this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
810 points (91.9% liked)

Science Memes

10356 readers
2335 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.


Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Shard@lemmy.world 20 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Adding on to that, its not just the surplus produce. Its all the rest of the produce that's unusable by us humans.

When we grow something like corn, we're only growing it for the kernels that we can consume. We can't physiologically make use of the stalks, stems and leaves, but an animal like the goat? They'll chew up anything green and turn that into usable calories we humans can make use of.

[–] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

Doesn’t even need to be green, just any sort of plant or really any sort of organic matter. Eating goats that have lived off of old trash is probably not the best idea though

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Which neatly raises the point of how modern large monoculture does a lot less of that kind of use of agricultural products unusuable by humans.

Absolutelly, the whole of a cow slaughtered in a slaughterhouse is famously used (down to the hoves) and nothing thrown out, however you don't see goats being raised on the unusable parts of a corn plant (whilst wheat straw is actually used as feed, for corn the silage for cattle made from it uses the whole plant including kernels not just the left-over unusable by humans parts).