Are you going to keep animals?
When I tell about my place in Germany that is as self-sufficient as possible, people often ask if I will also keep animals. The answer is no. And that's not because I don't like animals, because I love animals.
1. First of all, I want to be able to be away from home for a long time. To be precise, I want to go on holiday in the winter, because then there is nothing to do in the Netherlands (or Germany). In fact: in the summer I have 2 performances, 3 parties and 4 birthdays every weekend - in the winter I am depressed (hint: organize your party in the winter aghr!). Anyway, animals have to eat every day. Only cats can go a week ahead with a large feeder.
2. I think it will be difficult enough just to grow two vegetables for us. If I also have to grow crops for animals, well, then I should have put down edible things for myself right away. For a cow, that comes to 9 kilos of vegetables for one kilo of meat. Below you see a table of how many kilos of vegetables an animal should eat per kilo of meat as a yield:
| Salmon | 1,2 |
|---|---|
| Chicken | 1.9 |
| Pig | 2,8 |
| Cow | 8.7 |
3. Animals also need a lot of water. If you look at the table below, you will see that growing vegetables also requires much less water than livestock. A kilo of vegetables needs about 332 liters, while a kilo of meat from the cow needed 15,415 liters. Note that this counts twice, because the crops that animals eat must also have to drink:
| Sugar beet | 197 liters |
|---|---|
| Vegetables | 322 liters |
| Fruit | 962 liters |
| Milk | 1020 liters |
| Eggs | 3265 liters |
| Chicken meat | 4325 liters |
| Pork | 5988 liters |
| Goat meat | 8763 liters |
| Nuts | 9063 liters |
| Cow meat | 15415 liters |
4. Animals also need space. Of course I could look for a secluded part of the terrain, but my terrain isn't that big. Keeping large livestock is certainly not an option, chickens are still possible in terms of space. Below is a table of how much space industrially kept animals need.
| Meat chicken | 0.05 m2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Rabbit | 0.063 m2 | |
| Meat calf | 0.5 m2 | |
| Pig | 1.0 m2 | |
| Dairy cow | 5 to 10 m2 |
5. As said, I love animals, so slaughtering them is not my hobby. Just give me vegetables. I see people as animals, so to eat animals is like eating someone of my own kind. If meat is very environmentally friendly, superfluously and animal-friendly, then let me eat a piece of meat, but that is not what society now offers for meat.
All in all, the B12 will have to come from outside the property, probably from eggs, which are even available in the village so that will be fine. But, no offense, tell me, if you're reading this, do you see how many sources cow meat (beef) needs? Did you know that - in addition to transport - cows also have the greatest contribution to environmental pollution, eg. by eating soy from Amazon rainforests?
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