Hi Jean-Louis,

> Axel:
>
> > 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.
>
> Of course! But since organic and conventional agriculture are about
> equally productive, the space needed to grow plants used for animal
> feeds should be approximately the same, therefore an organic pig uses
> the same space as a non-organic one, plus 20 square meters; these 20
> sq. m. add up to less than one thousandth of France's total surface.
>
> (Note: if the above is wrong, I am very interested in a numeric
> estimate on how much space is needed for each organic pig, cow, sheep,
> chicken, etc. with detailed calculations.)
>
>
> > > -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.
>
> By "land", I in fact meant the country's total surface (arable or
> not). I don't know how much arable land there is in France; suppose
> 50% is arable. Then, if we allow 1 animal per hectare, and allow the
> bovine population to graze on 25% of the country's surface, then these
> cows can provide about 20 kg of meat/person/year. Again, 1 hectare may
> be not enough, I don't know, but remember that we can eat meat from
> pigs, that take much less space. And even if there were a shortage of
> meat, then I would consider eating less animals products. For the
> time being, my consumption of organic meat supports organic animal
> rearing, which is a positive thing in my opinion. At present, farmers
> here are complaining about the wholesale price of pork, which is less
> than $1 per kg: it seems that everyone (farmers, animals, consumers)
> would benefit from an increase in quality.
>
>
The real question is..how much non-animal food do I need to
produce 1 kg of human protein (indeed..do I need..as an
adult rather than a suckling or growing child) to produce
1 kg of human protein at all? Or to put it another way,
is it effective to feed a cow with enough veggies to produce
1 kg of cowmeat to feed me for one or two meals? And how
much human protein would I produce (or need) from these one
or two meals? And how many other valuable nutrients would
I miss by eating this 1 kg of animal protein?

Best regards,

Alan