Childhood indoctrination

[The Grand Nudger]

To jump right back in after my passing out drunk on a monday night (wewt)....

We -could- grow something other than livestock with both the area that livestock is kept (a very small area, remember, battery farms and feedlots) and the area that feed for livestock is grown - in some cases-. The reasons that this is untenable are simple at heart (but can be very complicated if we explore them - laying aside land that's unsuitable for ag)

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A:livestock production is undertaken in areas where it is economically more feasible to produce beef than to produce tomatoes - the effect of this is that you can buy more tomatoes with your beef money - than you could with tomato money. Does this increased buying power get distributed among the hungry in the area - no, it does not....but neither does the tomato money. Very often, (and I'm an example of this btw-despite being a niche producer of a highly profitable set of perishables.....in a first world country...not beholden to the developed distribution infrastructure or commercial buyers in any way.....) a producer can't even afford their own product.

B:people aren't going hungry because we don't produce enough food, they're going hungry because they lack the purchasing power to avail themselves of the food we have an impressive glut of. It's amusing to note, that some starving somebody somewhere might actually be willing to pay -more- for a tomato than any given american - but of our developed infrastructure and superior market that tomato shipment will still wind up on our docks as opposed to theirs because the producer will net a massive difference here due to volume alone.

The long and short of this, is that one cannot talk about food production whilst ignoring the harsh economic reality of food production - which drives it more directly and more forcefully than any other factor - and determines what is or is not an effective use of available land. Livestock production produces an economically valuable product (as well as a nutritionally valuable product - that has by-products with a wide range of fairly important uses themselves). Producing food for human consumption on land that is currently used to produce feed (where it can be done) won't alleviate this problem, as all it will have done is decrease the buying power of the producers (because they're now producing a less valuable crop) - who already cannot afford to consume their own products......and already lack the buying power to secure the productivity of others - meanwhile food rots away in shipping containers daily.

We might contend that hunger is a complex issue, but I disagree, I think it can be summed up pretty simply. People can't afford the food we have, and it's already dirt cheap because there's so damned much of it- and part of the reason they can;t afford it, depressingly..is because it's so damned cheap that they can't generate enough revenue from it to purchase it - but simultaneously can't afford to eat it as opposed to selling it. That guy producing feed on his plot - is attempting to make enough money to buy food...and growing anything else would lessen his already poor ability to do so. Get it?

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As to the notion that we could "feed the world" by growing more crops

We could already "feed the world" with the crops grown and current methods. We -could- cut out livestock production...if we ignored the economics (in the bit above) and simply dispersed the commodities free of charge and we would have an even more impressive glut of food (sans meat)...but this isn't going to have the effect that we might think it would (even if it weren't horrendously wasteful to begin with...which it would be) - alleviating the suffering that we're likely to invoke as an impetus for doing so.

I want to make this very clear...so that people understand it. There are animals (including human animals) in our food production pipeline that are subject to an existence that is orders of magnitude more shitty than livestock. Our livestock actually have rights - some would argue not enough, others would argue that these rights aren't well enough enforced (and I would agree on both counts).......these animals (again, including humans) have none. Less than none. They are exploited and/or exterminated on the whims of the price of grain. We turn oil into food. Really take the time to let that sink in.

If we wanted to eliminate this vastly greater contributor to said suffering - this abuse of organisms that we afford no rights to whatsoever - we will have to stop producing food the way that we do...which would be difficult, because the way we do it is precisely why we have whatever amount of food we do in the first place. It's efficient. The only way we are currently aware of even conceiving of weaning ourselves off of this vastly more useful and efficient source of fertility is by...wait for it....ramping up livestock production.

It's simple, to produce food at a level sufficient to feed ourselves we require nutrients in greater amounts (and greater quality) than would exist in any natural ecosystem. There is no balance here, there has never been any balance here - and trying to strive for some "balance of nature" in agricultural production is to reach for what has been a fairy story from the word go. We are going to have to point at something that is exploitable - and I'm honestly not going to begrudge anyone for what they point at so long as it works - and so long as they think their position through and own up to the realities of their suggestion. Those of us in this thread that have suggested that we shitcan livestock and start mass-producing the leafy stuff have not thought this through -at all. They have ignored (or were blissfully unaware of) the reality of the production of the commodities they seem to think offer a more moral or more efficient solution to the food question.