At 23:22 11/03/1999 GMT, you wrote:
>Axel,
>you try to imply that _all_ animal husbandry have bad results.
>As usual, trying to claim "all" anything is generally unhelpful - not only
>to an argument, but also to allowing for possible alternate solutions.
i was just making a point. i know that organic and especially permaculture
animals are a lot less harmful to the environment, but still inefficient
and wastful of space and resources.
>It is a fact that there are methods of animal husbandry that are _very_
>beneficial. Generally, certified organic requirements fall into this
category.
yes, but it would be better to have plants and trees growing to produce an
abundance of food. there are situations of course where animals are the
only choice, but i was not taking about this unusual cases, but about the
massive use of the land for animals for human consumption. the rule is that
animals are wasteful and damaging.
>Actually, there are many vegetable-growing practices that are worse than
>many animal-growing ones. As an example, farmers that continually crop the
>land year after year.
this is true only if you compare a good organic or permaculture animal
operation with a conventional vegetable farm that uses chemical fertilizers
and pesticides. if you take one acre of land, used properly and
organically, you can grow several hundred pounds of vegetable food, but
many times less animal food, depending on the food. all things equal, it is
far more efficient to grow plants.
as to the farmers, donīt forget that half of the worldīs grain (according
to the worldwatch institute and rifkin) is fed to cattle, so it is not that
the bad farmers destroy the land to produce innocent apples, but in great
part to feed ANIMALS. this happens in argentina, in brazil, in the states.
also big, big areas of the world are used as pasture for animals! donīt you
see anything out of balance with such a practice? big chunks of the land
used for animals to eat and walk about? this is very stupid and mad, donīt
you think? you could grow trees, all sorts of vegetables, natural reserves,
reforestation, etc. yes there are areas that can not grow all this, but
many can.
>Before they were killed off earlier this century (or was it last c.?) there
>were millions of bison on the plains in USA, soil was very fertile. Look at
>it now.
i do not know what do you imply with the above, but if you read beyond beef
by rifkin you will find out that the bison were killed by the millons TO
MAKE ROOM FOR CATTLE. yes. it seems that people in europe did not like the
taste of wild animals so they had to kill them all. it is in the book.
>
>You would be better arguing that many farming practices are turning the land
>to desert
main cause of world desertification: cattle ranching. also in the book.
- it is man's stupidity that is ruining the planet: don't blame
>the cattle for being forced to live in a certain way.
it is manīs stupidity in raising many hundreds of millons of animals
creating totally unsustainable and unnatural conditions on earth. cattle is
not to blame, of course. it is the way we raise cattle, and all that is
being sacrificed for cattle.
there is just NO justification for destroying an incredibly beautiful
planet to eat meat by the pound. maybe when we were just a few guys on this
planet, ok, but not know.
axel makaroff
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