ukimalefu wrote:
user wrote: may have meant faux, but didn't want to say
Maybe NOT: fashion designer is making faux leather from pineapple leaves.
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BUT this allows me to bring up a point that was talked about by Steven Novella in the latest podcast of the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe.
He was describing the false economy of organic farming. One thing that gets significantly de-emphasized is that much of organic farming uses NATURAL forms of fertilizer, by far the most being manure produced by the cattle industry.
BUT one of the arguments for a more vegan food system is that we would be using at least fewer resources for raising cattle with the ideal being that there would be no cattle being raised for beef.
With such drastic reductions in the cattle industry perhaps to the point of disappearing entirely, what would be the source of that manure?
The basic problem is fixing atmospheric nitrogen into forms usable by plants then animals then US. Of course there are power-intensive means for making fertilizers but none of these are considered organic. There are crop-rotation means like growing alfalfa but this would REQUIRE that a much larger percentage of current food-production fields being allowed to fallow.
SO a question I asked myself after watching my linked video: do those pineapple farmers REALLY not use those fibers from the harvested pineapple plants as claimed in that video? Or are they "wasted" by being plowed into the ground to be fertilizer for subsequent seasons?
