bonifartius 𒂼𒄄 @bonifartius@social.cleverlibre.org

@tripu
> But we don’t need to raise ruminants to transform inedible plants into meat and dairy. We can grow edible plants in the first place, using far less resources and polluting less, and still feed everyone with that. That is why the current situation is not optimal (as you admit).

you have to distinguish growing food to feed it to ruminants and having ruminants grazing on meadows/eating hay from meadows when the weather is too harsh.

to grow edible plants on soil where there now are meadows requires heaps of fertilizer and is a loss of habitat. it doesn't make any sense, especially not from an ecological perspective.

on the other hand having ruminants converting plant material from these soils into something human edible is almost _free lunch_.

> It makes total sense if the net impact of growing elsewhere + transporting is smaller than growing locally — and that seems to be the case very often.

i think it is dangerous to view this only from the perspective of "impact". for plant-only food you always need to fortify it with synthetic vitamins etc. which requires chemical industry requiring fossil fuels.

> (Only disadvantage I can think of: food sovereignty, resilience against geopolitical turmoil.)

this is one of the reasons why there are food shortages in the 3rd world now, local traditional food gets replaced with imported cheap/free (aid) food produced on an industrial scale.

2ct personal semi-well reasoned opinion:
i think this is also one of the reasons why we have so many problems in the 1st world now: we replaced people with machinery in a sector which gave many relatively untrained people jobs which made deep sense - feeding others. now we have many relatively untrained people in the social systems with rotting brains due to bore out, ultra cheap food and farmers who barely can live despite all the upscaling due to industrialized agriculture. would make more sense to replace the industrialized agriculture with an ecological version also with more manual labor again. raising livestock has a place in there too, but it'll be for the occasional roast on sunday and holidays, not cheap meat abundance of today.

@freemo

@freemo @tripu the madness starts when good meadows are plowed and used for crops, killing an important habitat (at least in middle europe), removing a CO2 sink and ruining the soil for a very long time as it's prone to erosion. i've seen this being done to plan corn for bio-gas - of course they need artificial fertilized for it - total madness :)

it may certainly not "optimal" to have ruminants on green land, but they create food from plants humans never could consume. everyone talks about reducing climate impact.

it also doesn't make sense to drop one of the most important local protein and fat sources in cold and moderate climates, instead transporting stuff around the globe.

one thing that _should_ happen though is that livestock is again raised in more traditional ways, really grazing on meadows etc.

@niclas haha, no problem, i agree wholeheartedly :)

even if you loosen the conditions it's nearly impossible here.. the monthly imposed fees are the killer, minimum 200€ mandatory health insurance, ~19€ for the public broadcasting assholes, there are probably more i forget now. if you don't want to or can pay those things out of pocket you have to apply for social security and those fuckers really tighten the thumbscrews to have you take any job.

otoh i'm becoming an expert in bleeding the state at every corner possible ;) maybe i should write a book on it.

@ceo_of_monoeye_dating @SnakeMcDuckets i'm just in a bad mood in general, not seeking an argument here ;)

@ceo_of_monoeye_dating @SnakeMcDuckets sure, but i'd venture one could cook up something by now which is heat resistant. maybe some genetically modified bacteria from deep sea black smokers? who knows. nothing is sacred anymore and nobody stops and asks himself if opening another box of pandora is wise.

@ceo_of_monoeye_dating @SnakeMcDuckets
> Also, vaccines in general do not work when consumed orally.

the half dead oral polio vaccine creating polio outbreaks in the 3rd world begs to differ!