Oh lord if this post were actually the truth it alone would be proof there is a god, cause growing food before the invention of animal husbandry was so improbably that god had to have a hand in making sure people didn't starve.BNguyen said:technically, no, it would take longer to grow a garden than it would to wait for a cow to be eaten (veal and all that), but a garden is a less guaranteed form of nutrients (I've seen how little a home garden actually produces) seeing as how exposed a garden is to damage and how much time is needed to produce enough food to live on, compared to say a herd of cows.Chris OBrien said:This may be true... if it happened instantaneously. But you're not really citing any facts or numbers. In a 2000 calorie diet, the daily intake of protein needed is easily obtained by eating a balanced, plant-based diet without additional effort*. It seems illogical to assume it would take significantly larger quantities of food to obtain proper nutrients--certainly no more than is already grown to breed, raise, and fatten all the livestock grown for food currently.BNguyen said:I never said that, and don't go accusing me of saying that I did.ThrobbingEgo said:Are you suggesting that meat is a substitute for... greens? That's the most fucked up thing I've ever heard. If you substitute all your carrots and broccoli for beef, you're going to have a nutritional deficiency. While people can live entirely on a plant-based diet, you can't live entirely on meat. You'll die.BNguyen said:Growing a garden (with all that entails) or picking up enough greens at the store costs way more than a package of meat.
That reminds me of that scene in Food Inc where this family was comparing the cost of broccoli to Pepsi, marveling at how much cheaper Pepsi is than vegetables. It's fucking sugar water.
If you want a fair comparison, compare the cost of meat to legumes. Look at how cheap lentils are. Being a vegan can be very inexpensive.
I was simply stating how difficult it would be in our economy to completely switch over to a vegetarian diet based on how expensive it would be to acquire sufficient amounts of greens to suppliment or take over for our need of meat. Plants may, for the most part, have what we need in terms of vitamins and minerals, but we'd need to eat larger quantities of it to get the same amounts that meat gives us.
*http://www.savvyvegetarian.com/vegetarian-cooking/protein-sample-menus.php - these are some sample menus that show a balanced, vegetarian diet and the intake of nutrients. Another good resource - http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.htm
And he's right. Your comparison was flawed. You should compare the cost of raising a cow to growing a garden. Aside from the cost, it will take years before the cow is edible. Most plants can be eaten within months of being planted.
If you were to start with two plots of land - one to be used for growing a garden, the other with a herd of cows. The cows are already to go to eat and little care is needed - just water and sufficient amounts of grass (and not all cows eat soy beans or corn, around where I live, we grow grass for them), add to this that the cows can produce milk if they are healthy
On the other hand, you have to plow a field, add seeds, water, and fertilize the field before a crop can get going. But before that, watch out for birds that dig up seeds, and once they do get growing, spray pesticides and fungicides to remove insects and fungus, and you have to watch out for small animals and even deer which will eat your crops. Storm damage can also ruin the chances for a harvest and even if the crop outlasts all of that, there is no guarantee that the individual plants will produce viable, for lack of a better term, produce. At most a tomato plant will give only a dozen or so edible tomatoes. Now an orchard on the other hand can give you plenty of produce but only after a few years of waiting and even then, there is still the threat of damage and wood rot. After this, both sides require basically the same amount of effort necessary to clean, and prepare the produce to get to the consumer.
Now in this scenario, you'd most likely starve long before your crop got up and running if you chose to not eat from the herd.
Add to the fact that after a few years, the ground loses its nutrients and no crops can be grown until they are replaced, and if you don't have the land needed to wait and still produce crops, then again, you'll starve.
What I'm trying to say in all this is that it's not economically viable to switch over (yet) to a plant based diet with how much effort and money it would need to produce food for everyone. Going completely organic in terms of crops leaves for poor quality produce and a lot of the time no crops at all from bad soil and pests.
The plants we eat do not grow like the weeds we try to remove from our gardens, they don't come back easily or quickly and the amount that they can produce is very low. And add to this that even though there is a lot of land open from humans, most of it is unusable for growing crops since we have parks, mountains, deserts, and protected habitats. The rest of the land is either already being used to grow crops, used to raise herds for meat, or used for us to live on.
And as a note, I do not believe we need giant stadiums for sports or racing as I see it as a waste of fuel, building materials, and good land for growing crops or animals.
Maybe the problem I have is that too many vegetarians want to push their moral high stand point over everyone else because they've made a choice of lifestyle, more specifically the vegans who want only organic foods. I eat both plants and animals, I love specific animals and others I find good sources of food and up until scientists can make a good enough replacement for that, then I'll continue to eat meat.
And I just feel as though I have to say it again: one cow can feed just about as many people as several acres of crops, but with less effort needed to get that cow to your plate.
I find it humorous that you accept anidotal evidence of home gardens as proof that growing food is less effect then raising meat. Here is a hint you do not have to now what you are doing to plant a garden in your backyard. Also the gestation period of a cow is nine months. That means you have to feed momma cow for nine months before there is a baby cow that you can eat. Cow after all do not appear out of thin air. Plus another 6 weeks before it can be eaten as veal, which by the way is horribly inefficient that is why veal is so expensive. So that is 10.5 months before a cow is food growing vegetable is quicker then that by months.
Furthermore you can produce much more plant foods on an acre of land then you can meat, especially grazed cows they eat a lot of grass and need space to roam. That is a fact. Also crops do use up nuetrients that is why fertilizer is so important to modern agriculture and before fertilized ancient people practiced crop rotation either either by growing different crops in the same area or moving one crop to a different area.
Our crops do not grow like weeds but they are no where near as fargile as you imply. The import ants we place on meat is mostly artificial we need it don't get me wrong but no where close to what people think we do.