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Rule (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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[–] 15 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Why is this always brought up, stop spreading this. Animals usually are not fed grain unless it's harvesting time. We also do not grow food just to feed them. The grain we feed animals is shit you cannot eat. It's roots/stalks/stems/bad/rotted plant matter. It's the leftovers from the greens we can consume. Most animals also are raised on land that is not suitable for crops, rocky/hilly/weak topsoil land.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Mate, I have three chickens at home and I feed them a scratch mix that is mostly grain. I think you’re talking out of your arse, and I strongly doubt you have any actual animal husbandry experience.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Your chickens are definitely on a different diet than factory farmed ones, haha

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Sure, it’s different to cage hens. But it’s the exact kind of feed that’s used for free range farm chooks.

    Edit: I literally get it at a farm supply store because it’s way cheaper than a pet shop.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Chickens were classically considered food for the rich because they eat grain. They are an exception among livestock in that regard. Talk about animal husbandry.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Animals products are less efficient for a simple energy reason. Animals produce heat which radiates away as lost energy, and they rely on consuming autotrophs. All life gets its energy from the sun, we as animals get it one or two down the food chain from plants or other animals (which are also eating plants). Animal-based products are simply less efficient.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You can think this all you want, but you cannot consume what they do, you also cannot grow crops usually where livestock are raised. Crops need a pretty flat chunk of land, livestock don't.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Except for the deforestation needed to increase pasture area and for growing more feed. Destroying habitats and pushing indigenous people further from their homes. Meat on a large scale doesn't work because it is energetically less efficient. Farmed animals produce waste products like methane which are large contributors to global warming. Even if the land used by livestock was completely unusable for other purposes, they would still be polluting the environment through eutrophication and destroying locally endangered species.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Everything you just said...is the same shit that happens for plants as well. Deforestation isn't something that happens only with livestock. It also only really exists now in poor countries for people who are trying to survive by any means. You also are assuming that plants don't use nutrients from the soil or that the ground has to be fertilized or sprayed with pesticides or that large machinery has to be used to harvest it.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You forget that the food required to make even small quantities of meat is much higher than just growing plants for human. Better to directly eat the energy produced by autotrophs. Deforestation doesn't happen in "poor countries" just so people can survive, it happens because corporations lobby the government of corrupt countries like Brazil so they can destroy habitats for feed and pastures.

    Meat production is a simple maths problem to see that wasted energy used by livestock (to survive and grow) is lost energy.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    Let me know how it works out for you eating grass, brush and stalks and roots of plants, that's what livestock mainly eat.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013

    86% of the global livestock feed intake in dry matter consists of feed materials that are not currently edible for humans

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    All you did was step around the problem. I am not arguing that what is fed to livestock should be fed to humans, I am saying that livestock take up useful space, pollute the air with methane (which is near to 100x a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2), that the lands are cleared of their native plants to feed the ever growing meat industry, and on a large scale animal feed has to come from somewhere (which is why I bring up the inefficiency of not sourcing the energy from autotrophs). Animal feed may be inedible, but it is also grown specifically to be feed. I am not suggesting the complete veganizing of the whole planet, just the meat on a large scale is killing the planet.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Ok but we use twice as much land to grow animal feed than we do human food and it has all the same drawbacks. And then the meat we get still only provides 18% of our calories.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    No we do not. Provide a source that shows we grow crops directly to feed livestock in any meaningful amounts.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/

    36% of corn grown in the US goes to feeding livestock. Not including the stuff you're talking about like byproducts from ethanol and such.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yep, and that 36% is dead corn that the gov tells farmers to grow, they pay farmers to grow it so we don't have a famine. The majority is sold over seas and turned into ethanol. The rest that we eat is mainly HFCS. So no we don't grow it directly to feed animals, it's grown and not used, so the stuff left in the fields to dry is harvestes whole and tossed into grain. You might want to read your own article.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    You keep trying to have it both ways. You've finally conceded that there's 36% of land used to grow livestock feed. But now it's time to shift the poles somewhere else. At least you've started reading and trying to back up what you're saying.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Why it is true that you’ll graze non-butcher animals on the leftover stalks and such, we absolutely finish beef and pork on grain and a big portion of the grain harvest is for animal feed.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Almost all of the grain we feed is what I just explained. All of that is ground up and a binding agent (usually molasses) is applied. We do not grow crops just to feed to animals, it's a complete waste of land. We grow crops for our consumption and use first and whats left over is turned into grain to feed to animals we then butcher and eat.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    I can only speak to the USA, but in my area the number one crop in this area is dent corn and soya. Of the corn grown here 40% goes into ethanol production, and 36% is used for animal feed.

