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A comment on Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%. Parent comment

Re:Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces met... by cesnja on Thursday September 24, 2020 @04:46AM (#24576622)
There's also the "classic" option, discovered some 200 years before synthetic fertilizers - crop rotation that includes some form of legumes. IMO with the current state of agriculture and food production we went into a local maximum that is very unsustainable and bad for the environment.
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Re:Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces met... by 1234fdsazxcv on Thursday September 24, 2020 @04:56AM (#24576668)
There's a reason we had to switch away from that. The crop rotation cycle isn't an efficient use of land. Synthetic fertilizers exist for a reason -- the human race wants and needs an excess of food. No one wants to switch to a model of food scarcity.
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Re:Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces met... by fidrelity on Thursday September 24, 2020 @06:02AM (#24577023)
citation needed.

This is an all too easy narrative. Synthetic fertilisers might simply have caused an arms race for short term, higher efficiency which destroyed less efficient production techniques.

That does not make it long term efficient, see research on sustainable farming[0].

[0] https://rodaleinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/RI-FST-Brochu...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces met... by tarsinge on Thursday September 24, 2020 @05:13AM (#24576767)
The point is that if the food is not meat we need like up to 75% less crops, which is completely attainable without synthetic fertilizer.
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Re:Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces met... by tarsinge on Thursday September 24, 2020 @07:59AM (#24577723)
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

The figure given is 77% of agricultural land is used for livestock

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Re:Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces met... by tremon on Thursday September 24, 2020 @05:44PM (#24584036)
That land use figure includes grazing areas, not just crop fields.
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Re:Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces met... by ekianjo on Thursday September 24, 2020 @05:16AM (#24576786)
Claiming it does not make it so.
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Re:Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces met... by tovej on Thursday September 24, 2020 @05:39AM (#24576906)
Every addition of a new consumer in a food chain brings with it a high rate of energy loss. The cow will need to use its energy to live, only a small portion of the energy is left in the steak you eat. 75% is a good approximation.

In general, the shorter the food chain, the more efficient it is. This is a universally known fact. I will drop some helpful links for you if you doubt this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_flow_(ecology) https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z2m39j6/revision/6 https://scienceaid.net/biology/ecology/food.html#ecological_...

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Re:Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces met... by tremon on Thursday September 24, 2020 @06:41AM (#24577224)
Please define "efficient". Most arguments I've seen against crop rotation hinge on manual labour-type efficiency, not land yield-type efficiency.
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Re:Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces met... by bluGill on Thursday September 24, 2020 @07:52AM (#24577677)
That doesn't provide the same value as manure. Don't get me wrong, crop rotation is important because it provides different things.
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Re:Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces met... by fit2rule on Thursday September 24, 2020 @08:05AM (#24577764)
Absolutely true. We can definitely be treating the land better.

The only reason we need industrial fertilisers, is because its packaged so well and easy to distribute. But if we weren't raping the soil in the first place, we wouldn't have this problem.

Industrialized farming needs to be revolutionised by the same technique that computing went through: a DIY revolution.

If you don't have a garden, now is the time to start. Everyone should have a garden.

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Re:Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces met... by belorn on Thursday September 24, 2020 @10:25AM (#24578884)
A garden and a few chickens. Getting 4-6 eggs per day is simply fantastic, and the hens are great at eating up harmful insects and weeds that would otherwise harm the output of the garden. They also fertilize the land in a very natural way.
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