what form of food procurement is less harmful to the environment? why?

Answer 1

Eating lower on the food chain is also important. When you eat a diet that is high in meat, you must realize that it takes a lot of agriculture land to support all of those animals. Most of that energy is lost (as waste and heat).

For example, in Colorado, about 90% of our agriculture land is devoted to feeding livestock. If we ate lower on the food chain, much of that land could be returned to wildlife habitat.

Edit: Leviter, you're answers are usually very good, buy I'm going to have to disagree with you in this case.

I do agree with most of what you said but if you connect it with what I said (the fact that most agriculture land in the world goes for directly feeding livestock) you will see that eating a diet high in meat has caused much more of our land to be converted to agriculture FOR livestock.

It takes about 12-15 kg of grains to yield 1 kg of beef; most beef consumed in the world is grain fed. Jeremy Rifkin estimated that we could reduce our land devoted to agriculture by less than half it's current area if we ate very little livestock. This would greatly reduce our depndence on irrigation/fertilizers/pesticides and so on.

Now, in some less developed countries, less land is devoted to directly feeding livestock. I worked in Nepal as a forester and did agriculture work. Land is at a premium and Nepalies know well that if they tried to graze their livestock on their agriculture land, they would have little to nothing to eat. Furthermore, their forests and wildlands are severly degraded due to overgrazing for the little livestock they do have.

Much wildland/rangeland in Colorado and the west show degerdation from grazing. For example, livestock are one of the main vectors of noxious weeds. Noxious weeds are right up there with concret and asphalt for major contributiers to loss of habitat.

Realize that one of the main things our tropical forest are being cleared for (apart from the wood) is a quick, cheap place to raise corn for cattle.

Remember, your average trophic level shows about a 90% reduction in energy converted.


**EDIT 2:
Leviter seems to raise some good issues but upon consideration, they don't seem to make much sense. Most importantly, s/he seems to be ignoring some of the issues I've presented.

I address some of the points below:

1)It does not take 12-15kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef. It takes no grain at all.

-That would be nice if that was the way it happened, but it's simply not. The truth is that the vast majority of livestock is grain fed. Again, more than 80% of our agriculture land in the US is devoted to feeding livestock.

It CAN take 12-15kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef, but it can also take 12-15 kg of grain to produce a kilogram of soybeans.

-What???

2)By not eating meat you are forcing people to entirely abandon huge swathes of currently productive land.

-Not true, since you will not "force" anyone to do anything. People will use the land the way it is most productive for them. It would never be a realistic scanario for ALL people to stop eating meat. The idea I'm talking about is to lessen the pressure on the meat industry which would lessen the reliance on grain-fed livestock. Much land for livestock could come out of agricultural production (mono-cropping) and be reclaimed for wildlife and wetlands. The remaining livestock could be fed through range lands (a practice that currently rarely happens).

That shortfall in production has to be made up elsewhere where the environment is conducive to cultivation. That basically entails clearing forests or draining swamps.

-Again, not true because of the reduction in land needed for growing grains and soybeans for livestock.

3)Nations like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina have vast areas that are totally unsuitable to any food production except grazing. When you then factor in genuinely less developed nations something like 2/3 of the world’s potential agricultural land can only be sustainably used for grazing or mixed grazing/cropping.

-And those may be the areas best suited for the remaining livestock.

As a result the best way for the US to achieve a reduction in cultivated land is to maintain or even increase meat production while removing current trade barriers against that 2/3 of the world.

-I agree in removing trade barriers but the US should reduce it's meat production to reclaim cultivated land.

4)As I’m sure you’re aware Rifkin has come under serious criticism for his attempts at equating all food production systems from an environmental perspective.

-Yes, and I admit he was not the best source to use. But there are many that concur with what I'm saying.

Basically his argument is that we should reduce US food production area by 50% even though that entails reducing that entire 50% to a monoculture and an ecological desert. Such a “solution” is not environmentally beneficial.

-Not exacttly, because little range land will be reduced but much mono-culture land will be reduced because we will not be feeding it to livestock and loosing that 90% of the energy.

5)Yes, of course bad grazing management produces problems. But bad cultivation management produces far worse problems. If we assume equivalence we are still environmentally far better off with degraded grazing lands than with degraded croplands.

