Opinion: "The End of Meat Is Here" - NY Times
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Funky_monks
Neo-Rustic
As stated, animal agriculture does not need soy, it's cheap and has a favourable amino acid profile. If soy production dropped, animals would simply be fed other things.You’re both assuming that the ‘cake’ is the byproduct of the oil and not the other way round. The following analysis suggests animal products are the primary economic driver of soy production:
An argument could be made... that increases in the production of soy have primarily been driven not by the demand for animal feed, but by the demand for soy oil for human consumption. One might view soy cake as only a by-product of the production of soy oil, as its economic value is much lower (a kilogram of soy oil is about twice the value of a kilogram of soy cake). However, since the crushing of soybeans produces much less oil (20% by weight) than cake (80%), only a third of the overall value of a kilogram crushed soybeans is derived from the oil, as compared with two thirds from the cake. Soy oil is also one of the cheapest vegetable oils on the commodity market, whereas soy cake is the most valuable of all oilseed cakes due to its favourable amino acid profile and the low levels of anti-nutritive compounds it contains after heat treatment.
It is therefore likely that the growth in soy production has primarily been driven by the demand of soy cake for feed, and hence by the growing demand for animal-based products. However, because the oil and the cake originate from the same bean, there is a mutual and economically convenient dependency between their uses. The rapid expansion of soy and its use for feed is therefore likely to have been facilitated by concurrent increases in the demand for vegetable oil.
Soy: food, feed, and land use change
The global growth in the production of soy and its use for different types of foods has been, and continues to be, a major contributor to land use change in the Amazon and other regions in South America. This building block explores the connections between soy, land use change, and discussions...www.foodsource.org.uk
It is not the driver of oilseed soy production.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
"It is not the driver of oilseed soy production" is just a baseless assertion and the fact that it doesn't 'need' soy is irrelevant to the claim that it is the primary driver of soy production.
WouldBe
Dislicksick
So what's the point of the expense of all the equipment and running costs to extract the oil? It would be far cheaper to just feed the soya (including the stalks, pods and leaves) directly to the cattle if it was the primary motive.
E2a: you'll be telling us next that other products like grapes and sugar beet are primarily grown for animal feed because that's where the waste material goes.
Funky_monks
Neo-Rustic
So what's the point of the expense of all the equipment and running costs to extract the oil? It would be far cheaper to just feed the soya (including the stalks, pods and leaves) directly to the cattle if it was the primary motive.
E2a: you'll be telling us next that other products like grapes and sugar beet are primarily grown for animal feed because that's where the waste material goes.
Nah, come on now, you know the price of straw drives wheat production....
Funky_monks
Neo-Rustic
Depends where the soy comes from. Im sure it can be grown sustainably.
But in reality, avoiding soy oil shouldn't be hard, seeing as we don't cook with it here.
We can grow plenty other kinds of bean here
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
So what's the point of the expense of all the equipment and running costs to extract the oil? It would be far cheaper to just feed the soya (including the stalks, pods and leaves) directly to the cattle if it was the primary motive.
E2a: you'll be telling us next that other products like grapes and sugar beet are primarily grown for animal feed because that's where the waste material goes.
False extrapolation. The primary motivation of production under capitalism is to generate profits. When a productive process produces two or more commodities, to determine which one is the primary motivation as you put it, you have to work out which one is the most profitable. I have supplied analysis suggesting that the soy cake for animal fodder is more profitable than soy oil for direct human consumption. If that analysis is correct then the soy oil is better thought of as a byproduct of soy oil than the other way around. If you want to contest that you have to show that the analysis I linked to is incorrect. Instead you've offered a red herring.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
No one really uses soy oil in the UK afaia. It's used in a lot of US processed foods.
WouldBe
Dislicksick
Yes and if you just fed the soya to the animals it would be more profitable and save money by not investing in the oil extraction equipment. So again your argument breaks falls apart.
editor
hiraethified
What point are you trying to make here, by the way? Meat product is more harmful to the planet than soya, whatever the fuck its being used for, even though - of course - the majority of soya use is for meat eaters, one way or another.Yes and if you just fed the soya to the animals it would be more profitable and save money by not investing in the oil extraction equipment. So again your argument breaks falls apart.
WouldBe
Dislicksick
Yes as a waste product not as a primary product.
Poot
My wife thinks I work too hard
No, as a primary product too. Do you think the oil is only eaten by vegetarians?
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
Yes and if you just fed the soya to the animals it would be more profitable and save money by not investing in the oil extraction equipment. So again your argument breaks falls apart.
Oh boy.
WouldBe
Dislicksick
The waste product is the soya cake. That's not eaten by anyone wether vegetarian or omnivore.
WouldBe
Dislicksick
Possibly but then what do you do with the shit loads of waste product from soy/rape/sunflower etc oil and the waste from malt/cider/wine etc and all the other waste products from food production? You can't send it to landfill as it will just rot releasing tons more methane into the atmosphere and God knows what leaching into groundwater.
editor
hiraethified
This is a ridiculous argument. I don't give a fuck if you agree or not, but just about every scientific study has reached the same conclusion: eat less fucking meat, you cunts. And stop wriggling with bullshit excuses. The science is clear. And, best of all, when people do eat less meat, there will be a reduction in the horrendous, vile, disgusting cruelty involved in the meat industry, so that's a double win.
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
Any gardener/farmer would tell you that it would be used as fertilizer, just as it often is now.
WouldBe
Dislicksick
Whatever. In this thread and others like it it has been shown over and over again scientific reports that contradict what some of you keep posting but you just keep ignoring it just like the conspiraloons do.
