Protein From Gorse Bushes Could Feed Millions of People, Says Expert (theguardian.com) 127
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The gorse bushes that have invaded many Scottish landscapes could produce enough protein to feed millions of people, according to the leader of a Scottish government research program. The surprising suggestion by Prof Wendy Russell, at the University of Aberdeen, comes from research on the protein content of invasive plants that have to be doused with herbicides or burned back to keep them under control. Gorse contains 17% protein and broom has 21% protein, she said, adding: "Gorse and broom were fed to cattle at times when crops failed in the past, so we think protein from these types of plants could be used as animal food. If protein isolates are produced in the correct way, so to be safe, they could be considered as human food in the future."
"The whole point about gorse is it is actively being removed from marginal lands -- it's something we can gain protein from at no extra cost," she said. "We have a huge amount of gorse all over Scotland and when we did the calculations, just by active removal from marginal land, there's enough gorse protein to easily feed [Scotland's] population." [...] Scotland has little arable land, which is why Russell examined invasive plants on marginal land. "When you make a protein isolate from gorse, 57% of the total leaf protein can be recovered at up to 95% purity," she said. "We're using about 4.5 to 6kg of CO2 to produce [a kilogram of] isolate, compared to an average for meat of 102kg of CO2."
"The whole point about gorse is it is actively being removed from marginal lands -- it's something we can gain protein from at no extra cost," she said. "We have a huge amount of gorse all over Scotland and when we did the calculations, just by active removal from marginal land, there's enough gorse protein to easily feed [Scotland's] population." [...] Scotland has little arable land, which is why Russell examined invasive plants on marginal land. "When you make a protein isolate from gorse, 57% of the total leaf protein can be recovered at up to 95% purity," she said. "We're using about 4.5 to 6kg of CO2 to produce [a kilogram of] isolate, compared to an average for meat of 102kg of CO2."
For those wondering (Score:2)
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Scotland doesn't have any food shortages, so I doubt if eating wood pulp will be popular there. Sure, it is better than haggis, but that isn't saying much.
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...Sure, it is better than haggis, but that isn't saying much.
Haggis is actually pretty tasty. I was always reluctant to eat it until somebody pointed out it's basically boudin [withhusbandintow.com] made with oats instead of rice.
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The deep fried pizza and deep fried mars bars are superb. Just don't expect lettuce, tomato, relish or even a bun when you order a "hamburger" from a traditional takeaway food shop - it sjust a deep fried meat patty.
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Englishman here who works often in Scotland. I secretly stop at a burger van at the beginning of the A9 before driving up to Inverness for a bit of comfort food. They do an excellent Lorne and tattie sandwitch. Also never understood people making fun of deep friend mars bars, the are awesome if you have them a couple of times a year melted chocolate in batter with a bit of ice cream on the side.. heaven.
I have had the fortune of bringing a health conscious colleague up to Fort Augustus for some work and
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Sad that people might need this... (Score:2)
Considering that hamburger was $8.99/lbs the other day, we might need this, even if eating weeds sounds pretty awful. Prices are going crazy lately.
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Where do you get those prices? Here in northern Virginia, even Whole Foods Market only charges $8/pound for 93% lean ground beef. My regular chain charges $7/pound for 95% lean. Fattier ground beef is a dollar or two cheaper per pound, and buying in bulk (5 pounds) saves even more.
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Just looking at one of the grocery stores here, store ground ground chuck $2.99/lb [zuppardos.com].
I generally buy my ground beef at Costco, I think it may be usually about $3.99 or so when not on sale.
Damn, are all your groceries that expensive up north?
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No one in scotland eats vegetables
They eat neeps and tatties with their haggis.
What about letting goats eat it? (Score:2)
Re:What about letting goats eat it? (Score:4, Interesting)
On rough/rocky land, you can let the goats browse.
On arable land, it is better to grow and harvest the plants, then pelletize or pulp them into animal feed. You will get better yields because the goats aren't constantly nipping off the new leaves.
