6 ms·

Animal agriculture produces more carbon waste than the entire transportation sector. "Regenerative" animal agriculture is a myth, as fields can only sequester a

Animal agriculture produces more carbon waste than the entire transportation sector. "Regenerative" animal agriculture is a myth, as fields can only sequester a small percent of the carbon emissions produced by ruminants, and they eventually reach a saturation point where they stop sequestering any. Additionally, factory farms are pretty much the only option to make animal products available anywhere close to the quantity required. Community farms have significantly lower output at a higher cost, and therefore animal products prices would presumably skyrocket. There are plenty of delicious and easily available vegan recipes that require 0 veggie burgers, if you're interested in reducing your carbon footprint. Obviously your actions are up to you, but community farms like you suggest just aren't feasible at scale.

msandford 5y ago
The great plains of 100 years ago would beg to differ. It was very common for black soil to be 4 plus feet deep. If that wasn't a lot of sequestered carbon I don't know what is. Ironically all that sequestered carbon was released back to the air by intensive cropping not by ruminant animals.
- TollingSteady 5y ago
  I completely agree, natural habitats with native flora and fauna tend to settle into balanced ecosystems. As far as I can tell, that's not what you're arguing for, though, as that is not at all what modern animal agriculture is similar to. As far as crops, the majority of what we grow is fed to animals. For example, according to the USDA, approximately 70% of U.S. soy is used as animal feed. If you're interested in reducing crop farming, go vegan. (Source: https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/coexistence-soybeans-factsheet.pdf https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/coexisten...) As far as the limited abilities of carbon sequestering, "Grazing management could potentially, and under very generous assumptions, offset between 20-60% of annual average emissions from the grass-fed only sector," meaning that even all grass fed beef is still going to involve horrifying amounts of GHG emissions, completely ignoring the cost/land use that would make it otherwise unfeasible. (Source: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-grazing-livestock-climate-impact.html https://phys.org/news/2017-10-grazing-livestock-climate-impa...) Bonus link for more info on ruminants and carbon sequestering: "https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/animal/article/abs/mitigating-the-greenhouse-gas-balance-of-ruminant-production-systems-through-carbon-sequestration-in-grasslands/75C37264D0DBC0B6175DFA61574E3A6D https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/animal/article/abs/m..."
  - msandford 5y ago
    Doing regenerative ranching can be net carbon sequestering provided that you model your operation on nature a certain amount. People are doing it successfully. Another way to be responsible re food is to only buy good grass fed beef. As a bonus cows can make use of grass on land that's too poor for traditional farming.
    - TollingSteady 5y ago
      The source I cite for only 20-60% of GHG emissions being sequestered includes grass-fed beef. It seems like buying grass-fed beef is still environmentally unsustainable. Your claims don't seem to match any of the evidence I've seen, but I'd be interested in discussing them further if you could provide sources. As far as poor soil, a) current animal agriculture is mostly making use of usable soil & farmed crops, so this currently seems like a moot point, and b) this gets back to the above issue of being completely unable to scale. Unless you're being careful to only eat meat about once a month, I don't understand how the use of only poor soil is supposed to produce enough meat to feed everyone who would want it.
      - msandford 5y ago
        There are several ways to approach the problem. One is to look from first principles and analyze how the great plains came to be. It should be obvious that the carbon didn't just sequester itself. Therefore if one were to mimic the roaming herds of bison closely enough (and how close is close enough is up for debate) then it should absolutely be possible to be net sequestering. I'm having trouble finding a good source for this. There's a guy named Gabe Brown from North Dakota who is consistently increasing the amount of organic matter (and thus carbon) in the soil of his farm. I don't know how you'd interpret his results as anything other than sequestering. https://www.sandyarrowranch.com/2019-fall-winter-update/ https://www.sandyarrowranch.com/2019-fall-winter-update/ Finally there are places that are trying to study this rigorously as there's huge money to be made if you can offer guilt-free beef. Might that taint their results? Yup, but they might also be right. https://www.fastcompany.com/90368127/is-it-possible-to-raise-a-carbon-neutral-cow https://www.fastcompany.com/90368127/is-it-possible-to-raise... https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-regenerative-land-and-livestock-management-practices-can-sequester-carbon https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-regenerative-land-and-l...
jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
But that seems fine. People would still have access to meat, it would just be at a much higher price. The price should reflect the ecological cost anyways.
- TollingSteady 5y ago
  If we cut subsidies and internalized the externalities (i.e. heavy carbon tax on all meat used to offset the GHG emissions), it would be theoretically feasible to make meat carbon neutral. I'd imagine taking these minimum steps toward environmental sustainability would either a) greatly exacerbate food insecurity in America or b) make meat into a luxury that only the top 10% can afford to eat at all. Either way, I suppose it would be an effective way to let the market reduce animal agriculture. If you'd like to help this come about, please consider boycotting the current animal agriculture industry until it reforms, as this kind of carbon-neutral meat currently does not exist.
CuriouslyC 5y ago
Traditional agriculture is garbage, and you holding it up as some sort of solution to the incoming environmental catastrophe is dangerous. Eliminating animals will provide a short term band-aid, but the problem will fester under the surface as we continue to destroy fertility and poison our water, until we get laid low by rolling famines. The solution is distributed permaculture, with animals integrated (referred to as silvopasture). Silvopasture produces much more food per acre than conventional row crops, and when permaculture principles are followed, requires minimal or no use of fertilizers and sprays. In addition, it builds soil fertility and retains water. The animals in the system naturally fertilize the plants while controlling pests and weeds. As long as the dominant mode of agriculture is thousand acre farms growing monoculture commodity crops, sprayed with gallons of chemicals, which are then trucked back and forth across the country from processing plant to factory to store, we're going to continue to erode our future food supply.
- TollingSteady 5y ago
  I completely agree, crop farming as it currently exists trades a lot of long term sustainability and ecological responsibility in exchange for high output. However the problem is that the large majority of these monoculture crops go to animals. Reducing animal agriculture not only means less direct GHG emissions from animals, it also means a huge reduction in the amount of crops required to feed the same number of people. In the US, 41% of land is used for animal agriculture, while only 19.8% is used for food humans eat. (Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/) "The 7 billion livestock animals in the United States consume five times as much grain as is consumed directly by the entire American population." + "For every kilogram of high-quality animal protein produced, livestock are fed nearly 6 kg of plant protein." (Source: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-m...) If you're worried about greenhouse gas emissions, stop paying into animal agriculture. If you're interested in reducing the need for monocrops, reducing land use, and creating more sustainable plant farming, your best choice is still to go vegan.
  - CuriouslyC 5y ago

