G'day meat eaters,
Sez Carroll,
> Actually, the only 'crop' that should be grown on The Great Plains is
> grass for the most part. Certainly not wheat and corn. Water!!!!!!! The
> ancient aquifers are being destroyed and are irreplacable. I believe
> huge areas of China are not appropriate for grain production.
>
> Usaians eat far too much meat -- and it need not be so tender, but meat
> raised as Joanna suggests (plus cattle in reasonable numbers on what are
> or should be grasslamds rather than plowed lands) must always remain a
> core part of the human diet for ecological reasons.
I think this is right for parts European and North American, but Australia,
being the gnarled old chunk of land that it is, has almost no top-soil, and
cloven-hoofed animals strip what's left very quickly. We're big meat eaters
(though less so all the time), but we export a lot of beef and mutton because
we have to. We're very much a 'commodity economy' (one reason we're still so
vulnerable to currency volatility - an Oz'll get you 50 cents at the moment)
and we're just the place that needs to find other ways of paying for itself,
which is just the thing we can't do in a world where others
(twenty-five-year-old boys who call themselves currency experts or floor
traders) tell us what our 'comparative advantage' is.
Another example of just how irrational economic rationalism is. "invisible
hand' my arse ...
Cheers,
Rob.
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