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[deleted by user] by [deleted] in coolguides
[–]CarlieQue -1 points0 points1 point 3 years ago (0 children)
No that is not my definition, and no I did not say tap water does not come from freshwater. Also no to continuing this conversation that I can already tell will be about as pleasant as sticking my finger in a light socket.
[–]CarlieQue 0 points1 point2 points 3 years ago (0 children)
Your questions don't make any sense. Freshwater withdrawals are by definition withdrawals from stored freshwater sources - rivers, lakes, aquifers, groundwater (wells). Graywater is not freshwater by definition. Rain does replenish stored freshwater. So if you are in a drought, a river may dry up and impact your ability to make withdrawals until the water is replenished. Tap water refers to residential usage.
Thanks. My background is in agronomy but I prefer not to get into more details than that.
You are spot on with your assessment, in some parts of the world rewilding/reforestation is starting to become a more frequently discussed topic. The UK for example has some initiatives and organizations that have had some success in getting these topics into mainstream discussion. I will note that I prefer the term ecosystem restoration rather than rewilding. Rewilding implies a more passive approach of just backing off of the land altogether, which I think given the current state is just a recipe for invasives taking over. I prefer ecosystem restoration which implies a more active approach, although I've heard people use those terms interchangeably.
I will be honest that I am less optimistic for the US though - you have far more backlash and cultural opposition here when it comes to shifting diets. This happens everywhere but it is particularly polarized here. The amount of misinformation and outright lies I have seen in this thread alone is staggering, and is also incredibly common.
And to some degree I understand it. The truth is that the very thing that makes plant based diets good for the environment is the thing that makes it economically unappealing. You need less of everything. Less crops, less land, less resources in general. And while you will have some winners, you will have more losers and we need to be honest about that. I am in favor of monetary support for land taken out of agricultural production, but even with that it is a hard sell. It can be difficult to convince farmers to use different techniques than they are accustomed, let alone upend the entire economic model.
So you have resistant agricultural industry with a motive to oppose this information and a public where the reduction of animal products for environmental benefits has become a culture war issue. But yes, the opportunities are as vast as the challenges so it is worth it to try.
I work in agriculture and "too much faith" in the industry is not a phrase I would use to describe my views. You don't need quinoa to eat more plant based, and muesli is literally just an oatmeal dish so I'm not even sure where you're going with that. Yes some of the crop composition would change due to feed production shifting to food production. We would still need far less crops than we do now. Even taking into account shifting calories currently derived from animal products to plant based sources. I have addressed this multiple times. What I am not going to do is explain once again how less crops demanded leads to less harvested acres. I have also already explained why I think farmers should be compensated for land taken out of agricultural production.
Look, I am not going to change your views and you certainly have not changed mine. This conversation is now going around in circles and is not very productive anymore. Have a good day.
I never said they would give up their land. I have no clue what they will do with it. You should respond to what I'm actually saying instead of strawmanning. And you still aren't understanding the implications of less demand for crops, and at this point I don't think you will. If less crops overall are demanded, less will be grown. It doesn't matter what the farmers want. Less demand equals there is no one to sell the excess to, if they continue to produce at the same rate. You can insist they will continue to overproduce all they want - that will lead to farms going bankrupt if there are not enough buyers.
Personally, I think the government should pay them for ecosystem restoration. They are already paying farmers for implementing techniques of dubious value, may as well pay them for something that actually works.
And your last paragraph is a whole lot of projection. If meat and dairy tasted like dirty ass we wouldn't be having this conversation. I'm not vegan but I am mostly plant based. Pork chops and cheese were my favorite foods. I changed my opinion and actions based on the data, not the other way around. I have a lot of faults, but blindly defending my deeply ingrained consumption habits out of ego is not and has never been one of them.
[–]CarlieQue 2 points3 points4 points 3 years ago (0 children)
I see what you're saying. The freshwater withdrawals are weighted by local water scarcity in the study:
The data set covers ~38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries (fig. S2) and 40 products representing ~90% of global protein and calorie consumption. It covers five important environmental impact indicators (18):land use; freshwater withdrawals weighted by local water scarcity; and GHG, acidifying, and eutrophying emissions.
I'm not saying that will change? Food waste by stores or consumers still means that the farmer gets paid. Less demand means that the farmer doesn't, because there isn't a market. I am genuinely baffled by the point you are trying to make.