-My idea will reduce both.

6)Yes, livestock contribute to the spread of noxious weeds but they are secondary to the effects of contaminated seed

-What do you mean here?

and vehicular transport associated with cultivation.

-There is much more transport associated with livestock production (think of all those vehicles transporting tons of grain to feedlots, and the fact that you must cultivate much more land to sustain livestock).

7)Even grazing land that is severely infected with weeds is still more ecologically valuable than a cultivated monoculture.

-True in some places, but mono-cultures of Canada thistle or knapweed are less productive than mono-culture cultivated land. Noxious weed infested land is probably more environmentally damaging than asphalt (at least you can remove the asphalt).

8)The idea that rainforests are being cleared to grow corn for cattle appears to have no basis in reality. In excess of 70% of rainforest area is cleared for sugar cane, coffee and soybean production.

-Most soybeans are feed for livestock.

Around 90% of the remainder is cleared for cattle grazing. If you read the link I posted below you will note the rather ironic fact that soybean demand is increasing as Americans replace meat with soybean. This is leading to increased rainforest destruction since soybeans can’t be grown on Brazil’s natural savannah grasslands as beef can. A clear example of why not eating meat is NOT environmentally friendly.

-Also, there is an increasing demand for meat, and soybeans are used for cattle feed.

Worse yet because cropping is not sustainable on cleared rainforest the land is then abandonded and more land is cleared. In contrast grazing is suatinable and doens;t require constant destriction of rainforest.

-I'll say again, those lands are not suitable for either.



I have never before in my life seen a suggestion that any significant portion of rainforest is cleared to grow corn for cattle. Do you have a reputable reference to support such a claim?

-I would have to research it. Most of my knowledge of that comes from the periodicals "Restoration Ecology" and "Ecological Restoration." Also, from my professors in college and my travels in Peru.

9)Trophic levels are irrelevant if the land has a human production level of 0 without grazing. 90% of nothing is still nothing.

-True, but you have an imaginary scenario that says the livestock are strictly range fed.

You appear to be trying to argue that the Kalahari grasslands or Texas uplands would yield 90% more human utilizable biomass if they were cropped rather than grazed.

-No, you've misunderstood me here. I'm saying that we must cultivate enoromous ammounts of land strictly for feeding to livestock. The trophic level loss comes in here. Cattle are grazed for a while on rangeland, then they are sent to feedlots where they gain most of their weight.

That of course is simply not true. Those areas will produce no human utilisable biomass if they are not grazed.

-I know that. It was not my point.

The simple fact is that what is best ecologically is the food production system that has minimum impact. Since grazing cattle on the pampas or cerrado is far less ecologically damaging than clearing rainforest to grow soybeans the best source of protein is meat and NOT soybeans.

-Again, this is ignoring that most agriculture land is devoted to feeding livestock.

Since grazing within cleared rainforest requires less destrction than cropping soybeans onthe same land the best source of protein is meat and NOT soybeans.

-No, the best solution is to not have a demand to do either in the rainforest by needing less land for livestock, or less land to grow crops to feed to livestock.

Answer 2

the convenience of electric autos is which you additionally could make electrical energy out of wind or image voltaic. even nuclear means is plenty greater environmentally friendly. whilst you're annoying approximately threat, basically one reactor has ever exploded (Chernobyl Reactor 4). There might have basically been some human beings lifeless if the (at that element Russian) government might have admitted that it exploded and evacuated close by cities. approximately encouraging us all to force much less, the place I stay (NYC) there are continually commercials and human beings asserting to apply mass transportation like trains and buses. usual, decision power is greater useful than petroleum (and that i say petrol no longer gas because of the fact gas is diverse and greater useful than petrol). @JerryJ "notice that transportation is purely one area the place we use oil. an even bigger area is in heating residences." heaters are powered by utilising gas no longer OIL. there's a distinction.

Answer 3

Organic farming which does not include the production of lots of animals

Answer 4

The least harmful method is to simply go to the store and buy food.

The most harmful method is hunting and gathering,since it requires vast amounts of land be exploited to feed even small numbers of people. Hunting and gathering has led to the extinction of more species than any other hunman activity.

