Yeah. If we just reduced our meat consumption by somewhere between 50 and 75% we could feed the remainder off those sources and probably decrease the environmental impact of food production on net, except for cow's methane production.
I think you've missed my main point: reduced consumption is an increase in sustainability [1]. And it's not clear to me that grass-fed beef is sustainable [2] (especially not at the current scale of consumption [3])
Farmers are critical, underpaid, and deal with a lot of risk. There must be some insurance. But consumers should pay the real price for their goods at the counter.
There is definitely some opportunity in reducing meat consumption, I want to say that up front.
Specifically, grain-fed beef is the one to reduce. In many other cases, meat production may be the best use of the available resources. Three specific cases to consider:
First, not all land can support crops. There is a lot of marginal land in the world that can support pasture land, but not corn or cabbages. This is more common in the third world than in the US, although the US has some historical grasslands we've been irrigating the heck out of.
Second, some animals can capture calories humans can't, or are unwilling to. Pigs can eat food scraps or no-longer-fresh produce.
Third, not all animals are equally inefficient. Cows are the ones that are 10-to-1 on their calorie efficiency (although if those are 10 calories of grass, it's still a bargain). Pigs are closer to 3-to-1. You still save a fair bit by reducing the amount of grain-fed pork in the world, but it isn't as dramatic as the savings from beef. Chickens are like 1.8-to-1. That makes them basically competitive with soybeans as a protein source; you can plant 2/3 an acre of corn and 1/3 an acre of soybeans and feed it to chickens to get as much protein as 1 acre of soybeans, plus you get an organic fertilizer from them. From a pure environmental standpoint, there is no reason to ever stop producing chickens.
You mean reducing meat consumption? Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories. It would even have a big positive environmental impact.
Yes, agreed, reduction of meat consumption does need to happen. But saying "we should reduce meat consumption and ensure the meat produced is produced through these systems" is very different from putting it at the top of the list and drawing almost all focus to it.
In a similar way, if you reduce your meat consumption by 80%, you're 80% of the way to the environmental benefits of a wholly vegan diet. Isn't it easier to convince someone to reduce their meat intake than to eliminate it completely?
To me it sound an over-engineered solution to a simple problem.
We need less meat from better raised animals.
We need to understand that animals are an essential part of a balanced agricultural system.
We do not need more food-industry.
This is true in a lot of places and I agree meat consumption should go down but this is not true everywhere. Animals can convert calories we cannot eat to calories we can eat.
Take dry grasslands for example where you could either herd goats and sheep on what nature provides or grow crops which uses a lot more water and fertilizer than the environment there produces.
Meat is by far the production that require land. 1 cow requires 2.5 acres of land, if my memory is right.
If we cut meat consumption, then we have plenty of space available. We should eat much less meat in all cases, that's one of the few points that meta-analyses of effect of diet on health have pointed out.
We really need one piece of red meat like beef per week to get the vitamin B12. And no more than one meal with meat every other day.
Or we can have the same amount per week but with half portion everyday - for example if the dish requires meat for its taste.
With much fewer cows, we can then let them roam freely in forests, which they prefer by far. Grass without shade is good for golf, not for cows.
In the US, most cows don't even have grass ; they walk all day in their own shit, parked in overpopulated enclosure, and fed with soja.
That's so disgusting that cattle breeders went to court - and won - to forbid any photo of their enclosures.
I'm not a vegan, not even a vegetarian and I consider humans to be omnivorous by nature. But I want to eat the meat of happy cows, happy pigs and happy chicken.
Without hormones, without antibiotics, without GMOs feed. That means a more expensive meat but it tastes so much better, really.
Chicken are super tasty when raised in natural conditions. Pork is unbelievably better.
Reducing the consumption of meat seems like a step in the right direction. It's a huge drain on water, land, energy and calories. At the very least, people should be paying for the real cost. Taking it further, instead of subsidizing these industries, I wouldn't mind seeing a beef-tax.
Correct, I think it would be more effective having this change on a production level where farmers and scientists possibly work together to make meat production more sustainable by for example beter utilizing and extending grass lands in barren regions. Trick is to not make the meat more expensive...
People eat more meat than they need. Most people would be healthier if they consumed less of it or none and substituted vegetables/beans/nuts for those calories while still getting proper amounts of protein from non-meat sources.
Reducing meat consumption reduces a bunch of other consumption of resources letting people get their calories more efficiently.
> Meat is considered one of the prime factors contributing to the current biodiversity loss crisis.
> the livestock sector is a major stressor on many ecosystems and on the planet as a whole. Globally it is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases (GHG) and one of the leading causal factors in the loss of biodiversity, and in developed and emerging countries it is perhaps the leading source of water pollution.
> farmers would reduce their land use of feed crops; currently representing about 75% of US land use, and would reduce the use of fertilizer due to the lower land areas and crop yields needed. A transition to a more plant based diet is also projected to improve health, which can lead to reductions in healthcare GHG emissions, currently standing at 8% of US emissions [1]
What's not to understand? Stop eating meat. We don't need lab-grown meat. We don't need meat substitutes.
We can still farm ruminants on open grasslands where those are appropriate ecosystems, but that will mean cutting meat production by, I don't know, 99.99% or so. Which is fine, it's not healthy to eat a hamburger every day.
True- though it does not have to be binary. Our current levels of meat consumption are unsustainable and the levels of production required make treating the animals well a laughable proposition. I've tried to greatly reduce my meat consumption recently.
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