Feeding with mealworms as the only protein source

[3KillerBs]

I don’t understand you’re explanation.

Did you know we have huge problems here in the Netherlands with pollution by factory farming? The soil is unhealthy (too much nitrates) caused by factory farming and chemical industries.
We have way too much huge chicken, cow, goat, pig and other animal farms. Feed is imported from countries like Brazil, who burn rainforests to grow gmo soy and corn.

We also have invented so-called vertical farming with greenhouses to address the food problem. Meat (growing animals like pigs and chickens ) costs a lot more nutritious feed than eating veggies with proteins. So there is hope for the future if we downscale the factory farms and give the organic farms and healthy veggie farms/greenhouses a chance to grow.

You do not have enough land to support your population.

If you eliminate your modern, efficient farms you have even less ability to support your population.

 

[Shadrach]

With respect, perhaps you are unaware.
My Free Range Culling Project

My Acres of Weeds (in some of the better US climate for such things)

I am doing what you suggest - and without power tools or the benefits of modern machinery beyond a chainsaw, a generator, and electrically powered hand tools like drills and screwdrivers.

I am doing so on roughly 5 of my 30 acres. There's just two of us. I can do the math, it doesn't work for the US population. Too much of the ground isn't suitable. and the very good feed I offer my birds from the local mill is only possible because of grains shipped halfway across the nation - regularly, cheaply.

I also have five goats (two get wethered next week, on is going to freezer camp soon), a cat, two dogs, and am adding meat rabbits to my near 70 poultry. My neighbors have cows. We do a little barter, here and there - and if I can hit anything, maybe I take a deer or two each year in season. I *know* how the system works, and I'm getting better at demonstrating understanding via successful practice.

Oh excellent. No I haven't read either thread. Bad luck on the poor forage.
I just happened to step in on your post. It was a general comment. I should have posted without the quote.
My aplogies. No offense meant.
I had a system for a decade such as I describe in Catalonia although it wasn't for survival or profit; more out of interest in studying free range chicken behaviour.
My Uncle had a similar system for his free rangers when I was noticably younger and worked on his farm.
Many of the people I've come into contact with in my interest in free range chicken behaviour in various parts of the world use a similar system.
I posted mainly to point out that there is another way, but of course one needs the land and most backyard chicken keepers don't have that.

We had wild boar in Catalonia and although I no longer hunt we used to get regular meat by letting the night hunters use the land.

 

[BDutch]

You do not have enough land to support your population.

If you eliminate your modern, efficient farms you have even less ability to support your population.

No, this is not true.
If we eliminate these huge efficient farms, we can use the free space for agriculture and greenhouses to feed humans.

Do you know how these meat farm operate over here? The Netherlands is importing feed. And exporting meat. It has a huge flower and food industry that is polluting the soil we live on and the air we breath. .

Now a lot of land is used as a poop dump and used to grow feed for farm animals. Animal proteins are not efficient.
If we could eliminate the large meat farms and grow more health food our country and the people can live healthier.

Btw: Eating no or little meat (if balanced ) sure is healthier than eating cheap meat every day.

We don't need land to grow food. We even grow food in greenhouses on old factories.

(Edit spelling)

 

[BDutch]

https://www.greatervenues.com/nieuw...s-werelds-eerste-drijvende-vergaderboerderij/
We have floating farms too. Handy if the sea rises .

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I don’t understand you’re explanation.

Did you know we have huge problems here in the Netherlands with pollution by factory farming? The soil is unhealthy (too much nitrates) caused by factory farming and chemical industries.
We have way too much huge chicken, cow, goat, pig and other animal farms. Feed is imported from countries like Brazil, who burn rainforests to grow gmo soy and corn.

We also have invented so-called vertical farming with greenhouses to address the food problem. Meat (growing animals like pigs and chickens ) costs a lot more nutritious feed than eating veggies with proteins. So there is hope for the future if we downscale the factory farms and give the organic farms and healthy veggie farms/greenhouses a chance to grow.

I don't understand why you think the Netherlands is anything more than a rounding error. The Netherlands imported (depending on source) of about $3.2 Billion US in cereal grains in 2020, and produced just 1 million tons of wheat for domestic consumption. Your biggest supplier of cereals is France, Ukraine and Germany. Bluntly, their factory farming makes your population possible.

