By contrast, stressed plants are much noisier, emitting an average up to around 40 clicks per hour depending on the species. And plants deprived of water have a noticeable sound profile. They start clicking more before they show visible signs of dehydrating, escalating as the plant grows more parched, before subsiding as the plant withers away.
someone smarter than me should get to inventing a device that listens to plant clicks and tells you when it needs water
That’s actually mentioned as one possible use case further down the article!
Might be a good use-case to have your home irrigation system be triggered by plant clicks instead of a schedule.
It could be. Although we don’t know how much those sounds indicate distress, and perhaps watering should happen much sooner.
Imagine if aliens abduct you and give you food only when your stomach makes the kind of noise it makes after three days without eating anything, because “that’s all they can detect.”
Well hence they will work out when the plant (or human in your example) is really starving.
We’ve already established that. But that method will shorten the life of the plant (and human.)
I dunno, calorie restrictions has tended to lengthen lifespan in other organisms we’ve tried it on.
Sure, but not to the point in which it’s a constant stress.
That idea is mentioned in the article, yes.
Edit: apologies. The OP has already pointed this out.
Vegans: … uh… now what?
Vegans consume fewer plants than anyone else. It takes a LOT of plants to raise a cow, pig, or chicken. From an economic point of view, meat is a way of refining mountains of cheap, plentiful, safe plant products into a scarce, harmful and addictive luxury product. This comes up a lot, you’d be amazed how many plants rights activists your average vegan runs into.
…addictive?
Addictive like water and air are addictive.
the same plants that are being fed to animals are the plants that we eat too. animals are mostly said crop seconds or parts of plants the people can’t or won’t eat.
Wouldn’t you need to decimate the population of cows, pigs, and chickens in order to reduce their environmental impact? This argument always invokes an image of Thanos wiping out half the universe in order to ‘save’ it, but the people making this argument never seem to be receptive to acknowledging this point and just hand wave this step away.
Which would you prefer? A thousand people living freely or a hundred thousand people living in cages too small to stand up in?
Get outta here with pretending that big number = better. Those animals are raised in horrifying conditions explictly to be slaughtered. They wouldn’t exist in the first place except for the cruelty and greed of the meat industry. We routinely acknowledge that there are ‘fates worse than death’ for people, but when it comes to animals people seem to forget that. With the ending of the meat industry, fewer animals would exist, but they would be much better cared for.
Ending the meat industry would result in the extinction of breeds we have engineered for meat and milk production.
Ending factory farming would significantly reduce numbers and increase quality of life for the animals.
The population of livestock is artificially high because of meat industries. Additionally, all animals in a meat producing farm will be killed already. That’s the entire purpose. Simply slowing the reproductive rate of the industry would reduce the populations on a fairly short timeline. I’m a meat eater myself, but using the killing of animals as an argument AGAINST slowing meat production is not very logical.
Meat eaters are already decimating populations, they are Thanos with a universe conveyor belt, clicking every second.
Vegans: we’ll have only a little vegetable cruelty, as a treat.
Whatever keeps the high horse fed.
You’re going to have to unpack this a bit more for me.
Edit: Ohhhh, you’re another one of those plant rights activists. Buddy, I eat plants for breakfast. You know what? Now I’m going to eat twice as many plants, just because it upsets you.
Lol your reading comprehension.
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Oh no, you’re not better than anyone! Tragic.
Assholes like wiping shit off. Which is what the block button does to you.
Dumbest person on the internet today award goes to…… YOU!!! Congratulations 🎉🏆🎉
Either that’s true, and I can’t read your comment anyways, or it’s not and you’re a dipshit.
Real classy of you to do the toddler thing of sticking your fingers in your ear and going “la la la I can’t hear you”. (It’ll be an honor to share a spot on your block list with these other two fellas.)
Unless you count grass and non-human consumables and non-potable water…sure…until then that’s bullshit.
How is that bullshit? I am not vegan, but that’s just a scientific consensus and a major reason why plant diet is way lower carbon than a meat diet. If you need to grow plant food for your animal food, eventually you have to grow way more plant food.
