- Location
- Lincolnshire
A lot of land is grass because it won’t grow anything else. Grazing the grass is a very good way of turning it into a nutritious high energy food otherwise known as meat and dairy products. I think that’s fairly clever and efficient really and if we weren’t doing it now then somebody would probably invent it and be hailed a hero. Quite incredible that all that lovely protein and fat can come from grass. If mangos and bananas would grow in Lanarkshire I am sure they’d be doing it now. They do grow oats, potatoes and neeps but that’s a far as they can push it without needing supplementary heat and light.I'm not saying I agree with it but I think the argument is that beef and other meat is inefficient in a calorie per acre system.
Take these ultra efficient contract farming systems. They make money over huge acres but don't produce much food, a lot of what they produce is feed wheat which is used to produce livestock. They argue (i think) that, that land should be used to grow other food that can be fed directly to us humans, so reducing the amount of land used for food production allowing more of it to be used to "fix" climate change.
My guess is the numbers work on paper in a study, just not in the real world.
It wont stop them trying though.
I find it incredible really that people suggest these vertical horticultural systems that rely on electricity for the light and pumped hydroponics for the nutrients. My mate who is a left wing lecturer is well into it. He has a basic system in his house, all LEDs and purring pumps growing chillies and stuff. It’s all completely dependent on generated electricity, and requires lots of expensive manufactured components. When you mention the electricity usage it’s just dismissed as irrelevent. Scale it up and you’d need 10 nuclear power stations running balls out to grow enough veg indoors that could be grown outside using freely available daylight. Worlds gone mad. You just don’t know what to say really, it’s so bonkers.