5 ms·

But it is more efficient. Less soy needed for soy product then for the same meat calories.

• chrisseaton 6y ago
  Why not grass fed meat then there’s no soy at all!
  • refactor_master 6y ago
    It’s a massive waste of land though.
    • chrisseaton 6y ago
      How is it wasting land to feed cattle on it? It’s often not doing anything else.
      • bjoli 6y ago
        Not all land is a good pasture. In many parts of the world, good pasture are also efficient carbon sinks. In my part of the world those carbon sinks are rare (only about 10% of pastures are carbon sinks), and the few that are good are even better as farmland. That overlap is not 100%. Some good pasture is bad farmland, but the claim that good pasture is good farmland is a good rule of thumb
      • distances 6y ago
        Any land reclaimed from livestock feeding could be returned to nature, be it rainforests in Brazil or woodlands in Europe. Livestock uses a massive amount of agricultural land in comparison to plant production meant for direct human consumption. It's just a very very simple math based on the amount of crops it takes to grow animals for meat -- and soy is much more efficient than grass in that sense, so your suggestion would make things decidedly worse for environment.
        • chrisseaton 6y ago
          I don't know what you know about European agriculture, but woodlands in Europe aren't 'nature' in any primitive sense. If the grass pasture is already there in cycle, it's not being used for anything else. Might as well put cattle on it.
          • distances 6y ago
            > but woodlands in Europe aren't 'nature' in any primitive sense. Europe is varied, not sure where you live but the forests in Northern/North-Central Europe that I'm familiar with absolutely do support wildlife. I think it shouldn't be controversial that returning agricultural land to nature, whatever "nature" means in different areas, is good for environment. Anyway, this is wildly beside the point, which is that pasture feeding cattle can't satisfy the current demand for meat, not even close. Converting soy fields to grazing fields would be an ecological disaster without a serious decrease in worldwide meat consumption, as the yields would be far lower.
            • chrisseaton 6y ago
              > Converting soy fields to grazing fields But why would you do that? Don't cut down forests for soy, and don't cut it down for pasture either. Use existing green grass fields to feed cattle. This can be done in between crop rotations. > without a serious decrease in worldwide meat consumption Maybe that's the point? Eat less (if you want to eat at all) and eat grass-fed. Do cattle even choose to eat soy when they have green grass available?
              • distances 6y ago
                > Maybe that's the point? Eat less (if you want to eat at all) and eat grass-fed. Do cattle even choose to eat soy when they have green grass available? Eating less meat was the point from the start as the main/only way to decrease soy footprint, so if you're not suggesting to replace soy feed with grass then this whole discussion was in the end more or less pointless.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • telesilla 6y ago
        Cattle is also disastrous for the water supply. Unfortunately, mass production of meat is just very expensive for the health of the planet.
  • cerebellum42 6y ago
    Because that does not work on scale. This discussion is about how producing meat requires tons and tons of land in the form of soy bean fields that feed the animals, which indirectly and directly contributes to deforestation. Now you come along and say, just eat meat produced using this other method which takes a lot MORE land for the same amount of meat production?
    • chrisseaton 6y ago
      But our fields are already grass - we don’t need to deforest to grow any soy at all.
      • cerebellum42 6y ago
        No they're not, at least they're not pasture. They're either already farmed fields or they're wild meadows. Putting meadows to intense use would destroy whole ecosystems that may look like "just grass" from afar, and farmed fields are obviously already in use.
        • chrisseaton 6y ago
          > No they're not, at least they're not pasture. Thanks for telling me what the fields around me are!
          • cerebellum42 6y ago
            I don't think anyone in this whole thread was talking about your local fields here.
      • bayesian_horse 6y ago
        There's not enough grass-land in the world for everyone to eat grass-fed beef. That's the whole point of not feeding them grass in the first place.