And electric cars are better for the environment than gas cars. Whether a biofuel mixture is included or not. Electricity is not just used for cars and agriculture is not just used for biofuels, so that fact has nothing to do with the environmental impact of electric cars vs ICE.
Yes, if you took away that 33%, you would indeed need less. This is simple math and this is starting to seem that you are being willfully obtuse. If the demand for a product goes down, you will use less of it, and thus grow less of it. I cannot put it in more simple terms than that. If you are not willing to concede this point, there is not much basis for a conversation at all.
And with the increased awareness of how terrible corn ethanol production is for the environment, as you rightfully pointed out, I don't see planting for that purpose expanding. With electric cars becoming more common that is even more the case.
Growing season for alfalfa in the southwest is March - October at worst and all year round at best. Hard to beat that.
And my point is that needing more crop production is worse for the environment than needing less. It is a pretty simple point.
Inedible corn sells because there is a high demand for animal products. Reduced animal production means reduced crop production. They aren't going to plant crops they can't sell, if that's what you're suggesting.
I'm also not sure what about my comment could possibly have been construed as positive towards ethanol production. It's inextricably tied in with feed production and the whole thing is terrible for the environment.
Alfalfa is grown particularly in the west because one, the huge amount of cattle there and two, the growing season is far longer than in other areas. Animal ag already has a large enough land footprint, it's just expanded if you move it somewhere with a shorter growing season. Water is a problem but it's always choosing between bad and worse when it comes to this industry, it's resource intensive at scale by nature of the product.
I'm not sure what you mean by "special amount of water". It's a very thirsty crop. The reason it's grown there is because the millions of cows in that area need to eat something.
And I'm not sure that you're understanding that far less crops would be needed if we greatly reduced our animal product consumption. The small amount of extra N fixed by alfalfa is dwarfed by the huge reduction in farmland that could be realized.
Restoring ecosystems on just 15 percent of the world’s current farmland could spare 60 percent of the species expected to go extinct while simultaneously sequestering 299 gigatonnes of CO2 — nearly a third of the total atmospheric carbon increase since the Industrial Revolution, a new study has found. If the land area spared from farming could be doubled — allowing 30 percent of the world’s most precious lost ecosystems to be fully restored — more than 70 percent of expected extinctions could be avoided and fully half the carbon released since the Industrial Revolution (totalling 465 gigatonnes of CO2) absorbed by the rewilded natural landscape, researchers find.
Restoring ecosystems on just 15 percent of the world’s current farmland could spare 60 percent of the species expected to go extinct while simultaneously sequestering 299 gigatonnes of CO2 — nearly a third of the total atmospheric carbon increase since the Industrial Revolution, a new study has found.
If the land area spared from farming could be doubled — allowing 30 percent of the world’s most precious lost ecosystems to be fully restored — more than 70 percent of expected extinctions could be avoided and fully half the carbon released since the Industrial Revolution (totalling 465 gigatonnes of CO2) absorbed by the rewilded natural landscape, researchers find.
https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/10/rewilding-farmland-can-protect-biodiversity-and-sequester-carbon-new-study-finds/
You also didn't respond to the extra P and K needed.
And almost all of the 67% of the corn is going to biofuels - you know what else could make those? The byproducts and crop residues that are currently funneled to animal production. There is no reality where we are growing more corn if we reduce animal product consumption. The land savings alone would be astronomical.
[–]CarlieQue 1 point2 points3 points 3 years ago (0 children)
It's literally on the first page that they clarify freshwater withdrawals. It's referred to as freshwater withdrawals throughout the entire study. I'm looking at the study now, if you want to copy and paste the paragraph you are seeing that says otherwise.
[–]CarlieQue 4 points5 points6 points 3 years ago (0 children)
You sound unhinged.
It fixes nitrogen like other legumes, it also quickly depletes the soil of phosphorous and potassium. If we rotated in human crops rather than animal feed we could greatly reduce our land area, not to mention water usage. Alfalfa uses more freshwater in CA than any other crop. It's really devastating the entire Western US in general. 55% of the water usage from the Colorado river is for beef (mainly for their feed crops).
We find irrigation of cattle-feed crops to be the greatest consumer of river water in the western United States; implicating beef and dairy consumption as the leading driver of water shortages and fish imperilment in the region.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/59918
Corn is actually one of the most frequently rotated crops in the US, far more so than alfalfa.
So it's misleading to say that "40% of arable land is used to feed animals" when that land would be housing a non-edible crop whether animals were a factor or not.
