Whoa now don’t go comparing the natural order to factory farms. There’s a huge difference.
The most important being that no other animal farms other animals to the scale humans do. There are some examples of ants harvesting honeydew from aphids, and other symbiotic relationships…but the relationship between predator/prey makes up the majority of animal life, and in doing so, ensures a natural sort of checks-and-balances to keep things from spiraling out of control.
And on top of that, the natural order is damn near close to zero-waste. Nearly everything down to the bone gets consumed by a variety of predators and scavengers, right down to the insects cleaning up the scraps.
Factory farming is a big middle-finger to the whole natural balance. We breed, raise, and slaughter huge populations of large animals at a massive scale. And it’s effects are only worsened by growing alfalfa in the desert and soy in the regions formerly known as rainforest, and transport those by millions-of-years-sequestered carbon off to the factory farms to make the specially-bred bovine grow especially fast.
Personally I went “mostly vegan” for environmental reasons (will still enjoy an occasional high-quality cheese or dairy-based sweet treat). I just can’t reconcile the GHG impact of meat farming with my personal needs. Plenty of other sources of protein and micronutrients than the 3-4 sources of meat that regularly make their way to most American diets.
Hunting/gathering societies, much like predator/prey relationships, are intrinsically more sustainable. It’s pretty much the only system of checks and balances on population growth.
I don’t think you can handwave away natural selection under appeal to nature fallacy. That’s usually reserved for medicine. The only place it’s really applied in agriculture is organic/non-GMO produce which is a whole other shovel of BS.
And in point 5, if not for factory farming, our consumption of beef is not sustainable as it is. There is, quite simply, not enough arable grazing land in the world to accommodate our consumption of beef. The only solutions to that are to reduce the level of beef consumption, or to expand factory farming. And any institutional/government-level intervention to do the former would be wildly unpopular without there first being a sizable voting population who reduced or eliminated beef consumption themselves.
Soybeans are about 80% meal and 20% oil. They don’t grow special beans just for oil, their components are separated in processing. The ”perfect” soybeans get sold whole, and the rest get processed. Of soybean meal, 97% goes to animal feed and 3% goes to human food products (including soymilk).
From the 20% oil, most goes to human food (margarine, cooking oil, etc), a good chunk goes to biodiesel, and a small sliver goes to industrial oils.
about 17% of all end uses of soy is as oil. in order for that to be true, 85% of the global crop must be processed in an oil press. the industrial waste from that process is most of the soy given to livestock, but cattle still only get about 3% of the total weight of the global crop.
Whoa now don’t go comparing the natural order to factory farms. There’s a huge difference.
The most important being that no other animal farms other animals to the scale humans do. There are some examples of ants harvesting honeydew from aphids, and other symbiotic relationships…but the relationship between predator/prey makes up the majority of animal life, and in doing so, ensures a natural sort of checks-and-balances to keep things from spiraling out of control.
And on top of that, the natural order is damn near close to zero-waste. Nearly everything down to the bone gets consumed by a variety of predators and scavengers, right down to the insects cleaning up the scraps.
Factory farming is a big middle-finger to the whole natural balance. We breed, raise, and slaughter huge populations of large animals at a massive scale. And it’s effects are only worsened by growing alfalfa in the desert and soy in the regions formerly known as rainforest, and transport those by millions-of-years-sequestered carbon off to the factory farms to make the specially-bred bovine grow especially fast.
Personally I went “mostly vegan” for environmental reasons (will still enjoy an occasional high-quality cheese or dairy-based sweet treat). I just can’t reconcile the GHG impact of meat farming with my personal needs. Plenty of other sources of protein and micronutrients than the 3-4 sources of meat that regularly make their way to most American diets.
This is the fallacy of appeal to nature. “Natural order” isn’t necessarily “good”.
Regarding the rest of your comment, refer to the fifth bullet point.
Hunting/gathering societies, much like predator/prey relationships, are intrinsically more sustainable. It’s pretty much the only system of checks and balances on population growth.
I don’t think you can handwave away natural selection under appeal to nature fallacy. That’s usually reserved for medicine. The only place it’s really applied in agriculture is organic/non-GMO produce which is a whole other shovel of BS.
And in point 5, if not for factory farming, our consumption of beef is not sustainable as it is. There is, quite simply, not enough arable grazing land in the world to accommodate our consumption of beef. The only solutions to that are to reduce the level of beef consumption, or to expand factory farming. And any institutional/government-level intervention to do the former would be wildly unpopular without there first being a sizable voting population who reduced or eliminated beef consumption themselves.
about 85% of soy is crushed for oil, and almost none of it goes to cattle.
That’s entirely incorrect.
Soybeans are about 80% meal and 20% oil. They don’t grow special beans just for oil, their components are separated in processing. The ”perfect” soybeans get sold whole, and the rest get processed. Of soybean meal, 97% goes to animal feed and 3% goes to human food products (including soymilk).
From the 20% oil, most goes to human food (margarine, cooking oil, etc), a good chunk goes to biodiesel, and a small sliver goes to industrial oils.
about 17% of all end uses of soy is as oil. in order for that to be true, 85% of the global crop must be processed in an oil press. the industrial waste from that process is most of the soy given to livestock, but cattle still only get about 3% of the total weight of the global crop.
now ask me for my sources.