>>>Edit:

Eating lower on the food chain can be extremely environmentally damaging for numerous reasons.

Much of the world is simply unsuited to any food production aside from grazing animals. Attempts to cultivate such land results in massive soil erosion and salinisation. Added to that these areas usually require irrigation to enable them to be cropped at all. That irrigation itself interferes with river flows and requires considerable energy to be wasted on infrastructure for minimal returns. And because returns are so low production intensity for cultivation need sot be much higher producing much f\more rapid damage.

The second point to realise is that cultivated land is an ecological desert. Normally monocultures, but at best maybe a dozen species exist in every acre agricultural land. In contrast grazing land preserves most of the existing biodiversity, and grazing land commonly has diversity levels in excess of 200 species/ha.

Eating lower on the food chain is massively damaging to the environment. If everybody attempted to do it it would produce a wave of ecological destruction unparalleled in the history of our species.

Certainly some people could eat less meat, and specifically less grain fed meat, but simply becoming a vegetarian would be more environmentally damaging than maintaining a complete diet that includes meat. The idea that somehow it would be beneficial for everyone to eat lower on the food chain simply doesn’t withstand analysis.

>>>>EDIT 2.0

1) It does not take 12-15kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef. It takes no grain at all. Cattle are perfectly able to produce beef without eating grain. That is, after all, what they evolved to do.

It CAN take 12-15kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef, but it can also take 12-15 kg of grain to produce a kilogram of soybeans.

2) By not eating meat you are forcing people to entirely abandon huge swathes of currently productive land. That shortfall in production has to be made up elsewhere where the environment is conducive to cultivation. That basically entails clearing forests or draining swamps.

3) Nations like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina have vast areas that are totally unsuitable to any food production except grazing. When you then factor in genuinely less developed nations something like 2/3 of the world’s potential agricultural land can only be sustainably used for grazing or mixed grazing/cropping.

As a result the best way for the US to achieve a reduction in cultivated land is to maintain or even increase meat production while removing current trade barriers against that 2/3 of the world.

4) As I’m sure you’re aware Rifkin has come under serious criticism for his attempts at equating all food production systems from an environmental perspective. Basically his argument is that we should reduce US food production area by 50% even though that entails reducing that entire 50% to a monoculture and an ecological desert. Such a “solution” is not environmentally beneficial.

5) Yes, of course bad grazing management produces problems. But bad cultivation management produces far worse problems. If we assume equivalence we are still environmentally far better off with degraded grazing lands than with degraded croplands.

6) Yes, livestock contribute to the spread of noxious weeds but they are secondary to the effects of contaminated seed and vehicular transport associated with cultivation.

7) Even grazing land that is severely infected with weeds is still more ecologically valuable than a cultivated monoculture.

8) The idea that rainforests are being cleared to grow corn for cattle appears to have no basis in reality. In excess of 70% of rainforest area is cleared for sugar cane, coffee and soybean production. Around 90% of the remainder is cleared for cattle grazing. If you read the link I posted below you will note the rather ironic fact that soybean demand is increasing as Americans replace meat with soybean. This is leading to increased rainforest destruction since soybeans can’t be grown on Brazil’s natural savannah grasslands as beef can. A clear example of why not eating meat is NOT environmentally friendly.

Worse yet because cropping is not sustainable on cleared rainforest the land is then abandonded and more land is cleared. In contrast grazing is suatinable and doens;t require constant destriction of rainforest.

I have never before in my life seen a suggestion that any significant portion of rainforest is cleared to grow corn for cattle. Do you have a reputable reference to support such a claim?

9) Trophic levels are irrelevant if the land has a human production level of 0 without grazing. 90% of nothing is still nothing. You appear to be trying to argue that the Kalahari grasslands or Texas uplands would yield 90% more human utilizable biomass if they were cropped rather than grazed. That of course is simply not true. Those areas will produce no human utilisable biomass if they are not grazed.

The simple fact is that what is best ecologically is the food production system that has minimum impact. Since grazing cattle on the pampas or cerrado is far less ecologically damaging than clearing rainforest to grow soybeans the best source of protein is meat and NOT soybeans. Since grazing within cleared rainforest requires less destrction than cropping soybeans onthe same land the best source of protein is meat and NOT soybeans.