At 09:43 22/03/1999 +0100, jean-louis wrote:
>
> -suppose we want to feed everyone with 90 kg pork/year. Then, we need
>about 1 animal for every two humans, that is 30 million pigs. Allowing
>each of these a space of about 20 square meters, the total occupied
>surface would be 600 sq. km, that is one thousandth of the country's
>total surface.

axel:

sound pretty efficient, but:

what makes you think that a pig can feed exclusively on this surface? for
how long? what would he be eating? most likely there will be some kind of
foodstuff that has to be brought from outside those 20 square meters,
right? this would mean that the pig is actually using up way more land that
this environmentally-friendly 20 square meters.


> -suppose we want to feed everyone with 90 kg chickens/year. Then, we
>need about 25 animals for every human. But chickens need less space,
>perhaps 2 square meters or even less, so they would occupy no more
>than 5 thousandths of the total surface.

axel:

again, what is a chicken supposed to do in 2 square meters? this gave me
the chuckles when i read it first time. two square meters? do you mean that
they can get their food from that surface? for how long?  please clarify
what the chicken is supposed to do in those two square meters.


> -suppose we want to feed everyone with 90 kg beef/year. Considering
>that we need about 1 animal for every human, and that we allow the
>bovine population to take about 5% of the land, then 10 animals would
>graze on an area the size of a soccer (football) field.

axel:

where did you get the 5 percent figure? i do not know about different
species, but there is one well-known  statistic that says that animals
graze on HALF of the arable land of the planet. so your figures are likely
to be very underestimated.
and of course, always bear in mind that cows also eat food grown somewhere
else (like soybeans from my country, that we export like crazy to foreign
countries, in fact, this is so crazy, so unbalanced, that the agriculture
of argentina is mostly soybeans, soy oil, wheat, sorghum, and other
not-tasty things ;)

regards,
              axel makaroff