People keep asking me why I'm so strongly opposed to GMO in food, outside of stuff like Golden Rice. The reason is that we can't trust Big Ag to not do the wrong thing: for one, there are serious questions on monopolies and dependence of farmers, even entire nations in the end upon suppliers, and it's almost exclusively about introducing resistence against pesticides, with the aforementioned effects on biodiversity.
Have you ever kept a garden? Did you do it on natural soil, with no pesticides? The food problem is hard, especially because food isn't very fungible. (Consider crickets if you think otherwise)
GMO's should be regulated so that pesticide restiance is mitigated. Personally I think GMOs should have multiple pesticide restistances for each class of pest so that resistant pest mutations can be treated with a seperate pesticide.
> The food problem is hard, especially because food isn't very fungible.
Indeed it is, and modern agriculture has drastically improved human life from the situation of just a century ago.
The thing is, we've gone too far - in our quest for more and more and more food production, we have endangered nature itself. Soils are degrading because the crops use too much nutrients and because the wildlife - particularly small burrowing animals - get killed off by pesticides directly or because their food got killed off by pesticides. On top of that, heavy farm machines compress the soil... and so it can't soak up water any more, leading to flood and drought issues (it can't retain water because the soil is too compacted for the water to seep through, so no buffer for drought times, and when rain falls it just washes the topsoil with it and is gone). And that doesn't even mention insects and their role in food chains.
> GMO's should be regulated so that pesticide restiance is mitigated. Personally I think GMOs should have multiple pesticide restistances for each class of pest so that resistant pest mutations can be treated with a seperate pesticide.
You didn't get my point: pesticides kill everything but the GMO plants that are designed to be resistant, thus impacting the food chain of nature as an ecosystem. We've engineered places that are literally inhospitable to wildlife, with serious and far-reaching consequences. We barely understand food chains and anchor species as a concept, we only discovered just how huge a role wolves and beavers play in nature a few decades ago [1]. And yet, despite the warning signs (such as insect free car windshields despite driving through the countryside for hours), we keep on and on doing what we know is likely harmful!
[1] https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-r...
Around here I'm pretty sure it's about the deer.
2. The point that they are making is that there are ways to create biodiversity within modern ag that are actually required by law. You are not supposed to plant gmo or spray your whole field to keep a remnant of the original population, riparian buffers, cover crops (voluntary), and other voluntary buffer zones (pollinator fields etc). These can all preserve biodiversity and prevent resistance while still outputting the food needed at the price we all want to pay.
I am getting the impressing that you are not familiar with corrupt practices of Big Ag, most which have nothing to do with producing more food, and have everything to do with padding their profit margins and abusing their power.
For example, farmers hire agronomists, but actually agronomists make more money from kickbacks from producers of pesticides / agrochemicals than they do from farmers. Many of them are actually undercover pesticide pushers, rather than trusted professionals.
We have metric tons of research that shows that pesticides are overused, and poorly targeted. Not unlike the opioid crisis in US
You could just make a law that farms will be ranked by some biodiversity metric - for example, how many unique species of plant and animal were found by an inspector on an annual inspection. Any farm in the bottom 50% of rankings would need to pay perhaps 1% of revenue as an extra fee/fine for being insufficiently wildlife friendly.
Clearly people will game this metric, but most ways to fake having hundreds of species of animal on your farm are good for wild animals too.
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/GLOBAL-ENVIRONMENT/INSECT-A...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/07/insect-d...
We can't have animal agriculture and feed 10 billion people.
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471
We would need more than 5 Earths to feed everyone a version of the American diet.
https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/sustainability...
We don't have those extra Earths.
For many businesses, 1% can be the difference between profit and loss, and if slight adjustments to farming practice can get them some biodiversity and save them a 1% fee, they will.
