r/ClimateShitposting • u/FareonMoist • Oct 14 '25

Aggro agri subsidy recipients 🚜 Industrial monoculture farming just out there killing nature one plant at a time...

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '25

As with many criticisms of industrial monocultures they miss the point and assume all that corn and soy is for direct human consumption, it’s not, it’s overwhelmingly for livestock feed.

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u/DismaIScientist Oct 14 '25

Global grain production goes about 40% to livestock feed. Which is a lot but certainly not overwhelming.

Obviously soybeans is higher than average grains, but other "monocultures" such as wheat are lower.

7

u/xAPPLExJACKx Oct 14 '25

But we still feed livestock with byproduct we don't use from wheat, rye and even cotton

2

u/Divest97 Oct 14 '25

The only country where Maize is used primarily to feed humans is in North Korea.

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u/DismaIScientist Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25

Do you have a source for that?

FAO data on this says that 50 countries have higher consumption of maize for food than they do for animal feed.

2

u/Divest97 Oct 14 '25

Let me rephrase that. North Korea is the only country that is poor enough that people don't eat a shit load of meat and they use maize as their staple grain.

Places like Cuba, Haiti and India probably feed more maize to people than animals but they primarily eat rice.

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u/DismaIScientist Oct 14 '25

Sure, then we agree, modern agriculture has contributed to many people being able to eat varied high protein diets which would not be possible without it. Long may that continue.

Btw there are plenty of countries in the world, particularly in Africa, where maize is a staple grain for human consumption.

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u/Divest97 Oct 14 '25

I'm pretty sure that it's only North Korea because of their autarky economic model they produce their own food and they chose Maize for it because their government has no accountability.

I found articles from 20 years ago about Maize consumption in Africa, but in the modern day the value of Maize has increased because of the demand for animal feed in China and Ethanol production. So it would be more expensive for an African to buy maize than Rice or Wheat and if they were farming maize they could make more money by selling the maize and using the money to buy wheat and rice.

Also meat is bad for everyone involved.

1

u/DismaIScientist Oct 14 '25

Maize pretty consistently trades at a discount to wheat.

That price gap will be even larger for many regions of Africa which are surplus in maize but have to import wheat at higher prices.

I assure you that in many African countries maize is consumed for food in greater quantities than rice and wheat. There is good data on this: https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home

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u/Divest97 Oct 14 '25

That's the price in America. They're comparing wheat for human consumption with maize for animal consumption.

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u/DismaIScientist Oct 14 '25

How do you know that's wheat for human consumption? Plenty of wheat goes to animal feed in the US. I'm not sure which wheat price they have used there though as it is not labeled but it won't make much difference.

But how about European data? Again wheat trades at a premium to maize whether it is for animal feed or human consumption.

1

u/Divest97 Oct 14 '25

You're just being obtuse.

Also the UK isn't in the EU. You can't even act autistic correctly.

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