Specialization provides efficiencies of scale and experience. Return to family style farming, with each farm not only largely self sufficient, but actually producing a surplus would dramatically reduce the amount of food available for trade, and further, require a massive reallocation of labor back to an agricultural, rather than service, economy. Pro-tip. The First World Countries on this planet? Majority Service Economies. The Second World Countries? Manufacturing Economies. Third World? Agricultural Economies. That's not an opinion, its history and economics.

Take away modern fertilization and similar practices? Even less of the ground is suitable, and yields fall yet further.

Greenhouses, Aquaponics, all the rest - at scale - require huge chemical inputs and have big carbon footprints as well.

I'm a "systems" person. Don't point at the cute ears, big eyes, and sad expression and tell me its an elephant. I'll show four legs, massive body, the landscape behind the beast, and a huge steaming pile of $#!+. THAT is the "system" of an elephant.

and for reference, the elephant in this room is the US factory farm - which exported $20 Billion US in 2020 in cereals, accounting for 1/6th of the world grain market. The only larger exporter of wheat is Russia, and wheat hardly makes our top 10 agricultural exports - its number 8! That same year, the US had 36 million acres under harvest for wheat, more than three times the size of your entire country - and produced over 28 million tons of the stuff.

 

[3KillerBs]

and for reference, the elephant in this room is the US factory farm - which exported $20 Billion US in 2020 in cereals, accounting for 1/6th of the world grain market. The only larger exporter of wheat is Russia, and wheat hardly makes our top 10 agricultural exports - its number 8!

And we feed the world on far less land than we used even 50 years ago.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Oh excellent. No I haven't read either thread. Bad luck on the poor forage.
I just happened to step in on your post. It was a general comment. I should have posted without the quote.
My aplogies. No offense meant.
I had a system for a decade such as I describe in Catalonia although it wasn't for survival or profit; more out of interest in studying free range chicken behaviour.
My Uncle had a similar system for his free rangers when I was noticably younger and worked on his farm.
Many of the people I've come into contact with in my interest in free range chicken behaviour in various parts of the world use a similar system.
I posted mainly to point out that there is another way, but of course one needs the land and most backyard chicken keepers don't have that.

We had wild boar in Catalonia and although I no longer hunt we used to get regular meat by letting the night hunters use the land.

I don't take it personally. I'm not wired that way. No apologies needed.

Was pretty clear you were addressing the "general" and making some assumptions. My specific experiences are helping to tease out the assumptions (and there were a lot of them) that allowed family birds a century+ ago to live on "nothing". Really, they lived on waste - and for sufficient waste, of the right types, to exist it had to be a working farm - not the sort of specialized backyard flocks we see today.

I've spent a bunch of time on similar threads trying to educate in the face of some really rosy assumptions and some very selective views.

 

[BDutch]

@U_Stormcrow sorry this is a misunderstanding . I thought your arguments was about animal factory farming. We do need agriculture on reasonable large scale to provide food. Yes true, we don’t grow wheat and such in a large scale here and import a lot of grains and lots of tropical food too.
We have more grasslands for cows and free range chickens than we have agricultural land for crops like potatoes, beets, beans, brussels sprouts, cowl, corn etc. And the farmers use part of the agricultural land (corn an sugar beet) for cows too.

Our nr 1 NOx polluting factory in the Netherlands is the one that produces artificial fertiliser. Lots of land has become so poisoned that it became hard to grow food on it. So I would welcome it if Europe / our government decides it is prohibited to poison our land any further.

The greenhouses are not very polluting anymore if they use earth warmth, solar and wind energy. A lot of their ‘waste’ is recycled nowadays. (eg the leaves of bell pepper and tomato plants are used to produce board in the building industry) . If they change to modern and environmental positive techniques greenhouses are a way to produce lots of food and bio-based materials in the future.

Edit spelling

 

[U_Stormcrow]

@U_Stormcrow sorry this is a misunderstanding . I thought your arguments was about animal factory farming. We do need agriculture on reasonable large scale to provide food. Yes true, we don’t grow wheat and such in a large scale here and import a lot of grains and lots of tropical food too.
We have more grasslands for cows and free range chickens than we have agricultural land for crops like potatoes, beets, beans, brussels sprouts, cowl, corn etc. And the farmers use part of the agricultural land (corn an sugar beet) for cows too.

