Vegetarian dilemma?

[Paul mabbott]

The term 'rangeland' is new to me - sounds like grazed grassland. Welcome to Rangelands Australia tells me that '"Rangeland" is the Earth's most extensive land type. An international term, rangeland covers 50% of the earth's land surface on every continent except Antarctica.'
So it's a human lanbd-use term not an ecological one. In fact it incorporates several ecosystems; clearly 'threats' to rare wildlife might occur in some of the habitats (although I suspect that grazing produces as big a threat as arable farming).
As I thought, the original comment is just making a huge generalisation with little factual basis.

[Paul mabbott]

Originally Posted by Meta menardi

No sheep, no moors and fells.

Going back to nature then?
What the quoted author is doing is taking extreme views (not uncommon amongst meat-addicts) - all land has to be converted to intensive crop growth, all extensive grazing has to be stopped - simply use some of the rangelands for organic growth of arable - an economically and ecologically moderate way of preserving nature. Best thing would be for folk to stop eating so much meat but I doubt that would get through to the average Australian.

[Cotham Marble]

Originally Posted by Meta menardi

No sheep, no moors and fells.

Which raises some interesting questions about human shaping of environments. While some areas of open moor and fell undoubtedly existed in the period between the retreat of ice sheets from the last glacial maximum, and the advent of extensive clearance for agriculture in the Neolithic, the majority of the UK below 500 metres was forest or forest/scrub. Grazing may have been the most effective way of extracting human food value out of UK uplands as they were post clearance and post soil degradation, but it's not hard to envisage how technological development could make harvesting fruits from tree/shrub species an effective alternative to sheep and cattle farming. Given such a development, would restablishment of widespread tree/shrub cover, (either for food or biomass energy fuel) on the UK uplands not be more in keeping with the pre human ecology than the mediaeval pattern of exploitation that currently being followed ?

CM

[Johnny Redgate]

Originally Posted by Cotham Marble

Which raises some interesting questions about human shaping of environments. While some areas of open moor and fell undoubtedly existed in the period between the retreat of ice sheets from the last glacial maximum, and the advent of extensive clearance for agriculture in the Neolithic, the majority of the UK below 500 metres was forest or forest/scrub. Grazing may have been the most effective way of extracting human food value out of UK uplands as they were post clearance and post soil degradation, but it's not hard to envisage how technological development could make harvesting fruits from tree/shrub species an effective alternative to sheep and cattle farming. Given such a development, would restablishment of widespread tree/shrub cover, (either for food or biomass energy fuel) on the UK uplands not be more in keeping with the pre human ecology than the mediaeval pattern of exploitation that currently being followed ?

CM

We are where we are. Your suggestion is very interesting and it would be good to see some of these developments. But nuts, fruits, biomass etc would need to be commercially harvestable and distributable. At least livestock walk off the hills.

[PMG]

Originally Posted by Paul mabbott

Fine - cattle, sheep &c are products of human development - unnatural, would not survive without humans - but they have taken over vast swathes of the world eliminating much wildlife .... anyone interested in wildlife and the health of the Earth would want to minimise the numbers of these .... greatly ....

It think it might be the number of humans thats making the problem - it might be better for the earth if there was less of us

Pauline

[Paul mabbott]

Originally Posted by PMG

It think it might be the number of humans thats making the problem - it might be better for the earth if there was less of us

Pauline

Quite so, and that would get rid of a proportional number of cattle &c..

[PMG]

It wouldn't be possible to feed everyone on this earth if we all became vegetarian - every scrap of land that could be used for agriculture would need to be taken and folks would still starve in certain parts of the world due to weather/climate - including this country. It wouldn't be difficult to turn England into a dustbowl or a quagmire at certain times of the year and so lose essential crops. Removing cattle, sheep and pigs would take away a lot of natural fertiliser with the possibility of losing insects and fungi associated directly with it. The loss of natural fertiliser on and in the ground could have some unforseen effects too? As could covering the country in chemical fertiliser and raping the soil repeatedly. Protein is neccessary to human function and yes you can live a long healthy life without it being animal derived as we can see from the vegetarians and vegans alive today. It isn't eating meat that causes problems in mankind - its the carbohydrates we add to it that messes up our digestions and health - that plus the lack of running around to catch it

And as an afterthought I find the idea that everyone should be doing the same thing - living the same way - eating the same etc a bit strange? And an oversimplification of the worlds problems .........

Pauline

[nightshade]

I agree with Pauline, we were designed as Omnivores to take advantage of plants, fish, fowl, and four legged beasties. Could you envisage feeding the population with just plant material from our own small island. Our wildlife has evolved to fit into the arable farming system, monocultures of veg. in large areas are already a problem
.

[Paul mabbott]

We were not 'designed' we evolved ...

Originally Posted by nightshade

I agree with Pauline, we were designed as Omnivores to take advantage of plants, fish, fowl, and four legged beasties. Could you envisage feeding the population with just plant material from our own small island. Our wildlife has evolved to fit into the arable farming system, monocultures of veg. in large areas are already a problem
.

[PMG]

Originally Posted by Paul mabbott

We were not 'designed' we evolved ...

No need to take offense Paul - its probably a slip of the tongue - but as nightshade was saying we are omnivores our teeth prove that