this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
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Wait till you learn about all the extra food we grow just to feed the animals we eat.
It takes up the majority of farmland in the US. more than we dedicate to growing for humans to consume directly.
If you actually want to use less farmland, and therefore fertilizer, I welcome you to veganism.
What I think is more likely though, is that you need to tell yourself this to feel better about eating animal products.
Ah, yes, that pillar of good practices, US, where corn is so heavily subsidized its by-products had to be force injected into the entire food chain to justify it, to the point all food is rendered sweet by default.
I know it’s popular but believe it or not, the US isn’t the cause of all the world’s problems.
Only 23% of ag land worldwide is used to grow crops for direct human consumption. That’s lower than the US number by the way.
The fact remains that if you actually care about reducing farmland and fertilizer use, you’d go vegan.
Or was I right and that was just a throwaway comment meant to make you feel better about your habits?
Let's go back to examples I have at hand (I'm in Portugal and live in a somewhat rural area).
50 to 60 sixty years back, there was a lot more cattle roaming the area, as this was wool country. Even then, through field rotation, the production/consumption of feed was close to zero (abundant rains, predictable sunny intervals) allowed for fields to produce using what was at hand for fertilizer.
Come the 90's, with the end of the wool industry, flocks reduce drastically but the production of feed crops and cereals remains the same, with marginal use of synthetic fertilizers.
Come the 2000's and the berry craze explodes, with large extensions of land converted into greenhouses or intensive growth fields, that divert and consume huge amounts of water and require tons of synthetic agrochemicals.
The problem with corn in the US we have it here with berry farms and common greenhouses, that actively refuse manures and composts, thus injecting amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous previously absent from the soil. I can widen the scope to include peach and plum orchards.
The only area we have identified has being satured with those elements is further south, again due to intensive tomato farming. And an area where cattle is also raised.
I'm not white washing my option: I want sustainable agricultural practices to become norm, not exception.