Most animals raised for meat consumption are fed with crops, notably soy, not wild grass.
Thinking animals raised for meat only consume resources (land (first cause of biodiversity loss), plants, water, energy) that would not be useful to humans anyway is undoubtedly wrong.Researchers Poore and Nemecek are a great source of meta-analysis information about those subjects. Check this summary here for example: http://environmath.org/2018/06/17/paper-of-the-day-poore-nemecek-2018-reducing-foods-environmental-impacts/
Let me know if I misunderstood your point.
It’s less important that such arguments be factually accurate than that they are superficially convincing enough to distract the person giving the argument from thoughts and feelings they are unwilling to process.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/50901500/px-based_v3.2/educ-matrls/pdfs/HO_what-cows-eat.pdf
We do not feed them food we can eat, it would be such a waste to do so. We literally feed them shit we cannot consume. Feeds are made from roots/stalks/inedible plants.
The vegan industry doesn’t like this, so they say well that land could be used for other things, when in reality it’s already being used for the food that we eat.
They are also fed grains and soy in varying percentage depending on regions and countries.
There is also still the use of land, energy, fresh water and the methane emissions typical of cows.This is another break down of the above-mentioned study: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
You can see that indeed, the USA does better than other countries on not dedicating crops to animal feed, but it is still about 14%, while the world average is around 40%. Isn’t that a lot that could be earned back?
The majority of the land used for cattle grazing is not suitable for farmland. It’s either to hilly or rocky or just plain doesn’t have great soil. Not to mention the level of crops it would require to feed people and the amount of people who just cannot sustain on a all vegan diet. There is a reason we are omnivores and not herbivores.
This is also covered by the study and the article I shared above. It would require using more lands for crops that feed people, but that’s ridiculously small compared to the land that would be regained from stopping animal agriculture, which is 75%. Just removing cows would do the vast majority of that.
Crops for feed can be regained and if most pasture land is inappropriate for crops, some are, so we would gain from freeing those too. Furthermore, this land can be given back to biodiversity, which will also benefit us in the long term, if just protecting biodiversity for the sake of it is not a good argument for you.
Again, I am not vegan, I mostly advocate for reducing, not forbidding, consumption proportionally to ecological impact. If some people for medical reason require meat, I’m completely fine with it, this would likely be a small percentage of the current consumption.
Omnivore, not obligate carnivore except for a few exceptions maybe, so we could use a low meat diet or a fully plant based diet fine.
The majority of the land used for cattle grazing is not suitable for farmland.
But why should land be treated in that binary? How much biodiversity is being destroyed just to keep cattle or some other animals instead of keeping it in its natural state?
Yes, but inefficiently.
You go eat some grass/roughage and tell me how well that fills you up.
Pretty well, actually. Grasses like corn, wheat, rice, and oats make up a substantial portion of the typical diet.
What figures are you basing your ignorance off of? The majority of the plants humans grow through crop-based agriculture are fed to non-human animals. Animal ag is one of the largest consumers of fresh (ie “potable”) water. There are ten animals living in human possession for every human on Earth. Without intensive plant agriculture, we could not possibly feed them all. Grass and run-off is not what is producing your food.
And since we are specifically discussing the hypothetical suffering of plants, why wouldn’t you count grass? You’re triggered.
The majority of the plants humans grow through crop-based agriculture are fed to non-human animals.
It’s not that clear, it depends on the country. See the part about share of cereals dedicated to animal feed in this link, it’s about 15% in the USA and the rest of the feed is byproducts of crops used for human reasons. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
The majority of the plants humans grow through crop-based agriculture are fed to non-human animals
That’s a lie. 2/3 of the world’s crop calories go directly to people. One third of the world’s crop calories go to livestock, but that’s as the other user is mentioning, mostly crop seconds or parts of plants that we can’t eat.
What figures are you basing your ignorance off of? The majority of the plants humans grow through crop-based agriculture are fed to non-human animals. Animal ag is one of the largest consumers of fresh (ie “potable”) water. There are ten animals living in human possession for every human on Earth. Without intensive plant agriculture, we could not possibly feed them all. Grass and run-off is not what is producing your food.
