Any Vegetarians/Vegans here?

[The Grand Nudger]

You are still implying lots and saying too little. I don't think it is our goal to maximize the use of the sun's energy, but to provide enough calories to keep the current population comfortably sustained.

It -is- the goal of the farmer and of the plant, if plants can be said to have goals. If you don't have adequate sunlight, you don't put veggies in the ground (available sunlight is, in point of fact - the very first and most important requirement when determining whether or not -to ag-...all the rest is pointless unless you can ensure that requirement is met). It would be a waste, environmentally and monetarily. Once you put crops in the ground you absolutely must maximize the efficiency of the system (that's where the profits and the food come from). Vegetables are perfectly content producing inedible or unmarketable fruits in the absence of overall system efficiency, particularly so in the absence of adequate sunlight. Or, to put that another way, the cabbage doesn't need as much sunlight to go through it's life cycle as it does to produce the food we're planting it for in the first place. Wooded lots make much better livestock production areas. Animals like shade as much as we do, even if vegetables, generally, don't. On the subject of calories, I'll simply say that not all calories are created equal - and more sunlight does translate into more calories. Maximizing the use of energy (and other requirements) is, to my mind, the -only- way to provide those calories sustainably. I insist on efficiency in food production to the same measure and for the same reasons as efficiency in any other manufacturing process. That's why the trees needed to go in the first place. I'm not going to waste the seeds, the water,the nutrients, or the labor trying to grow corn in the shade, and neither should anyone else.

Of course, we can shore up the sunlight requirement by giving them a more concentrated dose of nutrients - but that only goes so far - and constitutes what some might call runoff, or pollution. Would you prefer that I advocate for runoff or maximizing the use of the suns energy? Unfortunately, our choices here are constrained by biology.

I think we can do this without interfering more than we already have with ecosystems. We don't need to worry about wether Bambi is preventing some sunlight from reaching our plants.

Producers worry about anything that impacts their yield, and they should. But I'm curious, how do you propose that we feed everyone without interfering further - we've only managed to feed some...with all the interference we've already caused. Interference isn't a flaw in the system, it's a feature. The whole point of agriculture is to create a non-natural environment. It's not as if removing the trees once suffices anyway. Keeping nature out of the garden is a constant battle. We didn't just cut all the forests down once (so that one could say - we did enough, work with what we have) - we are continually preventing them from reestablishing - and we must, in some measure - if we are to grow food. If you're willing to sweep all the death involved in creating these little non-natural ecosystems under the rug then why should the deaths of some farm animals bother you in the least? The farm animals and the woodland creatures combined don't even begin to address the overall death toll of ag-as-currently-practiced combined, in any case. What's all this about if we're just going to wave that away?


-Of course I'm implying much and saying little. I think that a tiny bit of research into food production - the actual mechanics of it- is enough for anyone to reach the conclusions that I've reached (I also think that it's thrilling and surprising - coming from a position of ignorance with regards to food production - which is where moist people are at - even the producers, to see how this stuff works, and why it works). I also think that the things we figure out for ourselves mean more to us.

We get the nutrients from oil, by the by. Oil and phosphates. I left the estimates to you. So, add whatever number you feel comfortable with to the death toll we've already started (we'll be adding more, shortly). I assume that you don't feel that we ought to be doing this any more than I do? If that's the case, perhaps you could suggest some other place where we might find nutrients of similar quality and quantity?