This is because the animals have eaten the nutrients for you. You can then take them in quasi-secondhand and at a lower absorption rate, however it is such an environmentally unfriendly way to take one’s nutrition that it boggles the mind.
re: farms/ranchers. (background: My grandparents were farmers, citrus farmers. They had a very small farm they worked with themselves and two workers daily, eight workers during cultivation.)
One major difference I have observed within my lifetime is that then, there were “seasons” when fruits were available and seasons when they were not. Now people expect to be able to buy any fruit at any time of the year, so many fruits travel much further than in the past to effect this.
Example: the expectations of consumers is to have strawberries at all times, but these are not typically grown here on the peninsula, thus they come from far away, however if the price goes too high, the consumers will not buy them and they will rot on the shelves. This is all to say I think it can be a much more perilous market for the food growers of today, with many more factors to consider.
I primarily “eat local” which thankfully is not at all hard to do, (1) because it is delicious (2) there’s an astounding variety of options (3) to minimize my footprint and (4) because it is cost-effective.
Most of my farming opinions are about the American west where there is not a lot of water, and as a whole there, the “but they grow our food” argument is not nearly as relevant as the wealthy farm owners who own the vast majority of farms would like you to believe.
Huge swathes of our public land are abused and the habitat severely degraded for basically nothing by a few ranchers - the fee is so comically cheap that it costs the BLM money to run what is quite literally a welfare program for a few already wealthy individuals, and if you dare even slightly raise this pitiful fee they literally riot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff).
On the plant front, huge amounts of alfafa (cattle feed) are grown in the desert southwest and central valley to be shipped oversees to places like Saudi Arabia. This is quite literally exporting water from an area that is largely desert, and again, we are giving the water to the people that own the land where this is grown at pathetically low rates while the Colorado river fails to even reach the delta, the Salton sea with much of California’s remaining wetlands dies, and the Great Salt Lake dries up.
I have absolutely no problem with actually growing food, but so much of the ridiculous environmental abuse going on in my half of the USA to benefit a tiny number of farm owners and ranchers is really not that.
That’s only a crisis in the sense that those countries cannot maintain what they have built up as their population shrinks. To the planet, it makes no difference. For those countries, it’s a sign that relying on unlimited growth was never a realistic approach, and they must find ways to live within the limits of what their population capacity and resources can support. Also, some individual countries may have declining populations, but there’s still plenty of people out there that could support those countries if they were allowed to become residents and work. They just need to start cutting the red tape. They could alleviate some of that negative economic impact by forming an alliance with other countries to access what they are short on (labor especially), and provide something in return.
Edit: Removed statement saying that our species overall birthrate is not declining. That is untrue depending on the timeframe selected (Global birthrates have declined from the 1960s to now, for example). Historically, though, birth rates were higher to offset child mortality rates. Child mortality rates globally have also dropped significantly over the same timeframe, reducing the need for higher birthrates. As ever, real-world statistics tend not to be simple independent variables.
I still contend that the problem is not too many people existing in the world, but rather the irresponsible usage of resources by the people. Would fewer people mean smaller net environmental impact? Sure. But so would implementing more responsible resource usage, and that option doesn’t carry with it the objectionable moral and ethical implications that inherently come with population reduction/discouragement of reproduction. I hate to be “that guy” who compares everything to popular fictional media, but we don’t to go the “Thanos route” to try and solve environmental issues.
That’s a whole different can of worms that I won’t get into here
Which raises an interesting question re: the energy footprint of transporting fresh fruits vs. freezing local fruits. I see no inherent reason why frozen produce has to be transported long distances. As I write this, I am preparing dinner using the last of the ginkgo nuts that I gathered and froze months ago.
I don’t think anyone here is suggesting that anything akin to a Thanos snap (or second Holocaust for a more realistic example) is the way to go. Any effort to reduce the population would have to involve a voluntary and gradual reduction in the overall birth rate to be a viable and ethical approach. However, with regard to ethics, a conscious and ethical approach toward population reduction is surely better than reaching a crisis point when the population exceeds the capacity of the planet to sustain it. Ethics and equality tend to become losing arguments when sharing resources endangers survival. However, I agree with you that we would be much further from reaching that crisis point if we did a better job of distributing the resources we have now. The ideal sustainable approach would probably involve both more responsible usage of resources and limiting population growth.