No they are not. They eat the shit we cannot eat, they graze the majority of their lives and we use non potable water to water them. The feed we feed them is not made with anything that a human could consume. It’s roots/stalks/inedible plants. This bullshit that keeps being promoted by vegans that everything a cow can eat is bullshit.
And since we are specifically discussing the hypothetical suffering of plants, why wouldn’t you count grass? You’re triggered.
Because your entire point was that vegans consume less plants than anyone else, which is basically saying “vegans are still better than meat eaters” it’s more hilarious dick wagging from you chods.
Lol butthurt misinformation troll
Lol I’m butthurt? Lol you vegans are fucking hilariously ignorant bunch. You’re like religious zealots too, all high and mighty with an ignorant levels of information being spewed to you.
This is the epitome of projection, FYI. All this wasted energy and impotent vitriol, railing against a non-existent evil (“the vegan industry?” seriously sad), defending the (actually malignant) status quo for free. It’s exhausting feeling so sorry for you
Are you saying grass aren’t plants? Why would it matter if the plant is consumable by humans if vegans are trying to minimize suffering?
Because they’re not about minimizing suffering, it’s about being morally superior to meat eaters and letting everyone know about it. The post I replied to, literally made that a point.
I challenge you to make an appetizing meal out of the plants (and specific cultivars!) used as animal feed.
Not a vegan: remember we raise a lot of these plants just as feed. If the reason to feed disappeared, so would the vast quantity of “not tasty” plants.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/50901500/px-based_v3.2/educ-matrls/pdfs/HO_what-cows-eat.pdf
No we do not…this is bullshit propagated by vegans. You cannot eat the shit cattle do.
Yes, but I can grow human food on the same plots of land.
…what part of the food grown is for humans and the shit you cannot eat from it is fed to cattle do you not get? You also cannot grow most food where cattle graze, as it’s to rocky or hilly or has to little water for it other than grass…
Step 1: feed them to a cow Step 2: you now have a fluffy pet cow Step 3: profit
If you think pigs, chickens and cows have the same level of awareness and perception as broccoli, tomatoes or potatoes than you’re the potato.
Humans have to eat and with the exception of a few minerals like salt, everything edible to humans is alive on some level. Vegansisn is making an ethical choice about reducing what causes the most pain fear and suffering in another. If I were to develop cancer, a tape worm or a virus should I also allow those living things to thrive as well or does “Uh, now what?” also apply to antibiotics?
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If you think pigs, chickens and cows have the same level of awareness and perception as broccoli, tomatoes or potatoes than you’re the potato.
Eat people because they’re potatoes, got it!
Or wait, it’s “than”? Hmm…no, I can’t think of how to turn it into a joke with a punchline of “than” being there instead of “then”, lol
How about I just get to eat meat because I consider it far more humane to be more efficient about proteins? And eggs and cheeses are more efficient with all sorts of aminos.
As much as I respect vegans I also don’t agree with their approach. I am of the opinion (as is most biologists) that we are omnivores.
(as is most biologists) that we are omnivores.
No vegans dispute this. In fact that is a large reason we point that meat is not a necessity to a healthy diet like many claim.
But fundamentally I’m not here to talk about veganism. You are entitled to your own beliefs, I only wanted to provide a complete answer to the “hypocritical vegans” comment that appears in every thread paints feeling pain. While I personally think deciding that things are most “humane” when they are “efficient” for you regardless of the effect it has on others is selfish and motivated reasoning, thus unethical. But this thread nor community is a place to discuss ethics, I clearly illuminated why equating plant rights and animal rights is silly, so frankly I would just like to end the discussion there. Thanks.
No vegans dispute this.
I’ve actually seen vegans dispute that. I have no problem with veganism. It is not a bad idea. I don’t eat meat, but I do not have the willpower (or the money) to be a vegan.
But I have seen that.
(or the money) to be a vegan.
That’s an urban myth as the whole foods plant-based diet is 30% cheaper and it’s only the prepackaged supermarket vegan alternatives that are more expensive on average.
