[ExI] Paleo diet and sustainability

[Kelly Anderson]

On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 11:49 PM, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
>>>  The amount of land needed for that is
>>> roughly 17 times as large as that needed for just growing human consumable
>>> vegetable matter on the same land.
>>
>> Citation required.
>
> No, I have better things to do.

To risk jumping in for Samantha...

I believe the above number is true (or close to true) when you take
into account that cattle spend the last weeks of their lives in feed
lots eating huge amounts of corn (mixed with molasses, etc.). While
this is not "necessary" in the sense that cattle can be raised just on
grass, it is just not what is actually typically done in America
today.

An old rule of thumb is that it requires 50 bushels of grain to finish
an animal in a feedlot.  There are 56 pounds of corn in a bushel, for
example, so you will need around 2,800 pounds of corn (and other
grain) to produce an animal that weighs 1,250 to 1,350 pounds. Some
cattle sent to feedlots young and lighter consume about 3,500 pounds.
(http://www.greerfarm.com/cattle/beef.html)

You can raise about 183 bushels of corn per acre, at least in Iowa.
(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_bushels_of_corn_can_you_get_from_an_acre_of_corn)

By way of comparison, the average American consumes something around
1500 pounds of corn a year...
http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2007/04/average-american-consumes-1500-pounds.html

The cows spend much less than a year in the feed lot... so people
don't eat quite like a cow :-)

Anyway, if you eat a pound of meat, you're eating a couple of pounds
of corn, and whatever grass and other things it ate prior to getting
to the feed lot.

In addition to all of this... cows fart a lot. Methane is a green
house gas that is 20 times more effective at greenhousing (neologism)
than CO2. (http://www.epa.gov/outreach/). A cow has a more negative
greenhouse effect than driving an SUV.
(http://openthefuture.com/cheeseburger_CF.html)

Bottom line, you just can't win. :-)

-Kelly