    Commercial poultry production heavily relies on grain -- typically corn. It's the primary ingredient in the processed feed overwhelmingly used for commercial poultry, as seen in this typical mix.

    We absolutely grow crops specifically to feed livestock. And this is ignoring the 52 million acres used for alfalfa and hay-grass.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013

    86% of the global livestock feed intake in dry matter consists of feed materials that are not currently edible for humans

    But it also makes an important contribution to food security through the provision of high-quality protein and a variety of micronutrients – e.g. vitamin A, vitamin B-12, riboflavin, calcium, iron and zinc – that can be locally difficult to obtain in adequate quantities from plant-source foods alone

    Just because they feed corn doesn't mean it's edible to humans, a lot of the corn grown is left to dry on the plant and then harvested. We do this so we don't end up with another famine. Not saying corn is what we should be growing for that, but it's a very easy and hardy plant.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Food is grown specifically to feed livestock though, it would be a pretty weird trophic pyramid for them to survive on our waste unless you went back to a time where people killed their one pig for the year and salted it away. In our country, the land degradation from clearing hill country for grazing has led to enormous biodiversity loss and a self-fufilling prophecy of eroded weak topsoil that people claim isn't good for anything else (though it could still be rewilded and in other cultures and times would be terraced and swaled to support plant crops).

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    ??? But it's not, we do not grow crops for livestock in any meaningful amounts. It's miniscule what is grown to feed livestock only.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Stop making stuff up, please. Idk what you do on your farm but globally we absolutely grow a lot of food for animals.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Please provide a source that shows that we grow crops directly for livestock consumption in a meaningful amount. So far no one has shown anything that states otherwise.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Over a third of crops are grown to feed livestock, and that's if you're not counting pasture as a crop, which it absolutely is - arguably our first solar powered factory floor. Even areas that were grazed in the past have had the relative proportion of native flora and fauna severely reduced to minimal levels through introduced grasses and overgrazing. To get a feel for land use against calorie production, you could have a browse through https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/feeding-9-billion/ for an overview.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013

    86% of the global livestock feed intake in dry matter consists of feed materials that are not currently edible for humans

    But it also makes an important contribution to food security through the provision of high-quality protein and a variety of micronutrients – e.g. vitamin A, vitamin B-12, riboflavin, calcium, iron and zinc – that can be locally difficult to obtain in adequate quantities from plant-source foods alone

    We already make enough food to feed the planet multiple times over, the issue isn't how much we've got, it's how to get it to people. Distribution is the issue.

    But no, 1/3rd is not grown for livestock, this isn't true at all.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    It's brought up because it's true.

    research

    edit: link doesn't appear to be working, but it's the paper by Emily Cassidy called 'redefining agricultural yields'

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    But it's not, these papers and studies all assume the land that cattle graze on is suitable for crops. You cannot grow crops on a massive hill properly. It's why the all the states that are flat usually have crops grown and all the hilly/dryer states raise livestock. No one is saying livestock can fully replace plants, but to many think we can replace everything with plants only. This is complete junk science.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    This has nothing to do with grazing land. This is crop suitable land being used to grow crops that is then fed to livestock. There are no assumptions being made and it is not junk science, you're just not very good at reading.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Except it's not, we are not growing crops just to feed to animals, as I've explained multiple times now, grain is created from the shit we cannot consume. Why is this so difficult to understand?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's difficult because it's just very untrue and wrong. This is very widely documented, grains are absolutely grown just to feed animals. The majority of corn and soy in the US is grown to feed animals. I'm not sure why you're so insistent on something that can so easily be looked up, you don't even need vegan sources, the animal ag industry reports this stuff.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Please provide the numbers then. Pretty sure someone already posted the numbers, in which only 5% is grown for livestock only.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You're pretty funny, before you said they only graze, then you said we simply don't grow food for cattle, now you've admitted we do based on some random dude pulling 5% out of a hat.

    info you won't read

    They cite a paper that puts the land used purely for growing feed at about 38% of our cropland. If you combine it with grazing land it goes up to about 80%. Cropland for food humans eat is just 16%.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Almost half (44%) of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture.

