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.


--Jean-Louis Tu <[log in to unmask]>