A cheap and reliable food supply

How long is it going to take for these intelligent minds to find a way to produce enough food to sustain ~150 million (approximately half the population of the U.S.) or more people? More imports of unknown quality food?

If every single beef cow in America was abducted by aliens tomorrow ZERO people would die of starvation. I promise!

So since you did not mean fertiliser here what exactly did you mean?

Not particularly. History is full of examples of civilizations that rose, became unsustainable, and then collapsed again into barbarism. From the Roman empire to the Mayans, poor agricultural practices have been the number one reason civilizations have fallen since recorded history began.

The naturally occurring elements that compromise all living organisims. Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, Calcium, Iron, Zinc, Copper, Selenium, Carbon, and I am sure there are minute amounts of other elements.

When, tomorrow? What about 7 days after? What about 30 days after?

How many would die in the unrest that would happen until another protien source became abundantly available?

Poor agricultural practices?, or the population outgrew the available food supply?

Or there were more people consuming food than there were producing food in a quantity that would sustain the status quo? What I remember being said about the fall of the Roman Empire, people were too busy enjoying the good life to be concerned about the basics. Kinda like what is happening in the U.S. today.

Read the book by Gibbon about the fall of the Roman Empire. The parallels are scary similar.

This fact sheet sponsored by beef.org might help you answer some of your questions:

http://www.beef.org/uDocs/BeefBytesComplete03-28-05.pdf

That website and document is provided by the beef industry and it might really surprise you how LITTLE beef matters for nutrition in the American diet. Don't get me wrong ... I love beef and it's a mainstay on my table probably 2-3 times per week, but we could survive without it quite easily if we had to.

Assuming y'all are going to do what y'all usually do and continue to argue groundless suppositions instead of looking at documentation, I'll throw out one of the more salient points from the document:

"A three-ounce serving of lean beef contributes less than
10 percent of calories to a 2,000-calorie diet yet it
supplies more than 10 percent of the Daily Value for
nine essential nutrients."

About a quart and a half of milk would completely replace that three-ounce serving of beef. So would a pound of potatoes and cheese or two cups of dried beans.

We're also not working with a net-zero food economy here. Those beef cattle that you seem to think we are so dependent upon are NOT converting otherwise useless range land to protein and calories anymore. They are primarily in feed lots consuming corn, which can be consumed BY HUMANS. It takes an estimated 20,000 calories of corn to produce ONE POUND of beef which will then yield you 1200 calories.

While I would sure miss my weekly cheeseburger, humans are NOT going to starve to death if all of the cows suddenly got beamed up to the mothership. Not even Americans.

High quality mineral like I said, can't imagine anyone not using one for cattle or any other ruminant for that matter.

Ever heard of beans?

Not mention chickens, pigs, rabbits, goats, sheep, eggs, frogs, possums, racoons.....

Heck we could solve 2 recent problem threads right here if we just had more people eating racoons and dogs......

Bingo!

Good points. A pound of potatoes and ?a pound of cheese? Protien and lots of carbs. Just what a recumbant life style needs.

As to feed lot statement, It could be taken that you are implying that cattle are in the feedlot consuming corn from conception to slaughter. I can remember when corn was the primary animal feed in the U.S.

If that is all that is needed, try feeding a high quality mineral along with sawdust or ground peanut hulls to ruminants and see what happens. Most of the ingredients that are in supplemental mineral mixes pass through the animal to be deposited on the ground. IMO, that is a very expensive way to add minerals to pasture land.

There have been many replies with the same theme.

This is a simple math problem - can be complicated answers, but the 'issue' is pretty simple.

If you take away produce (including meat) from a land, that land will be poorer.

Many of the grass-fed operations, and small garden operations, don't have very high yields. Then perhaps a lot is consumed on-site, with only small surpluses being hauled away.

This _appears_ to be sustainable, because there is a very low rate of produce (including meat) being hauled off site.

None the less, the soil becomes poorer and poorer over a long time. As well, yield/production remains fairly low.


Dad was an extremely tightwade German. He couldn't bear to spend money on fertilizer. His average corn yield was 88 bu per acre. We have 250 foot deep clay soils, vey rich in natural water holding, natural minerals, above average ph, good base fertility. This is _good_ soil.

I'm averaging 167 bu corn a decade or so later on the same ground. I actually use less fuel than he did. I spoon-feed P & K in strips, I apply less than conventional amounts of nitrogen.

I've doubled food production, with a bit more fertilizer, a bit less fuel.

My soils test better than they used to of course. And the earthworms are doing well, except of course where the 6 inches of rain flooded me out this year.

Used to be my dad & uncle farmed together, both their wives helped quite a bit, and averaged 2 kids a piece helping out with farming. I'm down to just me farming a bit more land than dad did, with some help from my wife. More acres covered with less labor.

That is how we feed more people with less.

My cattle I have gone to mostly grazing. I feed them very little of my corn & oats any more. Unfortunately it's a small herd, and with all the grazing I get little manure to put on my crop fields. I wish I had more, I value manure for it's many nutrients.

Your way of farming is great. But it requires more labor, it requires imported manure (some use seaweed, and organic-approved minerals, etc.) to build up & maintain the soil.

You just end up with lower production, more labor, to produce food. This is _not_ moving forward.

It's wonderful, it's fine, it's a great way of life if that's what you want.

