Mike McDowall <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>Isn't that a bit of an oversimplification ?
Almost certainly!!
> If you really are going to
>evaluate production only in terms of "efficiency", surely it is the
>whole system you should be looking at ?
Yes, agreed. And I think I was considering the whole <agricultural>
system, plus a bit more by thinking of food wastes. But of course, there
are all sorts of other aspects when you look at the real food chain -
fossil fuel costs of storage, distribution etc, etc. I'm certainly not
advocating
>Central planning !
but just trying to get people to think of indicators other than just
conversion efficiency of the animal step in the food chain.
>
>
>I am not really advocating whole system design. However, a
>production system using _some_ cereal feed for producing animals
>could still be more "efficient" than not producing off large areas and
>using all the cereals for human consumption.
Undoubtedly. The question that it would be interesting (but no more
than that) to investigate is to decide how much is "some" in your
suggestion. Is it 1%, 10% or what? I'm pretty sure that the current 40%
( see Ian's posting) is not ideal, but where the "ideal" lies (however
defined) ............?
And that's without considering all the landscape, social fabric, pollution
and other issues!
Dick M
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