Re: Do we need population control?

In article <93J8f.1521$2y.140@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
george conklin <george@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>"Herman Rubin" <hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:dju4c9$29ps@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


>> It is NOW known that the tropical rainforests have little
>> nutritional capability in their soil; there are no longer
>> any large agricultural areas to be utilized, unless global
>> warming finds much in the Arctic,

> Herman, Brazil for example is coming on board to feed meat to the Chinese.
>Have you been reading much lately about all the farmland in the USA which is
>being ABANDONED? I guess not. Your theory does not deal with FActs.

Some parts of Brazil, which is close to the size of the US
and almost all tropical, are fertile farming and grazing
land. However, too much of the Amazon forest, which is
not good land for those purposes, is being razed and used
for such.

> Further, Herman, when we eat a chicken fed with grain, we are throwing
>away 90% of the food value of the grain.

It is close to 50%. The 90% comes from feeding it to swine,
and it is even higher feeding it to cattle.

We could feed a population 10
>times our current level with the SAME food we have now if we ate a
>vegetarian diet. You can see the possibilities here, but maybe you can't.

Not with the SAME food. Cattle in Florida are being fed the
"waste" in converting oranges to juice. Sugar cane stalks,
after the sugar is extracted, likewise. Much of the product
of agriculture is not that good for human food.

Only about 10% of the soybean crop can be reasonably eaten;
the rest is edible, BUT few could tolerate it. The same
holds for much else. Most food animals can use convert
cellulose to starch, but not humans. This includes corn
cobs, cottonseeds, inedible rinds, etc. And we can well
use animal proteins, and even some animal fats, and the
other products, such as B12, essentially only produced
by animals.



--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
.

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