Ok, repost, deleted the others... So I wanted to discuss this great 'High-Thought' and I posted it in what I thought would be the right section, Science and Nature, and it surely wasn't... I can't post it in my Organics Section, because they'd think I was a nut, but I might try there eventually. and I can't post it in the Religion and Spirituality Section because half the time they respond with things like 'you don't really exist' and 'we are all just One' worse yet, 'prove you exist', or other stuff I don't get... So, I'm trying it here: "I have been thinking of my plants, which are organic, my soil, which I had to put a lot of time into, in order to get the micro nutrient load present for the plants to pick it up, and I had to keep a micro-herd functioning in the soil for optimum uptake. Then I thought of other creatures with bio-herds that assist them with uptaking nutrients of some sort, like termites for example. They eat wood, 100% cellulose, and the bacteria in their digestive apparatus assists them in breaking it down. Then I was thinking about UFO's, abducties, and cattle mutilations...and It occured to me that if the Aliens were using the human's for genetic studies, in order to make us a better equiped species, I personally would aim at decreasing our need for exogenous protien...in order to decrease our dependancy on meat eating because the methods we are presently using for meat production are harming the planet we live on. In order to do that, if I were an alien, I would enable a human to use the same method of protein consumption that a cow uses. Cow's do not eat grass, and just grow big muscles, they actually house a whole subset of bacteria in one of their stomach organs, and breed them for consumption. The whole ruminent family of animals, do not need to eat exogenous protien, because of their ability to make their own bacteria as their only source of protien inside their 2nd and 3rd gut, and then digest the chewed up and digested grass along with all that bacteria... in huge amount I might add. We humans also use bacteria in our colon's to make nutrients bio-avalable, but we lack the ability to move the colon's contents back to the stomach for digestion of the actual bacteria, we just poop it all out. Our poop is very high in protein. If we were able to use our intestinal flora for a food source, we would not need to eat meat. The planet would support a denser population and be better sustained. Since the cattle mutilations are almost all teeth, jaw, esophagus, and stomaches and mammary, I was thinking that maybe they are looking at making a few genetic changes in us, to assist us in survival. Using cows as the model. Just an idea. I am a huge meat eater btw. \t\t" I got one decent response about how cow husbandry doesn't do anything to the planet and added this: "No, raising cattle is hard on the planet, land use, we put more energy into raising stock to eat than any other food production known. Because cattle actually consume 16 times more grain than they give back in muscle. Refrigeration and transportation necessary for beef but not grains or beans. A pound of potatoes requires 99.6% less water to raise than a pound of cow, it takes 5,217 gallons of water to raise a pound of beef over the life of the yearling beef, 1,630 for pig, 25 gallons for a pound of wheat. Our water shed is slowly disappearing, the great Ogallala aquifer is the largest body of fresh water on Earth, and it lies underneath some of the richest farmland in the world -- the great American grain belt. But things are changing. The Ogallala is a fossil aquifer, which means the water in it is left from the melted glaciers of the last Ice Age. It's not like a reservoir or river, which are replenished regularly from rainfuall. When the water in the aquifer is gone, it's gone. Desalianation of ocean water is cost prohibative, or we'd do more of it. Animals eat a lot more food than they provide as meat. It takes 16 pounds of grain to make one pound of beef. That's 94% more land than if we just grew our own food on it. And 94% more pesticides because of our dismal farming methods. All told, livestock eat 70% of all the grain we produce in the US. It would be better if we could use bacteria for food within our own bodies." Just a thought, but I thought it was kinda a good one. We'd be better off set up like cow's...maybe the aliens are onto something? \t\t \t\t\t\t__________________
Well, I think that getting rid of out need for meat/cattle, and allowing for a more dense population would be bad. We already are facing problems with over population some places in some countries even put it in law that families can not have more than 1 or two children. But the only issue with over population is not just having enough food for everybody, its the pollution, energy consumption, waste management. Well, there have been numerous reports of aliens abducting cows! I think it makes sense, because aliens are here, we know that. They have to be so genetically advanced, it only makes sense that they can alter us as they probably have themselves over thousands of years. I think they want to help us evolve because if they wanted to hurt us they would have already, unless they are waiting for a specific time to over take out planet, like when we are at our weakest.