Our nr 1 NOx polluting factory in the Netherlands is the one that produces artificial fertiliser. Lots of land has become so poisoned that it became hard to grow food on it. So I would welcome it if Europe / our government decides it is prohibited to poison our land any further.

The greenhouses are not very polluting anymore if they use earth warmth, solar and wind energy. A lot of their ‘waste’ is recycled nowadays. (eg the leaves of bell pepper and tomato plants are used to produce board in the building industry) . If they change to modern and environmental positive techniques greenhouses are a way to produce lots of food and bio-based materials in the future.

Edit spelling

The same theories underlie factory farming, whether animal or vegetable. Its large scale monocultures, altering the lands to maximize suitable space and importing resources (feeds, fertilizers, water, etc) to support the continued drain on the area's ability to replenish itself, while concentrating byproducts for disposal or removal.

It allows a farmer (of whatever type) to concentrate expertise - that is, to be very very good at a thing - and to control for most variables, since so much is already imported to the property. The alternative, a balanced small scale system, generally involves a "farmer" who is passably good at a lot of things, desperatly trying to maintain a balanced ecosystem in the face of chance. Nature herself does a decent job of it planet-wide, but locally, not so much and not so often.

Lets use my own property as example. My incubation (mechanical) and culling allow me to maintain a balanced number of birds, providing (on average) whatever number of eggs per day I desire. I maintain very strict biosecurity. But if a wild bird were to bring a disease which ravaged my flock? It would take most of nine months to rebuild to current levels if I were to lose 75-80% of my birds.

In two years, NONE of my birds - ducks or chickens, have ever successfully incubated a clutch of eggs. I've sacrificed over 200 duck eggs to the effort this year alone, and a similar number of chicken eggs. I have an abundance, which I sell and sometimes donate, I can afford to do so - I'm a hobbyist, supported by other means - but very few living much closer to the margins could afford such persistent losses.

We had a cool fall. Last week, our overnight temps were in the 70s. This week, we had a hard freeze. All of my citrus, my blueberries, some of my other fruits had all been tricked into bloom by the early cold, followed by a warming trend. The hard freeze may have decimated this years production - I won't know for months. If I operated at the margins, I'd have been wiped out.

Two years back, in our (traditional) rainiest month (avg 8+ inches), we recieved just 1/8" of rain on property - destroyed more than 100# of seed I couldn't keep wet after planting, and altered the entire biome of my pasture - only the fact that I deliberately "cultivate" a polyculture kept me from losing the whole thing, and allowing invasives and native opportunist species from moving back in (anda LOT of weeding).

There have been other setbacks. I had to cull my only Rooster, more than a year ago, for reasons. My only doe dropped two boys this winter, giving me four male goats (the kids will be wethered next week), the sire goes to freezer camp "soon" - though I haven't a clue how I'm going to put him down to butcher him yet - I can't even catch him. or hang him up to do the deed.

I don't have the meat rabbits yet, who knows what "fortune" I will have with those.

...and none of this is unusual, its just chance playing out. Modern society, resources, etc allows me to suffer these setbacks in ways I could not if I also needed to produce all the feed for my animals and most vegetables for my my wife and I. Last year's potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions were a bust, as was the garlic. This year, the onions, leaks, garlic are all doing spectacularly. I'll know about the asparagus in a year or two - it takes a long while establishing itself - but I have concerns.

I could - I'm certainly trying - to build a largely self sustaining ecosystem on the grounds, and I've got a lot of ground (albeit with similar soil characteristics) to play with. But its a precarious thing - any 50/50 roll of the dice can easily throw it out of balance. and has, routinely.

 

[raingarden]

I have been absent because it took me a couple of days to get though a neat book, The Business Hen by Herbert Collingwood (1904). It's a vailable on line. Interesting how they sourced protein for poultry feed a century ago.

I come back to this thread and there are five pages of sociology. I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and enjoy both gluttony and the notion of subsistance agriculture.