An advantage of gorse is the plants can be harvested while leaving the roots and crown intact over the winter. So the plants will grow back fast in the spring.
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Yeah I meant to type "goats are good at browsing on marginal land."
Ah, that makes much more sense.
Goat meat is popular in Mexico. My mom has a farm and her neighbor raises goats. She sells them mostly to Mexican restaurants and supermarkets. Gorse grows in arid Mediterranean climates so should do well in northern Mexico and much of California and the American Southwest. In some areas of California, it is an invasive species.
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Goat meat (and goat milk) is popular in many countries around the world. It's one of the most commonly consumed meats globally.
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And it is delicious.
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Even here in Washington state it's considered a noxious weed.
Problem with allowing goats to browse the gorse is that they also destroy every other plant they encounter as well. Our primary vegetative pest is Himalayan blackberries, goats are sometimes used to control them, but they have to be watched closely to make sure they don't munch down everything else in the neighborhood. Their hooves can cause erosion as well, even more so than sheep.
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Goats _destroy_ ecologies, they eat right down to the roots and they breed quickly and easily. In many ecologies, they're a very invasive species. The over-breeding of goats is thought to be one of the major causes of the Sahara desert, which was not always a desert.
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And I'd rather eat steak but last time I checked the point of this thread wasn't to redundantly list food preferences.
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This generation gets goat. _Lots_ of goat. Managing the goats is the very definition of the "tragedy of the commons" problem, and that works out very poorly in desperately poor areas of the world.
https://www.popsci.com/sahara-... [popsci.com]
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But I wouldn't describe Scotland as desperately poor or without multiple regulatory institutions. Pretty sure they could avoid the "tragedy of the commons" in this instance.
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I'd hope so, but it would take caution and thought to avoid. It's not a solution to just enable and walk away.
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Just my thought.
Seriously? Who is going into a shop with a note on his shopping list "buy proteins" unless he is a guy who runs to a gym daily and wants it for his muscles?
I go to a shop and buy: meat! or fish or a sausage.
And yes, I also enjoy vegetarian dishes: but would never put some "artificial" protein substance into it. Tofu in a stew? Does not belong there: period.
If you want to eat Tofu, get a cooking book and look how it is eaten. Much much more enjoyable and tasty.
However: from that protein thing
Failed (Score:1)
If you have to farm the thing, that requires land. We need to chemically synthesize all our proteins and carbs in nuclear or solar powered synthesis factories in the deserts. Farming is stupid, aliens would laugh at us and classify us as primitive. It can be done, we already know how to totally chemically synthesize many proteins. The intermediate step would be to grow special bioengineered versions of our favorite crops optimized to grow under lights on shelves. Think of it as plant tissue culture. That is
You forgot you still inputs (Score:3)
You forgot that "chemically synthesize" means taking A and B and joining them together. To do that, you need both A and B. Actually, typically you need many more grams of inputs than the grams of usable output you get. Often, you synthesize a protein by starting with a different protein and replacing one of the peptides. So you synthesize protein by starting with protein ... :)
Re: You forgot you still inputs (Score:2)
I am referring to Total Synthesis. Meaning start with any hydrocarbon generated from any carbon source such as CO2 or wood that is converted to an organic compound which is then turned into the amino acids and then proteins.
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> If you have to farm the thing, that requires land. We need to chemically synthesize all our proteins and carbs in nuclear or solar powered synthesis factories in the deserts. Farming is stupid
> Meaning start with any hydrocarbon generated from any carbon source such as CO2 or wood
You're under the impression that growing wood (plants) does not require land?
You're a Democrat voter, aren't you?
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I was explaining the chemistry of it, dumbass. It requires carbon, which can be found anywhere including recycling shit after you eat it. You know about that don't you?
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Farming is stupid, aliens would laugh at us and classify us as primitive
Or maybe aliens would value food that tastes good as much as we do, and they would merely laugh (or sigh sadly, depending on their empathy) at our bullshit extractive farming methods when farming can be not just balanced (in that it doesn't deplete soil, or consume natural resources) but in fact restorative.
