I don’t have the info on me now, but I can post it later. Both animal husbandry/livestock and agriculture have benefited greatly from intensive methods, producing more food on less space with fewer resources. It is possible eggs are an anomaly though. I’ve never read about them specifically. Do you have any facts to present?
No, they haven’t. They’ve caused an apocalyptic amount of destruction which has been swept under the carpet by governments. If it were actually costed out, and if those responsible were made to pay for it, there would be hundreds of billions of $ changing hands.
You are, incidentally, conflating the term “intensive agriculture” with what might loosely be called factory farming. Intensive agriculture simply means the production of large amounts of food on very small amounts of land, and most modern organic/regenerative operations are “intensive”. Most historical ones have been, too. Broadacre farming is the exact opposite of intensive: it involves growing crops in a manner which is highly inefficient, but which works well with mechanized systems.
Eggs are not an anomaly. The return on investment is tiny (or negative, in a free market), and as noted, it involves the destruction of natural capital. Same for soya-farming, low-end meat, wheat, and all the other mainstream agricultural commodities.
I have a lot of facts, but I’d need to write a book if you want all of them. What are you interested in specifically?
1 Like
A book recommendation would be fine, thanks.
Way better. Shell.is thicker, eggs are bigger in the supermarket. Taiwan’s eggs are tiny .
I used to eat free range eggs from our farm, nothing beats them .
1 Like
I’m not sure if I can give you a single book that you ought to read. I own, or have read, upwards of 100 books on farming, soil management, animal husbandry, etc. Each one offers a slightly different set of facts and a different viewpoint.
You might try “Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal”, by Joel Salatin, but realistically you need to actually operate a farm to understand why industrial farming doesn’t do what its proponents think it does, for the same reason you need to have some actual involvement in the energy industry to understand the fossil-fuels vs. renewables debate. There’s a lot of technical knowledge needed before you can really grok the subtleties involved, and that knowledge tends to come from experience, not book-reading.
A very readable (and free) book is “Three Acres and Liberty”, by Bolton Hall, not because it describes state-of-the-art modern regenerative agriculture but because it describes what’s possible when magic technology simply isn’t available. Much of the advice in that book is still valid.
You might also like to watch some of Richard Perkins’ videos on YouTube. He’s operating a pretty big organic farm in Sweden and makes excellent use of appropriate technology.
2 Likes
Carrefour has had had ‘free range’ eggs on the shelf for years.
Whether the farms actually have them running around a field like you would imagine, is another thing and very doubtful.
Not in Taiwan. I probably wouldn’t be allowed to do it there - I certainly wouldn’t be able to afford the land area required.
I’m sure there are still these places. But you have so many free range options.
Are you getting free range eggs? They taste like the eggs I had in Italy. We had our own chickens that roam freely and laid eggs. The eggs tasted very different, particularly the yolk was a richer flavor.
I’m not too impressed with the eggs in the US in general, but I’m sure there are also good eggs.
I grew up on a farm. Now, the most successful farms in the area all use intensive approaches. Everything I read basically states the negatives as excessive runoff/manure fertilizer, excessive use of antibiotics and poor animal welfare. The benefits from a humanistic point of view tend to outweigh the negatives. I’ll read the book you suggested. Thanks.
As for energy, I’m in the nuclear power is required crowd. Wind and solar are too low density and fossil fuels are too dirty. 100% nuclear for national grids supplemented by private wind and solar. Developing nations need to develop their hydropower and burn fossil fuels until they are stable and rich enough for nuclear.
“Free-range eggs have a higher likelihood of exposure to hazardous microbes such as Salmonella and E.coli due to lack of management practices within these facilities. This poses a risk to human health, as the chance of being exposed to Salmonella and E.coli is more likely in free-range systems.”
There’s a lot more to it than that. I do it this way partly because I don’t want to be part of the problem, but mainly because I can make more money.
It’s horses for courses. Technology rarely transplants well, and there are all sorts of issues to consider when designing energy infrastructure - it can even be the case that what works in one part of a country will not work in another part because of differences in climate, geography, geology, or population density.
Commentators often overlook the fact that power generation and power usage are reflections of each other. A lot of modern industry was designed to match the characteristics of coal-fired power stations - ie., hard to start up and shut down, and therefore a source of continuous, constant power. It is that fact, more than anything else, that constrains the adoption of (say) solar in industrial nations. Such constraints don’t exist in “developing” countries. But they have other constraints to address. For example, most of them are overwhelmingly rural, which means it’s economically impossible to build a National Grid. Their load profiles are dramatically different to those of urban societies. Their level of technical competence is low to nonexistent. Corruption tends to sabotage all grand plans. In those cases, solar and wind are optimal on many different measures.
1 Like
Data suggests that energy leapfrogging doesn’t work well, and what happened in Germany? Total failure.
People want to use more power and manufacturing requires it. The way to lift people out of poverty is to give them abundant power for manufacturing and city living. That also leads to stability, and after a peak in the output of pollutants, a cleaner future.
Those developing nations will never become advanced without using denser energy sources.
Commentators use words like “leapfrogging” to wave away a whole load of complexity that they can’t be bothered to understand. Designing energy infrastructure is an engineering problem like any other - there are certain requirements and constraints, and the best solution is the one that meets those requirements and constraints. If something fails to work, it’s invariably because the designers have misunderstood those requirements and constraints … or because someone (usually a politician) has fiddled around with the design and breaks it.
