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Nope. Mules can breed. It's just not tried frequently, and probably not all that successful. Interestingly, I once read about a project that used "hand" fertilization that produced a complete chromosome set horse from a mule and horse crossbreed. (I may be misremembering, it may have been a hinny.)

https://articles.extension.org...

Genes are weird.

It takes somewhere around 4.67 pounds of corn for a pound of beef

You should not be feeding cows corn. It is done a lot because it is very cheap. But corn is not natural to cows instead they were evolved to eat grass. When you stuff them in feed lots and force them to eat corn their digestive tracts turn septic and they start breeding pathogens. Crammed together the way they are they pass that around. That is why cows are given antibiotics.

The problem isn't meat. The problem is factory farmed cheap meat.

By reasonably consideration, you're killing a ton of insects to grow that 4.67 pounds of corn relative to cucumbers.

This makes no sense. People grow corn for all sorts of reasons other than as cattle feed. Also, pastured cattle co-exist just fine with insects pretty much as the their genetic ancestors and cousins did. So it makes no sense to associate good beef-raising practices with problems to raising corn.

The guy you're replying to forgot that typical vegan don't count anything smaller than a bird as a living thing. They judge which forms of life are OK to kill and which are not. So all sort of bugs that get killed, dislocated or whatever when the harvest season begin

Or you're a dumbass. It takes somewhere around 4.67 pounds of corn for a pound of beef (really, the numbers wildly vary but even the lower end of 2.07 pounds is overly optimistic). By reasonably consideration, you're killing a ton of insects to grow that 4.67 pounds of corn relative to cucumbers.

I grew up in a village, cows usually where taken to pastures where there's a lot of grass. Land that will never become farmland.. because it just isn't. The grass is growing there because it is and that was it. It's still grassland, 25 years after I've been there.

And now imagine if there weren't cows there. There'd be a lot more insect life, right? Hmm..almost like destroying the natural cover indirectly killings millions of insects by birds. Yep, right, we're not counting those...

Seriously, there's no way you can require more energy to create beef and somehow magically not result in more death by sheer prospect of growing said planet life. Do I point out the ecological issues that are happening because of the mass irrigation in areas with the Ogallala Aquifer? You know, that area create for ranching livestock precisely because of that irrigation. No biggy if it dries up, of course. It'll only take 6,000 years to replenish through rainfall.

i can attest that with a few acres of corn you can become a millionaire from corn based subsidies.

Here: "Direct payments of subsidies are limited to $40,000 per person or $80,000 per couple." And: "However, the federal ethanol subsidy expired December 31, 2011."

It's hard to become a millionaire on $40,000 per year. But let's try using the old rules. Same cite: "and federal crop subsidies that can bring the total to 85 cents per gallon or more." From this: "Based on these figures, one acre of corn would produce about 423 gallons/acre." That calculates out to $360/acre in subsidies. "A few"? Ten? A hundred? A hundred acres would get you $36,000 a year in subsidies.

Again, hard to become a millionaire on $36,000 a year.

Moretto et al (1991) found grooming behavior of African bees in Brazil to be eight times more efficient at removing Varroa than Italian bees and 31 percent of infested African honey bee workers removed Varroa by their own or another bee’s grooming action (Moretto 1997).

Considering that the mites are less problem, and that these bees are more difficult for commercial apiaries to use, I reckon that the die-offs due to mites reported by beekeepers are about European bees.

Instead of helping them use an inherently destructive method of farming, help them use inherently creative methods.

So tell us of the inherently cretive methods.

What you have been saying so far is that our methods are wrong. So why on earth would anyone want to use our methods? And why would we be required to change our methods to some inherently creative method? Besides, If it is inherent, it already exists, therefore our help is not needed.

When we fertilize with shit, and not with chemicals, we build topsoil.

Yeah, manure is the cure for all fertilization problems, except when it isn't. I've grown up around organic gardening - parents and grandparents and myself. Its not bad, but on a large scale you must be very, very careful. I use leaf composting mostly myself.

As noted, on a large scale it can be devastating.

http://www.cbf.org/document.do...

part of what reads:

The Chesapeake Bay is choking on nutrient pollution from a myriad of sources – from urban runoff, industry, automobiles, and human sewage, but the largest source is agriculture and, increasingly, from the manure pro- duced by livestock, which now outnumber the watershed’s human population by 11 to 1. Most of that manure is spread on the surface of nearby cropland, and studies show that within two years as much as half of its nutrient pollution washes out of the soil and into rivers and streams or seeps into groundwater. Both of these pathways lead to pollution in local waterways and, ultimately, in the Bay.

When we fertilize with chemicals, we destroy it. We kill all the biological material and wash away the organics and are left with an inert growing medium.

Now here is your chance to refute the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's assertions about manure's contribution.

It can actually contain micronutrients needed by plants and yet not provide it to them because the microorganisms which make the nutrients bioavailable (package them in a form the plants can use, that is) are absent from the soil entirely.

Only it really isn't that simple. Large scale manure use can direclty kill other food sources.

Fish kills

http://www.deq.virginia.gov/Po...

http://www.dailyiowegian.com/s...

http://www.extension.org/media...

And of course, the Chesapeake Bay fishery industries.

There are a lot more, but the point is that while manure is indeed a source of carbon and nitrogen, it takes a whole lot of work to keep it safe, and a lot of that work seems like our methods. I live in an area with a lot of farms, and most have manure tanks and use manure. But you don't just take old Bossie out to the field and let her drop her patties there. And you really should not use carnivore manure

Here is organic gardener Mike McGraff's advice on using manure. for general interest, and carnivore manure note.

http://www.gardensalive.com/pr...

He is an excellent source of environmentally responsible plant growing knowledge.

My Grandmother used to make manure tea. The chickens she kept produced a lot of manure, but chickenshit is very powerful mojo. So whne she cleaned out the coop, it went into a rain barrel, and was filled with water. Makes manure tea. Once a summer (maybe more but I doubt it, and was a little kid at the time, she'd take na old saucepan and dip it in the tea, and pour some on the plants. She could coax some awesome stuff from the ground. But it all has to be processed first. Trying to use

Colorado State University says that corn requires 22 inches/year for a high yield crop with a range of 20-25 inches/year. You can get a low yield crop of corn on 15-16 inches/year.
http://www.extension.org/pages/14080/corn-water-requirements

Oregon State says that hemp requires 20-28 inches/year for optimum yield.
http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/sb/sb681/

For comparison, Switchgrass can grow everywhere and needs 15-30 inches/year.
http://www.uky.edu/Ag/Forage/switchgrass2.pdf (PDF)

The GP stated that there is a better crop for every climate zone. That may or may not be true, I'm not going to look through every zone and every crop, but I will say that hemp is not the end-all-be-all crop it's made out to be. To me, switchgrass looks better for general industrial use (the plan is to grow it on shit land like near highways since it doesn't require much upkeep). In the southeast kudzu since it grows so easily and offers a lot of biomass. But whenever industrial crops are brought up it seems hemp is the only answer. We have lots of different crop possibilities that fit the different climate zones and needs. Hemp is just one of the possibilities and isn't necessarily the best for all purposes. It's just made to sound that way.

Unfortunately "other Texas style vermin" likely includes fire ants. Those bastards are mean, and attracted to electrical hardware...

As it happens, the annual cost of keeping a horse is broadly similar to the annual cost of keeping a car - somewhere in the neighborhood of US$7,000 per year. Horses are probably a little less expensive, but not that much. Here are a couple of links. Horse: http://www.extension.org/faq/47, Car: http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1219206