Hi,
we were talking about the ethical consequences of agriculture,
and what damage it does on nature.

Richard Keene wrote:
>Cattle raised free range do not take 10X the amount of grain.
Free range cattle use about 16 times the area of grassland
that was necessary to produce the same amount of food directly.

The grassland (at least in temperate regions as here in middle
europe) isn't a natural habitat. It is created by the free-range
meat and milk procuction
- otherwise the areas below the tree-boundary would
rather fast turn into wood.
In addition, these grasslands get heavyly nitrogen fertilized-
to get a higher grass yield.
Growing grass is just a from of cereal, more oriented on the
production of green mass instead of seed (grain).
Grass is a very fast growing plant with the interesting
feature to live normaly for one year only and to be able to
send nearly all of this years sunlight power into the own seed
(for the next year, and in the POV of plant eaters for nutrition).

It's just a sort of agriculture in a somewhat (desireable)
less intense manner (nevertheless destructing the natural habitat).

Not to get misunderstood - i like *this* way of free range animal
keeping. I think it's a more natural way than feeding soy.
But is is agriculture, destroying natural habitats, with the
animal to food waste factor.

>If they would just stop fattening up cattle on corn
>then the ecological impact would be greatly reduced.

They can't stop. Because the grasslands aren't as *productive*
for "fattening" (means getting enough food for growth) as
heavily fertilized maize fields.

And the 60 million bisons?
How much humans could live from these bisons? That depends on
the average bison age. For example if one bison was enough
for one person for one year (hardly ever) then after one year
supplying 60 million humans they all were killed and gone.

So this count doesn't tell how much the *growth* of the bisons
was. Only the growth could be slaughered, in balance with nature.
Can you imagine how much meat is *now* produced on this area-
by means of the dreaded crop agriculture?

Only some of the native american folks were bison
hunter folks - namely the last ones after the richer and more
fruitful areas had been taken away from the "white" man.
The famous Apache bison hunting appears to be possible
in a large scale only after the availability of horses
- in America not more than 500 years old (spaniard).
Iroquese used (and possibly created) sunflowers, pumpkins and beans.

>On the religous aspects, I was comming more from
>the Mormon perspective where the word of wisdom says...
Thank you for the interesting Mormon reference.

regards, Amadeus


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