@Tfmonkey the reason why cows fart is bc we feed them primarily corn, if we feed cows grass then they won't be farting all the time. All herbivore animals eat grass but only the cow is the one that is farting all the time? All herbivore animals have 4 stomach but only the cow farts all the time? It is not that they eat grass, it is that we feed them primarily corn.
@UncleIroh @37712 @Tfmonkey Indeed. If we didn't use corn silage and soybean meal to feed cattle to make meat as cheap as it is, instead feeding them grass, they'd be healthier.
For humanity to go to 100% grass-fed beef though, meat needs to double in price per unit of weight if not more. That is also being conservative because cattle require large amounts of acreage to raise exclusively on grass.
We won't move away from such corn, soy, and silage-heavy diets until there is no fuel at scale.
Even in the early 20th century it was common for households to own a single cow and a few chickens.
Wealthier families had more cows, maybe a pig or 2, or a couple of sheep/goats.
That's the micro solution, but what do you think the macro farming solution is if we're locked into using corn/soy? Genuinely curious.
@UncleIroh @DoubleD @37712 @Tfmonkey
The ironic thing is the solution is free market and deregulation of farming where the farmers and entrepreneurs would be allowed to optimize the supply chain and figure out how to squeeze the highest productivity out of the agricultural process.
There are so many regulations, red tape and taxes/price controls that is impossible to do anything different than double down on the retardation.
@Zeb @DoubleD @37712 @Tfmonkey
I admittedly don't know enough to speak with any authority on this, but a first step I would look into is to find out how the Amish and other collectives engage in trade.
Do they engage in individual or collective trade bargains for instance, that kind of thing.
There have to be approaches to decentralized community-based agriculture that don't leave them complete;ly open to rape by the government and predatory Big Ag.
@UncleIroh @Zeb @37712 @Tfmonkey Decentralized agriculture will crop up (lol) once again when it becomes economical to have it. The reason farming shifted from distributed to centralized is because the big operations could out-compete others with government lobbying and lower cost of production with mono-cropping, grain-fed animals, etc.
Decentralization can't happen until it becomes uneconomical for the big operations to work, which requires a breakdown in logistics and fuel availability.
@UncleIroh @Zeb @37712 @Tfmonkey Thomas Sowell talked about this in "Basic Economics" phenomenon when he discussed street sellers of individual cigarettes vs packs or cartons who sit right outside the store that has said packs and cartons. They are effective middle men because the population is too poor to purchase a larger volume due to the high cost of fuel and thus logistics. It's not a one-to-one relation with this example, but it is related.
