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The dark side of our society...
Woah93
Veteran
Video's like this make me feel ashamed to be human.
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Comments
But what is the practical, logical (alternate) solution for feeding millions/billions of people? Please don't say vegetarianism, because that comes with its own load of issues and environmental problems...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding
So the other 91% of beef is eating X calories of corn and turning it into some percentage of X calories of edible food. I've eaten polenta, is quite palatable and in some parts of the world, people more or less subsist on it.
The argument for the local inviability of farming is more convincing in Murmansk, Iceland, Alaska, the Sahara, tops of mountains, etc.
Air polution from the dust that arises from plowing. Pesticides. Herbicides. Fertilizers. The process of applying those as well as harvesting kills a lot of sentient beings - reptiles, rodents, birds, not to mention poluting water sources. We running out of fresh water, too.
That and as TE mentions we're running out of arrable land and this problem will become even worse as a sea levels continue to rise (global warming) wiping out cropland. This will lead to war. War leads to .......
What we need to do is lower the population. Drastically. Starting now. Before nature does it for us (and it will).
Also, all over the world, there is a lot of killing of human beings as a result of wars, violent crime, communal strife and domestic violence. That's another reason to be ashamed of being human.
I prefer sandstone and granite.
So, the argument that there isn't enough land to grow crops is valid and cogent. We are running out of such land and the land we have is being threatened. To look at it any other way is simply irresponsible.
Around here we have a lot of meat animal ranching. Why? Because there's not a lot of land that can be used for crop production. In other parts of the country the problem is more accute - parts of texas, most of New Mexico and Arizona. They rely on out-of-state agricultural products. Those sources are under threat. Those places as a result are threatened as well.
Water cannot be ignored. The world is running out of fresh water and it doesn't matter where you try to grow crops, you have to water them. As our water runs out, our ability to grow vegetable crops will diminish as well.
So to say that we have enough farm land to grow enough food for the world twice over IS JUST PLAIN RIDICULOUS. We may have the land but we can't water the crops.
Owwwwwwwwwch.
For water specifically, according to the USGS, it takes between 4,000 to 18,000 gallons of water to make ONE hamburger. No that is not a typo! Those are thousands and thousands of gallons to make only one hamburger!
Meanwhile, it takes 110 gallons to make one pound of corn. 110-250 gallons to make one pound of wheat. The responsible choice is obvious. The responsible choice is to eat wheat and corn and not eat hamburgers.
There are many sources to verify this. Below is just one of them.
"Sustainability of meat-based and plant-based diets and the environment"
American Society for Clinical Nutrition
Am J Clin Nutr September 2003 vol. 78 no. 3 660S-663S
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S.full
CONCLUSION
"Both the meat-based average American diet and the lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet require significant quantities of nonrenewable fossil energy to produce. Thus, both food systems are not sustainable in the long term based on heavy fossil energy requirements. However, the meat-based diet requires more energy, land, and water resources than the lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet. In this limited sense, the lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet is more sustainable than the average American meat-based diet."
And since not eating anything is not an option, the responsible environmental choice is to choose the one that is the most sustainable, which is a vegetarian diet.
Where a child believes what they want, the spiritual adult doesn't make their belief system conditional to what they want.
Now they dont even want that stuff in the dog food even though the dog likes it. "No byproduct meal" byproduct is the liver, eyes, ears, heart, brain, kidneys, etc. They grind up like hamburger. Pink slime is the same same thing and it makes your food taste good after they treat it for ecoli.
They just want to chuck it to rot????? What if we did that to you after you died? "Im an organ donor." "Gross! Thats disgusting!"
:orange:
The best way to reduce water usage is to reduce the population, not try to change their eating habits.
AND ANOTHER THING ......
We haven't discussed weather. The polar ice is melting at an alarmingly high rate. All that ice melts, as fresh water, into the world's oceans. This is going to change salinity levels as well as water temps and this will cause massive change in weather patterns, which will affect crop yields world-wide as well as declines in much-needed sources of protein (fish, shellfish, etc).
What people eat is NOT the problem. We're running out of ways to feed them ANYTHING.
Back on topic the food industry is the elephant in the living room that nobody talks about. That's what they say about alcoholism.
This is a good guardian article on it here: "Food shortages could force world into vegetarianism, warn scientists"
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2012/aug/26/food-shortages-world-vegetarianism
Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world's population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages.
Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive by 2050, according to research by some of the world's leading water scientists.
"There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected 9 billion population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in western nations," the report by Malik Falkenmark and colleagues at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said.
"There will be just enough water if the proportion of animal-based foods is limited to 5% of total calories and considerable regional water deficits can be met by a … reliable system of food trade."
It goes on to say:
Adopting a vegetarian diet is one option to increase the amount of water available to grow more food in an increasingly climate-erratic world, the scientists said. Animal protein-rich food consumes five to 10 times more water than a vegetarian diet. One third of the world's arable land is used to grow crops to feed animals. Other options to feed people include eliminating waste and increasing trade between countries in food surplus and those in deficit. Why does it have to be one or the other? They are not mutually exclusive. The best option is to do both. However, if you think weaning people off meat or petrochemicals is hard. Try convincing people to stop having sex and making babies! This will be exponentially more difficult!
But, if you think population growth is the one and only way, good luck convincing people to stop having sex. You're going to need it!
Manna from heaven.
When life hands you locusts...
Methinks we need a separate subforum for such apriori contraversial subjects. Let's keep main area for Buddhist practice-related questions...
or
we could just resist responding to the flames.
Metta