I just want to point out a situation of hardship and how food security works out where animal farmers aren't too subsidized.

"Nigeria cost of living: People turn to 'throw-away' rice for food" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-68272830

This one is about rice 🍚, but not nice rice. It's rice that's left over from the main rice processing because it's too hard or dirty or some other standard incompatibility.

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A standard 50kg (110lb) bag of rice, which could help feed a household of between eight and 10 for about a month, now costs 77,000 naira ($53; £41). This is an increase of more than 70% since the middle of last year and exceeds the monthly income of a majority of Nigerians.
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They have economic/inflation problems. Rice is a staple, but even rice can be too expensive if you're poor enough.

One of the problems with grain conditioning for sale is that there's a lot of dirt and residue, as that's the stuff that comes out of harvest. In the process of cleaning it up and selecting out some parts, a certain % of the total mass of grains will become "residue".

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"Our wives spend hours removing stones and dirt from the rice before cooking and even then it ends up tasting not nice, but we have to eat to survive."
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I have actually done this with soybeans. I once received a sack of soybeans as a gift from some soy agronomic researchers, and it was straight from the harvester machine. It was grown for "feed", but it made for some nice tofu and miso. I imagine that cleaning rice is way more tedious.

Anyway, the relevant part of "residue" or leftovers from the process:

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Fish farm owner Fatima Abdullahi said her fish love it but because people are now eating afafata, its price has risen.
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There it is, that's the issue. The market competition for the harvest, humans competing indirectly with farm animals for food. Anyone paying attention to what's going on in Gaza is probably aware that this is happening there too, in a more dramatic sense (it's a famine).

And if animal farmers get subsidies, they can buy the food and the price goes up and either it becomes too expensive or there's none left for the poorer people, thus reducing food security and creating the conditions for famine. And, in the other way, no animal farming subsidies means more food security. This is why I get angry when I see animal farmers going on about "we feed the world". Feeding is not the same as providing nice, culturally promoted, luxury commodities.

This is an example of something that's happening at many levels and many scales, but it is a basic dynamic that will become more and more important as problems arise in the food systems due to environmental destruction, climate chaos, ecological chaos and running low on certain key inputs (including water).

#foodSecurity #animalFarming #plantBased #animalBased #trophicMinimalism #sustainability

What are trophic levels? And what is trophic minimalism?

#trophicminimalism

The ☀️ Sun is the main source of energy accessible on the surface of the planet.

Primary production is the biomass produced by those who consume that solar energy (and some other stuff): plants and blue-green algae. We call them autotrophs for that.

The more distant you are from the solar energy in terms of trophic levels, the more land covered in plants you require.

A nice paper to read:

"Eating up the world’s food web and the human trophic level"

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1305827110

#plantbased #diet #food #energy #land #landuse