Rob,
> >Same for other cereals, beans, and vegetables. Are those useless
> >proteins???
>
>No. But the thing with proteins is that the human body doesn't quite produce
>all the constituent amino acids it needs. Meat has 'em all, I believe - as
>would various combinations of vegetables, legumes, nuts and such - but you do
>have to know your business if you're to survive healthily on a vegan diet. I
>dare say you'd also need a substantial selection of groceries from which to
>choose, and, no doubt, the resources to buy 'em. A few vitamins could be
>neglected, too - vitamin B12 is a famous example, if memory serves. Anyway,
>meat's a very efficient source of protein, and it'd be a big pity if we were
>to find out that (market)efficiency in farming was essentially unsustainable,
>as this would deprive the urban poor first and foremost. Many on the more
>romantic-idyll wing of the green movement see some sort of divine retribution
>in recent discoveries of foot'n'mouth in intensively farmed mammals and
>inexplicably high tissue-toxicity in aquaculture-bred fish. I don't say
>they're not right, because I wouldn't have a clue, but this all wants sane and
>quick sorting, for sure.
If you say meat is an efficient source of protein you'll probably be
reminded by the experts that meat is an inefficient producer of protein per
acre of land. But, as a mini-grazier in a former life, I'll pre-counter by
noting that there's a lot of land you can't grow soybeans on (to say
nothing of corn and wheat) that'll grow great lambs, goats, rabbits,
chickens and pigs, as well as small cattle: brush land, woodland, highland
pasture growing directly over bedrock, and mountainous terrrain where you
can't use a tractor. Ain't nobody better suited to converting wild
raspberry, grape, hawthorn and poison ivy into high-quality eating than a
goat -- even if they do help themselves to your roses as well, whenever
they get a chance, the little morons. (Makes it all the easier to string
them up in the maple tree, when the time comes.)
Of course, I'm talking about the margins of farming, under current
circumstances: such animal husbandry lends itself to the private or small
producer because it requires low stocking, very little expenditure on
equipment and housing, and a great deal of attentiveness. On the other
hand, note (1) the low expenditure on equipment and housing may, in the
not-so-distant future, become more important than it is now, and (2) its
(quite literal) marginality doesn't prevent this kind of animal-rearing
from being a good way to feed at least a portion of the masses. In the
hills of upstate New York there are folks making a reasonable living (and
with a far higher standard of living, I think, than their heavily mortgaged
counterparts growing crops, next door) raising lambs and goats for sale in
"The City". They''ve formed cooperatives, and put themselves in touch with
buyers for the Greek, Italian and Arab communities in NYC. The trick is to
time the lambing/kidding for Ramadan and the two Easters...
I think the jury's out on the type and quality of protein we humans
require, and whether or not the protein needs of different peoples differ,
based on adaptation to local conditions. My own, untested theory is that
the early northern Europeans who survived the nine-month winters, whose
ancestors many of us are, were the ones who did well on a diet of meat and
stored tubers (remember that the English expression for food and drink used
to be "meat and drink" and that the German word for "to die" (sterben)
means "to die of starvation") -- and that the reason we folks from north of
the Alps so like our meat might therefore be closely tied to an actual need
for meat. But I'm no expert.
cheers,
Joanna
www.overlookhouse.com
_______________________________________________
CrashList website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
