One-third of our greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture

Discussion in 'Environment & Conservation' started by sawyer, Sep 5, 2017.

  1. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Most GM is just modifying the plant to make it more tolerant to pesticide so they can use more pesticide.
    The biggest thing that makes agriculture vulnerable to pests is the almost universal practice of monoculture—planting a vast track of all the same species right next to each other. There are other systems out there.
     
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2017
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  2. sawyer

    sawyer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Indeed, grain is not practical to grow small scale and it is one of the dirtiest most fuel intensive crops that vegetarians largely rely on for calories. In my brief association with the grain farming industry I was shocked by the amount of herbicides and pesticides it too to bring this crop to harvest. It kind of made me never want to eat grain again but what are you going to do?
     
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2017
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  3. sawyer

    sawyer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Unfortunately huge urban population demands huge industrial farming and that requires huge amounts of pesticides and herbicides and fertilizer. That's just the world we live in.
     
  4. dairyair

    dairyair Well-Known Member

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    Agree. They would have to be in an industry moving that way or a low competition industry.
     
  5. DivineComedy

    DivineComedy Well-Known Member

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    This reminds me: Save the plants, eat a Vegetarian.

    I once wanted to convert one of our engines to burn alcohol, or ethanol, knowing that my father once ran a still in his youth, since we had plenty of corn, and he said, “Don’t burn food.” He told me about using coconuts during WWII. https://www.ewb.org.au/resources/52/950

    It is just as ridiculous to complain about corporate farms, or farms that are more efficient, as comes up every time farming is discussed.

    In that new show with Morgan Freeman, the other day they showed these African cattle farmers fighting over grazing land, scrawny little beasts. Maybe they can’t grow crops, which would be better than the waste of cattle farming, but certainly where they can be grown a corporation might be better for it than individuals.
     
  6. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Yes which is why there is research in the cows biome to see if we can reduce the methane
     
  7. Chester_Murphy

    Chester_Murphy Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You forgot to mention the consumption of beans, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, radishes and other vegetables which produce greenhouse gases once harvested and consumed.

    It wouldn't be prudent to mention all of the facts. They don't serve the rhetoric and whacko theories that would make someone richer.
     
  8. ibobbrob

    ibobbrob Well-Known Member

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    Are there more facts than these, which are an integral part of agriculture?
     
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  9. Chester_Murphy

    Chester_Murphy Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Hahaha These are most important. :D
     
  10. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Okay...lets just say that agriculture contributes to climate change.

    We have to eat.

    Perhaps now that we have stablished that human activity contributes to this problem we should try to curb our footprint elsewhere?

    Actually it wont even matter as we have crossed a threshold that cannot be fixed, all we can do now is prepare and wait.

    By the way...cow farts are the least of our worries.
     
  11. Merwen

    Merwen Well-Known Member

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    ----

    I tries to grow a bit of a few grains this summer to see if I could do it and all were overtaken by weeds. I also grew some amaranth and have yet to get many seeds because the method of collecting them recommended by the seed company was to bang the seed heads inside a pillowcase, and all I got was a thimblefull of seeds and a pillowcase full of bugs.
     
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  12. sawyer

    sawyer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Farmers have GPS guided tractors so that when they spray herbicides they don't miss anything but sometimes they still do and you can tell by all the weeds in that spot. Grain in anywhere near the amounts our world consumes can only be grown by extremely fuel intensive methods with unbelievable amounts of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizer.
     
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  13. sawyer

    sawyer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    But if you really thought our C02 contribution was going to cause catastrophe you would make some major concessions in what you eat. Grain would be the first thing to stop.
     
  14. sawyer

    sawyer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What you forget is the fact that buffalo once covered the plains states by the millions and they are gone now so cows fill their place methane wise
     
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  15. sawyer

    sawyer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    A backyard vegetable garden is not polluting and extremely low on the C02 footprint meter so unfortunately you are full of ummm, organic fertilizer here.
     
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2017
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  16. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Actually, if you read my reply you would have noted the acceptance of our fate and understood that any attempt at preventing it is futile. My life choices are rather irrelevant though I do not eat much grain to begin with.
     
  17. DivineComedy

    DivineComedy Well-Known Member

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    Fifty separate acres plowed with fifty different rototillers probably would cause more CO2 than fifty acres plowed with a more efficient tractor.
     
  18. sawyer

    sawyer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Even were that true you leave out the transportation of the crop in semi trucks to distribution points where it is then put in smaller trucks to be distributed to local stores where much of it is eventually thrown out. When I wanted to get a CDL so I could drive log truck I took a job with an over the road trucking company because they would train me and get me my CDL. My primary haul was garlic from Gilroy California to be delivered in Florida. Now compare that to growing some garlic in your backyard for your own consumption.
     
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2017
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  19. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    I think it's laughable to suggest that generalization. I know too many "vegitarians" who fly privately, who drag endless entourages around with them, etc. To suggest that they have "a footprint less than any other group" is laughable. And while one statistic was advanced, the 6x number doesn't equate into total land required, and is actually a less significant fraction of the whole of agriculture. But, hey, MT tried to spin. And that, truly, is the important part...
     
  20. DivineComedy

    DivineComedy Well-Known Member

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    You are right, we also didn't have to go to the grocery store for much. We have to eat and everyone can't own an acre of land for subsistence farming, unless you want to argue for that. Some things just have to be accepted as inevitable until more efficient means of transport are available.

    May 1, 1935: "To the extent necessary to carry out the provisions of this Executive Order the Administrator is authorized to acquire, by purchase or by the power of eminent domain, any real property or any interest therein and improve, develop, grant, sell, lease (with · or 'without the privilege of purchasing), or otherwise dispose of any such property or interest therein."

    Read more at the American Presidency Project: Franklin D. Roosevelt: Executive Order 7027 Establishing the Resettlement Administration. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?p...#ixzz1WF7IYFdf

    Pine Mountain Valley Resettlement Project

    My father was a slave on one of those farms given to a family by FDR.
     
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  21. sawyer

    sawyer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So you agree with the OP, thank you.
     
  22. DivineComedy

    DivineComedy Well-Known Member

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    Only that it is inevitable and irrelevant. We could redistribute wealth so we all have an acre of farming land.
     
  23. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    What utter nonsense. Did it occur to you that in that distribution that not all land is equal in it's ability to produce? And, that if we did, it was cause catastrophic deforestation? Oh yeah, thought not....:roflol:
     
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  24. DivineComedy

    DivineComedy Well-Known Member

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    Good "farming land" taken from the efficient corporate farm and given to me, by the revived FDR program, to reduce CO2 transport costs, I'll be just fine.
     
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2017
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  25. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    Rather selfish, huh? How about the other 7.X Billion folks??
     

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