That is an interesting thought. A lot of "what's wrong" with beef is how it is raised and lies almost exclusively in the fact that they are fed grains. Forget the health of the animal and the healthfulness of the meat by feedlot conditions. Cows are ruminants, and are thus designed to eat grass, like you described. Figures vary, but something like 80% of US corn is used to feed animals. The rest is used for industrial items like starch and fructose syrup.... Only about 2% of corn grown in the US is meant for direct human consumption. All those figures of water are for industrial feed-lot finished cows. All that water consumption is mainly for the actual growing the grain, nothing to due with raising the animals, other than feed. What was North America before the white man came? A big freaking native grass field, rain irrigated, populated from wall-to-wall with ruminants. From what I hear, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. This summer, a lot of hype, hysteria, and fear is being placed on how the corn is being so affected by the drought like conditions. Food prices are rising, the poor kids of africa are starving, and bio-fuels are worsening this catastrophe. We are all gonna die, maybe ..... Thing is ..... This year of planted corn was the highest in a few decades. Even with losses, we have more than enough corn. What happens when supply falls? Prices rise. Why not create fear based 'scarcities'? The same result will happen. I'm a conspiracy kinda guy, but follow the money.... Farm bills and FDA government money, USDA, GM corn, monsanto, oil industry, commodity traders, future markets. Who benefits from feeding cattle corn? Not humanity. Corporations (1%, 'them', global elite) do. I think the earth could support a large population of people who eat similar to us. It comes down to how it is raised, which boils down to one thing in the end: The Federal Reserve Note. EDIT: There was a Coast to Coast episode about the corn fear a week ago today. It was a very interesting show, both parts! Animals & Health/ Corn & Fuel - Shows - Coast to Coast AM
Well, the majority of our pollution and energy consumption problems are because of our food production model. Trucking it everywhere under refrigeration, storage facilities, stock yard waste and run off, hormone contamination, diseases. How about, we can better utilize our planets resources without suffering from over population problems if we could supply our own protein needs. The reason the Chinese have a one child policy is that they cannot feed themselves, and they spent a decade starving. I wasn't looking to increase our numbers, just looking at making life more livable if I could. And if I could, I would use some cow genes to make us better equiped to survive. We have always been weak. We still are. We just have really big ego's
If we didn't have need for protein, period, we wouldn't need to worry about how it was raised and who had the upper hand in the process. The whole process of "Farm bills and FDA government money, USDA, GM corn, monsanto, oil industry, commodity traders, future markets." would shift. Largely. I'd sign up for some gene therapy.
Well, until you can splice me in some extra stomach partitions, I guess that's the best I can suggest
I raise Hereford cattle on 100 acres in central Texas. Usually once a year I'll purchase 50 polled heifers (already pregnant). By the time they have had their calves and gained enough weight for resell, my little ranch looks like a disaster area. They shit in my water tanks (ponds), trample down most of my native grasses, and wear down trails all over the place. If this wasn't over half of my yearly income I would raise something else!!
Oh, you poor dude. Just out of interest, have you ever thought about raising something not-cow? You would be suprised at some of the animals that people are raising up here, herds of ostrich for instance. They require less water, space, cause less damage, have the best leather, are huge birds for the meat, and like living densely. Sheep? Just wondering if there is a market for exotic or unusual. Alpacha are also common here. Maybe even something for zoo life, not meat market, like self raising giraffe, they even breed well in captivity, they love humans and have few known enemies and none would be living near you. One guy up here has zonkey's and zorses, zebra hybrids, guy makes a living doing something he loves to do...just a thought.
I can feel a dramatic rant coming on here. Before i do Im just ganna take a deep breath and let it go lol
So I was confused at first because you started going on about UFO's and cattle mutilations. My initial reaction was: ok, I don't care about whatever your thought is, just post whatever it is you're doing to your plants because it's obviously working very well. But then I read the reast of it, and you're spot on I think. It sure would be nice if we could directly utilize cellulose even half as well as we can use glocuse. If nothing else it would be pretty funny to eat a brownie, and then when it kicks in go out on the lawn and start grazing like a cow.
sorry ,but not true about deer and elk herds. they didn't exist in large numbers until we cut down all the trees which allowed their populations to explode. then we ate them, then westarted raising cattle as the human herd increased.
LOL, seriously? Ever hear of buffalo? Elk herds estimated in the millions were present, alongside similar numbers of buffalo. Elk are a prairie animal. It's because of people that they now live high in the mountains. Yep, not until humans were everywhere did the animals have a chance at success
We have a lot of Elk where we live, they walk thru your veggy garden and it's done for. Bigger than horses, more muscular than moose, and our local gov says they were here 3000 years before us, so you can't shoot them... My dad, back when he was alive, he'd pull the old pick up into the apple orchard (where they were chowing down our apples), and honk the horn to scare them off...they used it as a scratching post and bounced it into the mud! They have made the same ambling circuit for thousands of years, from the mountainous wood edges, all over our grassland, down to the waters edge where we meet the sea and back in a huge wide loop. Ours never took to the mountains, they are on the prairie still where I live.
yep, another tasty animal. i was more speaking of the eastern seaboard and the virgin forest areas. prairies excluded. the deer there are doing much better due to the fact they need prairie habitat. the buffalo were killed off to control indiginous populations. but if there were so many millions before modern man what's the difference if we now have millions of cows?
The difference isn't the cow population, it's the amount of space that they take and energy that they consume because of the confinement that we impose on them. Unconfined roaming massive herds also chewed up the earth, that's why they moved in a circuit, not stayed in one place. But when you keep millions of cows in small spaces, they do more damage, and raising them in confined space demands more energy than it takes for it's return in meat. Millions before man were spread out and moving around. This pile we raise now is not equal to the millions before we took over the land. You should try this game: McDonalds Game - Free Online Adventure Games You have to run a mcdonalds, the cows, grain for the cows, antibiotics for the cows when you have too many in one field, like that...it's dumb fun, but it's based on a balanced sim game concept.
