RE: We'll meat again (without the animals)
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I've been involved in both major and minor farming operations for most of my life.
I'd say the biggest waste of resources goes to producing certified organic seeds like wheat, barley, etc.
That land which you assume is wasted and destroyed if used for cattle is actually being used the same way it had been used for thousands of years. Animals grazing in the pasture is 100% natural. Millions of buffalo used to roam the prairies here. Now much of that land is used to grow edible plants. And when it comes to certified organic, the soil dies quickly if the field doesn't sit idle every couple of years for one growing season while a plant that's destined to be worked into the soil grows. That makes that land 'useless' to not only humans, but wildlife and livestock. The amount of fuel that gets burned producing certified organic seeds is insane when compared to the other seeds.
Free range chickens just walk around and eat bugs along with whatever is offered. No different than wild birds doing their thing. Those massive poultry barns where most chicken comes from use far less land than something like, cities. Their feed is often low grade stuff people won't eat.
I often wonder what happens to the livestock if the lab and vegetarian types get their way. Does it go extinct? No such thing as a wild cow. We'd have to bring wolves back in high numbers to take care of all the feral pigs, because those things reproduce like crazy and would destroy most of the crops in no time. So they'd have to be culled, then the meat would go to waste.
I could talk for days about these things.
The land is sustainable if grazed naturally, but could that supply current demand? All those domestic animals would never be born naturally. I've heard that argument before and it make no sense. I am not saying we eliminate them all. They have been bred to be far different to what they came for and many could probably not survive without human intervention. All that animal food has to be produced somewhere on land that could be feeding us.
There were wild pigs and the ancestors of our cattle around before us with predators to keep the balance. We are making everything artificial with no natural balance. Hence ecosystems are collapsing as we exploit them.
What are these 'vegetarian types' anyway? What is wrong with not wanting to kill as many animals? I am not a farming expert, but I can see that the meat industry as it stands is not sustainable. Do we have to keep cutting down the Amazon for beef production? Human population is a related issue as our demands outstrip the resources. We just seem to be in a race to use up everything in the name of profit and that seems crazy. Wouldn't it be a good thing to reduce the number of animals living short, miserable lives? I'm not saying there cannot be free range farming that the landscape can support, but how do we feed the rest of the world?
It's not all an either/or situation. I'm not some zealot, I'm a pragmatist. I probably don't save much money by not eating meat as it is so cheap and some veggie options are not. Given the number of overweight people around I think we should be thinking more about what we eat for our own benefit as well as the animals.
Usually the grass fed cattle graze on pastures and eat hay. We cut the natural grasses that grow alongside roads, around the edges of fields, and areas too wet to work and be used for seeds, veg, fruits. There's silage which is like fermented grasses. That can mixed with wheat and barley straw. Sometimes they'll throw cattle into low grade feed corn fields and they eat straight off the plant. It's far too expensive to feed cattle straight corn their whole life. That's often saved for the final weeks of their life after the actual farmer sells them to market where some get fattened up with corn.
Nothing. Nobody pays attention to the millions of birds and mammals that sucked up into harvesters or plowed over in the fields.
That's where they grow soybeans, too, and lots of them.
Stop throwing one third of all food produced into the trash. The rest of the world should learn how to feed itself. City folks want everything handed to them. Should learn to pull their weight and not dictate to those doing the work how to do their jobs. Of course farmers deserve to earn a living from farming. Food costs often rise when these things have to be trucked around and stored. Farmers don't earn much, often getting the shaft and living in poverty.
The world isn't even overcrowded. It's just poorly managed. Give every human alive a quarter acre and they'd all fit nicely into Canada.
They're treated better than most pets.
This discussion could go on forever. I agree with some of what you say. The monoculture of endless fields of wheat is not ideal. Huge amounts of chemicals are used on it, but then livestock get antibiotics and possibly hormones that will end up in the soil and water. I just found a statistic that over a third of crops are fed to animals.
Waste in agriculture is a big issue. We will have to rely on food crops to feed the growing population as they are not going to get all their nutrition from meat. If they did then we would have even bigger problems.
Maybe there is plenty of space in Canada, but the average human is consuming more than their share of the planet can provide. Not just food, but water, energy and raw materials.
Farmers should get a decent deal, but 'the market' exploits them. Food production is essential and ought to be managed better, not purely for profit that goes to the few (not the farmers).
The original point was more around that millions of chickens are killed every day so people can have their nuggets. Are those birds living for a few weeks in crowded barns really treated better than my pet chickens that have lots of space and access to outside?
Thanks for your input.
This discussion could and most likely will go on forever. Not between us but in society in general. There's a huge disconnect between producers and consumers. Often the producer gets the dirty looks, from folks who have absolutely no experience or understanding in what the producer does. Livestock are not treated poorly. They're not suffering.
Those chicken barns are the result of consumer demand. I don't eat those. But in order for millions of birds to be able to survive, those conditions must be suitable. Food, water, shelter. Those birds have no idea what the great outdoors is so it's not like they're depressed about not being able to go outside. They're raised for a purpose. It all goes to cities. Those are city factories. If the bird has small wings and drumsticks, it came from one of those barns. I don't touch the stuff. I won't touch farmed fish either. Those are for people who never learned how to fish.
The grains used to feed livestock would be necessary, as it's unethical to starve a bird. Those grains go into the chicken and that chicken goes into the city. For cattle, I know some people supplement their feed with grains but in many years nobody has ever come to ask what they're eating so I assume those numbers are rough estimates. But do keep in mind feed grains and human consumption grains are not the same. Feed corn, feed peas. People don't eat those plants.