I'd PAY to see that! (Score:1)
It is a weed plant, and evergreen (Score:3)
I bet it tastes like lysol.
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Probably a vegan.
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So an improvement over their normal diet.
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> I bet it tastes like lysol.
So, a new Covid cure
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https://www.diffordsguide.com/... [diffordsguide.com]
Gorse has traditionally been used as a flavor/syrup because of its pleasant sweet coconut smell.
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I bet it tastes like lysol. OR WORSE,
if it smells like it,
Gorse (or "whin") smells exactly like coconut.
Feed it to chickens (Score:2)
Scotland has a declining population, with only 1.29 babies per woman. They certainly do not need to start eating soylent green.
Why should they suffer because some shithole country on the edge of the desert keeps their women illiterate, and having 6 babies each?
Cattle are great for grazing on grassland that is otherwise unsuitable for agriculture, but feeding them grain or similar crops is very inefficient.
Better to feed this new product to chickens, which are extremely efficient at converting plants to ta
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As the guy above said, goats can probably eat it now. Is it tastes bad even for them, or if it taints the meat a little gene splicing should fix that.
How exactly they are going to go through a pasture and collect just the gorse on a commercial scale is a question. A gorse eating goat, or deer or bison for that matter would do it naturally.
It's not a bad idea. Eat the invasive species is a fine notion. Where I live they imported pheasants and chukars specifically to eat, and they never get out of control.
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goats can probably eat it now.
Goats will certainly eat it. Gorse is grown in many places as fodder. Cattle can also eat it if it is crushed.
How exactly they are going to go through a pasture and collect just the gorse on a commercial scale is a question.
Gorse grows densely and tends to crowd out all other plants. This makes it a nasty invasive species, but easy to grow commercially.
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Scotland has a declining population, with only 1.29 babies per woman. They certainly do not need to start eating soylent green.
Gee. Maybe they could export it?
Alternatively, can we learn from the weeds, and engineer something that grows on otherwise useless land, and will be nutritious to grazing cattle?
Like gorse, you mean?
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Scotland has a declining population, with only 1.29 babies per woman. They certainly do not need to start eating soylent green.
Gee. Maybe they could export it?
Better to use it to stop importing the grain they feed their chickens, no?
Alternatively, can we learn from the weeds, and engineer something that grows on otherwise useless land, and will be nutritious to grazing cattle?
Like gorse, you mean?
Why the sneering attitude? Do you behave that way in real life? Try asking properly why they don't do that now.
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Maybe we could send them our black teenage girls, especially the 50% of hem who get pregnant between age 15 and 20 in America? If you want to prevent a lot of American racial problems, start there.
Scotland is currently run by an openly racist party - the SNP - so they're ahead of the curve on that one.
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The SNP is nationalist in the we-want-independence-from-the-UK sense, not the we-are-the-master-race sense. Hardly racist to want self-determination.
The SNP are racist in the all-English-people-are-bastards sense. And they don't want independence at all - they want to be part of the EU and its nice juicy handouts. Independence would be a disaster for Scotland.
Re:Feed it to chickens (Score:5, Funny)
Once the thorny, dense, durable and almost impossible to kill Himalayan blackberry takes hold
Blackberry brambles have taken over about half of my front yard. My wife asked me to "do something". So I opened my browser to do some research.
Twenty minutes later, she asked me if I had found a way to kill them. I told her no, but I had found several great recipes for blackberry cobbler.
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Buy 2 goats. Then a couple weeks later dig up the crowns. After blackberries are gone and crowns are dug up, slaughter one goat for meat and keep the other around to make sure it doesn't pop back up. Problem solved.
Re:Feed it to chickens (Score:4, Interesting)
Pigs. I used to work at a produce market, and in the summer a pig farmer would pick up our reject produce. He had an apple orchard which had been abandoned for many years and was full of blackberries. He would dump the produce in an area of the orchard that was overrun, the pigs would slurp it up and then start rooting. He was clearing a couple of acres a month that way.
