Bay 12 Games Forum

Nope. Rained today, ergo it was good. Also, this bed remains comfortable. So. Good day.

That's hardly relevant. A single big farmer with modern equipment can farm a lot of land, and they make a big chunk of the rural population. And that equipment burns a lot of oil. But if people de-urbanized they wouldn't all suddenly become big farmers, if for no other reason than for lack of land. Dig up some statistics on carbon footprint of third world sustenance farmers and compare that to city dwellers instead.

There's more to environmental damage than carbon footprint, though.

Part of the conceptual problems that worry me is that most low-carbon agriculture methods (that I'm aware of, anyway) tends toward requiring a good deal of space -- and arable land is, indeed, limited. One of the numbers I've never seen crunched is if it's even possible to support our current population with subsistence farming techniques. Even if modern techniques have a higher carbon footprint, it's certainly more productive per square foot. The primary questions there, I'd say, is A) What's the ft² per person needed by low carbon agriculture and B) Does that much arable land exist? With partial tertiary questions being if that much land will exist long enough to start reducing carbon issues and what sort of damage utilizing that land is going to do (Does it mean clear-cutting more forest? Does it mean driving certain animal and plant species to extinction?). If we end up having to decimate our own population several times over and still end up wrecking the biosphere, then it's likely not a viable solution (though certain utilizations of it may be part of the solutions.).

There's also the flat fact that even subsistence farming does a certain degree of damage. It's still going to be killing off local species (crop killers of various sorts, both plant and animal) -- our species has been an extinction event and environmental hazard since before we started low-carbon agriculture, and that won't change if we return to it. It's also still going to be consuming resources of varying sorts, even if the carbon use is reduced.

Basically, there's going to be negative aspects to low-carbon farming and related means of supporting populations, and likely more than seems immediately evident. Especially if it's going to support a population in the billions. My big question to what you're supporting, DJ, is if it's actually going to be less damaging (I'd guess yes, but when you're dealing with scales like the topic in question is, a lot of non-obvious shit goes down) than what we're doing now and, just as importantly, if it's not, where are the gains occurring? What's being traded out for those gains?

And all that's just a sort of representative sample of the sort of issues that pop up when you're actually contemplating the problem of something as freakishly wide scale as actually supporting our entire population on subsistence farming. Someone actually familiar with agriculture methodlogy and the general logistics involved would probably have dozens more. Doesn't mean it's not a good thing to ask and study, but it is a bloody huge subject, and I'll admit I have trouble swallowing any solution that's, well, simple. Without a great deal of support, anyway. Because simple solutions often have very, very complicated consequences

... I should probably actually look into this stuff more, really. I'm actually aware of a few academic sources I could probably tap for information, but... bleh. Effort, ha.

That's the idea, yes, Toady's approved it so I'm just waiting for the paperwork to be pushed through.

A Georgia state senator's timely call for...hammer control. Or something. Man, what is it with Georgia?

Georgia's problem is actually quite similar to Florida's... and Alabama's. They're a little less hot, but also jammed chock full of drugs. Seriously, the Tri-state area down here is one of the heaviest drug trafficking areas in the states. It makes a difference, for many reasons, only some of them directly related to consumption.

... you don't need greed to want to improve something. It is allowable to improve for the sake of improving instead of the betterment of self that may or may not come from it. There can be purpose in the act even if there is not self-improvement in it. Gods know I've helped people and done various so-called selfless deeds despite not enjoying it, feeling worse afterwards, and getting not just no benefit but active detriment therefrom. It is not difficult to internalize as an axiom that if a thing can be bettered by an action, that is the right act to do, if able. Kant can blow me.

But yeah. If you're breaking down selfishness and describing it as the fundamental motivating point for all things, it is inherently amoral and frankly almost pointless to acknowledge and effectively nonexistent. If a thing is all things, it might as well be no thing, because it cannot be differentiated.

An announcement: I have changed my username, pending Toady's approval, to FearfulJesuit.

That sudden realization that I will hence forever think of you as footjob. Is it WTF? Is it happy? Is it sad? I'm not sure! But. It's here. Best of luck with your change, FJ.

I mean more efficient to consume the grain, rather than feed it to livestock for meat. Our land resources can't support the increasing global consumption of meat. Small grazing operations can be highly beneficial to the land, maintaining or boosting soil fertility. But raising animals large scale in feeding pens and feeding them grain drains soil fertility and uses more water, while feeding less people.

Brain's going weird places. It sorta' sounds like the best suggestion going via the arable land/water heuristic would be to murder grazing animals outright and stick to something else for free-range livestock. Pigs and chickens are actually pretty prime for that, because both are more forest(/jungle, in the chicken's case)-dwellers than plains. We could double-purpose our woodland while decreasing the amount of grain we wasted on non-humans.

Even if we did stick with feeding-pen type raising, both those two would open up other possibilities for expanding their diet, since they're prime examples of omnivores. Roadkill, the unused parts of the harvested animals (waste organics in general, really, and I'm not sure about pigs but I know chickens are cannibals.), possibly dead humans if you were going balls out for it. I'd imagine you could decrease waste overall quite a bit with that sort of program. Why put stuff in the land fill when you could put it in breakfast's belly?

To anyone who justifies eating meat because the animals themselves would eat meat given the chance:Male Lions will often kill unrelated cubs so that they can impregnate the cubs mother. Would you consider this justifiable behavior for a human? Natural is not the same thing as right.

I honestly don't know of many cases where people are going out and killing lion cubs so they can attempt to impregnate their mothers, but yeah, it'd be unlikely. We tend to have a decently strong taboo about cross-species copulation.

Also humans aren't large felines, so it's not quite best of analogies. Try primates, there's plenty of messed up (and admirable) stuff there.

Huh. I'm asking because I don't actually have enough background in agriculture to know, but is feeding the current livestock population 50% of our grown grain actually a less efficient use of arable land and water? I'd think (perhaps erroneously. I haven't exactly seen the numbers crunched) we'd be being even less efficient in that manner if we tried to keep the current livestock population while leaving them free range. I'm not even talking keeping the current consumable meat stocks going, just the same population.

'Cause if we were actually trying to maximize use of arable land and water, we'd genocide most other large animals post haste and turn their habitat into farmland, insofar as I'm aware.