more-than-two-story hog facility in production,” Northey says. “They said there are some two-story facilities out there, but this is the first eight-story building with pigs in it. There looked to be three [buildings] up, and another one in process. So potentially four buildings, with 7,500 sows per building. Just amazing.”

China's High-rise Hog Hotel

In the West, there is some evidence that meat consumption is going down, from its freakishly high levels. Overall, though world-wide meat consumption is going up. It's getting cheap enough that every larger numbers of people can afford it. I do wonder if the planet can afford it. The US alone has 93 million cattle.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

This guy grows veggies in space and has done the sums :-

Any chance of a quick summary?

 

[A380]

As an aside: Why do people call vegetables 'veggies'?

It's almost as anoying as people who call their dogs 'fur babies ' on FB.

Veggies is an acceptable short form for vegetarian, but surly not for vegetables?

 

[eoin_k]

In Europe, it's easier to imagine what a more sustainable system of food production would look like with livestock than without them. Beef farming would be reduced to a level much closer to that needed to complement sustainable crop rotation on prime arable land. Sheep farming makes sense on marginal land that isn't much use for anything else (hill farms, marshland etc.). Small scale pig farming could be integrated into market gardens, orchards and small holdings. Mass poultry farming would make less sense, but chickens would be more common in people's allotments and kitchen gardens.

Less meat would probably be produced than is now the case, but it seems to make sense to integrate livestock into food production in this sort of climate in terms of maintaining soil fertility, and minimising energy inputs and the use of petrochemicals.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

In Europe, it's easier to imagine what a more sustainable system of food production would look like with livestock than without them. Beef farming would be reduced to a level much closer to that needed to complement sustainable crop rotation on prime arable land. Sheep farming makes sense on marginal land that isn't much use for anything else (hill farms, marshland etc.). Small scale pig farming could be integrated into market gardens, orchards and small holdings. Mass poultry farming would make less sense, but chickens would be more common in people's allotments and kitchen gardens.

Less meat would probably be produced than is now the case, but it seems to make sense to integrate livestock into food production in this sort of climate in terms of maintaining soil fertility, and minimising energy inputs and the use of petrochemicals.

Yep, in other words, mostly going back to good practices from the past. Pig farming could be located at the edges of cities, the pigs eating our food waste.

 

[gentlegreen]

Any chance of a quick summary?

Stacked floors Of LED lighting - incident solar radiation 1KW psm, solar panels very inefficient as are LEDs - so the skyscraper would need an acre of solar panels.
Transport costs aren't THAT expensive ...

The only schemes in operation are growing insanely expensive salad for the wealthy.

 

[Spymaster]

As an aside: Why do people call vegetables 'veggies'?

It's almost as anoying as people who call their dogs 'fur babies ' on FB.

Veggies is an acceptable short form for vegetarian, but surly not for vegetables?

Veggies are vegetables for under 7 year olds.

 

[gentlegreen]

Apparently vegetarians are called vegos in Australia.
ve-ge-t-a-b-les is a lot of syllables and glottal stops ...

I believe "meat" used to mean "food" ...

"meat and two veg" implies veggies other than spuds as more of a garnish ...



I must be eating 5 times that every evening ...

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Thing is, even assuming that this pasture isn't going to wash away into a river as soon as you start digging it, you won't keep getting ten times the food for very long unless you throw in artificial fertilisers. Less meat = better-cared for natural environment seems less and less obvious the more I think about it.

That's clearly not true. You can get high yields in an organic system. It is more labour intensive but by practicing crop rotation and using green fertilisers it's perfectly possible. I know a little of what I speak as my other half farms and I do the odd days work there.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Of course meat can be raised in an sustainable and ethical fashion. It's just most of us couldn't afford to consume the quantity of it that we currently do.

 

[NoXion]

Yep, in other words, mostly going back to good practices from the past. Pig farming could be located at the edges of cities, the pigs eating our food waste.

Maybe we could bring back serfdom and trials for witchcraft too. I'm not convinced that the dilemma between current agricultural practice and going backwards to rural idiocy is a real one.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Maybe we could bring back serfdom and trials for witchcraft too. I'm not convinced that the dilemma between current agricultural practice and going backwards to rural idiocy is a real one.

Good practices like mixed farming, I meant. And feeding pigs our food waste is a solid idea. If you rummage through the CIWF website, they have stuff on how it can be done safely - it's mostly banned at the moment.

That's a puzzling post, tbh. 'rural idiocy', or accumulated knowledge over thousands of years that has often been discarded in favour of industrialised practices?

 

[Pickman's model]

Good practices like mixed farming, I meant. And feeding pigs our food waste is a solid idea.

but is it a good idea? should we be forcing pigs to eat among other things bacon and pork chops?

 

[NoXion]

Good practices like mixed farming, I meant. And feeding pigs our food waste is a solid idea. If you rummage through the CIWF website, they have stuff on how it can be done safely - it's mostly banned at the moment.

Well that in itself sounds like a better idea than just tossing it into a landfill, although I suspect that composting of some kind might be easier to achieve logistically. And if we're moving away from fossil fuels at the same time then collecting the methane gas thus produced would seem to be a good idea.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Maybe we could bring back serfdom and trials for witchcraft too. I'm not convinced that the dilemma between current agricultural practice and going backwards to rural idiocy is a real one.