Machete works for smaller areas, I jump the fence a couple times a summer and whack the neighbor's blackberries back several feet to keep it out of my yard. Once the area is cleared if you mow it three or four times a summer the roots will eventually die.
I pick about 3-4 gallons of berries every August and make 5 gallons of truly excellent wine.
"protein isolate" (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, perhaps. I've got my doubts. Not all protein is equivalent, and most plants don't have the amino acid balence people need. Cattle frement this stuff in an internal biodigester before metabolizing it. People don't have a rumen, so that step would need to be done externally, and even so, people aren't really adapted to living on a diet of purely plants. We can do so by careful selection and balencing of multiple different plants, but it's non-trivial.
Note that I haven't even addressed the question of taste, or even convincing people to try it.
It's really not that complicated (Score:3)
> most plants don't have the amino acid balance people need
True. You need to eat more than one plant. Unless you eat one of the plants that has all of the essential amino acids.
> people aren't really adapted to living on a diet of purely plants. We can do so by careful selection and balencing of multiple different plants, but it's non-trivial.
Most people around the world do it by eating both rice AND beans.
People eat more rice than they do beef. Your country is just weird.
If you want to call "eat both
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PS:
> people aren't really adapted to living on a diet of purely plants.
The other great apes eat about 3% meat, 97% plants. That's roughly what our bodies are naturally adapted to. Obviously we CAN survive for years eating much, much more meat. We just get obese and die of heart disease.
The other apes also eat a much larger variety of plants, whatever is in season that day and handy. They don't fly fruit from South America to Canada to have bananas every day of the year. Humans eat most rice, corn, and
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PS:
> people aren't really adapted to living on a diet of purely plants.
The other great apes eat about 3% meat, 97% plants. That's roughly what our bodies are naturally adapted to. Obviously we CAN survive for years eating much, much more meat. We just get obese and die of heart disease.
The other apes also eat a much larger variety of plants, whatever is in season that day and handy. They don't fly fruit from South America to Canada to have bananas every day of the year. Humans eat most rice, corn, and wheat. We lack variety compared to the natural apes.
No, it's not. Apes are apes, and pretty much everything that makes us different from apes is our adaptation to a new environment, that is savannah, instead of jungle. Upright posture, less body hair, everything, switching from vitamin C to uric acid as the main antioxidant, etc. This also includes severe metabolic changes, to deal with a new diet. Because in jungle you eat fruits, while in savannah you either eat grass, or you eat things that eat grass. And dunno about you but I don't seem to have a rumen.
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That's a junk food diet that just happens to be vegan.
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Try going on a fully vegan diet of white bread, pasta, potato chips and fries and you'll balloon to huge weight too.
Berkeley-Stanford. I have ben vegetarian all my life. There are several in India who eat only vegetarian. They are all fine with very few health problems. The word is saatvika
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Obviously we CAN survive for years eating much, much more meat. We just get obese and die of heart disease.
You do not get obese from eating meat. Regardless how fat it is. That is close to impossible.
You get obese from starch and sugars, and fake sugars that send the wrong messages to your hormone system.
To convert proteins into fat that can be stored, aka being obese, the chemical/metabolizing process is so long and complicated it simply does not happen in "ordinary people". Only Inuit, Maori etc. can do t
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It's fine to be a veggie. Thumbs up for that. The problem starts when veg* groups start telling all the rest of people in the world what they should and should not eat. Eating preferences should be like religion - Thy shall keep it to yourself. Respect, tolerate but don't force your own beliefs onto others.
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Except polling shows that most vegans don't want to eat lab grown meat.
Oh and also vegans and vegetarians want the mass slaughter of farm animals to take place (because you can't eat them) and for them to become extinct. We should be using man made plastic fibres rather than wool or silk.
