this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
651 points (96.3% liked)
memes
15612 readers
2613 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- [email protected] : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- [email protected] : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- [email protected] : Linux themed memes
- [email protected] : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah, alfalfa is the correct translation. I tried to do a quick search for how much land is used for forage crops (like alfalfa and hay) but didn’t come up with any decent stats. However, I looked for the global crop production stats and the top 4 globally are sugarcane, corn, rice, and wheat. These 4 contribute almost 50% of total arable land use. On the graphics for production— forage crops don’t even get an honorable mention. So unless you have some info on how much wasted land alfalfa grows on, I’m going to say it’s not all that important (land use wise)
Second, using different cultivars for animal feed and direct human consumption is true. We don’t eat dent corn. We eat sweet corn. Two very different varieties. However, saying that one variety can be grown on this patch of land and the other varieties cannot is simply false. Yes there are differences in adaptability of different varieties, but they aren’t massive. Especially when you read about how much fertilizer and water we dump on our animal feed crops each year. Any damn plant could grow with those kind of inputs.
And lastly, your “appeal to tradition” argument is a classic logical fallacy. So I won’t try to refute it.
There's a economical difference. Growing plants for animals is cheaper. Plants for animals are easier to take care. We dump a lot of fertilizer on animal crops. But we dump even more in human crops.
They amount of care and soil usage is always going to be higher on crops destined to human consumption.
This could grow if we tried to grow only human based food? Yes, but with much higher economical effort andes yield per sqrmeter. When nutrients grow thin in soil is not only that things straight up do not grow, is that less things grow and they grow smaller.
It's not tradicional. It's observation of history. Humans have not grown as omnivore because of tradition. We have not domesticated animals because of tradition. We have done it because it's the most efficient way to do things.
You for instance are vegan because of tradition. Not because economics or efficiency dictate it, but because a series of moral considerations that were passed onto you thus modifying your behavior. But most humans population if faced with the nutritional challenge will both grow plants and farm animals because it is the most efficient way to do things.
Traditional exceptions would be the opposite. Like the cultures that forbid certain foods because religious reasons.
It doesn't matter because the other costs of raising animals (eg water, land, waste) completely outweight any supposed, tiny advantage from growing plants to feed them.
I love this dishonest change of tense. Even if it was once "efficient", the current state of industrial murder is literally destroying the planet. Completely unsustainable.
I'm not dishonest. Please be respectful if you want others to respect you aswell.