
Is There Enough Meat for Everyone? - mhb
http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Should-We-Eat-Meat
======
msandford
Joel Salatin is one of the first people that comes to mind after reading the
article. He might not rub you the right way (as he's an evangelical Christian,
etc) but he sure does seem to have some interesting ideas about raising cattle
in a natural way that's also highly productive. His way of farming seems to be
about 4x as land efficient as his neighbors (if you believe him, I tend to)
which is a big deal. It also seems to be relatively low input (not buying lots
of feed) and low capital; he uses mostly cheap electric fence.

If I sound like a fanboy it's because I'm leaning that way. It really feels
like he's "hacking" farming and I have a big appreciation for that.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjzvtM-
Wo4c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjzvtM-Wo4c)

~~~
have_humility
A BBC Horizons documentary with subtitle "How to Feed the Planet" (popsci--I'm
aware) was posted to reddit a few months ago. The conclusion, IIRC, suggested
that even the best hacks in beef farming don't hold a candle when compared to
approaches that lean more heavily towards transitioning away from beef to
other types of meat, especially chicken.

~~~
msandford
Cattle have a FCR of between 5 and 20 or so. Chickens more like 2ish. If beef
is bad because it takes 20 units of food to make one unit of beef and you have
a way to make 4x the units of food per acre, then your effective FCR (relative
to traditional methods) drops from 20 (at the worst) to 5. If it was at 5 then
your effective FCR could be as low as 1.25 If it was more in the middle at say
10ish then the effective FCR could be at 2.5 which is pretty respectable. This
is made better because you're also getting eggs from the sanitizing chickens
and meat from the broiling chickens that are all making multiple passes over
the same land at different times.

This is of course predicated on grass fed beef with the farmer taking a
substantial interest in raising as much grass as possible (sanitizing chickens
and paddock system). It's not a lot of work, but it does take more effort than
just throwing grain at cows in a feedlot.

~~~
have_humility
I don't know what a sanitizing chicken is, and apparently neither does Google.
I assume from context it means chickens bred to lay eggs?

~~~
msandford
In this case it's chickens which get carted around a few days behind the cows.
Cows eat grass. Cows poop on field. Flies lay eggs in poop. Eggs hatch into
maggots, which eat poop. Chickens dig through poop looking for maggots. This
spreads the poop out and gives the chickens an excellent source of protein.

Cow poop is actually a good fertilizer for grass, but it's too concentrated
normally. The chickens spread it out to a more reasonable concentration and
produce eggs in the process.

------
beat
A basic vegetarian argument is that meat is inefficient compared to grain, and
there just isn't enough resource. But if this were true, then older cultures
with far less resources would never have wasted food on raising meat. Clearly,
they did.

Animals are a way of turning inedible things into edible things. Grass? Well,
you could till it all, or just turn sheep and cattle loose on it. Grain hulls?
Throw them away, or feed them to the chickens. Spoiled garbage? Pigs will eat
it. For as long as we've farmed, animals have increased rather than decreased
the food supply.

~~~
pdx
Exactly. I grew up on cattle ranches in Montana and Wyoming. The short growing
season, rocky soil, and dry conditions would make any attempt at farming
laughable, but the cattle did just fine. Driving them into the high mountains
for summer grazing allowed the mountain grass to also be converted to beef.
None of that land was appropriate to farming, which means that any beef grown
there is extra food for the planet.

What always amazes me about capitalism is how it often manages to allocate
resources efficiently. Nobody is raising large cattle herds down in farm
country. Land that can be farmed is generally farmed, because that provides
the best return. Land that can't be farmed, is ranched. This idea that you
have to give up farming to have meat doesn't take this into account.

~~~
beat
This doesn't mean corn-fed meat isn't wasteful, of course. But it does mean
that meat itself isn't the cause of hunger elsewhere.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
If it is wasteful, I wonder how much is caused by corn subsidies.

------
sremani
The way the US society discourages vegetarianism (even for people who a
traditionally vegetarian) is mind boggling. When you ask for a vegetarian
option, one would be lucky if he does not get stared like a space alien, esp.
in the country.

~~~
ElijahLynn
This is starting to change but yeah, it is saddening how many people think you
need meat to survive and grow. Bill Gates left his intelligence behind on this
one.

All protein on this planet was created by plants via photosynthesis.

