Comment by DennisP | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DennisP | Hacker News Reader

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At the scale we do it, farming is not a healthy relationship to the environment. It does immense damage.

Right now, livestock are 60% of the biomass of all mammals on the planet. Humans are 36%, leaving only 4% wild mammals. Our poultry has three times the biomass of wild birds.[1] Food production takes up 40% of the Earth's land mass.[2]

Scientists have defined nine "planetary boundaries" we need to avoid crossing to avoid environmental catastrophe. For the ones related to farming, we've already crossed the boundaries for land use, biodiversity, and the nitrogen cycle, we're close for the phosphorus cycle, and over halfway there for freshwater use.[3]

According to the book Clean Meat, a 2011 study found that cultured beef would use 99% less land and 96% water. We feed nine calories to chicken to get one calorie of meat.

If we were to convert to cultured meat and milk, we could stop most deforestation and let most of that 40% of land mass revert to native forest and prairie. We'd pull back from those planetary boundaries and absorb gigatons of carbon. Do the same with fish and maybe ocean populations could recover.

That would be a healthy relationship with our environment.

[1] https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.h...

[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/agricultu...

[3] https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/08/05/have-we-crossed-the...

Thanks for this, wholeheartedly agree.

If we are ever to restore earth to the Eden garden we'd all like it to be, then these type of advances are the only way this'll ever happen.

I don't want Eden. I want medicine, engines, cheap energy and internet.

We can have all of it. For medicines in particular, preserving biodiversity actually helps, we're still discovering new medicines in wild plants. Doing away with animal farming wouldn't hurt the rest of your list either.

There's no reason why you can't have both.

> If we were to convert to cultured meat and milk, we could stop most deforestation and let most of that 40% of land mass revert to native forest and prairie

Or, due to human/life nature, human population will grow even larger and take up that space too :(

Urbanization has been the trend for decades. With most farming obsolete, it would probably accelerate.

Not only do we take less space that way, but urban populations tend to have lower birth rates.

Urbanization isn't all fine and dandy. In fact, I really don't like living in high density housing at all. I start getting itchy way before we reach high density. Why is it so important to use less space?

I like using more space per person but having less people. Does away almost magically with many issues we see in high density urban areas. I'm not saying we should all live on a farm. Just don't cram thousands of people into a high rise and then build one high rise next to the other for miles.

"Oh, great; now we can support an additional 5 billion people!"

> We feed nine calories to chicken to get one calorie of meat.

This is not a byproduct of the current farming landscape, but an artifact of the food chain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer... & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency.

In general, from one level of the food chain to the next, only 10% of the energy is able to be converted.

My chickens eat bugs around the house.

Edit: I'm not joking. Old-school local farm chickens really do eat bugs. They feed themselves a good part of the year. Bugs and vegetable scraps. I'm not sure what new-school corporate farm chickens eat. And foxes will eat the chickens (if they get a chance). The food chain.

Confirming this. Chickens are fierce predators when given the chance. One of the walls on our stables is usually covered with flies chilling in the warmth of the sun. The chickens (and the local magpie population) go there to prey on them whenever they get the chance. Chickens will also hunt mice, lizards and other critters small enough for them to catch and devour.

However, the fact that our chicken use one of the walls of our stable as a hunting ground kinda puts things in perspective; for most people, a stable, or obtaining meat from farm chickens is simply not possible. Industrial farming is the big issue, and replacing industrial farming will require new methods. I'm not sure more over-processed products is the answer though.

"Chickens will also hunt mice, lizards and other critters small enough for them to catch and devour."

Your comment reminded me that chickens (and indeed, birds) have descended from dinosaurs (many of who were carnivores).

The idea of a group of T-Rexes hunting and fighting over prey like a flock of chickens is outright scary. :D

A few years ago I got to know a commercial chicken farmer. He showed us his "chicken houses," which were large dirt-floor buildings packed so full of chickens you could barely see the ground. They ate whatever grain he threw in there. By contract he had to buy grain from Tyson and sell them the chickens.

> By contract he had to buy grain from Tyson and sell them the chickens.

I’m assuming a contract he signed

Edit: similarly you could say by contract Tyson had to sell him the grain and buy chickens from him

I wasn't making a moral judgement, just emphasizing that the chickens eat grain and will continue eating grain.

I could also get into a discussion of market inequities and whatnot but it'd be a bit off-topic in this discussion of environmental impacts.

This is 100% true as long as human motivations are not factored into play.

The equally plausible reverse scenario is that as soon as artificial honey is preferred, bees will be killed off for being useless in the capitalist sense, and the planet will die.

Nothing is ever black and white.

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