Food and climate change

[oldbeyond]

Was reading this earlier today: https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/wha ... and-dairy/

Pretty good infographic. Pareto moves would be minimizing beef and lamb. Then pork and dairy even if they’re quite a bit lower in impact. Eggs and poultry are quite a bit more competitive, especially scaled for protein content, even if plant based foods win out.

The global averages cited when they talk about the ”planetary health diet” are quite interesting. MENA seems to be pretty close to their ideal as is.

[7Wannabe5]

@ white belt:
Right, most creatures put on flesh better with high energy pelleted food. Did you ever see the first episode of Mighty Mouse where he gets his super powers from eating from a supermarket (which was a new concept at the time.) Making anything like a closed system is very hard and actually impossible except in terms of balance of most important and measured stocks and flows.

[white belt]

@Alphaville

I think we need to distinguish between fresh water fishing and saltwater fishing. I live several hours from the closest ocean, but I’m a mile or 2 away from a viable source of freshwater fish. That’s why I am implementing freshwater fishing into my strategy. I’d be curious what the carbon impact of freshwater aquaculture, but transport emissions could be much less than saltwater aquaculture since it is easier to keep things local.

[white belt]

@7Wannabe5

That’s why when I ran the numbers at the individual scale for myself, scavenging for fish with traps, throw lines, and rod/reel (depends on local fishing regulations), came out as the clear winner. My only inputs are bait worms that I already grow in a composting bin and CapEx for equipment that I can re-use many times. Aquaculture requires me to establish a system and feed the fish, so costs end up being almost as much as grocery bought fish. Of course there is still a benefit from having a resilient supply of protein outside of the industrial food system, but for me it seemed like a lot of work for not much yield.

[Alphaville]

I think we need to distinguish between fresh water fishing and saltwater fishing.

yeah, i grew up eating fresh fish and seafood. have looked at farmed fish but hard to tell what’s what.

eg some farmed salmon is nasty, some is decent. some tilapia is okay, some is nasty.

hard to tell what’s what right now so i default to “wild caught” and “sustainable” fish which nevertheless apparently requires enough fuel expense as to match the carbon footprint of beef cattle.

[eta: oh! farmed mussels are great]

Was reading this earlier today: https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/wha ... and-dairy/

Pretty good infographic. Pareto moves would be minimizing beef and lamb.

ah! just what i was looking for. going to start chopping the end of that hyperbola. thanks!

eta: cheese!

ok, baby steps...

-

eta, 2: maybe the way to go is focus on adding the bottom ones instead of focusing on “repressing” the top ones...

[Flurry]

Another problem with these fake meats, besides the disappointment, is the price. Not a good value.

Well, I see them as an occasional treat and nothing someone should eat every day. I don't know how the other products taste but the Beyond burger patty has a strong meat like taste and texture. That might help someone who wants to ditch meat from the diet but has cravings for the taste.
I think the price will be much cheaper in the future as more and more producers enter the market, even in the low cost segment, there will be a lot of competition. But already now these products are cheaper than animal-friendly, organic meat products and I personally don't like saving money if I support animal cruelty with it.

[Alphaville]

oh yeah if you like them why not.

for me the real pricey treat are macadamia nuts . delicious but $$$. i rarely buy them but they’re so tasty.

here’s a bit of a tragicomic situation involving macadamias and airplanes:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_rage_incident

[Alphaville]

So if 1lb beef equals roughly 3.3 gallons of gas, my household’s 4lb ground beef per week (for 2) equal one compact car’s gas tank?

[ertyu]

My personal solution is to eat meat infrequently. I would not purchase meat and most dairy except feta. I would, however, eat animal products if they’re free or if there isn’t another hassle-free option eating out. I haven’t eaten eggs in a while either.

[jacob]

You guys seem mostly focused on mitigation (making the problem less worse by eating less meat) but I think you should be more concerned about adaption (having enough food to eat).

Carbon mitigation (if you're a first-worlder reading this) is more effectively done with a Pareto strategy which should prioritize a reduction in direct and indirect power production (electricity and stuff) and transportation (how much you and your stuff is moved around). The other strategy is like trying to save $30 on your food budget while you're spending $200 on your car payment, $300 on your part of the rent, and another $300 on "fun". Focus on those instead, literally.