Mind you as far as I am concerned a large proportion of vegans are rank hypocrites because they own pets. First question I ask any vegan if they start talking to me about it. If the answer is yes then I tell them to STFU an
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> Oh and also vegans and vegetarians want the mass slaughter of farm animals to take place
No I don't. I really spend no time at all thinking about farm animals. Not a topic I'm concerned with at all.
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are rank hypocrites because they own pets.
Well, nothing wrong with that as long as they feed their meat eating pets vegan and supplement the food so the pet is not missing anything ... oh, wait ... /sarcasm
My cats get _real_ fish. However they are so vegan, they eat and love white rice - no idea why. My GF pretends "that is normal, they are Thai cats!"
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Again, it's just your personal opinion, and not your call to make for the entire society. Don't impose your own morals onto everyone.
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You need more than rice an beans. Mushrooms help a lot. And different beans have a slightly different balence. Some claim that soy contains a good balence of everything, but I'm not so sure. But when you add in tomatoes, onions, etc. you start to get a good balence. Nuts also help.
P.S.: I'm *not* a vegetarian, though I did look into it. But vegetarianism is only possible due to cultural learning. OTOH, the same is true of hunting and pastorial living. People learn to do things through their cult
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You need a certain amount (grams) of each of the essential amino acids each day. *If* you're only getting 40 grams of protein and you need 6 grams of leucine, 6 grams of tryptophan, etc THEN you'd need a balance. Simply because if half of those 40 grams are threonine, that would leave only 20 grams for all the others.
If you're packing down 100+ grams of protein every day like a typical American, you could eat 50 grams of threonine and still get plenty of each of the others. As long as you get enough trypto
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Probably because in North America, beef is fairly plentiful because the resources to grow it are plentiful. Water, land, grains, etc are plentiful, so that's why cattle is popular despite being really bad nutritionally (saturated fat, cholesterol) and environmentally (poor food conversion rate, takes a lot of land and water). Chicken and pork are far more economical. It's why "plant based meat" is a thing - replacing beef consumption is one
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Note that I haven't even addressed the question of taste, or even convincing people to try it
https://www.diffordsguide.com/... [diffordsguide.com]
Gorse has traditionally been used as a flavor/syrup because of its pleasant sweet coconut smell.
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That's the flowers. The rest of the plant which is what is under discussion is an entirely different kettle of leaves.
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I like the idea of forcibly genetically mutating people to have a rumen so that we can be more ecologically sensitive.
Which leads me to a question a friend had asked while playing Stellaris.
"Which is worse, morally:
- enslaving billions of people, or
- genetically modifying people so they are happy to be enslaved"
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Wow, modded insight full by idiots.
That is actually the only reason I answer.
Not all protein is equivalent, and most plants don't have the amino acid balence people need.
Irrelevant, you get the missing proteins form other plants. Or meat.
Cattle frement this stuff in an internal biodigester before metabolizing it.
Irrelevant. Cattle does not ferment amino acids aka proteins. They ferment cellulose aka fibres, to make starch from it.
People don't have a rumen, so that step would need to be done externally, an
Well as the old saying goes... (Score:1)
You can lead the Gorse to a waiter, but you can't make it extinct.
Soil nutrients are magic (Score:2)
You can just harvest gorse or graze animals on marginal lands and extract soil nutrients at orders of magnitudes above the natural rate and it's all going to be all right. Somehow weathering will increase by orders of magnitude to keep up, it's magical ... well either it's magical or it's going to hit a brick wall at some points.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: Gorse Bush 2022 (Score:2)
Came for this, left satisfied someone else thought it sounded like George Bush.
Yum! (Score:2)
I look forward to trying me some Gorslent Green.
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We actually are in 2022, after all.
Which (Score:2)
Gorse and Broom
Sounds like a comedy show about a married ogre and witch.
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You can eat a Gorse, of course,
but a horse wouldn't eat the gorse.
Go right to the source and ask the horse.
He'll give you the answer that you'll endorse.
He's always on a steady course.
The horse will skip it without remorse;
so alone you'll have your tasty Gorse.