In agriculture, it means reducing animal agriculture, expanding forests, and adopting plant-based diets. Nut orchards replacing dairy farms. Regenerative practices like syntropic agriculture, natural farming, and permaculture to nurture soil. No pesticides or herbicides, limited fertilizers, compost over manure, smaller diverse fields, hedgerows, companion and nitrogen fixing plants.
Think vast untouched forests, biodiverse corridors, and thriving meadows.
It's not merely a 1% revenue concern; it's about safeguarding the Earth and prioritizing biodiversity. Such a profound shift requires prioritizing the well-being of our planet over short-term financial implications.
We could get serious about that if we decide to get serious about agri land use, deforestation, soil depletion, etc.
The issue is that animals raised on pasture need more land and more time, which equals more money. It's cheaper to raise animals on what amounts to junk food (soy, corn, legumes).
We raise and sell pork, chicken, eggs, and dairy products that never eat anything that our own land doesn't produce (grass/nuts/native fruit). But my hogs grow over a year not six months, my chickens don't lay in the winter, and my cows don't produce 10+ gallons per day. My business is only sustainable because of people who care for quality of cheaper quantity.
My point was merely, there is a middle way, that makes better products, cheaply, and more ethically.
80% of all agricultural land for 18% of calories. It's an area the size of both Americas.
https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-Land...
If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
Given that we're in the sixth mass extinction, and animal species have seen 70% decline in last 50 years, we have to reverse the trend.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-7...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
That "marginal land" should be reforested instead and nature restored.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4
The carbon opportunity cost of animal-sourced food production on land
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4
Humans are driving one million species to extinction - with agriculture
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/
Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption
> My business is only sustainable because of people who care for quality of cheaper quantity
Your business might be. Animal agriculture isn't.
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471
Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable
A global shift towards healthy and more plant-based diets, halving food loss and waste, and improving farming practices and technologies are required to feed 10 billion people sustainably by 2050, a new study finds.
Sure, if you're ok with ignoring everything else.
> have a wealth of nutrients
But nothing that we couldn't get from plants.
> and they can improve the ground they are on at the same time
They can. But forest would do it too, and better. Climate-wise it's not a win.
https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/grazed-and-co...
Grass-fed beef isn't necessarily better for the environment than beef from CAFOs. While grass-fed systems offer benefits like soil health, they often require more land, potentially leading to deforestation. They can also be less efficient in terms of resource use and have variable effects on carbon sequestration. A comprehensive assessment considering land use efficiency, resource consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions is essential to fully understand the environmental impact of different beef production methods.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-03-grass-fed-beef-good-or-...
"This report concludes that grass-fed livestock are not a climate solution. Grazing livestock are net contributors to the climate problem, as are all livestock. Rising animal production and consumption, whatever the farming system and animal type, is causing damaging greenhouse gas release and contributing to changes in land use.
'Ultimately, if high consuming individuals and countries want to do something positive for the climate, maintaining their current consumption levels but simply switching to grass-fed beef is not a solution. Eating less meat, of all types, is.’"
> https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-Land...
how did you get 80% and 18% numbers from that link?..
also, calories is not the only metric of nutrition load..
https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-g...
from
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
> also, calories is not the only metric of nutrition load
True. Nutrition is more than just calories. Plant-based diets offer diverse nutrients, antioxidants, and fiber that promote better health.
Ok, but still that pic lacks sources
Actual UN FAO says it is 33% of croplands used for crops production for animals, and other land is not necessary can be used for other type of aggrecalture: https://www.fao.org/3/ar591e/ar591e.pdf
UC Davis estimates that cattle farming consumes only 40% of arable land: https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/cattle-and-land-use-dif...
> Nutrition is more than just calories. Plant-based diets offer diverse nutrients, antioxidants, and fiber that promote better health.
I am more wondering about protein intake
Why does the land have to be used at all?
> I am more wondering about protein intake
Seitan, tofu, TVP are the obvious high-protein plant foods. People without a taste for those things or uninterested in leaving their comfort zone can seek mock meats.
Either way, it's trivial to hit protein goals.
and why not be used?
