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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
It has been claimed that fish farming is a sustainable source of food that will help us feed the growing global human population while protecting wild fish populations – but this isn’t true.
“Fish farming is not a substitute for catching wild fish out of the ocean,” says Matthew Hayek at New York University. “In fact, it relies on catching wild fish out of the ocean.”
Hayek and his colleagues have shown that the amount of wild fish killed in order to feed farmed fish is between 27 and 307 per cent higher than previous estimates.
Farmed carnivorous fish eat multiple times more weight in wild fish caught from the ocean than is obtained by farming them, says Hayek. For instance, producing a kilogram of salmon may require 4 or 5 kilograms of wild fish.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 23 2024, @07:31AM (1 child)
Actually, crops are much more profitable, acre for acre, than even primo beef. That's why pretty much everywhere that can be reasonably farmed already is, and grazing is mostly marginal land that's either too poor of soil or too dry or too steep or some other no-go problem for modern tractors. That's also why we irrigate so much cropland that otherwise would only be good for grazing.(Like, close to 100% of California's crops.)
An awful lot of grazing land is several acres per cow-calf pair. That's about $500/year of gross income. If the same land could be put in, say, wheat, it would be about 5x more profitable.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 23 2024, @12:41PM
I have a skewed perspective on grazing land, here in Florida. Grazing land here is quite valuable for other purposes. It's interchangeable with citrus groves, suburban development, and many commercial crops.
The Lykes brothers' ranch around Fish eating creek was over 50,000 acres of highly valuable land that became embroiled in political wrangling for conservation and development. Many other old family ranches in Florida are similar, run as cow-calf operations by families more interested in preserving their rancher lifestyle/heritage than making profit, they already have more money than they need.
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