    Habitable land is not the same as the ability to grow food on it.

    The UN FAO does not provide breakdowns of the amount of land directly devoted to feed, food, and industrial production. It does provide this in tonnage terms, however, converting this to area estimates is complex, especially when co-products are considered.

    So most stats that are pulled out of someones ass, because they came up with a system that says all feed we provide to animals is more than the tonnage we eat ourselves. No shit we feed way more grain to a 2k lb cow. It's 2k fucking lbs. It doesn't even provide a breakout of what isn't actually human consumable, because it's bullshit stats.

    If we combine global grazing land with the amount of cropland used for animal feed, livestock accounts for 80% of agricultural land use.

    And if I combine the road as part of my land in front of my farm I have more land...this is fucking stupid. Grazing land is not usually suitable for plants. It's why crops are not planted usually in places that are rocky or have to many hills.

    You're source is bullshit.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Habitable land is not the same as the ability to grow food on it.

    Umm yeah? No one said it was.

    So most stats that are pulled out of someones ass, because they came up with a system that says all feed we provide to animals is more than the tonnage we eat ourselves. No shit we feed way more grain to a 2k lb cow. It's 2k fucking lbs. It doesn't even provide a breakout of what isn't actually human consumable, because it's bullshit stats.

    When talking about feed grown specifically for livestock it doesn't actually matter if it's human consumable or not, it's land that could be used to grow human consumable food. They make the distinction between cropland and grazing land pretty clear.

    Also you don't just get to dismiss science when it doesn't suit whatever you think. You asked for numbers, there they are.

    And if I combine the road as part of my land in front of my farm I have more land...this is fucking stupid. Grazing land is not usually suitable for plants. It's why crops are not planted usually in places that are rocky or have to many hills.

    You're source is bullshit.

    There are things that can be done with grazing land other than planting crops and almost all of them are better for the environment than having livestock graze on it. They are just talking about the total land at that point, not trying to convince you of anything, stop reading everything so defensively.

    And also it's a pretty credible source and it's definitely better than your anecdotal 'we literally don't grow food for cattle at all, ever' nonsense.

    We use more than twice as much land to grow feed for livestock than we do for humans, and the livestock only supplies 18% of global calories. It's an inefficient use of land full stop. When there are more people we will need more efficient sources of food. This might mean farming more human food and therefore less animal feed.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013

    86% of the global livestock feed intake in dry matter consists of feed materials that are not currently edible for humans

    But it also makes an important contribution to food security through the provision of high-quality protein and a variety of micronutrients – e.g. vitamin A, vitamin B-12, riboflavin, calcium, iron and zinc – that can be locally difficult to obtain in adequate quantities from plant-source foods alone

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You are misreading that 5% claim. 95% of global livestock are fed food grown specifically to feed them. 5% are fed the way you claim.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Which is not true, hell even the users other source doesn't say that. If we grew 95% of our crops to feed animals, there wouldn't be a high price on livestock, it would be a lot cheaper and vegetables would be extremely expensive. I can buy 10lbs of potatoes for like $5 still.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    What you say is true for 5% of animal feed globaly.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That 46% is land whose biodiversity and ecosystems have been intentionally crushed for the meat industry.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    100 % or this chart is made up of food we got by intentionally crushing land for the meat Industry. It shows how the food we feed livestock is spread across different feeding sources, not the land uses by said food source.

    I poated it because the person I replied to insisted that most of the food animals are fed is just the uneatable byproduct of agricultural products made for humans. This chats shows its defnetily not the main source used to feed animals, as it only makes up about 5 %

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