96
votes
Accepted
Do beef farmed pastures net remove carbon emissions?
No.
This is not really an infographic that is truthful. It is 'anecdotal evidence' evidence for one farm, very probably not true for that very farm, and in any case a misleading oversimplification.
...
- 42.9k
67
votes
Are 99% of US beef cattle given steroids to promote faster growth?
TLDR: roughly true, although the overall percentage of US feedlot cattle given such implants is around 90%, not 99%, according to 2013 USDA data, although it's higher in some US regions, for some ...
- 49.3k
65
votes
Do male chicks get ground up on most farms in the industralized world?
The early to mid 1900s saw the division of chickens into breeds that produced lots of eggs versus breeds that produced lots of tasty meat. Males of the first type (egg layers) obviously don't lay eggs,...
- 11.2k
29
votes
Do male chicks get ground up on most farms in the industralized world?
The Wikipedia page on chick culling provides a good overview.
Note that quoted claims confuse the general practice of culling with the specific practice of maceration. Culling also includes other ...
- 132k
28
votes
Accepted
Have farmers been sued because Monsanto seeds are blowing into their fields?
Schmeiser, the farmer in the original case, noticed one year that a section of his crop was not killed by Roundup. He saved the seed from that section and planted his crop following year with that ...
- 296
28
votes
Is animal agriculture responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation?
Yes. In fact, some sources calculate that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) figure is actually an underestimate.
A frequently cited study on the topic is Steinfeld et ...
- 17.5k
20
votes
Accepted
Are people dying of starvation because we cannot produce enough food?
I think the answer depends on what you mean by your question, which you stated as:
Is it "a known risk that people are dying of starvation because we cannot produce enough food"?
As is often the ...
- 3,564
16
votes
Are crop circles man-made?
There are several prominent instances of humans creating crop circles.
Claim 1: Doug Bower and Dave Chorley
The most famous claims of human-made crop circle come from Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, who ...
- 11.1k
15
votes
Do beef farmed pastures net remove carbon emissions?
Here's something nobody ever seems to ask: What's the alternative? Surely we aren't picturing a pastureland that would have been paved over with asphalt, if not for this heroic rancher? Certainly in a ...
- 1,604
14
votes
Accepted
Were modern wheat varieties specifically selected because it was less nutritious?
Were modern wheat varieties specifically selected because it was less nutritious?
tl;dr: Surely not.
How were wheat cultivars bred?
For what did breeders select?
Was the nutritional value ...
- 42.9k
13
votes
Are people dying of starvation because we cannot produce enough food?
Jean Ziegler says, that 12 billion people could be fed by the world production. This is also written in the fact sheet for the right of food of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights:
"...
- 239
13
votes
Do beef farmed pastures net remove carbon emissions?
Some of it is close to factual data for one particular farm in Nova Scotia.
Infographic have been based on calculation from this site https://wild-mountain-farm.myshopify.com/blogs/pasture-...
- 2,783
12
votes
Do US farmers apply Roundup to non-GMO wheat crops 7-10 days before harvest?
This is actually true, dessication with glyphosate seems to be an established practice. From the Glyphosate Task Force:
In the joint dossier submitted by the Glyphosate Task Force (GTF) for the ...
- 41.9k
11
votes
Are hogs scalded alive in slaughterhouses?
Given that millions of hogs are slaughtered in the United States every month, it is entirely possible that workers do observe pigs being scalded alive. However, to the extent that USDA regulations are ...
- 7,049
10
votes
Does the Earth only have 60 years of harvests before the top soil is lost?
If she said it in 2014, she wasn't the first.
For example, in a 2012 interview, Professor John Crawford of the University of Sydney said ,
A rough calculation of current rates of soil ...
- 96.4k
10
votes
Do most people have no idea where their food comes from or how it’s made?
Yes, Viva!, a UK-based pro-vegan charity conducted a survey in 2016.
Here is their press release dated four days before the cited article.
Note, this was not a scientific study, published in a peer-...
- 132k
9
votes
Does the Earth only have 60 years of harvests before the top soil is lost?
This posted article from May 2019 discusses the claim and its origins.
The idea that there are only 100 harvests left is just a fantasy
Despite dozens of headlines quoting these predictions, ...
- 199
8
votes
Accepted
Does the USDA burn food every week?
It's impossible to disprove every false statement by finding a source that explicitly refutes it.
But here's how USDA food "destruction" proceeds, from a recent example:
Iconic product of ...
- 49.3k
8
votes
Accepted
Did the Neolithic Revolution increase infant mortality rates?
Probably someone can give a more detailed answer, but skeletal data seems to support this increase; form Bocquet-Appel, Science, 2011:
During the economic transition from foraging to farming, the ...
- 49.3k
8
votes
Does the United States throw wheat in the ocean to keep the prices high?
Wheat from the United States that was given as a gift to India was dumped into the ocean:
According to Parliamentary Debates: Official Report, Volume 133, Issue 12
a) Out of 1444 tonnes. of gift ...
- 96.4k
8
votes
Does the United States throw wheat in the ocean to keep the prices high?
I did not find information about wheat, but I found this link which talks about cherries:
US Government Orders Farmers To Destroy 30 Million Pounds Of Their Own Crop
...
“The food pantry ...
8
votes
Are there more mushrooms during full moon?
Larian's answer suitably covers some logical issues with the claim, which is enough to perhaps comfort you in your skepticism, but it doesn't empirically answer the question for us.
It seems the ...
- 10.4k
7
votes
Accepted
Does organic cotton use less water than conventional cotton?
The claim that organic cotton farming uses less water than conventional modes of farming appears to be the scientific consensus. For instance, Grose (2009) states that
[farmers] in Israel have ...
- 8,466
7
votes
Do yaks get shaved?
According to Milady Standard Cosmetology, page 534:
Yak. This strong fiber comes from the domestic ox found in the mountains of Tibet and Central Asia. Yak hair is shaved and processed and used ...
- 96.4k
6
votes
Is animal agriculture responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation?
Probably yes, but the comparison is fraught with challenges.
Geographical Scope
Selection of geographical area for analysis is the largest confounding factor here. Some areas of the world have more ...
- 161
6
votes
Is animal agriculture responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation?
The data is different for just the US:
The primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States
are:
Transportation (28.9 percent of 2017 greenhouse gas emissions) – The
...
- 1,266
5
votes
Has selective breeding increased the sugar level of fruits?
Yes.
Temperate Fruit Crops in Warm Climates at page 178:
A general objective in most breeding programs is higher sugar content
See Survey of Food and Nutrition Research in the United States, which ...
- 96.4k
5
votes
Would humans starve if spiders disappeared?
Nope. If insects ran rampant and ate everything, we could just eat them.
Could Less Meat Mean More Food?
“Nutritionally, it is excellent food,” says Arnold van Huis, an
entomologist at Wageningen ...
- 178
5
votes
Are people dying of starvation because we cannot produce enough food?
It is indeed the case that most of the problems with malnutrition and hunger throughout the world are political and social problems and not that we don't produce enough food.
In the Coursera course A ...
- 211
5
votes
Do beef farmed pastures net remove carbon emissions?
First, it's important to mention that not all carbon is created equal. That is, some greenhouse gases are much worse than others. But in the interest of the claim, let's look at carbon, only.*
With ...
- 151
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible