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Raising cattle can easily become a net negative to carbon emissions if cows are given slightly more space to graze and moved around more often. If all cattle we

• loceng 6y ago
  There needs to be a proper discussion, debate, to break apart ideologies that are perpetuating misinformation or just simply not taking into account the whole ecosystem; the documentary Sacred Cow seemed to do a good job to explain it.
  • throwaway1777 6y ago
    Not sure why this was downvoted, sacred cow is actually a good unbiased take at regenerative agriculture (including both plants and animals)
• silicon2401 6y ago
  > less cattle production This idea would lose the interest of anybody with influence over cattle production right here. It's almost impossible to make people simply want less, but it's more feasible to make them want something different than what they want today.
  • est31 6y ago
    What you are looking for are subsidies. In the EU you can get subsidies for not touching a plot of arable land at all.
• pat2man 6y ago
  I think both solutions work hand in hand. We replace the lower quality meath with vegan alternatives. This allows meat producers to focus on higher value, grass fed products. So we still eat steak but frozen processed meat patties are replaced with plan alternatives.
  • atharris 6y ago
    This is really meat-dependent, ironically - the biggest thing we could do is cut consumption of steak and other prime cuts of beef, since ground beef is made out of what's left after those expensive, sought-after cuts are taken. I would guess that eliminating ground beef consumption doesn't really get us anywhere for the environment.
• drewg123 6y ago
  That study seems to be comparing cropland to pasture. The problem is that the tradeoff is not between cropland and pasture, but pasture and forest. Eg: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/02/revealed-amazon-deforestation-driven-global-greed-meat-brazil https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/02/revealed... Due to increasing demand for meat, we have people burning the forest and releasing all the carbon sequestered in the trees, and reducing the efficiency of the land as a carbon sink going forward.
  • dzhiurgis 6y ago
    And what undeniable value do forest provides? I live in NZ where which still somewhat recently used to be covered in forests. There’s tons of pastures and forests certainly look nice (and native bush is just something else), but other than that I don’t know why forests so important? Properties with shading are more expensive here, but that also causes more issues with your rain water tanks.
    • InvertedRhodium 6y ago
      I live in NZ as well - forests provide a myriad of benefits, the ones you'd probably consider most importation is the sequestering of co2 and the production of oxygen (that thing you need to live). Beyond that they are a habitat in which much wildlife finds a more suitable environment (forested areas are protected from birds of prey), act as wind breaks across areas such as the Canterbury plains, help with retaining topsoil and so much more. The shade they provide your BBQ is literally the least important role forests play.
      • DetroitThrow 6y ago
        The o2 production that forests and rainforests provide always seems a bit overstated - your surrounding oceans are even better at that, but algae don't help with regional smog much, do they? Carbon sequestering, wind breaks, increased biodiversity, topsoil protection, game reserves - they may not seem huge to the average person, but like you say they are crucial for our continuity.
  • 6y ago
• duckerude 6y ago
  > The 2017 data showed that converting annual cropland to perennial pasture, under holistic and regenerative grazing practices, had the effect of storing more carbon in the soil than cows emit during their lives. Does this continue storing more carbon, or does it just store a constant amount of carbon? It reads to me like it's a one-off reduction in carbon that's already cancelled out after a couple of years.
• asoneth 6y ago
  The linked research is interesting and may be slightly more nuanced than your summary. From their executive summary: "The WOP system effectively captures soil carbon, offsetting a majority of the emissions related to beef production. The largest emission sources — from cattle digestion and manure — are highly uncertain. We believe the results shown here are on the conservative side. Accounting for soil carbon capture is not yet standard practice and the results may meet with challenges, such as on ensuring long-term storage. In the best case, the WOP beef production may have a net positive effect on climate. The results show great potential." It looks like their beef production does produce carbon (and methane) emissions, they just pair that with the carbon sequestration due to their land use. I appreciate that they did this research and published the results. It's an interesting argument. But I'm unsure how well it scales at a societal level. For one thing there's the opportunity cost of using so much land for a single pound of beef. More significantly it seems like one could use their logic to pair any activity with enough soil-based carbon capture to argue that it's now a carbon neutral activity. For example, one could argue that dirt biking has "net negative carbon emissions" if you subtract their tailpipe emissions from the carbon capture from thousands of acres of forested trails.
• shafyy 6y ago
  No, just no. White Oak Pastures has been debunked by real science many times, e.g. here: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijbd/2014/163431/ https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijbd/2014/163431/