~~~
slayed0
Yes, (most) protein on this planet was created by plants, but not all protein
is equal. Most proteins from plants are not complete proteins and cannot
sustain a human being. This is not true of animal protein. Yes you can combine
various plant proteins together to form complete proteins, but the answer is
not as simple as: just eat plants.

~~~
astazangasta
This is incorrect. What, pray tell, is a "complete protein?" There are no
amino acids in animals that are not found in plants. You appear to be wholly
misinformed on this subject.

~~~
slayed0
"A complete protein (or whole protein) is a source of protein that contains an
adequate proportion of all nine of the essential amino acids necessary for the
dietary needs of humans or other animals"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein)

Many plants have "complete" amino acid profiles but one or more amino acids
are too low to be completely adequate for humans. In this case, another
protein source with a supplemental amino acid profile is required in order to
balance out the deficiency in the first.

~~~
astazangasta
Quoting from your own source: >Nearly all foods contain all twenty amino acids
in some quantity, and nearly all of them contain the essential amino acids in
sufficient quantity.

You don't need to eat meat to get your protein.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
But traditional foods in America included beans, corn, squash. Presumably to
get a reliable source of protein. The natives weren't dieticians; they ate
that because villages with that tradition thrived.

So protein quality and quantity can't likely be insured by eating any old
vegetables. Its not as simple as 'don't eat meat'.

------
MrDosu
A personal experience I have made in trying to live off the land a few times
autonomously is that it is quite sustainable when you are hunting animals.

When you rely solely on plants you need to roam HUGE swatches of land in
comparison and extract almost all of the plants you find.

------
GordonS
Another issue is what parts of the animal we eat or don't eat. At least here
in the UK, many wouldn't touch liver, heart, kidneys etc with a barge pole,
despite never having even tried them.

While offal has gained ground in restaurants in recent years, it's still
absent from most homes.

Offal makes up a decent chunk[1] of cattle and pigs, and fresh, well cooked
offal is a delicious thing. There should be more effort by the meat industry
to persuade people to try it.

[1]
[http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/147867/ldpm20901.pdf](http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/147867/ldpm20901.pdf)

~~~
gadders
A lot of UK farmers are now shipping offal (or the "5th quarter") to other
locations such as China and the Middle East. So a lot does get eaten, even if
not locally.

Source for this is Farming Today podcast on Radio 4.

~~~
GordonS
A good point - people are not so 'scared' of offal in some other cultures

~~~
gadders
I quite often eat liver, have eaten heart when a kid and happily wolf down a
steak and kidney pie.

I will not go anywhere near tripe.

------
jasonisalive
As usual, Gates gets the true problem completely wrong. The real issue here
are the numerous and significant unpriced economic externalities associated
with animal flesh production, whose impact is rendered enormous by the scale
of this industry. Animal rearing produces a major portion of global greenhouse
gases, rivers of faeces, pollutes waterways and overtaxes water resources, not
because of a lack of capacity to technologically innovate cleaner solutions,
but because collective interests in these resources are not being properly
acknowledged and protected through the negotiation and enforcement of pricing.

This is a classic economic problem. Bill Gates does the issue no favours with
his starry-eyed techno-optimism or his attempts depict food supply as a
selfless global communal endeavour. No, food supply is a market of profit-
seeking individuals using their resources to generate goods considered
valuable enough to trade by other individuals. There is simply an
overproduction of these goods because they are being sold without their
externalised costs being factored in. Food producers can make their products
too cheaply, so too many are made.

Tackle the pricing problem and technological development to minimise
environmental impacts will naturally emerge. Absent this step, efforts to
develop and promulgate technological improvements will never get far.

~~~
bryanlarsen
This is of course not unique to animal farming. Where I grew up animal farming
is much more environmentally friendly than grain farming. It uses green water
and native prairie, without chemical use or plowing. (Plowing is generally
much more environmentally destructive than chemical use).

In Saskatchewan, higher pricing of externalities would increase animal
production, not lower it.

~~~
sleepyhead
> Where I grew up

Well that is the problem here. Farming has changed. Particularly so in
America. A handful slaughterhouses, heavy corn use, chemically power washed
eggs, all within a framework that is made for economical returns and not
animal welfare or taste. And it is not a US-only problem. Denmark for example
is facing huge issues with pig farming and here in Norway we are seeing
problems with use of antibiotics in chickens.