This doesn't mean that food should be ignored or that focusing on the others is an excuse to pigging out or thinking you've done your part. The carbon budget is just like any other budget. Prioritize and optimize. Ultimately find a better way to use the resources.

The adaption part is already happening. The refuge streams coming from central/south America and into the US and from the Middle East into Europe have climate origins. As it becomes harder to grow food, farming is failing, and farmers move into cities to find jobs. These jobs aren't there, so we get unemployment and resulting crime and possibly unrest escalating to war. This is what people then try to emigrate from.

Think about how people and governments will respond once these "trouble zones" move into Southern Europe and the Southwest/Central US and farmers can not grow anything there either. That's the trend to be concerned about.

The shocks to be concerned about are described in my first post in this thread.

[ertyu]

RIP Mongolia, Canada, Bulgaria + Greece, Spain. Will likely face military pressures "from below." I have had an intuitive premonition that 20-30 years into the future, Bulgaria may be conquered by a middle eastern country. Might sell any real estate before that happens. Stock market seems like a no-brainer location-independent place to store wealth at that point, assuming it functions as it does today -- which also can't be taken for granted. We are entering a low solar cycle now, supposedly, which gives us time to prepare. Unfortunately, a low solar cycle also reduces the probability that the world's nations actually band together to slow down global warming.

Oh well. I don't have kids, and I hope to be dead by that time.

[stoneage]

The adaption part is already happening. The refuge streams coming from central/south America and into the US and from the Middle East into Europe have climate origins. As it becomes harder to grow food, farming is failing, and farmers move into cities to find jobs. These jobs aren't there, so we get unemployment and resulting crime and possibly unrest escalating to war. This is what people then try to migrate from.

What happened is demography.

Farming was not "failing" in most of europe in the 19th and 20th century, but people still left farming to live in the cities.

Less children were dying, farmland per capita was decreasing and it was becoming difficult to sustain a living. Around the exact same time, agricultural production and productivity was booming...so we could sustain industrial workers lending their muscle and body to factories.

This what happened in China, too : booming demography, poor peasants, cheap labourforce, and industrialisation.

Now Africa is seing the same kind of booming demography, development, and because it fits our narrative about what we expect from Climate change, we assume they are all starving.
They're not.

https://comparativemigrationstudies.spr ... 015-0015-6

the analysis shows that intra-African migration intensities have gone down. This may be related to state formation and the related imposition of barriers towards free movement in the wake of decolonisation as well as the concomitant rise of nationalism and inter-state tensions. While African migration remains overwhelmingly intra-continental, since the late 1980s there has been an acceleration and spatial diversification (beyond colonial patterns) of emigration out of Africa to Europe, North America, the Gulf and Asia. This diversification of African emigration seems partly driven by the introduction of visa and other immigration restrictions by European states. Contradicting conventional interpretations of African migration being essentially driven by poverty, violence and underdevelopment, increasing migration out of Africa seems rather to be driven by processes of development and social transformation which have increased Africans’ capabilities and aspirations to migrate, a trend which is likely to continue in the future.

It does not mean that maghreb and sahel inhabitants are not impacted by climate change. Just that it isn't necessarily the main driver of intercontinental migrations.

[Alphaville]

I’m looking for mitigation, yes. Especially when I had no prior idea.

If food production accounts for 26% of emissions, and half of those come from beef, yeah I’m personally saying bye bye to beef, regardless of other possible things I could or could not do. ~12% carbon discount, all other things being equal? Sure, easy call—then proceed to the next iteration.

I didn’t get rid of my truck just to eat a gas tank every week

[Loner]

Re: farming getting into cities. Yes, it's not always climate-driven. Take Mexico. After NAFTA, a lot of subsidized US agro-products got into the country. Mexican farmers couldn't compete. They left the countryside and rushed into the city. Wages were driven down, etc. I suppose a similar situation happened elsewhere. Can't argue that CC might worsen the situation and bring misery though. ERE has been a good part in waking me up on this, so thanks for that Jacob. Thank god we have electric cars to solve it all!

