Jed Rothwell writes,
Not with the U.S. diet. We eat a tremendous amount of meat, and
this takes 10 times more starting plant food (mainly cattle
feed).
Wrong (partially). We do eat too much meat here but not more than
Europe, where the 1/4 acre standard has been in place for a long
time - and it only takes 10 times more land IF you allow
predominantly open-grazing, which is not really necessary, nor is
it a wise use of land, if that land can be way-more productive in
biomass.
Even with our fertilizer intense production it takes more than
1/4th acre to feed one American.
Wrong (partially). We simply do not us our land wisely now. The
fact that we use more than necessary does not imply that we must
always be as extravagantly foolish in the future as we have been
in the past.
The rest of our agricultural land is presently devoted to
producing food for export. If we use it to grow biofuel instead,
more people overseas will starve. Two billion are already at
the edge of starvation and millions die from malnutrition.
There may be some truth to this - but are we supposed to feed the
world AND also pay exorbitant fuel prices? No !
We must work out some accomodation on this - and one clear answer
is to use tropical land and cheap labor for ethanol, and keep US
corn fields for corn. I think Brazil is willing to go along with
us on this - as they need the approximately half million jobs
which selling us 4 quads of ethanol would bring.
Here is the story on how much land it takes for food - Pimentel
notwithstanding. West Germany in a nation nearly as prosperous as
the USA, maybe more so these days - depending on the value of the
Euro. They certainly drive flashier cars on average than we do
(and speed along much faster on the autoban) and are
self-sufficient in agriculture. They do this on a little more than
1/4 acre per person per year of arable land. They use it wisely
but still they have a lot of misused "grazing" land for cattle.
The Netherlands has less land and feeds its popualtion on an
eighth of an acre of arable land per capita, but they import
feed-grain as land is more valuable there for housing. Both
countries eat almost as much meat as we do.
The amount of land required to feed a population is highly
dependent on your prioities. You can graze 100 cows on 100 acres
or you can put them in a 1 acre feed lot and feed them on just a
fraction of those 100 acres if planted in corn. In the USA we
choose the open grazing option, so our arable land per capita for
food is on paper "artifcially" high and distorted - all becasue of
our inefficient usage for cattle.
If you are a bug specialist and have an inordinant fear of being
overrun by Latinos, and you want to influence public opinion, then
you will cleverly get the word out that here is the USA we cannot
tolerate many more immigrants, because there is too little arable
land for that - and you will fudge and distort your figures to
reflect just this kind of ingrained paranoia.
Balderdash. I live in the most populated state in the USA and in
the fifth largest metropolitan area - 7.5 million, and there are
almost as many Latinos as whites here, and am 10 minutes from the
heart of the financial district - and it is NOT at all overcrowded
from my perspective (except at rush hour on 101). There are
actually too many deer this year and we are trying to get them
thinned out becasue of Lymes disease.
But then again I am not a paranoid bug-specialist who fears
immigrants, nor do I like insects more than people - so yes, I am
going to go to every take every opportunity to show Pimentel for
the foolish idiot that he is. Plain and simple. We do not need
that kind of disinformation floating around under the guise of
authoritative science.
Jones
- Re: Photosynthesis upper limits are unclear Jones Beene
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