> protein
yes, but the topic of discussion what is the share of those nutrition in consumption for plant vs animal today and not hypothetical case when everyone switch to plant based diet.
Also, it is not clear if whole chain of seitan production is much better than animal protein in term of efficiency.
Seitan is just wheat gluten. You can take wheat flour off your shelf right now and wash out the starch so just the spongy gluten is left which is pure protein. And that's just one protein-concentrated food.
I think you need to look these numbers up for yourself because it doesn't seem like you have a grip on how inefficient meat is, and I think you need to see the numbers for yourself to believe it.
yeah, I looked, internet search says that seitan costs $15/lb in walmart, which is way more expensive than some chicken tighs, and I use this comparison as benchmark for efficiency and economical viability.
Your hand-wavings and personal attacks are ignored.
Why would you look at that and not just at the cost of wheat flour? Wheat gluten is dirt cheap to extract from wheat. Once again, you can make it in your home at the cost of wheat flour.
Another example is soy beans where the majority of soy is fed to animals instead of consumed directly as products like tofu, TVP, and soy chunks.
As for "hand waving", I suppose I can google meat inefficiencies for you. First google result: https://www.wri.org/insights/sustainable-diets-what-you-need... -- You'll notice that wheat is the most efficient source of protein especially when considering GHG emissions.
wheat flour has much smaller protein content than proper cuts of meat, so you just shift all this processing from industrial complex to your body with side effect of calories over consumption, blood sugar spikes etc.
> soy beans
uncooked soy beans also costs like 3-4$/lb in walmart, while having lower quality protein than meat.
> majority of soy is fed to animals
you can think that animal are doing your industrial processing: extracting proteins from raw soy/grains and converting it to well preservable and digestible form.
Remember, it takes 25 calories of cow food (like wheat or soy) to grow one calorie of meat.
You can eat those calories (wheat or soy) directly at 25x more efficiency, and that's just calorie efficiency without looking at water or land use efficiency.
Finally, price doesn't tell you how much it costs to make something nor the financial viability at scale. Just like the price of beef doesn't show you subsidies, the price impact of basic demand, nor externalities.
In a hypothetical world where we switch 100% beef consumption to wheat gluten and tofu, why would it be more costly when we aren't losing 24 calories for every 25 calories we feed to cows anymore?
Even when you wash the starch from wheat flour to isolate wheat gluten, the starch is used as inputs into other foods. When we talk about the energy lost through tropic levels, it's lost as unrecoverable metabolic energy.
which has cost which we discussed already.
Also gluten protein is far less digestible than animal protein, Table 1 in this publication says it is less digestible by factor 4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6723444/#:~:tex....
> even beef
beef is by no mean the best way to grow animal protein. Turkeys and chicken will be much more cost efficient.
> Remember, it takes 25 calories of cow food (like wheat or soy) to grow one calorie of meat.
I answered you already that calories intake is by no mean the important metric of nutrition value, and not interested to jump into this discussion again.
This seems like this could have the sources (cannot open it right now).
https://github.com/owid/notebooks/tree/main/HannahRitchie/da...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Things may seem that way since those areas have been cultivated since prehistory, but this is not correct in general. Also, commercial fields (aka green concrete) and naturally grazed steppe/savannah are very different.
My cattle (Jerseys, I do not raise commercial beef cattle) prefer my savannah land. I have approx. 100 acres of oak savannah which I have worked hard to restore to its former glory. My savannah (I don't call it pasture, it's not) is far more productive and biodiverse. I do have to remove my herds from it because trees cannot handle the constraint weight and trampling of large animals, and so I do also have a small 20 acre pasture that I keep for the off-time. I also have a 5 acre lot I keep for the winter months (Jan-April) so my cattle don't destroy dormant plants and so the grasses have time to mature in the spring.
No, it's "the shareholders". Large corporations don't care about farming, only making money. They just happen to also farm.
Guess who is behind “the children?” Yes, the shareholders as well.