The major consumers of these animals live in cities. Everyone mows their lawn and throws that perfectly fine cattle feed in the garbage. Hogs and chickens love table scraps, but that goes in the landfill. Grocery stores throw out perfectly fine fruit and veg because of blemishes on the skin. Breads get thrown out three days before the best before date.
Saying feeding animals is a waste of land and saying that from within a city that wastes both land and food; none of that makes sense to me. Plenty of food could be recycled into producing more food.
You mentioned antibiotics and hormones. Hormones are given to dairy cattle for the most part so they produce more milk. Medications are given only when the animals are sick. If farmers spent money injecting their livestock with things they don't need, that farmer would be wasting money. It's not as common as the anti-meat media says it is. I even get a chuckle when fast food places advertise their beef burgers as antibiotic free, hormone free, grass fed. Those catch phrases would only appeal to a city dweller who knows nothing. To the farmer, antibiotic free, hormone free, grass fed beef is every cow they've ever known.
Not much point in blaming cities when they are a fact of life. We are not going to go back to all living in the country, but people still need/want to be fed. So we need food production that meets the needs in ethical and sustainable ways. I agree on cutting waste. I'd love to see everyone grow some of their own food if they have a garden rather than worrying about a perfect lawn, but not everyone will. Many have little space and maybe they are worse off than some of the animals. There's no such thing as an ideal world, but we can strive to be better.
BTW Our chickens get some scraps, but they prefer the feed we buy. Our food waste goes into large scale digesters to generate compost.
I'm not blaming cities as a way to look down on city folks. I'm simply pointing my finger at cities because mass produced livestock only exist to feed cities. They have no other purpose.
Oddly enough, placing thousands of birds in one facility is the most sustainable method of producing meat on a large scale. The lab producing meat will require the same things. Food, shelter, water, electricity. The same long list.
When it comes to grains, fruit, veg. Maybe once people settle in to eating test tube meat, they'll be content eating genetically modified plants. Higher yields per acre is how things become sustainable. Unfortunately many who don't farm are under the impression GMO means Monsanto and therefore chemical spray. The chemicals aren't necessary. Certified organic could include genetically modified plants that produce higher yields. That would make more sense. Weeds are easy to take care of without chemicals. Diseases and pests are a bit harder. These food plants are in all reality are invasive species. On this scale they create habitat for diseases and bugs that were never a problem if the land remained in its natural state.
Do your chickens produce eggs? Grind those shells into their feed. It's a good source of free calcium.
I do feed the chickens some crushed shell. Only one of the 3 laying for now. Others have been moulting. There's an avian flu issue now, so we need to add extra netting to their run. It's not like we save money by having them, but they are partly pets. Actually, pets consume a lot of meat. They wouldn't care how it was produced.
We have to improve the world we have, not the ideal one we want. That will require use of technology, as it has previously.
Our perspectives will always differ. Where you live in a cramped space, it might seem like livestock wastes too much valuable land.
This outline probably looks familiar.
That's four seconds worth of something that looks the same for several hours of driving.
Where I live I see what seems like a never ending landscape worth of edible plant production. Livestock barely makes a dent in Alberta and Saskatchewan yet 300000 head of cattle exist here and they aren't cramped in feedlots. To say meat wastes too much land and is unstainable to me doesn't make sense because clearly, far more land is used to produce edible plants. And that operation is massive, super hard on the environment, consumes massive amounts of fuel. Certified organic uses far more land and yields far less per acre. Two kilometer long trains, nothing but grain cars, leading to ports, so people everywhere can eat bread and cereal. Fuel burning nonstop in every direction.
I've nothing against folks who choose to not eat meat. I'll snicker when they think that choice is better for the environment. Obviously they've been misinformed. Manure is also one of the best fertilizers known to man. Without that or chemicals, we'll have to start growing our soil in labs as well.
Wild pigs. If wild pigs came across these millions upon millions of acres of edible plants, no amount of natural predators could stop them. A fence won't stop them. Wild cows or buffalo would trample and eat it all. Introduce that much food into their environment and yes, they would reproduce. Wild pigs, feral hogs, boars are such huge problem, they must be reported to the authorities here if we see even one. Just because one isn't eating meat and chooses plants, that doesn't mean animals will not die.
The harvest must be timed and off the field before migratory birds like the millions upon millions of geese that come and go here year after year get a chance to destroy it all. Half a million of those birds are hunted yearly, for meat. If they were introduced to yearly seed crops on this scale without anyone hunting, growing these crops would be impossible.
Deer absolutely love nearly all plants us humans enjoy. Their numbers have to be kept in check as well or their population would explode and destroy any chances of us eating plants.
No amount of natural predators could counter what are natural predators to plants. You'd have to eliminate their food source, which is our food.
Like I said, I could talk for days about this. Plants mess with the planet far more than livestock. Managing plants takes a lot of brains and centuries of experience. Those growing balcony gardens and pretending they're saving the environment because they grew one salad; they know nothing.
Another interesting tidbit about livestock feed. When these products intended for human consumption don't meet industry standards, rather than throwing it all in the garbage or burning it, it goes to feeding livestock. It's hard to predict things like weather, yields, quality. The end result, regardless of quality, still finds a proper home. Even many years ago when I worked in an oat mill, packaging oatmeal, oat flour, etc., if something didn't meet human consumption requirements, that product wasn't thrown out, it was stamped 'cattle feed' and sold.
You mentioned obesity. Sugar comes from a plant but even that isn't the main cause. People simply don't work for their food anymore. Hunting, gathering, farming. That's what kept people in shape for thousands of years.