There are several products that are more expensive in any diet like waygu steak or decades old wine.
Oxford University research has today revealed that, in countries such as the US, the UK, Australia and across Western Europe, adopting a vegan, vegetarian, or flexitarian diet could slash your food bill by up to one-third.
Your paste:
adopting a vegan, vegetarian, or flexitarian diet could slash your food bill by up to one-third.
Me:
I don’t eat meat
Either you did not read my post or you ignored it to lecture me anyway. Either way, you are not here in good faith.
I’m only disputing your claim that the “vegan diet is expensive.”
Claiming the vegan diet is expensive when a comprehensive study by Oxford on the topic says otherwise necessitates reexamining the claim.
Well I do think getting protein from many sources makes more sense and easier to obtain. Are there other options? Absolutely. But how available are they at all times and how much do I need to eat to get the same amount? I hear what you are saying by selfishness but we kind of have to be. It’s what fuels this giant meat puppet I move around daily.
Many sources of protein
You think vegans just eat blocks of tofu all day? My diet has never been more varied and flavorful than when I went vegan. Every single environmental impact study says animal agriculture is a bane to our continued existence, and it goes so far beyond that. Our lands and crops are swallowed up by this ever-rotating machine of suffering and murder that affects the lives of billions of land animals every year, which die terrified and in pain. No “varied protein” myth is worth so much suffering.
And now it seems we can say the same with plants. Life per se is bad because it is based on a predatory scheme. We need to eat more living things in order to keep living…
Vegan Bullshit Bingo
#22: Plants have feelings tooNo, they do not. There is no serious study to suggest that they do. Plants do not have a brain or central nervous system. At most, they respond to stimuli. If you really care that much about the welfare of plants, you should go vegan, since many more plants “die” for animal feeding. Do you feel bad while mowing your lawn? And would you rather rescue a potted plant than a dog from a burning house? Is docking pig tails the same as branch trimming to you? Question upon question…
No. One of my sisters is a vegan and we have had extensive talks about it. Yea garbanzo and peanut butter are great power packed availability. But peanut butter only goes so far. Garbanzo needs a massive amount to match isolated whey or anything close.
I totally agree with the environmental impact. I wish I could have locally sourced options that wouldn’t impact the environment so much.
I love how micromanaging nutrition only ever comes up when veganism is mentioned. Do you think people who gorge themselves on steak and cheeseburgers are inherently healthier than someone with a vegan diet because they consume animal protein? You might be shocked to learn that the densest source of protein doesn’t come from an animal.
EDIT: You DO have local sources available to you. It’s in the same grocery store you buy slaughtered animals from.
Local meat is not better for the environment. Scientific information is only one click away. Look at this graph, it’s impressive. Plus:
Vegan Bullshit Bingo
#11 I only eat organic and regionalWhile seemingly 99% of people say this about themselves, the proportion of organic meat in virtually all western countries is less than 2%. Maybe you consciously buy organic products for the big feast, but then in everyday life you go get your weekly hamburger, the restaurant around the corner, or “just this once” prefer to reach for the somewhat cheaper discount products. Moreover, in organic farming, animals suffer and die in the same way. Organic cannot solve the core problems: Murder and exploitation for pleasure. The goal is more about soothing the conscience of consumers rather than actually helping the animals.
Local meat is local murder.
What? The entire point of veganism is that it is an entire order of magnitude more efficient than eating meat. Turns out all the land we use to feed animals we can just grow soybeans on instead. Speaking of which, you want amino acids? Wanna take a guess what has all the amino acids you need? That’s right, tofu! It’s widely recognized as the healthiest source of protein possible. That sets it apart from red or processed meat, which actively gives you heart disease and cancer.
Look, I’m sorry, but you’re just wrong. If you want to eat meat despite the facts indicating you shouldn’t, that’s fine. Same as you can decide to smoke cigarettes and drive a Hummer. Just be aware that it’s worse for both you and the entire planet.
Excessive soy beans has side effects as well. Most nutritionists (like doctors) agree that plant based with diversity of meats is the healthier option.
