Nomads: You talk about high altitude grasslands and Scandinavians living off of land unfit to farm. And - again - I agree that that's possible. But only in small numbers.
In the last 200 years we've gone from having maybe 700 million people on the planet to have TEN TIMES that, about 7 billion.
Your argument ignores the fact that people still do it today in situations that aren't small numbers.
Population density is irrelevant to the dynamics I described.
The land is still unfit to farm. But it's still useful for graving livestock.
An explosion in population doesn't suddenly make that land fit for farming or unsuitable for livestock.
You're wasting that land if you don't do something with it.
Do just a little internet searching and you can learn how many acres a cow needs to roam on if the land isn't fit for farming.
I'm already aware of that. But you didn't give any reason why you think that's relevant to disproving my arguments.
You seem to be operating under the false belief that land used for livestock pasture takes away land from agriculture.
Although that can be true, it's often not true. And that's the key you're missing in this equation.
Take, for instance, the columbian plateau of the USA. It's arid and hot with bad winters. But the the main economic product of this area is agriculture, which is done at the lower elevations in the valleys, especially along the rivers. And extensive irrigation is used to extend that growing away from the rivers into other parts of the plain.
But, the high lands around the valley are not used for agriculture at all. They can be 1 to 3 thousand feet above the valleys. Instead, they are used for pasturing livestock.
Why is that significant? Because in an area where land is your source of wealth because agriculture is the main productive enterprise, and where they've packed as much agriculture as they can into the lower elevations as they can, you'd think they would trip over themselves trying to expand their fruit and produce operations into the cheaper highlands.
But they don't. Why? Because it starts to not be feasible for growing good crops. Even if you can pipe up water from the valley to irrigate it. A lot of the stuff you want to grow wouldn't do well, and even if you did it would probably be of such limited quantity and inferior quality that it wouldn't be profitable for the labor and resources involved in doing it.
So it gets grazed. And the cows get sold for slaughter.
Land that otherwise would go unused is being used for food.
The same principle applies regardless of how dense your population is or how economically well developed you are.
Oh we do it, we graze animals on such land, but not many. You really have to check your math on this idea of grazing animals on poor quality land.
The math doesn't disprove anything I said.
We're talking about land that would go unused if not pastured.
Your arguments don't work in those scenarios.
You also don't know what percentage of cows in this country get grazed on arable land vs scrub land.
You're probably not aware that in many states that have a high output of both agriculture and beef, like South Dakota, that the livestock are likely running on ground that is otherwise deemed not ideal or unsuitable for agriculture. Not as much arable land is being used up by the cows as you probably think.
Although you could graze the cows on the arable land and get a higher yield of beef per acre, there's actually not always an economic incentive to do that when the high altitude grasslands or scrubland is so much cheaper. There's more competition from other industries for the arable land, which drives up the cost. So it starts to be economically advantageous for you to rent or buy inferior land for your livestock because you'll net more beef per dollar invested, even if requires more acres to do it.
You're also probably not aware of the vast tracts of land in the western half of the USA that is government owned but leased out for livestock to graze on. It's land that is arid, scrubby, high altitude, and unlikely to be land people would want to grow food on. And it's land that isn't even available for agriculture if people wanted to, because the government has it locked up in their hands and only allows very limited uses for it.
Veganism: You're debating me on the problems of veganism but I'm not proposing veganism.
I don't need to be talking about veganism for what I said to be true.
Even if we're talking about vegetarianism, there's still flaws with your reasoning.
Those flaws are:
1. You're not recognizing that overall caloric and nutrition would lower for many people around the world if they cut out meat. This is because they could no longer supplement what they grow by pasturing unsuitable land, fishing, or hunting. And they don't grow enough plants or raise enough dairy/eggs to make that meat supplementation irrelevant.
2. You're ignoring those who don't have easy access to dairy or eggs for nutritional supplementation, but have easier access to meat.
Mass homicide? Say what? Where on earth did you get the idea that I was advocating for that??????
I don't think a lot of people who spout those talking points about overpopulation do advocate mass homicide, because they haven't taken the time to really think about the implications of where that line of thinking must inevitably lead.
I'm trying to help you see that blindspot and realize the fundamental flaw in that line of thinking.
Very few in Germany in the 1920s thought all that talk about "racial hygiene" and "the master race" would or even could lead to mass genocide when they embraced or tolerated the ideas. But logically it was the only direction that line of thought could have ultimately gone in.
Ideas have consequences and can be dangerous things. You have to be very careful to analyze the consequences of the ideas you embrace as truth.
Permaculture: I'm a big fan of permaculture. I think of it as mostly geared towards plants and dairy however.
Animals are an essential part of permaculture by definition, which is about integrating plants with animals. You see this expressed very clearly with those like Geoff Lawton.
It's also not true to say permaculture can't even be focused on animals. Joel Salatin and Alan Savory both operate a pasture based form of permaculture that uses animals to heal desertifying land and turn it into ideal growing ground.
The definition of permaculture is permanence. It's about having a system you can operate permanently because it's not depleting itself. In fact, another operating trait of permaculture is that not only will the system not deplete itself but it will actually grow and increase the longer it runs. That is what you see Salatin and Savory doing with their lifestock. The topsoil is increasing with every year. Bare dirt and rock is turning to grass. The soil is retaining more water and becoming drought proof.
