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Animal Feed
Animal feed is food given to domestic animals, especially livestock, in the course of animal husbandry. There are two basic types: fodder and forage. Used alone, the word feed more often refers to fodder. Animal feed is an important input to animal agriculture, and is frequently the main cost of the raising or keeping of animals. Farms typically try to reduce cost for this food, by growing their own, grazing animals, or supplementing expensive feeds with substitutes, such as food waste like spent grain from beer brewing.
Animal wellbeing is highly dependent on feed that reflects a well balanced nutrition. Some modern agricultural practices, such as fattening cows on grains or in feed lots, have detrimental effects on the environment and animals. For example, increased corn or other grain in feed for cows, makes their microbiomes more acidic weakening their immune systems and making cows a more likely vector for E. coli,[1] while other feeding practices can improve animal impacts. For example, feeding cows certain kinds of seaweed, reduces their production of methane, reducing the greenhouse gases from meat production.[2]
When an environmental crisis strikes farmers or herders, such as a drought or extreme weather driven by climate change, farmers often have to shift to more expensive manufactured animal feed, which can negatively effect their economic viability. For example, a 2017 drought in Senegal reduced the availability of grazing lands leading to skyrocketing demand and prices for manufactured animal feed, causing farmers to sell large portions of their herds.[3] Additionally agriculture for producing animal feed puts pressure on land use: feed crops need land that otherwise might be used for human food and can be one of the driving factors for deforestation, soil degradation and climate change.[4]
North Yorkshire is a ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber and North East regions of England. It borders County Durham to the north, the North Sea to the east, the East Riding of Yorkshire to the south-east, South Yorkshire to the south, West Yorkshire to the south-west, and Cumbria and Lancashire to the west. Northallerton is the county town.
The county is the largest in England by land area, at 8,654 km2 (3,480 sq mi), and had a population of 1,158,816 in 2021. The largest settlements are Middlesbrough (148,215) in the north-east and the city of York (141,685) in the south. Middlesbrough is part of the Teesside built-up area, which extends into County Durham and has a total population of 376,663 in 2011. The remainder of the county is rural, and the largest towns are Harrogate (75,515) and Scarborough (59,505). For local government purposes the county comprises four unitary authority areas — Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, Redcar and Cleveland, and York — and part of a fifth, Stockton-on-Tees. The local authorities of York and North Yorkshire are part of a combined authority of the same name, and the local authorities of the other three areas are part of the Tees Valley combined authority. The county was historically part of Yorkshire.
The centre of the county contains a wide plain, called the Vale of Mowbray in the north and Vale of York in the south. The North York Moors uplands lie to the east, and south of them the Vale of Pickering is separated from the main plain by the Howardian Hills. The west of the county contains the Yorkshire Dales, an extensive upland area which contains the source of the River Ouse/Ure and many of its tributaries, which together drain most of the county before reaching the Humber estuary in the south. The Dales also contain the county's highest point, Whernside, at 2,415 feet (736 m).