You don’t need those animal products for nothing. As most doctors are carnists and do not fully understand nutrition because they have not studied the topic much in their training.
The objective of this article is to present to physicians an update on plant-based diets. Concerns about the rising cost of health care are being voiced nationwide, even as unhealthy lifestyles are contributing to the spread of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. For these reasons, physicians looking for cost-effective interventions to improve health outcomes are becoming more involved in helping their patients adopt healthier lifestyles. Healthy eating may be best achieved with a plant-based diet, which we define as a regimen that encourages whole, plant-based foods and discourages meats, dairy products, and eggs as well as all refined and processed foods. We present a case study as an example of the potential health benefits of such a diet. Research shows that plant-based diets are cost-effective, low-risk interventions that may lower body mass index, blood pressure, HbA1C, and cholesterol levels. They may also reduce the number of medications needed to treat chronic diseases and lower ischemic heart disease mortality rates. Physicians should consider recommending a plant-based diet to all their patients, especially those with high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or obesity.
your case study is over a decade old. do you have any supporting data?
The entire point of veganism is that it is an entire order of magnitude more efficient than eating meat.
the definition provided by the vegan society makes no mention of efficiency.
eating meat has no effect on the planet.
What does being omnivores have to do with anything?
How about I just get to eat meat because I consider it far more humane to be more efficient about proteins?
What does this have to do with anything? This is bringing efficiency to an ethics fight.
I’m not fighting. I find it annoying to have to eat 16 times the amount of normal peanut butter as one chicken breast. It’s pure math.
If something is wrong, then it’s wrong, regardless of how efficient or inefficient it is.
It’s not wrong though lol
Well, that’s a completely different argument.
I hope they like stones. Hmmm, those crunchy minerals!
I hope they like stones. Hmmm, those crunchy minerals!
They look like big, good, strong hands, don’t they
Goron cuisine
Thought the last mineraterian starved to death last Thursday?
Haha as always, you do what you can
Won’t someone think of the plants feelings?!?
Eat fruits, the plants give those to you specifically to eat.
In the same way that cultists give human sacrifices to Cthulhu specifically to eat.
I’m pretty sure the fruits are screaming too.
The whole deal is that we get to eat the fruit, and in return we provide the seeds within with a nice nitrogen-rich deposition nice and far from the parent plant.
It’s not a death cult, it’s a sex cult. The fruits might be screaming, but not in pain
They yearn for your colon
:
And the deal with Cthulhu is that he gets to devour whoever you’ve sacrificed, and in return he provides a benefit to the survivors: allowing them to live long enough to provide more sacrifices. It’s basically the same deal.
Also, if anyone reading this happens to be a seed on a fruit meant to be devoured by humans then I have bad news about your final destination: it’s rather a stinky place that is not in any way conducive to your growth. The cake is a lie.
It’s basically the same deal
It’s not even remotely similar.
Also, that “stinky place” to us is heaven to a plant. Kinda how the foul oxygen they excrete is life-giving air to us.
The stinky place isn’t soil. It’s a sewer or a landfill, because that’s where human waste ends up. Neither can support plant life because they are devoid of light, just like the realm of Cthulhu.
Doesn’t change the plant-animal arrangement from the perspective of the plant, it’s still freely given. We just hold up our end through agriculture.
I’m screaming, and the things consuming me can’t.
What? The fact that plants physically react to being cut has absolutely no bearing on whether they have conscious experience.
Well, not in any way that we can relate to anyway. But that was the same with animals much earlier.
How much earlier are we talking? I bet if you asked prehistoric hunter-gatherers whether they thought animals experienced pain, they woulds say yes. The idea that animals were automata comes from Descartes.
Time to start eating bacteria now, I guess.
Maybe hundreds of years from now we can synthesize nutrients without involving any living cells. At that point, it could be seen as unethical to enslave, murder and eat billions of microbial cells. For the time being, our life still depends on other living things, so better get comfortable with having mixed feelings about survival.
Technically we can, it’s just so expensive as to be completely out of the question.
But they’re working on it!
Personally, I’m still just waiting on lab meat.
