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It's more complex than that since if we're talking about land use or calorie production since most livestock is grazed on marginal crop land and would need to b

by lhl 7y ago

It's more complex than that since if we're talking about land use or calorie production since most livestock is grazed on marginal crop land and would need to be compared to that of the palm trees. The appropriate way to calculate efficiency might to be separate out the rendered tallow from a nutrient-weighted food output (today, we don't actually have a calorie shortage, but we are definitely nutrient deficient) and an life cycle analysis of all the inputs. In terms of other aspects of environmental footprint, it also depends a lot on how the animal was raised. While conventional beef might be 30+ kg CO2eq/kg, full LCA has shown regenerative beef can be net negative (due to soil carbon sequestration): https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/hubfs/WOP-LCA-Quantis-2019.pdf https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/hubfs/WOP-LCA-Quantis-2019... Water footprint also is similarly nuanced and needs to be split into green/blue/grey water.

mumblemumble 7y ago
> most livestock is grazed on marginal crop land There's a lot to unpack there. What is "marginal crop land"? It conjures images of scrubland in the North American west or the African savanna. But more than half the cattle in the world live in Brazil and India. My understanding is that rainforests take up so many nutrients that the soil is actually very poor and unsuitable for most kinds of agriculture. So one could easily say that recently burned Amazon rainforest is "marginal crop land", and that would make this statement technically true while still being no consolation at all. The next biggest chunk of the earth's cattle live in China, where my understanding is that they're effectively creating their own "marginal crop land" - they graze, they take up the nutrients in the soil, then they're slaughtered and their meat is shipped overseas, taking those nutrients along with them. So the soil keeps getting less fertile. Grazing is supposedly a major factor in the expansion of the Gobi desert. The USA? I don't know. Perhaps all the biggest CAFOs are located in marginal crop land, but the grain they're feeding to the cattle is all grown on prime crop land. Perhaps some specialty farms are creating eddies in the current, but it's hard to see much evidence that they're changing the overall flow unless we're very careful about how we frame the conversation.
- cgh 7y ago
  In North America, cattle are grazed on grasslands which have a long-term symbiotic relationship with grazing ungulates (the buffalo, now mostly gone, an immense tragedy). Cattle are only grain-fed for the last few weeks of their lives. There's this standing myth that cattle spend their lives in feedlots and that's simply false, as a visit to any ranch will tell you. And even that feed is largely inedible by humans[0]. The analogy between modern cattle and the wild grazing of buffalo isn't perfect. There are problems with modern grazing that need to be addressed. The North American grasslands are prone to desertification if over- or under-grazed. The work of the Savory Institute is largely about promoting "regenerative grazing", not just in North America but also eg Africa[1]. Anyway, if you live in North America and eat/utilise relatively local beef, then you aren't a participant in some kind of misuse of "prime crop land". [0]: https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/fao-sets-the-record-straight-86-of-livestock-feed-is-inedible-by-humans/ https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/fao-sets-the-record-s... [1]: https://savory.global https://savory.global
- samatman 7y ago
  It's even more complicated than that, because large parts of Brazil are pampas or other dry lands, where grazing cattle is the most suitable form of food production. I suspect at this point that former rainforest land accounts for most of the grazing heads, but it's difficult to find numbers.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Brazil, India and China are big countries by land area. Different parts of each country have different soils and even climates.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  No idea what the GP means by marginal crop land, but yes, people tend to grow cattle on land that isn't very good for crop, for one reason or another (the most common reasons being a rocky terrain or a non-plane surface, poor soil is usually not such a reason as soil is always fixed anyway). > My understanding is that rainforests take up so many nutrients that the soil is actually very poor and unsuitable for most kinds of agriculture. That's a characteristic of the Amazon forest specifically (and not even all of it). The soil is poor because it's an old land with a lot of raining, that carries the nutrients away, it's not a fault of the forest. Other rain forests have different characteristics.

by lhl 7y ago

mumblemumble 7y ago

> most livestock is grazed on marginal crop land There's a lot to unpack there. What is "marginal crop land"? It conjures images of scrubland in the North American west or the African savanna. But more than half the cattle in the world live in Brazil and India. My understanding is that rainforests take up so many nutrients that the soil is actually very poor and unsuitable for most kinds of agriculture. So one could easily say that recently burned Amazon rainforest is "marginal crop land", and that would make this statement technically true while still being no consolation at all. The next biggest chunk of the earth's cattle live in China, where my understanding is that they're effectively creating their own "marginal crop land" - they graze, they take up the nutrients in the soil, then they're slaughtered and their meat is shipped overseas, taking those nutrients along with them. So the soil keeps getting less fertile. Grazing is supposedly a major factor in the expansion of the Gobi desert. The USA? I don't know. Perhaps all the biggest CAFOs are located in marginal crop land, but the grain they're feeding to the cattle is all grown on prime crop land. Perhaps some specialty farms are creating eddies in the current, but it's hard to see much evidence that they're changing the overall flow unless we're very careful about how we frame the conversation.

cgh 7y ago
In North America, cattle are grazed on grasslands which have a long-term symbiotic relationship with grazing ungulates (the buffalo, now mostly gone, an immense tragedy). Cattle are only grain-fed for the last few weeks of their lives. There's this standing myth that cattle spend their lives in feedlots and that's simply false, as a visit to any ranch will tell you. And even that feed is largely inedible by humans[0]. The analogy between modern cattle and the wild grazing of buffalo isn't perfect. There are problems with modern grazing that need to be addressed. The North American grasslands are prone to desertification if over- or under-grazed. The work of the Savory Institute is largely about promoting "regenerative grazing", not just in North America but also eg Africa[1]. Anyway, if you live in North America and eat/utilise relatively local beef, then you aren't a participant in some kind of misuse of "prime crop land". [0]: https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/fao-sets-the-record-straight-86-of-livestock-feed-is-inedible-by-humans/ https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/fao-sets-the-record-s... [1]: https://savory.global https://savory.global
samatman 7y ago
It's even more complicated than that, because large parts of Brazil are pampas or other dry lands, where grazing cattle is the most suitable form of food production. I suspect at this point that former rainforest land accounts for most of the grazing heads, but it's difficult to find numbers.
bluGill 7y ago
Brazil, India and China are big countries by land area. Different parts of each country have different soils and even climates.
marcosdumay 7y ago
No idea what the GP means by marginal crop land, but yes, people tend to grow cattle on land that isn't very good for crop, for one reason or another (the most common reasons being a rocky terrain or a non-plane surface, poor soil is usually not such a reason as soil is always fixed anyway). > My understanding is that rainforests take up so many nutrients that the soil is actually very poor and unsuitable for most kinds of agriculture. That's a characteristic of the Amazon forest specifically (and not even all of it). The soil is poor because it's an old land with a lot of raining, that carries the nutrients away, it's not a fault of the forest. Other rain forests have different characteristics.