[quote name='"SkunkPatronus"']Ok, repost, deleted the others... So I wanted to discuss this great 'High-Thought' and I posted it in what I thought would be the right section, Science and Nature, and it surely wasn't... I can't post it in my Organics Section, because they'd think I was a nut, but I might try there eventually. and I can't post it in the Religion and Spirituality Section because half the time they respond with things like 'you don't really exist' and 'we are all just One' worse yet, 'prove you exist', or other stuff I don't get... So, I'm trying it here: "I have been thinking of my plants, which are organic, my soil, which I had to put a lot of time into, in order to get the micro nutrient load present for the plants to pick it up, and I had to keep a micro-herd functioning in the soil for optimum uptake. Then I thought of other creatures with bio-herds that assist them with uptaking nutrients of some sort, like termites for example. They eat wood, 100% cellulose, and the bacteria in their digestive apparatus assists them in breaking it down. Then I was thinking about UFO's, abducties, and cattle mutilations...and It occured to me that if the Aliens were using the human's for genetic studies, in order to make us a better equiped species, I personally would aim at decreasing our need for exogenous protien...in order to decrease our dependancy on meat eating because the methods we are presently using for meat production are harming the planet we live on. In order to do that, if I were an alien, I would enable a human to use the same method of protein consumption that a cow uses. Cow's do not eat grass, and just grow big muscles, they actually house a whole subset of bacteria in one of their stomach organs, and breed them for consumption. The whole ruminent family of animals, do not need to eat exogenous protien, because of their ability to make their own bacteria as their only source of protien inside their 2nd and 3rd gut, and then digest the chewed up and digested grass along with all that bacteria... in huge amount I might add. We humans also use bacteria in our colon's to make nutrients bio-avalable, but we lack the ability to move the colon's contents back to the stomach for digestion of the actual bacteria, we just poop it all out. Our poop is very high in protein. If we were able to use our intestinal flora for a food source, we would not need to eat meat. The planet would support a denser population and be better sustained. Since the cattle mutilations are almost all teeth, jaw, esophagus, and stomaches and mammary, I was thinking that maybe they are looking at making a few genetic changes in us, to assist us in survival. Using cows as the model. Just an idea. I am a huge meat eater btw. \t\t" I got one decent response about how cow husbandry doesn't do anything to the planet and added this: "No, raising cattle is hard on the planet, land use, we put more energy into raising stock to eat than any other food production known. Because cattle actually consume 16 times more grain than they give back in muscle. Refrigeration and transportation necessary for beef but not grains or beans. A pound of potatoes requires 99.6% less water to raise than a pound of cow, it takes 5,217 gallons of water to raise a pound of beef over the life of the yearling beef, 1,630 for pig, 25 gallons for a pound of wheat. Our water shed is slowly disappearing, the great Ogallala aquifer is the largest body of fresh water on Earth, and it lies underneath some of the richest farmland in the world -- the great American grain belt. But things are changing. The Ogallala is a fossil aquifer, which means the water in it is left from the melted glaciers of the last Ice Age. It's not like a reservoir or river, which are replenished regularly from rainfuall. When the water in the aquifer is gone, it's gone. Desalianation of ocean water is cost prohibative, or we'd do more of it. Animals eat a lot more food than they provide as meat. It takes 16 pounds of grain to make one pound of beef. That's 94% more land than if we just grew our own food on it. And 94% more pesticides because of our dismal farming methods. All told, livestock eat 70% of all the grain we produce in the US. It would be better if we could use bacteria for food within our own bodies." Just a thought, but I thought it was kinda a good one. We'd be better off set up like cow's...maybe the aliens are onto something? __________________[/quote] This is the single greatest post I have ever read on any Internet forum. Forget the aliens, that is some clever thinking on your behalf. ( sorry about the forget the aliens bit but I think the thinking that got you to that thought is very very clever!!) Maybe we have made a huge mistake growing meat for food? Well not a mistake but maybe that is one thing we could change that would benefit the planet , our species and every other one for that matter. Why don't we 'brew' food from a fast growing mix of plants before we consume it? Artificially replicate what cows and other herbivores can do that we can't. Could our digestive system survive on a balanced gruel of microbes already processed to be bio available to us? would that be possible? Could we just eat an inert substance packed with what we need? Wow ur a smartypants skunkpatronus love your thinking. Oz
you are correct. all one has to do is visit a feed-lot or dairy and view the mountains of poo, or look at the brown run-off after a rain, to understand the problem . as for grain or corn fed animals, they taste better than grass fed. during hunting season i visit grain farms where they are happy to lose some of the hoards of deer and elk that "visit" in droves. as far as a processed sustainable food-source.....soylent green?