[chenda]

Re: farming getting into cities. Yes, it's not always climate-driven. Take Mexico. After NAFTA, a lot of subsidized US agro-products got into the country. Mexican farmers couldn't compete. They left the countryside and rushed into the city. Wages were driven down, etc.

The great success of ''free'' trade Though I think the US could potentially mitigate this more easily than Europe, as the political geography is simpler and the population density much lower. We have the whole of Africa and the middle-east on our doorstep, both of which approach demographic parity with Europe. The Mediterranean and Black Sea would have to be turned into a fortress.

[7Wannabe5]

Rising food prices in the U.S. in the 1970s became a big political issue that led to many farm policies and international policies which are still in place today. IOW, the precedent is that the U.S. will go to war if the price of hamburger starts seeming out of reach of median household.

OTOH, surveys reveal much lower level of meat consumption in population born after 1996. Of course, this might be partially due to fact that they are a relatively impoverished generation. Hot chips seems to be the food of choice for the kids I teach. More spicy potatoes may be the future of most of our diets.

Although, of course, if the energy grid fails, it may return to being the case that livestock, especially hogs, is the most efficient or secure way to store any excess crops or make food out of waste, because otherwise rats, rot, etc. The tendency towards homeostasis of a living creature kind of functions like a very tightly covered buffet tray set at safe temperature. Many or most pioneer households kept a hog or two for this reason. There is a delightful memoir of a young woman who raised two hogs on dumpster scraps in the city of Oakland, CA, “Farm City” by Novella Carpenter.

[Alphaville]

OTOH, surveys reveal much lower level of meat consumption in population born after 1996. Of course, this might be partially due to fact that they are a relatively impoverished generation. Hot chips seems to be the food of choice for the kids I teach. More spicy potatoes may be the future of most of our diets.

hahaha yes i’ve noticed the same thing. hot cheetos and funyuns.

it’s because the kids have a low protein diet, and umami provides the illusion of protein.

and people need protein, especially growing ones, but it doesn’t have to come from meat. i’ve recently upped my gluten consumption (oooooh, bad bad gluten, lol) and my meat cravings have gone down sharply. homemade rye bread and granola rule (well, no gluten in the granola).

we animals do have a natural appetite for protein which must be met one way or another. and i love my protein, but i need a less disastrous way to get it than meat and cheese.

the data on beef has blown my mind. i had been stuck on the “grass fed vs grain fed” question for years while missing the actual picture.

[7Wannabe5]

Well, it is true that protein intake in childhood influences adult height. The earliest humans were much closer in physique to professional athletes than 19th century industrial workers. When there was an extreme class division in Europe, members of different classes actually varied quite a bit in appearance for this reason. Could happen again in the U.S. An early diet of mostly hot chips will make poor kids shorter and more obese than the kids of “healthy” meat and/or organic greens eaters. However, as adults, tall/large men in particular are best served by switching over to primarily plant based diet. Also, obviously, in primitive times, early childhood high protein diet would have largely consisted of breast milk*. I nursed my kids until they weighed 30 lbs. and they are both very tall and relatively free of allergies compared to me and their itchy/scratchy red headed father.

I also wanted to note that a human would eventually die on a diet of nothing but lentils and/or rabbit meat, because both contain too little fat. That’s why you never see lentil oil on your grocer’s shelves. Sometimes fat is even more difficult to procure through bio-intensive home horticulture than adequate protein. That’s why I planted butternuts and hazelnuts on my permaculture project.

* New report from CDC indicates that lower income parents are giving their infants solid food much too early. This is especially tragic given strong correlation with eventual IQ.

[Mendes]

@alphaville: ever tried making your own vega burgers from kidney beans etc? Great value for money, great taste.

[Alphaville]

@alphaville: ever tried making your own vega burgers from kidney beans etc? Great value for money, great taste.

i haven’t, but i’m a very big black bean aficionado.

i normally eat beans with a spoon from the bowl, with a glug of olive oil on top, or in their late stage or refrigeration fried as patties (mixed with rice, cumin, and some breadcrumbs.)

how do you make yours? is it a lot of work?