Is there any future?

djpbarry

Kama wrote: »

While growing your own food might currently seem 'unrealistic' or 'too much effort', if we assume a current state of petrochemical dependence in food production, and a steadily increasing price of oil/energy, the tipping point comes when it is less expensive to grow (a portion of) your own food.

I would say that point has already been reached, particularly if you're vegetarian and you already have the necessary land.

meathstevie

Why vegetarian ? I've started growing a bit of veg and fruit in my garden ( spuds, carrots, onions, strawberries and two apple trees to come soon ) but also a bit of the meat is ultimate free range, i.e. game and the odd wild trout. If you have a garden that's anyway sizeable you could for example buy a few male chicks and fatten them from table scraps and put them on the table in a few months time. You don't need to store anything in fridges or freezers, you just take them from your pen and 2 hours later you have your meal ready.

Kama

Kama wrote: »

, the tipping point comes when it is less expensive to grow (a portion of) your own food.

If you're referring to vegetables, the cost tipping point has never come into the equation, it's always been cheaper (in money) to grow your own, just is very time consuming.

For poultry, then it's hard to match the supermarkets.

MeatProduct

BraziliaNZ wrote: »

oh come on I'll give anything up except travelling. Can't we keep that one????
I brought up the idea that we have too much "stuff" in this day and age and we eat too much meat on After Hours a while back and I was laughed out of the forum.
Seriously - cattle farming is a huge issue, we need to find other sources of protein. Fish farming could be the way forward, but I think that's dodgy, doesn't it give you cancer or something? farmed fish that is?

It's the animal protein that gives you cancer. Cases of protein deficiency are rare and is hugely overplayed in support of the dairy industry.

Meat production is very resource intensive and it consumes a lot of fresh water not to mention the cost of fertilizer, transport, and the embodied cost of rearing a cow. Aside from all that the nutrients from meat are second hand as those nutrients are largely taken from what the animals are eating. There's also the added bonus of collesterol in meat which is the main driver behind heart disease, the biggest killer in the US.

Stop eating meat and it will free up resources that are better spent elsewhere because the nutritional argument for meat and dairy is null.

Nick

AngryHippie

red meat, perhaps,
Poultry on the other hand is relatively inexpensive to produce, provides high levels of protein, and is quite environmentally friendly (guano makes an excellent fertilizer).

Even on the red meat issue, While intensive cattle farming is hard on the environment, it is quite sustainable to graze a few on a small plot of land without rising the sea levels, and a bullock goes a long way to filling a fridge. With the added bonus of knowing where your meat came from, and what it was fed.
Same almost applies to sheep, although they do provide less meat from a carcass, they are fairly low maintanance, the problem with sheep is that it is as much work to keep two as it is to keep thirty, so it is hard to justify the amount of work for just two...

Kama

Except for a dietary purist, local meat production isn't comparable to an industrial-agricultural setup, whether in terms of petrochemical inputs, food miles, quality of animal life, and so forth.

Btw we couldn't use chicken**** as fertiliser straight, had to compost it first, or it burned stuff (pH am guessing).

kamana

http://anticivnet.blogspot.com/search/label/tribal%20peoples

djpbarry

kamana wrote: »

http://anticivnet.blogspot.com/search/label/tribal%20peoples

Point?

kamana

djpbarry wrote: »

Point?

do I need to explain?

djpbarry

kamana wrote: »

do I need to explain?

Generally when somebody digs up a 6-month old thread, they have more than a link to a blog (which seemingly has little or no relevance to the discussion) to contribute.

kamana

aahh mr djpbarry its so good to hear from you again. It's been so long, did you miss me? I sincerely hope you haven't been hanging around your pc for the last 6 months waiting for me to resurface.
I think that link is highly relevant. It shows directly what civilization is doing. I am optimistic that you will have a read of it.

djpbarry

kamana wrote: »

I think that link is highly relevant. It shows directly what civilization is doing. I am optimistic that you will have a read of it.

I'm sorry to disappoint, but I simply don't have the time to wade through every single post in an obviously biased blog in the hope that I might find something of interest. If there's a specific point you want to draw my attention to, feel free.

johnathan woss

Having read through this thread I'm sure some of you are familiar with this site but I'll post it anyway:
http://www.theoildrum.com/

Are any of you members of ASPO - Ireland ?
I'm not but I'm trying to educate myself on this stuff as fast as I can.
Events seem to be unfolding faster than most would have predicted.