I think this is very much part of the same can of worms, but we’re not solving any problems on this forum. We don’t have to go into the details on that if there’s no interest, and I also wish to refrain from deviating too far from the main topic.
We don’t need to bother trying to reduce the birth rate (if lower populations would actually be a good thing, which is debatable), because birth rates are already going down anyway. We’re getting very close to a point of no return on massive population declines over the next century and it seems unlikely birth rates will increase to stop this from happening.
Even without obviously extreme methods like genocide or forced sterilization, I believe social engineering to paint reproduction in a negative light/discourage people from having kids is highly questionable at best ethics-wise. We already have an epidemic of people who see raising kids as merely a hindrance to their own personal pleasures, rather than a blessing, such a campaign would only exacerbate that. I could go into the morals of why I believe this is a terrible thing, but that would go beyond the nature-related scope of this discussion.
Similarly I am refraining from getting into the immigration-related debate because that would get heavily into politics, and very polarizing politics at that. I don’t believe this is the place for that
My point is that I think there are better and much more ethical options for working to conserve the environment than any form of population reduction. At this point anyway, it isn’t an “either or” situation where we either reduce the population or the planet is destroyed. Like I said earlier, the idea that the earth is currently overpopulated on a global scale or even close to such a limit is tenuous at best.
Ask yourself why they should see it as a blessing. Is it actually a blessing for everyone? Wouldn’t social engineering to paint reproduction in a positive light be just as morally sticky? It is a complicated topic. I won’t pretend to know the answer myself. Again, we are digressing from the main topic, though, so perhaps we can just leave it there.
I personally do believe having kids and raising them up right is an objectively good thing, so I don’t see pro-reproduction messaging in the same light as anti-reproduction messaging. You are right though I don’t think this discussion is really getting anywhere without going too off topic, so I guess we can agree to disagree
As far as population numbers go, there appear to be reliable estimates (one link I just found) that the human population will reach a maximum around the year 2080 and then decline after that. That’s soon enough for me.
Like blowfly maggots? That’s sounding more and more like a viable/sustainable protein route to me.
As agriculture shifts entirely away from historical small/medium local scale to megascale global operations, like many other market-driven industries, there’s this strong tendency for the big players to squash out any new, environmentally-improved technologies that might have sprung up under the old model of shared open-sourced innovations.
Especially those innovations that solve global environmental problems at the cost of cutting up or shaking up the global scale of the markets that the big corps fight so hard to protect from any threats to their power to monopolize and control.
Really?
Give a woman an education. An opportunity to earn her own living, not as a ‘breeder’.
And surprise, surprise - she makes her own choices about whether she wants to birth a child every year.
Everyone has a different idea of what “raising them up right” entails. And for some of us, the very expression is borderline triggering because it brings to mind adults with rigid ideas about who a child “ought” to be, that do not sufficiently account for who the child is.
I think it is an objectively good thing for people to have enough self-awareness to know whether they are suited to parenthood, rather than succumb to social expectations.
And I disagree that this is diverging from the topic because the values that people hold – and instill in their children – directly affect the environment.
Just to make myself clear, I am in no way implying everyone is morally obligated to have kids. And I fully agree that if someone is planning on having kids, he or she should be prepared to actually be a good parent to said kids (not just have as many kids as possible and then ignore them, a certain very high profile figure who is currently giving pro-natalism a bad name comes to mind…).
I am merely saying that having a stable family with children and doing what it takes to be a good parent is a good, positive thing and a noble goal to aspire to, and that the recent societal push to paint having kids in a negative light is quite harmful.
Maybe we are exposed to different parts of society, but this is definitely not the majority opinion I am receiving. It feels like you are trying to find an enemy for your opinion to be more valid.