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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

> but I also suspect the diversity of plants required for a healthy vegetarian diet may be just as difficult to maintain as livestock,

People need protein, energy, vitamins, and minerals.

Getting calories from meat is inefficient; you need to feed the animal many more calories than you'll get back.

Meat is reasonably good source of protein. Getting protein from vegetables means mixing types to get the range of amino acids. There's a gentle concern about the lack of omega fatty acids in some vegetarian diets.

You get some fat soluble vitamins from meat and dairy products.

Meat is a good source of iron. Milk is a good source of calcium. But both of those can be found in vegetable products too.

tl:dr You need to grow vegetables anyway; meat is really inefficient; why waste energy growing feedcrops for animals (and for the people looking after the animals, and the people looking after the feedcrops) when you can jsut grow feedcrops for people.

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> Getting calories from meat is inefficient

You're taking the model of an industrialized first-world nation with 300 million+ people and applying it to a tiny space colony. Calling that apples vs. oranges would be an understatement.

If you disagree, tell me this: How many 30,000 lb. John Deere combines do you think will be sent with the first settlers?

No, it really is inefficient. A huge portion of the materials livestock consume get converted into heat and waste products.

And don't forget space - these would be domed colonies, so space would be absolutely critical. Here on earth humans have devised a way to raise food animals in a way that's (somewhat) reasonably efficient in terms of land used. But that method depends critically on armies of 30,000 lb. John Deere combines in order to produce sufficient quantities of feed crop without an enormous human labor input.

Using the model of 'small holding' - 5 acres per person style.

Goats provide:

Meat Milk Leather Bone Manure Farts Goat blood Useless baby boy goats

They eat. They eat far more calories than you'll ever get from them. Someone has to look after them, and that person also needs to eat.

Someone needs to grow the food for the goats, and for the goatherds, and that person needs to eat.

For a goat to produce milk it (like most mammals) needs a child to feed. Thus, you need at least one male goat for breeding. But male goats don't give milk. And they stink. And billy goats are just plain mean. So this stud-goat, stinky, mean, lazy thing, also needs food and care. And the birthing goat needs some attention. And if it's a male it's useless, so someone has to kill it.

All that time and effort, and all you get is goat meat and goat milk. Maybe some will think it's worth it, but other people would prefer using all that time and energy on a wider range of food.

> tell me this: How many 30,000 lb. John Deere combines do you think will be sent with the first settlers?

You have it backwards: Massive industrial farming makes things many times more, not less, efficient.

It seems to me that you could just feed your goat the parts of the plants that you can't really eat yourself. All the green crap from soybean plants for instance.

If that is worth it probably depends on how much goat milk is worth to you, how much the green crap is worth to you otherwise as compost, and how much goat crap is worth to you as fertilizer.

I don't think it would be worth it, but it wouldn't terribly surprise me if I were wrong.

The model is the same everywhere.

We canna break the laws of (bio)physics, Jim.

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