If we run out of oil then that may not be a choice. What happened in Cuba is an example of how we may have to manage.

 

[NoXion]

If we run out of oil then that may not be a choice. What happened in Cuba is an example of how we may have to manage.

Funny, I was once told that the Saudis had enough oil to give them a century of profits. Which tallies with how that Peak Oil nonsense, which was popular among internet survivalists around the turn of the century, turned out not to mean that shopping for petrol now carries a significant risk that one would get their throat slit. The oil is not going to run out this century, although the quality of newly discovered deposits has certainly gone down the drain, as can be seen with the fact that fracking is now considered commercially viable (sort of - market fluctuations seem to be a risk for fracking operations). No, the real risk with oil and fossil fuels in general is their adding to the carbon content of the atmosphere, which is already on course to cause significant disruption to civilisation this century.

 

[Pickman's model]

Funny, I was once told that the Saudis had enough oil to give them a century of profits. Which tallies with how that Peak Oil nonsense, which was popular among internet survivalists around the turn of the century, turned out not to mean that shopping for petrol now carries a significant risk that one would get their throat slit. The oil is not going to run out this century, although the quality of newly discovered deposits has certainly gone down the drain, as can be seen with the fact that fracking is considered commercially viable. No, the real risk with oil and fossil fuels in general is their adding to the carbon content of the atmosphere, which is already on course to cause significant disruption to civilisation this century.

less petrol and more plastic

 

[mr steev]

Apparently vegetarians are called vegos in Australia.
ve-ge-t-a-b-les is a lot of syllables and glottal stops ...

I believe "meat" used to mean "food" ...

"meat and two veg" implies veggies other than spuds as more of a garnish ...

View attachment 112510

I must be eating 5 times that every evening ...

WTF has have they done to that broccoli? It looks gross

 

[gentlegreen]

WTF has have they done to that broccoli? It looks gross

indeed.
And the notion that that ever qualified as one fifth of one's daily requirement of veggies is bonkers - even if the rest of one's calories came from wholegrain and beans.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Funny, I was once told that the Saudis had enough oil to give them a century of profits. Which tallies with how that Peak Oil nonsense, which was popular among internet survivalists around the turn of the century, turned out not to mean that shopping for petrol now carries a significant risk that one would get their throat slit. The oil is not going to run out this century, although the quality of newly discovered deposits has certainly gone down the drain, as can be seen with the fact that fracking is considered commercially viable. No, the real risk with oil and fossil fuels in general is their adding to the carbon content of the atmosphere, which is already on course to cause significant disruption to civilisation this century.

Well quite. Fracking is only viable with high energy prices which comes from diminishing supply and increasing global demand. Vast amounts of energy are used every year to make fertiliser. And yes climate change and water shortages will also bring their own pressures.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

No matter if we continue to eat meat or not, we do need to better manage our soils.

About three times the carbon currently in the atmosphere is stored in the Earth’s soil—up to 2.4 trillion metric tons, or roughly 240 times the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels annually.

Much of that is locked up in land used for agriculture. Cropland soil stores atmospheric carbon in organic matter such as manure, roots, fallen leaves and and other pieces of decomposing plants. It doesn’t remain there permanently. It takes decades for the organic matter in the soil to decompose, and the carbon stored within is eventually emitted back into the atmosphere as gas. Soil is responsible for 37 percent of global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, according to the paper.

Estimates vary for how much carbon dioxide could be stored if soil were managed with the climate in mind. Methods of controlling the amount of carbon stored depend on climate and soil type. In addition to slowing the decomposition rate of organic matter in the soil, some methods include adding compost or biochar to fields, vegetating fallow fields and more effective use of irrigation, erosion control and fertilizer.

The study says that if all the Earth’s farmers were to manage their fields so the soil stored more carbon, the impacts of the greenhouse gases emitted from burning fossil fuels annually could be cut by between half and 80 percent.

Farmland Could Help Combat Climate Change

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Great civilisations have fallen because they failed to prevent the degradation of the soils on which they were founded. The modern world could suffer the same fate.

This is according to Professor Mary Scholes and Dr Bob Scholes who have published a paper in the journal, Science, which describes how the productivity of many lands has been dramatically reduced as a result of soil erosion, accumulation of salinity, and nutrient depletion.

"Cultivating soil continuously for too long destroys the bacteria which convert the organic matter into nutrients," says Mary Scholes, who is a Professor in the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences at Wits University.

Although improved technology -- including the unsustainably high use of fertilisers, irrigation, and ploughing -- provides a false sense of security, about 1% of global land area is degraded every year. In Africa, where much of the future growth in agriculture must take place, erosion has reduced yields by 8% and nutrient depletion is widespread.

"Soil fertility is both a biophysical property and a social property -- it is a social property because humankind depends heavily on it for food production," says Bob Scholes, who is a systems ecologist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research....

Civilizations rise and fall on the quality of their soil

Sorry about the large cut and pastes. Soil use and fertility, by chance, is what I chose as a reading topic this summer.

 

[twentythreedom]

What 'on earth' are you on about?