What is commonly overlooked is that societies that aren’t “developed” are like that because, fundamentally, that’s the way they want it. Do-gooders tend to come in and sponsor well-intentioned projects like solar powered lighting without realising that, if people actually wanted those things, they’d save up and pay for them like everyone else. The end result is that a load of expensive kit ends up in landfill within six months because the recipients really don’t have sufficient motivation to keep it working.
I completely disagree. You can’t lift people out of poverty, nor can you drag them out of it by force. Someone has to want to stop being poor; and if they want it badly enough, they’ll figure out how to. Generally they do it by getting the hell out of whatever shithole country they’ve been born into.
I’m not really sure what “denser energy sources” are, or why they’re special. I use solar on my farm because it works 24-7, unlike the laughable shambles known as the power company in my locale. It’s also free, and electrically-powered tools are 300x nicer to use than gasoline-powered ones. But that’s just me.
The failure of “developing” nations to develop is 90% cultural, not technological: they have certain beliefs, laws, and patterns of behaviour that keep everyone poor and ignorant. You can give poor people all sorts of stuff and they will be unable to derive an income from it - because they’re poor. They think and act like poor people. Just as importantly, their neighbours think and act like poor people and severely constrain everyone’s ability to be anything other than they are. I’ve seen it happen in many different contexts.
Thanks for the replies. I enjoy reading the other perspective.
With respect for fossil fuels, denser means more hydrogen atoms and less complex structures. It also leads to a greater capacity factor. Nuclear leads by a long shot and solar and wind are dead last.
How many KWH can your solar array provide daily? Do you have batteries for when the sun isn’t shining? Like I said, for individuals solar and wind, resurrected with battery backups, are great. But I think city living is essential for advanced societies at this time.
Thanks for your thoughts.
1 Like
In many situations, this is a relatively minor design consideration. An energy infrastructure consists of much more than just power sources. As mentioned, one main consideration is that the source should be matched to the load - that alone can make or break the economic viability of any given power source. For example, if you want to run an aluminium smelting plant with 24-7 operation, solar would be the worst possible choice.
The capacity factor for wind and solar can vary dramatically depending on the precise nature of the installation and the loads connected to it, and it’s not a very good figure of merit anyway. It’s a bit like the way petrolheads compare figures for bhp or drag coefficients or whatever, while the average commuter just wants to know if the car will get him to work and back for the least possible cost. Similarly, all that really matters with (say) a solar installation is: does it provide adequate power for the intended application, and does it do so cheaper than any of the theoretical alternatives? If so, then it’s a good solution.
No idea. It varies all over the place depending on the weather. On the average, I suppose about 1.5kWh/day. The point is that it provides what is required for the operation of my farm (and my house).
2kWh of lithium phosphate cells and about 500Wh of lead-acid. This sort of thing would actually work very well in small communities - in theory I could probably make some money by hooking up the neighbours to a much larger array, but it’d be a whole lot of effort for a fairly modest payback (especially since they probably wouldn’t pay their bills).
That all depends on your definition of “advanced”, I guess 
I agree with you that village living tends to produce people with a very limited outlook on life. Whether that’s a bad thing is up for debate.
2 Likes
Only way for solar to be able to generate a lot of power is to collect it in space and somehow beam it down to earth. Then no problem with weather or day/night cycles, especially if the orbit is in such a way that it never goes to the night side of Earth.
1 Like
Such a terrible post with a surprisingly wonderfully accurate finish
Efficiency of food is a hot topic. Arguably it is more efficient, but i dont think there is much debate regarding it being better for the environment. It isnt. the amount of medicines used on chickens here is gross, and it goes directly into the water. Quick description.
Chickens are raised in tiny cages stacked on top of each other. In order to maintain growth, they need hormones. In order to not get infections from being shat on daily, they need meds. In order to avoid skin infections due to humidity here and said shat, more meds. Fleas, rats etc more poisons. Farms are built on concrete pads. Said pads have their poop shoveled out and sold in bags as (psuedo) organic fertilizers. meaning, all that gets spread into fields. What is left, aka a lot, is hosed down and goes into ditches. Ditches go to rivers and eventually oceans.
If one doesnt have morals and doesnt care about anything but themself along that journey, they just need to realize they are eating all the various crap they give the chicken in their kfc, their field grown crops and their seafood. Enjoy the full course karma meal
If we want to liken ourselves as an intelligent species, we cannot continue this form of agriculture unless we accept being total and complete hypocrites. Or morons. Either is accurate. And we still dont show greater understanding or intelligence.
3 Likes
In Australia they have a dozen different ways of advertising the quality of the eggs, organic vs. free range vs. cage free vs. barn laid vs. omega 3 vs. whatever… and then the one that says “Just Eggs”, as if to say to the frazzled consumer, it’s okay, you can relax, we’re the safe choice because you know what you’re getting! 
Sheesh, hoomans. 
1 Like
Actually it’d be great if someone could post a list of the common packaging terms used in Taiwan, and what precisely they mean. I do pay more for the “good” eggs at Carrefour, but it’d be nice to know specifically what I’m paying for. (FWIW I care very little about organic; I care more about “[less un]happy chickens”.
1 Like
You haven’t seen development on steroids, have you?
Declare village X to be part of the neighboring megacity, throw a pile of money at it, stir in some social organization, and poof! The people are a bit rough around the edges, some of the facilities are opened before the roads to them get paved, and so on… but within a few years the community blends in, and you would have trouble guessing how many years ago the village disappeared.
I’m not saying that model would fly in Elbonia, and I’m definitely not saying the practice always follows the theory (as unfortunately there’s a tendency to replace the villagers with rich people instead of turning the villagers themselves into rich people), but even so, it’s a thing.
2 Likes