Doing chemistry by mixing chemicals is like fumbling in the dark. You tend to have ridiculously low yield, because you can’t really control which reaction takes place. It’s just a game of probabilities, which makes this gamble really expensive.
Living cells are doing chemistry the right way by combining specific materials and making specific products. Enzymes are very picky, but with them you can actually control the reactions. Making enzymes is just next level complexity and a story for another time.
Isn’t that basically what nutritional yeast is?
No, yeast is fungi.
Same concept, though. Grow microbes in a vat and eat them.
Bacteria already release stress chemicals when their food is lacking, so…
They should eat each other. It’s the only ethical choice.
Promoting plants 69ing is so 2024.
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The ethical choice is dehumanization.
You are definitely the sane person here
The ultimate ethical reason is to delete all ways of living because this is the only way to not promote suffering.
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they’re literally not human
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you can’t dehumanize nonhumans
This is exactly the response the author was hoping for.
No, it doesn’t.No, it isn’t.
Doesn’t what.
You’re right, I should have written “No, it isn’t.” Fixed.
So, no, it isn’t the response the author was looking for.
Fair.
Disagree, but fair.
There’s absolutely NO WAY, not even a scintilla of a percent, that the author did not expect the
kingkind of discussion we’re seeing here to take place. None.
Well, sort of. Not in the same way you or I might scream. Rather, they emit popping or clicking noises in ultrasonic frequencies.
Another “science” community with clickbaity bullshit.
Eh… What? It’s an interesting article. The screaming is in quotation marks. So as far as I’m concerned, the title is fine.
Mowing my lawn must be a fucking nightmare for everything involved. ☹️
Imagine if instead of a podcast or audiobook or symphonic power metal you had to listen to the screams of your lawn as you mowed its life short
It gets worse – that doesn’t kill the grass. It just mutilates it.
and you get to do it over and over again every time it grows back!
grass is the Ken Kaneki to my lawnmowers Jason lol
Grass Metal!
That’s what the fresh cut grass smell is.
You know why freshly mown grass smells so nice?
The smell is the grass’s defense against grazing animals, as it attracts predators.
It smells nice cause it tells your predator brain there are prey animals you can eat nearby.
So the grass is literally snitching on the animals that are eating it, announcing their presence to their predators.Evolution is fascinating that way.
Wait till you hear about grazing.
Hasn’t this study been done before? Feel like I’ve heard of grass “distress signals” from years back
Yes, remember that one as well, but this is a literal sound, not only a “plants communicate stress in some way” (if I remember the previous research correctly).
This sound right to me
Nah, the pops and clicks are just plant language for, “I give my consent to be your food. Namaste.”
I hear the screams of the vegetables (scream, scream, scream)
Watching their skins being peeled (having their insides revealed)
Grated and steamed with no mercy (burning off calories)
How do you think that feels? (bet it hurts really bad)
Carrot juice constitutes murder (V8’s genocide)
Greenhouses prisons for slaves (let my vegetables grow)
We have to stop all this gardening (it’s dirty as hell)
Let’s call a spade a spade (a spade is a spade is a spade is a spade is a…)
Salads are only for murders! Cole slaw’s a fascist regime!
Omg I had completely forgotten about this!
Remember that Mythbusters (Episode 61 Deadly Straw) that re-created Cleve Backster’s primary perception experiments to show plants can sense malicious intent and totally re-created his results? I had to re-watch it to make sure I was remembering correctly. They totally just alter the experiment until they break it, then sweep it under the rug and call it busted. Totally.
So it’s been years since I’ve seen it, but I do remember that episode. I went through the wiki a bit and read up on some of Backster’s experiments and how they were received by the scientific community… not great. It is a very intriguing subject, but I think it gets anthropomorphized pretty bad. Even the title here, “plants do scream” almost implies consciousness. I do think there are mechanisms that plants may have evolved that we don’t fully understand. Like holding onto water or nutrients if there are more plant clicks (screams) happening nearby. But we have to be scientific about this. In the article, they talk about possible sources of the clicks possibly being air bubbles escaping the plant. Jumping to some of the conclusions that were explored in the past like “plants have ESP” are tall claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Claims like that were never reproducible, so we shouldn’t believe them. I think plants are amazing, and we should keep studying stuff like this, but best to stay realistic and phrase these findings appropriately. Just my two cents.