What's the amino acid profile look like, though? (Score:2)
Harvesting? (Score:4, Interesting)
Clearly he's never tried cutting down gorse. It's a mass of sharp thorns on tough woody stems that even goats will only eat as a last resort. You would have to pay me a heap of money to spend my days harvesting that stuff.
'Marginal' land that means places too steep or rocky for mechanised farming. So I can only assume that he's planning to reinstate prison work gangs, sending out convicts to harvest gorse bushes. Nobody else would want to do it.
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Correction: She's not He's
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I think the point is that it is already being removed as an invasive species but at the moment it is just dumped somewhere. To be fair it is more likely to be shredded and then composted than dumped. However the point is at the moment it is waste material but with a bit of processing it could be turned into animal feed. Mind you I have not seen large amounts of gorse growing in the highlands myself, but perhaps I have not been looking close enough.
As others have pointed out in the past the vast majority of
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He is saying that if it were grown as a crop and harvested mechanically, it could potentially be broken down into something we could eat as a source of protein.
We eat loads of stuff that isn't exactly easy to harvest by hand, like coconuts and root vegetables. Even some spikey fruit like pineapples.
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Clearly he's never tried cutting down gorse. It's a mass of sharp thorns on tough woody stems that even goats will only eat as a last resort. You would have to pay me a heap of money to spend my days harvesting that stuff.
'Marginal' land that means places too steep or rocky for mechanised farming. So I can only assume that he's planning to reinstate prison work gangs, sending out convicts to harvest gorse bushes. Nobody else would want to do it.
Oh you silly man ... that's what we import third worlders for! It's a sign of how sensitive and caring we are.
Propaganda. (Score:1)
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"Scotland has little arable land." - umm,. so how does it manage to be a net food exporter then?
Intensive agriculture and a small population.
WTF is science today??? (Score:2)
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Subject: WTF is science today???
If this is so good why hasn't anybody done it in the last ten thousand years, or so?
Because they didn't have today's science, and with it cost/labor-effective means of extracting the protein. Instead they converted such plants into pigs or goats, which is possibly less efficient.
One step closer (Score:2)
Because who doesn't want a delicious bowl of protein, synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals [youtube.com]. It's everything a body needs.
I wouldn't call it an invasive species (Score:2)
What should it be good for to fight that?
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Feeding people is not the problem (Score:2)
Feeding people is not, and never has been the problem. If there is hunger, look to the local political system. It is virtually always a problem of local corruption. As often as not, when international aid is sent, the local politicians claim it, and sell it on the black market, instead of feeding their population.
Gorse in Scotland is a plague, because livestock will not eat it. If you want to use land productively, you have to remove the gorse. However, this ought to be a one-time activity (because gorse
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Feeding people is not, and never has been the problem.
Feeding people continues to be the problem. Producing enough food for them, on the other hand, is not the problem (and hasn't been since the so-called green revolution.) The problem is feeding them what they want to eat sustainably. This will do nothing to address that, since nobody wants to eat gorse protein.
In the USA we throw away more than enough food to feed not only all of our homeless, but probably several other countries' as well. We do this so that people can have their choice of food year round, b
Eeyore (Score:1)
I tried it but I became gloomy and depressed, and worse my tail fell off and I had to put it back on with a nail.
Give it to the Vegans (Score:2)
A perfect source of protein for Vegans. They can petition Morningstar Farms to use it in their sausage patties. They already made them massively worse to appease vegans last year, so may as well go further.
Sorry for the rant - but a breakfast food that helped wean me off eating bad things for protein in the morning was changed so massively that it makes me (and most folks who liked it) to gag all in the name of going vegan. A bit of egg white and some milk was too much of a cross to bear for them.
Dr. Dolittle Won't Eat It (Score:1)
"I eat every flowering shrub there is except for gorse."
(Earlier in that sequence he also said he wouldn't eat horseradish lest he upset the horses.)
Gorse Is also Highly Flamable (Score:1)