this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] ashok36@lemmy.world 73 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Also the fact that one bad year in your tiny part of the world means you and everyone you know die slow agonizing deaths. Fun!

[–] Socsa@sh.itjust.works 36 points 5 months ago (2 children)

This is also a major point of livestock. If you have more produce than you can eat, feed the excess to some animals and they will keep those calories fresh and delicious over the winter.

[–] Shard@lemmy.world 18 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Adding on to that, its not just the surplus produce. Its all the rest of the produce that's unusable by us humans.

When we grow something like corn, we're only growing it for the kernels that we can consume. We can't physiologically make use of the stalks, stems and leaves, but an animal like the goat? They'll chew up anything green and turn that into usable calories we humans can make use of.

[–] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Doesn’t even need to be green, just any sort of plant or really any sort of organic matter. Eating goats that have lived off of old trash is probably not the best idea though

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Which neatly raises the point of how modern large monoculture does a lot less of that kind of use of agricultural products unusuable by humans.

Absolutelly, the whole of a cow slaughtered in a slaughterhouse is famously used (down to the hoves) and nothing thrown out, however you don't see goats being raised on the unusable parts of a corn plant (whilst wheat straw is actually used as feed, for corn the silage for cattle made from it uses the whole plant including kernels not just the left-over unusable by humans parts).

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 6 points 5 months ago

livestock

Explains the name perhaps

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago

This is part of the reason why early farming was so inefficient. Have a plot up the hill, have one in the valley, grow multiple crops, etc etc.

That's not done to have more food, that's done so you don't die when something bad happens.