The answer to the title of this thread is NO and anyone who thinks it is is delusional.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
You're right Ed, it’s always tempting to pick apart Wouldbe and Funky-monks terrible arguments because they’re just so obviously flawed. But ultimately they win by leading you down a rabbit hole. Whatever tangential bullshit they throw out can’t detract from the fact that they’re apologists for a cruel, destructive industry responsible for unparalleled suffering, disease and environmental degradation. And ultimately they don’t give a shit.
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
Wasn't sure where to put this. It probably belongs in the Corona forum. I thought I'd put it here because it illustrates the harm that happens not just to animals, but the people who work in meat processing plants. It alleges that managers at a Tyson plant in Waterloo, Iowa bet on how many of their employees would get sick and/or die:
www.nbcnews.com
I've seen other sources on this say that there were seven workers who died. I'm pretty sure more people have died at other plants than this Tyson plant, but the callous attitude toward workers puts it in another category. If this isn't criminal, it should be.
Suit alleges Tyson Foods plant manager bet on how many workers would get coronavirus
A federal lawsuit alleges that management at a Tysons Foods meat plant bet on whether employees would contract the coronavirus. About a third at the Iowa plant tested positive.
www.nbcnews.com
I've seen other sources on this say that there were seven workers who died. I'm pretty sure more people have died at other plants than this Tyson plant, but the callous attitude toward workers puts it in another category. If this isn't criminal, it should be.
editor
hiraethified
But even better to immediately drastically reduce the amount of meat eaten.
Funky_monks
Neo-Rustic
Didn't say we shouldn't reduce the amount of meat we should eat. My argument is more with the perception that this will intrinsically lead to environmental benefits (such as a reduction in soy cropping - if the demand for soymeal as fodder falls, it'll simply be used for something else; maybe soil conditioner, AD plants etc etc). It won't lead to any; just like all overly simplistic "one size fits all" global solutions, although to be fair it's not as inane as "just plant some trees" as a solution so that big business can carry on polluting, having "offset" their emissions, and, you will see this sort of thing happening more and more with incentives etc based around the concept of "natural capital" monetarising the environment.
By simply ignoring meat, you are ignoring livestock's potential both as an environmental tool (trial plots in many natural habitats that have attempted to address degradation by removing grazers have often degraded more than those that are grazed) and their place in ecosystems (all farming is a man-made ecosystem). You'd lose emerging tools like regenerative agriculture, for example and things like aquaponics which have the potential to feed millions of people, especially in cities.
The real issue is the relentless pursuit of market share by the supermarkets/industrial food companies (who have suddenly hit on this notion of entirely synthetic food, and have seen the potential to completely remove farming from the equation) and as a result of this, the agrifood supply chains. Plenty of environmentalists would say that the only sustainable diet is a local one.
There are loads of interesting ideas to address this, not least "urban farming" (which is almost always based around fruit and veg - have just read a paper that found that urban farming (via extended community allotments) in Australia is many times more productive than fruit and veg producing rural farms, not least because manual labour allows much closer cropping than machine (also can garden "up" more by supporting climbing veg as opposed to the dwarf field varieties to be cropped by machine). This also cuts out the supply chain almost entirely as the food is grown where it is to be eaten. It also has positive societal benefits in some of the poorest post-industrial landscapes of the world as well as helping integrate those economic migrants from rural areas into urban ones.
Capitalism wants, intrinsically, to centralise things (Marx was right), and this, to me, is extremely obvious in the pig and poultry industries. Both of these species were originally domesticated to live in small flocks/herds alongside humans to recycle the inedible into food (I believe Engels describes pigs in Salford in "The Condition of the Working Class"). Decentralising them again could be a much more sustainable solution, given that niche (food waste) still very much exists.
John Seymour (he of self-sufficiency handbook fame) admitted towards the end of his live that individualistic self-sufficiency was too much work and not efficient. Community self-sufficiency has the potential to be our saviour.
This, of course, would require a departure from the way that life is currently lived and certainly wouldn't suit capital at all (and would probably be quite a departure for a lot of people, especially in the developed world), so it is ideologically attached to notions like "the end of meat" being here, to be replaced with a manufactured, synthetic product that anyone else but massive industry would lack the economies of scale to produce. To it, the vegan/vege markets are simply new markets to be exploited, and it is just as comfortable designing industrial solutions to cater for these, in the same way that it has been responsible for the "turkey twizzlers" of this world, only this time it can control the entire process without the need for farming.
As a (not so extreme) extension of this you could reasonably argue that saving the environment isn't compatible with capitalism.
editor
hiraethified
It's just that you seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to deflect from this one simple, science-backed, obvious statement of fact.
What?
Funky_monks
Neo-Rustic
No, I've taken issue with the fact that this will somehow help the environment.
See also: Randomly planting trees.
If you've gleaned nothing else, I'd hoped that it would be that solutions to eating sustainably are far from "simple" and will almost certainly vary depending upon where on the planet you live.
In the UK, for example, cattle and sheep are essential to preserve habitats and capture carbon. Plus, we don't have the climate to produce either year-round veg crops or much in the way of protein rich seeds (although I have seen a seed catalogue advertising "edamame" that one can grow here, so am tempted to try and grow some in the veg patch).
None of my posts have defended industrial pig and poultry production (which, by the way, account for 80% of the meat eaten in the UK).
editor
hiraethified
And intensive farming and factory farming helps how exactly? Because that's how the majority of meat is produced in this country. Is that essential too?
ska invita
back on the other side
shit trollingFunky_monks
Neo-Rustic
It wasn't meant to be - it's the basis of holistic regenerative agriculture (which doesn't work everywhere, but has had noteworthy effects)
Before and after holistic grazing management (Zimbabwe):
Funky_monks
Neo-Rustic
At no point have I said it does.
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