4 ms·

This makes me think of Alan Savory calling for the reduction of elephant population to save the land from overgrazing and then later regretting it. Today he pr

• perfunctory 7y ago
  Unfortunately the majority of beef we eat does not come from grass fed cattle.
  • simonsarris 7y ago
    Most beef cattle in the USA are raised on pasture from birth in the spring until autumn (7 to 9 months). Then for pasture-fed animals, grass is the forage that composes the great majority of their diet. Many cattle are then fattened before slaughter in feedlots and are fed small amounts of hay supplemented with grain, soy and other ingredients in order to increase the energy density of the diet (fattiness carcass weight, etc). (And a lot of this cattle raising is done on huge tracts of land which used to be grazed by Bison, which we nearly eradicated, and replaced their biomass with cow biomass.) I think its somewhat disingenuous to say the majority of the beef we eat does not come from grass fed cattle. But if you want more purely pasture raised animals, that is mostly an economic argument which is somewhat separate from what's best for the land, etc.