Cheap and well cared for meat? Can we have it all?

geordie_joe

Pandora123 wrote: »

Farmed salmon commonly requires three pounds of wild fish as feed for every pound of salmon raised... a net loss of protein. (link)

More food for thought...

:A

I'm willing to bet that three pounds of wild fish is made up of fish we would never eat. Just the same as pigs are fed large amounts of food before we eat them. No doubt they are fed more protein than they have when they are killed, but I'd rather eat the pig than the pig food.

boo81

Exactly my point, a 500m2 area is very small leeway so going on figures from over 6 months ago we can sustain everyone.

A journal ive found on the net states that after a study they conclude that the loss of cropland is likely to be within the range 30–60 Mha over the next 3 decades by my calculation that make 1-2 Mha a year.

The earth is in a fine balance thus why water and food shortage is a huge issue. We dont have the land to keep the animals and maybe we are back to the chicken thing with them being free range! I wonder if you compare the amount of people a crop will feed and the amount of people meat will feed and work out the resources used for each including time which actually works out the most viable for feeding the worlds population. :rolleyes:

LuciferTDark

Pandora123 wrote: »

I am not sure why you think veggies don't know or haven't noticed this? It seems a rather odd statement to make.

Just me being facetious

Pandora123 wrote: »

To say that the entire population of cows & chickens would "have to be wiped off the face of the planet" is bit melodramatic. Do you envision some kind of overnight conversion of the entire world's population to vegetarianism/veganism and imagine some mass slaughter of these animals would have to be carried out? (wait now, there's already a mass slaughter of food animals... 10.4 billion annually in just the US alone).

Yep being melodramatic, but if we did all stop eating meat there'd be no reason for the meat providing animals being kept at all, they don't do anything else, they certainly couldn't survive in the wild for long either so it would be kinder to just put them down rather than let them starve to death don't you think? 10.4 billion a year? greedy Americans!

Pandora123 wrote: »

I see a more gradual shift away from animal protein and towards plant protein, not just because of economics, but because this world is so very overpopulated and there is simply not enough land available to produce meat for everyone (not even when the last of the Amazon rainforest has disappeared).

Time to cut down the human population then do you think? Plans are already in place if it ever needs to be done.

Pandora123_2

geordie_joe wrote: »

They only make the figures work by taking the land we had in 2002 and the population of 2007 and hope you don't realise we've built on a lot of that land in the last five years.

The bigger the population gets, the more land we have to build on.

I do not have endless hours to research this, there could be figures for irrigated arable land in 2007 out there somewhere.

Please show me where you got the information that "we've built on a lot" of irrigated arable land in the last five years. In this country at least, irrigated arable land (i.e. land for growing crops) is well protected against development.

It's obvious that population growth has to drastically slow down. Not sure how that is going to happen. A debate for another time let's say.

Pandora123_2

LuciferTDark wrote: »

Time to cut down the human population then do you think? Plans are already in place if it ever needs to be done.

I have heard of such plans, but haven't read in depth about them.

I think if every family limited themselves (voluntarily) to one child, it would be a great thing for this planet. It would take a massive shift in personal and society attitudes for that to happen, though.

(I don't believe the "plans" to which you refer utilise voluntary measures. More a cull from what little I've read.)

I don't have the answers. It really saddens me the way humans have trashed this planet, with little regard for other species or even for their own environment. Hopefully nature will eventually restore the balance, no idea how this will happen though.

geordie_joe

Pandora123 wrote: »

Please show me where you got the information that "we've built on a lot" of irrigated arable land in the last five years. In this country at least, irrigated arable land (i.e. land for growing crops) is well protected against development.

Just look at any developing country, their cities are growing at an alarming rate. Look at India, building factories like they are going out of fashion. South American countries too. Not to mention China, who have just displaced millions of farmers so they could flood the valleys to provide water and electricity for the cities and factories.

Pandora123 wrote: »

It's obvious that population growth has to drastically slow down. Not sure how that is going to happen. A debate for another time let's say.

Yep, maybe I should start a thread "Which groups of people should we shoot first?"

Pandora123_2

geordie_joe wrote: »

I'm willing to bet that three pounds of wild fish is made up of fish we would never eat. Just the same as pigs are fed large amounts of food before we eat them. No doubt they are fed more protein than they have when they are killed, but I'd rather eat the pig than the pig food.

Wild fish caught for being made into food for farmed fish: anchovies, mackerel, sardines. (link)

I believe those are all fit for human consumption.

Pandora123_2

geordie_joe wrote: »

Yep, maybe I should start a thread "Which groups of people should we shoot first?"

I'm not sure where you got "shooting people" from "slowing down population growth".

geordie_joe

LuciferTDark wrote: »

Time to cut down the human population then do you think? Plans are already in place if it ever needs to be done.

ROTFL! I'd like to see them. How could we do it?

Pick a country and nuke it, I doubt it as we would also render the land useless to us.

Send the army in to pick out a certain group of people and kill them? A bloke already tried that and the world gave him a good kicking.

In fact it's been tried a few times since then and each time the "civilised world" has sent in troops to stop it.

Anyway, if the UK gets over populated we will need to kill people in the UK and not some other country. Do you think the rest of the world will stand by and watch Gordon Brown slaughter 20% of the population?

Do you think anyone would carry out his orders if he did order them to do it?

geordie_joe

Pandora123 wrote: »

I'm not sure where you got "shooting people" from "slowing down population growth".

I had also read another post which I was itching to reply to, and I guess "killing people to reduce the population" was still in the front of my mind.