Do you agree with Richard Dawkins?

[The Grand Nudger]

Similarly, I respect that you wish to see us find a more workable solution to our food troubles. I don't think that you or I would ever find ourselves on opposite sides of any picket line. To use the analogy of sanwiches, when it comes to human beigs and their food requirements, the whole thing is a giant shit sandwich. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. Such an impossible fucking situation we find ourselves in. Through luck (or whatever you want to invoke) we managed to succeed in such a massive way that this rock seems incapable of supporting us all much further unless we do something about it, but our options aren't exactly legion, and for whatever reason we didn't see fit to address them before they became issues (and admittedly, we are often our own biggest problem, if not most often).

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Since we're both in such bridge repairing moods btw, let me offer you some insights as to what types of livestock production I would support, and why.

Integrated aquaculture. This one, to me, is a no brainer. You have to have irrigation for commercial level vegetable production. Too many farmers still used rain fed production methods (even here in the US). This leads to lower yields (which translates directly to less efficient use of space, and in many cases not specific to the US, famine). There isn't a single ag extension in this entire country that doesn't spend a considerable amount of time trying to convince producers to irrigate, and irrigate well (save the case of feed crop production, to which irrigation would be a complete waste, livestock already consumes enough water as is, and the crops don't need it, no need to exacerbate an issue).

So, we need copious amounts of water to make best use of agricultural space. But what is this water doing for us while it sits and awaits deployment? For purposes of simplicity I will avoid crop specific assessments and say that on average, intensive vegetable production requires about one inch of water per week. That's a whole hell of a lot of water when you consider the amount of surface area involved. Now, sometimes it rains, we don't have to irrigate when it rains. Often an area receives adequate rainfall through the course of a year to sustain production, but it doesn't fall on que. You have rainy seasons and dry seasons. For example, Central Florida receives -at least- 55 inches of rainfall a year, but it actually falls in the warmer months which are unsuitable for vegetable production (counter-intuitive I know), crops are grown in and through the winter with the exception of okra, black eyed peas.....and livestock. So, we'll need to store this water, so that we can deploy it on call, when it doesn't rain. Couldn't we use all of this stored water somehow?

There are a great many things that we might eat that just so happen to do pretty well in the water. Fish, for example. Fish are a great source of healthy protein, you can load more fish in an area than you could ever hope to achieve with cattle (or any other type of livestock, honestly). With a adequate filtration system you can get about a pound of fish per three gallons of water reliably. Trouble is, that fish shit where they eat (and live). This leads to massive problems with water quality (and thereby runoff). The currently accepted number for this is that a commercial aquaculture operation is likely to exchange 90% of its water on a weekly basis. That is a whole hell of a lot of pollution. Let's take a look at this pollution. It is largely in the form of of ionized or unionized ammonia. Ammonium (NH4) is not toxic to fish. Ammonia (NH3) -is- toxic to fish and is present when the PH is 7.0 or above. Any amount of this substance is lethal to fish, but it can quickly become overwhelming to the point of literally making the water poison. Fortunately, there are these helpful little things we call "Nitrosomonas bacteria" which oxidize the ammonia, eliminating it. Unfortunately, the product of ammonia oxidization is nitrite, which is toxic (though less so than ammonia) to the fish nevertheless. If it stopped here we would still be screwed. Que "Nitrobacter bacteria", which take this nitrate and convert it into nitrates. Nitrates are not toxic to fish in low or moderate levels but we must still routinely exchange the water to prevent toxicity through buildup. So, we can leverage a natural process known as "The Nitrogen Cycle" to help us keep the water tolerable for aquaculture (and we do). But what do we do with all of the water we need to exchange?

It just so happens that plants need nitrates, nitrogen, to grow. Not all of them, but most of them, and certainly it is the single largest nutrient requirement in agricultural production. Plants need nitrogen for the synthesis of the protein's peptide bonds as well as for the nitrogen found in seven of the twenty possible amino acid R- group side-chains which are needed for making proteins, and proteins are needed for Cell growth. Now, this isn't the only nutrient that agricultural crops need, but some crops (the leafy greens- Brassicaceae, Asteraceae, etc) leverage this nutrient so heavily that almost all other nutrients can be ignored, as they are commonly found present and available in the soil in great enough quantity as is anyway. This group of plants comprises most of the "heavy feeders" which are such a burden on fertility. They also comprise a hefty chunk of what human beings eat as far as vegetables are concerned. They are also, though not always, those vegetables for which the entire plant (and not just a small portion of it, such as the fruit) is consumed. So why don't we dump all of that water on top of these crops? Fish are interesting in this regard as we are so genetically dissimilar to them that instances of communicable disease (such as we see with cow manure or chicken manure) are far less common. Plants uptake those toxins which the fish produce (which have already been processed into less toxic forms by bacteria in the first place) as nutrients. In the same way that water exchange is the output of aquaculture, runoff is the output (at least one of the outputs) of agriculture. What do we do with the water onces it's been used to irrigate the plants?

Recirculate it! That's right, pump it right back into the "aquarium". Provided that we have not introduced/have filtered out toxins (pesticides, agricultural supplements, hostile organisms) we can just put the unused and now triple filtered portions of water right back into the holding tanks for those little fishes to swim around in and "dirty up" all over again. Now, this doesn't work with every crop, and so it is especially sutiable only for some. This is an issue we have a chance of resolving. We could find a way to engineer feed for the fish that leaves mineral elements intact by the time it reaches the crops. We could leverage GMO to produce crops with lessened nutrient requirements, or even crops which actually produce those nutrients from other sources. In this way we wrap protein from livestock production (the fish) into nutrition from agricultural production (the vegetables) by leveraging the outputs of each process as the input of the other. This has the effect of conserving water, reducing pollutants and runoff in the rest of the water supply, reducing fertility requirements from other sources (in some crops absolutely replacing those other sources), making fantastic use of space, and the whole damned thing is edible.

Now, one might have issues with any part of this sort of system individually. Some would take issue to the fish, (especially seeing as how some of the best suited species are classified as "invasive") others might take issue to the possibility of GMO feed or crops, and yet others will tell you that this sort of thing is prohibitively expensive (at least in set-up and establishment) or that the skill and labor requirements for this sort of operation would be too diverse/specialized for it to be profitable for the investor/operator. In and of itself, it is a fantastic system, and was largely pioneered by universities in severely water starved areas. It offers controlled production, and it can be done year round (temperature control is required for the fish, and as a result the crops benefit). This is just one possible alternative. There are many more. Each offer benefits as compared to our current system, each force us to accept compromise.

(I'm not the one creating and abandoning the "necessary/unnecessary" dichotomy at will Joe, I leave that to you, and I don't appreciate being asked to justify terms or assertions that are part of your arguments, and not my own. That doesn't seem unreasonable, does it? If I were to simply accept all of your arguments up to this point, I would say that we should avoid any suffering which we can, but this does not imply that all suffering could be avoided, does it? You would and have asserted that we could avoid it all, making it all "unnecesary" hence there is no reason to use the term, but I'm guessing that you find it easier to argue for than "all suffering". Understandable. Trouble is, we have no reason to assume that we could, and all evidence points to something suffering somewhere regardless of which way we choose to take this. Which i continue to remind you of, every time you invoke the term and the argument that follows. It is empty, you have explicitly stated that you would simply create new requirements if pressed so why not just attempt that argument instead? This is the last time I'm going to comment on this line of "reasoning".)