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The title should read "Industrial Farming is Horrible". Industrial crops aren't much better for the environment.
by VT_Drew 10y ago
The title should read "Industrial Farming is Horrible". Industrial crops aren't much better for the environment.
- aaroninsf 10y agoMy data-free immediate thought was, '...but industrial meat farming uses N times as many resources [land, water, petrochemicals] to produce the same number of nutrients/calories...' Now I am interested if this is in fact true. I have certainly heard this argument made, and it is often alluded to e.g. in describing the problem in China of producing enough meat to satisfy an increasingly affluent society (the subtext being, 'with the same constrained resources'). Going to poke around a bit...
- aaroninsf 10y agoTL;DR: it is in fact true. Best would be vegetarian diet; failing that, eliminating beef is a huge win. QED if you are not vegetarian and have no interest in being, the 'greenest' thing to do is to reduce or eliminate beef consumption. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S.full http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S.full is glum. (I looked at resource usage, not the ethical side; fwiw I'm an ethics-motivated vegetarian myself.)
- pavel_lishin 10y agoIn my experience, out of the commonly-eaten meats, beef tends to be the priciest anyway.
- chetanahuja 10y agoBut not nearly proportional to the ratios of energy/land/water consumption between vegetarian (or say chicken/fish) based food items and beef. E.g., what's the difference in price between a burger made from ground beef vs a similar sandwich with grilled chicken?
- ams6110 10y agoIt's also one of the best for you to eat, assuming it's grass-fed.
- zardo 10y agoSource for that? I've never heard of any beneficial effect of red meat consumption.
- aorth 10y agoJane Goodall's book "Harvest for Hope" had some great statistics about the amount of water alone required to raise a kilogram of beef compared to chicken, rice, etc. I read it over ten years ago but I remember the numbers being jaw dropping. Health issues aside, beef puts a horrible load on the environment.
- 1123581321 10y agoIt is true in our overspecialized food production system, especially when byproducts like manure aren't counted as output. In smaller, more diverse farms, animals contribute to the overall output because they improve land that is fallow, turn waste into food and manure and provide food that complements plants effectively in our diet. We have the technology to farm this way, at scale, but it is politically infeasible and there won't be any demand for it until the specialized products of our current system become much more expensive.
- tgb 10y agoCitation needed? Others have already provided citations against your claim and the naive reasoning makes it seem obviously untrue: industrial livestock are fed industrial crops and so are worse than eating industrial crops oneself, and probably by a factor of at least 2.