Childhood indoctrination

[The Grand Nudger]

@Ind :So humane treatment enters in after all. To which I mention - as I did pages ago, that some livestock already lives a better life than some humans - and we could do even better on both counts.

How can we ask the third world not to do this to the planet if we're eating steak ourselves? I don't think it would be very convincing to say "Look, Ma, we're eating less" where "less" is not very well defined. Wouldn't it be much more convincing if we could say "Look, Ma, we don't eat it at all!"?

This..this right here sums it all up. What I'm trying to express is that I'm not in the business of saying "look ma, we're eating less" - to anyone.

AForb

I suppose the occasions where "livestock are capable of processing commodities which we are not" depends mostly on the soil type in a given region, and whether it can support fast crop growth?

It depends on the commodity. You can grow -something- almost anywhere, but there's a long list of somethings that aren't fit for human consumption no matter how fast they grow - or where they were grown. Additionally, just because something is fit for human consumption, doesn't make it the best use of space. Particularly if something else that's fits for consumption can be grown on the same space -for whatever reason- and ends up adding more to the overall pool of available nutrition - for whatever reason-. For example, there are places where we -could- grow food for human consumption..but growing a tiny yellow flower that's used in the extraction of the most common insecticides is a better use of space because it multiplies the productivity of -all- other spaces used for veggies.

As far as additional soil fertility goes, I was under the impression that crop rotation was a strategy used to mitigate soil erosion, and also to restore nutrients back into the soil (by leaving the stalks or other remains of plant material behind). I can see that the more intensive operations might be less willing to do this and would instead require fertiliser. If you wanted to provide a link that would be good.

It is used for that purpose, even by the big boys. Not only does it mitigate loss and erosion it reduces the amount of work they have to do (which would influence their ability to compete on price). Thing is - the fertility in those stalks -came- from somewhere....and we're not standing on top of a perpetual motion machine. The majority of nutrients goes into the parts that we eat, the fruits, the seedpods. There are a few exceptions on this one, but the fertility is exported in the form of commodities leaving only the byproduct - so you end up leaving in less than you take out.

Here's the current commercial guide for my state - to give you an idea of what goes into this.
http://www.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/id/id36/id36.pdf

What you'll notice, is that "best practice" include rotations, preventative IPM, soil conservation, water conservation, reduction of chemical inputs...that's all already there. It all translates not only into "more food" but also "more profit". The two things are tied at the hip to each other.