------
sehugg
The article briefly touches on this, but substituting more efficient (< 2 to 1
conversion ratio) meats like chicken and farmed fish seems like a good idea.
The high price of beef right now certainly has changed my shopping habits, and
I can't say I really miss it -- nor do other Americans according to some
sources[1].

p.s. take chicken drumsticks, pat dry, salt and pepper, iron skillet for 1
hour at 450 :)

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/chicken-vs-
beef_n_4...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/chicken-vs-
beef_n_4525366.html)

~~~
rotten
20 years ago we were talking about shellfish aquaculture as the answer to this
problem (which was obvious even then). The lower on the food chain you go,
typically, the lower the production costs. Filter feeding mussels, scallops,
and oysters are about as low as you can get and still call it "meat". Many
producers were touting these creatures as the answer to getting protein in the
future. Since then water pollution has seriously curtailed the growth of that
industry. It is still worth exploring as an option though.

~~~
delish
> Since then water pollution has seriously curtailed the growth of that
> industry.

Interesting. I'd like to know more. Do you have a source for that?

~~~
have_humility
The BBC Horizons documentary I mentioned above also looked into mussels as a
source of meat. I don't recall pollution being mentioned as an issue, but it
gave other reasons why even optimistic outlooks could only consider them a
partial replacement, given the numbers we have for meat consumption today (not
to mention decades from now).

------
gadders
I love meat. My neighbours have cows and sheep and pigs and I own chickens.
I've been up close with all those animals and they're pretty cool in their own
way.

I sometimes thing that if meat could be grown in a lab and animals didn't have
to die, I'd be happy with that. But then I realise that arsehole food
scientists from somewhere like Kraft would get hold of it and ruin it.

~~~
ocfx
Meat infused with their yellow cheese powder

~~~
gadders
Yeah, and hydrogenated vegetable oil, food dye, fillers, lego offcuts etc.

------
have_humility
What are the numbers on the chart in the linked page supposed to mean? Average
meat consumption per capita per year, organized by country? And the bigger
question: how do this kinds of charts keep getting made, and how do articles
that otherwise make no hint at their own charts' existence keep being
published?

~~~
diego_moita
It is a good question.

I think it refers to carcass per person. This means that they're counting the
weight of non-eaten tissue (bones, skin, intestines, brains, etc).

The chart sounds odd to me. I am Brazilian and I know that Argentinians and
Uruguayans consume a lot more meat than us, I believe even more than the
Americans.

When it comes to non-carcass, edible meat only we are at 37 kg per
person/year. The Uruguayans are at 60 kg.

------
Rockslide
tl;dr: no (at least not at the moment):

> Returning to the question at hand — how can we make enough meat without
> destroying the planet? — one solution would be to ask the biggest carnivores
> Americans and others) to cut back, by as much as half. [...]

> But there are reasons to be optimistic. For one thing, the world’s appetite
> for meat may eventually level off. [...] I also believe that innovation will
> improve our ability to produce meat. Cheaper energy and better crop
> varieties will drive up agricultural productivity, especially in Africa, so
> we won’t have to choose as often between feeding animals and feeding people.

------
rboyd
I'm grateful Gates and others are funding meat alternatives. He briefly
touched on the ethical issues (by proxy), but we hardly ever do here on HN. I
remember in 2011 Zuckerberg resolved to only eat meat that he killed himself.
I think more people ought to try that. I know I wouldn't be able to hunt and
slaughter my own food, and I respect people that do much more than the status
quo of outsourcing animal murder.

It's pretty hypocritical of this society to elect ~4 species of animals that
we endorse killing. But we think about eating dog or dolphin and rageface.

~~~
beat
Oh, if people get hungry enough, they'll eat dogs and dolphins, all right.

At the end of WWII, rats had been exterminated in Berlin. That was all there
was to eat.

~~~
gadders
I invited my 93 year old gran to a barbecue (she's 97 now) and asked her if
there is anything she doesn't eat or wouldn't like.

Gran: Whale meat

Me: Er, OK. I can do that.

Gran: We had it during the war on rationing. You didn't know if you were
eating meaty fish or fishy meat.

------
gadders
There is also this company: [http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/silicon-valleys-
fake-eggs-a...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/silicon-valleys-fake-eggs-
are-better-than-the-real-thing)

that is planning to create synthetic eggs (even though eggs are pretty much
are the perfect food).

------
shusain
Like carbon caps, governments could introduce meat production limits if none
of the other solutions pan out.

------
platz
No

