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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   25097 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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The U.S. produces 51.5 million acres of hay and 37.3 million acres of wheat per year. So setting aside all other forms of animal feed, more land goes to producing hay alone than to wheat.

However, I think that Zeke was referring to small mammals getting killed during harvesting, which my googling suggests is more due to increased predation from loss of cover than getting chewed up by machinery.

Which is why I'm pointing out that raising cattle at scale involves harvesting even more land. Estimating the effects on animals from cropland is difficult, but it's not a comparison that favors beef to begin with.

A lot of hay production is a tax write off- it’s cheaper to have a guy come bail up your hay on land you aren’t using for agriculture than it is to pay taxes on it. Some of that land is also fallowed, or hay is otherwise a secondary product(certain kinds of hunting leases, for example).

The Saw Doctors - Hay Wrap

You can grow hay/alphalpha on extremely marginal land, which is largely unusable for other crops. I’m not arguing that these crops never displace food commodities, but in general I would expect that farmers favor food crops which are typically more valuable.

But zeke5123 is talking about accidentally killing animals as part of growing and harvesting crops, not optimal land use. That seems like it would be similar per-acre whether you're growing alfalfa or wheat.

It's a completely different subject but I'm reminded of Scott's 2015 post about California's water crisis:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-doing/

34 million acre-feet of water are diverted to agriculture. The most water-expensive crop is alfalfa, which requires 5.3 million acre-feet a year. If you’re asking “Who the heck eats 5.3 million acre-feet of alfalfa?” the answer is “cows”. A bunch of other crops use about 2 million acre-feet each.

All urban water consumption totals 9 million acre-feet. Of those, 2.4 million are for commercial and industrial institutions, 3.8 million are for lawns, and 2.8 million are personal water use by average citizens in their houses.

Which leads to interesting calculations like this:

The California alfalfa industry makes a total of $860 million worth of alfalfa hay per year. So if you calculate it out, a California resident who wants to spend her fair share of money to solve the water crisis without worrying about cutting back could do it by paying the alfalfa industry $2 to not grow $2 worth of alfalfa, thus saving as much water as if she very carefully rationed her own use.

But in any case the question of whether alfalfa is worth the resource usage has little to do with zeke5123's objection.

But zeke5123 is talking about accidentally killing animals as part of growing and harvesting crops, not optimal land use. That seems like it would be similar per-acre whether you're growing alfalfa or wheat.

Alfalfa maybe, but generic hay production probably kills fewer animals because of less pest control, tilling, etc.- even though being a mouse caught in a mower is pretty bad, just like being a mouse caught in a combine harvester.

California agriculture is feckin' crazy, because they're growing water-heavy crops in places never meant to grow anything, in order to exploit the good climate and growing seasons. And because they don't have sufficient water resources, they have to drag it out of rivers originating in other states.

But hey, that's their economy and their problem to sort out.

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