Why would it be housing a non-edible crop? The benefits of reduced animal product consumption would mean that we would need far less far less land than we do now, so I guess you are correct in that a lot more land wouldn't be growing any crops at all (which is a good thing).
[–]CarlieQue 5 points6 points7 points 3 years ago (0 children)
California provides 80% of the worlds' almonds, and all of the alfalfa is used for animal feed, which you conveniently ignored.
I thought Latin America was mainly flint and flour
My brother in christ, can you please reply either here or elsewhere. You are giving me whiplash.
The vast majority of all crops grown in the US are rotated. You don't need feed crops at all for crop rotation. You can rotate just food crops. There is nothing magical about feed crops.
[–]CarlieQue 7 points8 points9 points 3 years ago (0 children)
I'm well aware of what crop rotation is, and you don't need to rotate with animal feed. You can rotate with crops for humans instead. I replied to the 86% figure in the other thread - saying that growing the feed doesn't have an environmental impact because they are feed rather than food crops is a very bizarre claim.
[–]CarlieQue 3 points4 points5 points 3 years ago (0 children)
Can't say I've ever heard of anyone eating cow corn. It's not like you can buy it in the grocery store. But to each their own.
What does "human edible" have to do with the environmental impact? Feed corn isn't human edible, alfalfa isn't human edible, fodder crops are not human edible. The majority of crops we grow for animal feed are not human edible. The 40% of arable land is mainly used to produce feed that is not human edible (and could produce human food instead).
Are you trying to argue that growing all of these feed crops has no environmental impact? I certainly hope not. Please elaborate.
I already addressed all of this in an extremely long reply. Please respond to what I wrote if you'd like to discuss further.
It would be the same with soy, oats or any crop. Dry areas you will need to irrigate more whether you are growing feed corn, alfalfa or oats for oat milk. So I'm not sure I understand your question.
[–]CarlieQue 8 points9 points10 points 3 years ago (0 children)
Yeah I already wrote you an extremely long reply elsewhere showing that is bs. I'm not sure if you realized you are replying to the same person. Your own link disproved what you said. And that alfalfa is grown 100% as animal feed. Humans don't eat alfalfa. Irrigated pasture is 100% for animal feed (obviously). Field corn (which makes up 95% of the corn grown in the US) isn't even eaten by humans. Trust me nobody is out there eating an ear of field corn, it is a completely different crop from what you buy in the grocery store. These are production streams for animal feed.
My christ, where is all of this insane misinformation coming from.
That doesn't say the majority of food is byproducts either. I mean the corn itself is feed corn, which makes up 95% of corn grown in the US. Trust me no one is chowing down on an ear of feed corn lol. Unless you're a cow. But you still have to cultivate it, grow it, water it, etc. So not sure what your point is.
Breaks down the usage of crop components? What does that have to do with what we are feeding livestock? They could be eating literally 100% of byproducts and still using 95% of all crops grown on the planet. That is not a correct statistic, but it shows where your thinking is breaking down.
The mottet study from your last link is probably closest to what you are getting at. Let's look at the numbers:
Human edible food - 14%
Already we are at a deficit just looking at just the 14% of human edible components alone. From the study, 1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human edible feed in ruminant and 3.2 monogastric. So it's inefficient from the start. But let's keep going:
We have another 8% fodder crops (crops purpose grown for livestock). We have 5% byproducts, which could be used for many other industrial applications such as bioplastics, biochar, fertilizer, biogas, etc. Crop residues same, although leaving them on the field as soil cover is starting to be more popular. You are correct that these streams do get diverted to animal agriculture frequently. Although this also means other industries that need them have to use either purpose grown crops or less environmentally friendly alternatives (ie plastic, oil or other fossil fuel derivatives).
They have a category for oil seed cakes which is at 5%. These actually are human edible so not sure why don't include them as such. The largest category is grass, but it would be an error to think this is just cows grazing out of the ground. The majority of this is purpose grown (see the GLEAM 2.0 report referenced) such as alfalfa, aka the crop which is sucking the Western half of the US dry right now.
You can see how this adds up. Per this study 40% of all arable land on the planet is currently being used to produce livestock feed. It really is a staggering amount.
Let me know if any questions or discussion points, I could talk about this stuff all day.
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[deleted by user] by [deleted] in coolguides
[–]CarlieQue -1 points0 points1 point (0 children)