8 ms·

The advice may not be as great. Amount of land and water needed to grow crops that sufficiently replace nutrition provided by meat may be worse for climate chan

The advice may not be as great. Amount of land and water needed to grow crops that sufficiently replace nutrition provided by meat may be worse for climate change than just eating meat. Obviously that only applies to grass-fed cattle. I don’t have a source right now, but the choice is not as obvious as many think.

jeremyjh 7y ago
Isn’t most cattle fed grain?
- keymone 7y ago
  Yes it is, which is the main issue because apart from impact on land, corn-fed cows do excrete(?) more methane than grass-fed.
  - Doubl 7y ago
    I thought it was the other way around, unfortunately, because I'd rather see cattle on pastures rather than in yards
perfunctory 7y ago
> Obviously that only applies to grass-fed cattle. There is simply not enough land to replace all meat supply with grass-fed cattle meat. So if we all want to eat meat from grass-fed cattle only, that would mean exactly radical reduction in meat consumption.
- keymone 7y ago
  There is not enough land to produce equal amount of meat at the same price point. There is plenty land to produce enough more expensive meat. Which also reduces meat consumption. It’s a win all around.
jaxr 7y ago
The efficiency of converting plant based protein into animal protein to feed that to humans is very low [1]. A huge portion of the crops are actually used to feed cattle. If humans stopped eating meat tomorrow, we would have plenty of food (we'd better start eating a lot more soy, though) https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/105002 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/1...
- keymone 7y ago
  Cattle doesn’t convert plant based protein into animal protein. Also cattle eats crop that humans can’t eat and which grows in significantly more tough conditions than those required for crops used as feed. Eating lots of soy is not healthy. It’s a very weird and unconvincing argument on your part, to suggest humans should just start eating crops fed to cattle and that would somehow work in terms of sufficiently healthy and available nutrition as well as being net positive on climate change. Cattle eats grass which grows everywhere in the world and cattle produces vastly healthier and nutritious profile of fat, protein, vitamins and other essential nutrients than what you could achieve by growing human edible crops for similar price. Sure you can achieve good nutrition with other expensive vegetables but that’s not what will happen if humans stop eating cattle. Let’s be realistic.
  - nmca 7y ago
    Baffled to read this, as I thought it was widely established as grossly inaccurate. Suggest you read Steinfeld, Henning; Gerber, Pierre; Wassenaar, Tom; Castel, Vincent; Rosales, Mauricio; de Haan, Cees (2006), Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options Or alternatively anything about food culture and supply in India. I don't believe your current position is substantiated by any evidence; but I'm happy to look through any relevant numbers if you can find them.
    - ar-jan 7y ago
      I suggest you also read Steinfeld's own correction regarding the 2006 claim that livestock accounts for 18% of GHG emissions: "The comparison measures direct emissions from transport against both direct and indirect emissions from livestock." http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0 http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0

jeremyjh 7y ago

Isn’t most cattle fed grain?

keymone 7y ago
Yes it is, which is the main issue because apart from impact on land, corn-fed cows do excrete(?) more methane than grass-fed.
- Doubl 7y ago
  I thought it was the other way around, unfortunately, because I'd rather see cattle on pastures rather than in yards

perfunctory 7y ago

> Obviously that only applies to grass-fed cattle. There is simply not enough land to replace all meat supply with grass-fed cattle meat. So if we all want to eat meat from grass-fed cattle only, that would mean exactly radical reduction in meat consumption.

keymone 7y ago
There is not enough land to produce equal amount of meat at the same price point. There is plenty land to produce enough more expensive meat. Which also reduces meat consumption. It’s a win all around.

jaxr 7y ago

The efficiency of converting plant based protein into animal protein to feed that to humans is very low [1]. A huge portion of the crops are actually used to feed cattle. If humans stopped eating meat tomorrow, we would have plenty of food (we'd better start eating a lot more soy, though) https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/105002 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/1...

keymone 7y ago
Cattle doesn’t convert plant based protein into animal protein. Also cattle eats crop that humans can’t eat and which grows in significantly more tough conditions than those required for crops used as feed. Eating lots of soy is not healthy. It’s a very weird and unconvincing argument on your part, to suggest humans should just start eating crops fed to cattle and that would somehow work in terms of sufficiently healthy and available nutrition as well as being net positive on climate change. Cattle eats grass which grows everywhere in the world and cattle produces vastly healthier and nutritious profile of fat, protein, vitamins and other essential nutrients than what you could achieve by growing human edible crops for similar price. Sure you can achieve good nutrition with other expensive vegetables but that’s not what will happen if humans stop eating cattle. Let’s be realistic.
- nmca 7y ago
  Baffled to read this, as I thought it was widely established as grossly inaccurate. Suggest you read Steinfeld, Henning; Gerber, Pierre; Wassenaar, Tom; Castel, Vincent; Rosales, Mauricio; de Haan, Cees (2006), Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options Or alternatively anything about food culture and supply in India. I don't believe your current position is substantiated by any evidence; but I'm happy to look through any relevant numbers if you can find them.
  - ar-jan 7y ago
    I suggest you also read Steinfeld's own correction regarding the 2006 claim that livestock accounts for 18% of GHG emissions: "The comparison measures direct emissions from transport against both direct and indirect emissions from livestock." http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0 http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0