My phone also screams (signals) when someone calls, must mean my phone feels pain I guess.
I remember this mythbusters episode. They basically detected that plants “might “ scream or signal to other plants. They got some weird outliers too.
You misremember it a bit. They saw “activity” when the thing was connected to the plant. Then they moved the plant into a steel container and the readings stopped. They hypothesized that they detected something like vibrations from a busy street etc, not a plant “screaming”.
It’s been years since I’ve seen it, so yeah that’s probably right
Mythbusters episodes are all over YouTube free for everyone. Just a little FYI in case you feel nostalgic
Oh im gonna watch some mythbusters.
For me the question is if plants can actually hear these distress sounds, otherwise it’s not really for communication.
They probably do. But even if not, it can be used for communication with insects and other animals.
If this is interesting to you, you may also be interested to check out the book The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger
Is it about people eating light?
Talk about fast food
2/3 of crop calories go to humans
Source?
The paper is from 2013. The number of animals in factory farming were ramped up since then.
Then: She says crops not crop calories.
“From the 41 crops analyzed in this study, 9.46 × 1015 calories available in plant form are produced by crops globally, of which 55% directly feed humans. However, 36% of these produced calories go to animal feed, of which 89% is lost, such that only 4% of crop-produced calories are available to humans in the form of animal products. Another 9% of crop-produced calories are used for industrial uses and biofuels[…]”
55% + 9% = 64% = 2/3
So you’re correct with the 2/3 crop calories(!) if we count the 9% biofuel/industrial stuff with it.
But why is the following?
“According to a 2011 analysis, 75% of all agricultural land (including crop and pasture land) is dedicated to animal production.”
I’d suppose it’s because of this reasons: A. Pastures need a lot of space which for which often woods or rainforest are burned and biomes are destroyed. B. Probably the most eaten vegetable (potatoe) is very energy dense and has a lot less waste by-product and therefore needs a lot less space than animal feed like soy, wheat or corn.
This is everything I need to know from your paper to say that the system of animal agriculture is fucked, wasteful and destroys nature and our health (not only because of the pandemics it causes):
“Put another way, shifting the crops used for feed and other uses towards direct human food consumption could increase calories in the food system by 3.89 × 1015 calories, from 5.57 × 1015 to 9.46 × 1015 calories, or a ∼70% increase. A quadrillion (1 × 1015) food calories is enough to feed just over 1 billion people a 2700 calories per day diet for a year (which is 985 500 calories per year) [1]. Therefore, shifting the crop calories used for feed and other uses to direct human consumption could potentially feed an additional ∼4 billion people.”
Pastures can be regenerated, btw: https://www.reddit.com/r/farming/comments/1ds3fvh/how_to_turn_pasture_into_a_garden/
Edit: The latter is what the “Vegan Land Movement” is doing very successfully by rewilding pastures to wild lands again where a wide variety of wild life is finding a refugium now.
what I’m reading is that I’m right, and you would like to shift the discussion to land use
Nope. I’m not shifting anything. You were by changing the subject from crops to crop calories without taking into account humans can grow calorie dense foods on relatively small space opposed to animal feed which needs a lot crops, land and produces a lot of plant waste and in addition is inefficient because only a fraction of calories come out of the slaughtered being compared to the initial calories in plants.
All that while we cull millions of feeling beings in the worst possible way right now because of H5N1 (add that to the polycrisis) waste enormous amounts of resources for little protein and calories and destroy nature.
Here have a look at some frail vegans, while the world burns, mate:
Here have a look at some frail vegans, while the world burns, mate:
your dunk-brained links to Reddit are not getting clicked
how do you measure crops if not by crop calories?
the same crops that feed animals feed people. they eat fodder and industrial waste from the same fields that produce food that people eat. it’s a conservation of resources.
Delicious screams. With butter.