But it is not sustainable for feeding the world's population now.

We can't force the whole world backwards. We don't have enough manure to import from 'somewhere' to fertilize all out crops. We don't have enough seaweed. We don't have enough people willing to work cheap enough to hand-weed all our crops. We won't go back to hand picking cotton for everyone.

We can't lose the time spent growing cover crops waiting for the soil to rebuild - we only have about 1 month extra food at any time. What id we all stopped fgrowing corn for a year in order to grow clovers & alfalfas to rebuild the soil? People would starve.

Note that cover crops are a very hot topic in conventional farming these days - I myself use clovers, alfalfas, and turnips in my effort to improve soils. I've experimented with tillage radishes. Real, big, farms are working with these ideas as well to improve growing.

MIG is the only way to go with livestock - big farms and ranches are using these ideas as well. I split the pasture dad had into 3 pieces, it offers much more grass, much less weeds now that I can do some limited rotation. I do much more than that with the turnips, cornstalks, etc.

Your way of doing things is wonderful. Frankly it's not all that different than _big_ farming, with conventional herbicides, fertilizers, etc.

Your way has some limits on what you can do. That cuts into production & efficieny somewhat.

In the big picutre, your way & the conventional way of farming are very similar, and use much the same ideas. Neither is sustainable, or both are sustainable. Your way uses imported manure; conventional uses manure & fertilizers. You use more labor to deal with weeds & bugs - conventional used some chemicals.

MIG, cover crops, manure, it's all a big part of conventional farming.

We all import things onto our farms to produce more; or we suffer a reduction in production. There can be no other way.

That doesn't make your way wrong, or bad.

I'm puzzled why you would think your way is somehow more sustainable, or somehow superior? That isn't true. No how, no way.

It's all farming, it's all about using land to it's best ablitiy to produce crops that can be used by humans.

--->Paul

Turns out sulfur is one of them. Since they have changed the sulfurr content of diesel fuel, the past few years we need to add sulfur to the fertilizer for top corn (and other grassy crop) yields. Only takes 5 lbs or so per acre, but it makes a difference.

Moly is also an important one.

--->Paul

I always get a laugh out of the "grass fed" mantra on the sustainability/permaculture type websites (of which I do believe in the concepts if they are scaleable).

99% of a beef cattle have always been mostly grass fed most of their lives; they go feedlots (of various sizes) for the last 60-80 days or so of their lives to get grained/finished.

What has drastically improved (IMHO) in the last 20 years or so is soil and grass management thanks to the likes of the "Stockman's Grass Farmer."

Think some are missing the most obvious problem... 100 or 1000 years ago, no matter whether you want to look at buffalo eating grass or wolves eating buffalo, the consumer wasn't fencing off the food source, taking large amounts of nutrients away from that source in the form of meat or grass or whatever, consuming it in a concrete tower or suburb where it was also converted back into nutrients, and flushing most of those nutrients into the nearest river or ocean or into a hole several feet down where it becomes unavailable to the original source. You can't replace that organically in the long run.

__________________
The internet - fueling paranoia and misinformation since 1873.

I'll assume you mean an ordely, slow or planned conversion. A huge chunck of food reserves would be gone if the cattle were suddenly beamed away without warning, and _that_ would cause some problems!

But I understand the point of what you are saying, if not the suddeness factor.

Cattle are able to turn fiberous plant products into meat. Actually much of their conversion of fiber ends up going into growth, as they grow from weaning weight to near full grown. _This_ is when cattle even today consume a lot of the 'useless' range ground products. As well, their moms are also raised on this range land. (Or equivelient 'useless' stuff like road ditch grass hay, cornstalks, winter wheat grazing, etc.)

So, the cattle basically grow up with very little grain use.

Then to fill them out quickly, they are fed much higher grains.

Today, a lot of that is not even just grain. It can be the waste products of citrus production, ethanol plants, sugar production waste, soy oil production, and so forth.

Corn silage has become much more of a staple of beef cattle as well - this is the whole green corn plant ground up, not just the corn kernals. Or Earlage, which is the whole cob and kernals ground up - not just the grain.

When corn or wheat or other crops go bad, those crops are often ground up and fed to beef. This is stuff that didn't make good grain, but had some value as ruminant feed. You'd be surpised at how much of this non-human grains beef lives on.

To be sure, a lot of grain is used as well. Not saying it isn't.

But - those beef cattle eat a whole lot of stuff, even today, that you & I could not live from, to make the cheeseburger.

I think the actual grain use is a lot less than many reports have come up with.

We could live without the beef.

I think our food supply would be more easily disrupted, it would depend more on good crop conditions. Any drought or crop disease would quickly reflect upon our food supply.

We are blessed to have the buffer of beef around, to help keep our food supply stable from year to year.

I think without beef, we would have food supply issues. If one looks at the big picture, and not just the numbers.

That doesn't take away from your points, and I understand, beef is not real effient at turning a pile of grain into a pile of human food.

Tho, actually, us humans are not terribly good at turning soy meal and silage into energy either - we leave a _lot_ on the processing & cooking floors and are not nearly as effient at using these livestock feeds either - would be much waste.

--->Paul

Notice there was an "unless" in there.

__________________
I'm an environmentalist, left wing, Ron Paul loving Prius driver with a farm. If you have a problem with that, kindly go take a leap.