msandford 5y ago

The great plains of 100 years ago would beg to differ. It was very common for black soil to be 4 plus feet deep. If that wasn't a lot of sequestered carbon I don't know what is. Ironically all that sequestered carbon was released back to the air by intensive cropping not by ruminant animals.

TollingSteady 5y ago
I completely agree, natural habitats with native flora and fauna tend to settle into balanced ecosystems. As far as I can tell, that's not what you're arguing for, though, as that is not at all what modern animal agriculture is similar to. As far as crops, the majority of what we grow is fed to animals. For example, according to the USDA, approximately 70% of U.S. soy is used as animal feed. If you're interested in reducing crop farming, go vegan. (Source: https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/coexistence-soybeans-factsheet.pdf https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/coexisten...) As far as the limited abilities of carbon sequestering, "Grazing management could potentially, and under very generous assumptions, offset between 20-60% of annual average emissions from the grass-fed only sector," meaning that even all grass fed beef is still going to involve horrifying amounts of GHG emissions, completely ignoring the cost/land use that would make it otherwise unfeasible. (Source: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-grazing-livestock-climate-impact.html https://phys.org/news/2017-10-grazing-livestock-climate-impa...) Bonus link for more info on ruminants and carbon sequestering: "https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/animal/article/abs/mitigating-the-greenhouse-gas-balance-of-ruminant-production-systems-through-carbon-sequestration-in-grasslands/75C37264D0DBC0B6175DFA61574E3A6D https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/animal/article/abs/m..."
- msandford 5y ago
  Doing regenerative ranching can be net carbon sequestering provided that you model your operation on nature a certain amount. People are doing it successfully. Another way to be responsible re food is to only buy good grass fed beef. As a bonus cows can make use of grass on land that's too poor for traditional farming.
  - TollingSteady 5y ago
    The source I cite for only 20-60% of GHG emissions being sequestered includes grass-fed beef. It seems like buying grass-fed beef is still environmentally unsustainable. Your claims don't seem to match any of the evidence I've seen, but I'd be interested in discussing them further if you could provide sources. As far as poor soil, a) current animal agriculture is mostly making use of usable soil & farmed crops, so this currently seems like a moot point, and b) this gets back to the above issue of being completely unable to scale. Unless you're being careful to only eat meat about once a month, I don't understand how the use of only poor soil is supposed to produce enough meat to feed everyone who would want it.
    - msandford 5y ago
      There are several ways to approach the problem. One is to look from first principles and analyze how the great plains came to be. It should be obvious that the carbon didn't just sequester itself. Therefore if one were to mimic the roaming herds of bison closely enough (and how close is close enough is up for debate) then it should absolutely be possible to be net sequestering. I'm having trouble finding a good source for this. There's a guy named Gabe Brown from North Dakota who is consistently increasing the amount of organic matter (and thus carbon) in the soil of his farm. I don't know how you'd interpret his results as anything other than sequestering. https://www.sandyarrowranch.com/2019-fall-winter-update/ https://www.sandyarrowranch.com/2019-fall-winter-update/ Finally there are places that are trying to study this rigorously as there's huge money to be made if you can offer guilt-free beef. Might that taint their results? Yup, but they might also be right. https://www.fastcompany.com/90368127/is-it-possible-to-raise-a-carbon-neutral-cow https://www.fastcompany.com/90368127/is-it-possible-to-raise... https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-regenerative-land-and-livestock-management-practices-can-sequester-carbon https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-regenerative-land-and-l...

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago

But that seems fine. People would still have access to meat, it would just be at a much higher price. The price should reflect the ecological cost anyways.

TollingSteady 5y ago
If we cut subsidies and internalized the externalities (i.e. heavy carbon tax on all meat used to offset the GHG emissions), it would be theoretically feasible to make meat carbon neutral. I'd imagine taking these minimum steps toward environmental sustainability would either a) greatly exacerbate food insecurity in America or b) make meat into a luxury that only the top 10% can afford to eat at all. Either way, I suppose it would be an effective way to let the market reduce animal agriculture. If you'd like to help this come about, please consider boycotting the current animal agriculture industry until it reforms, as this kind of carbon-neutral meat currently does not exist.

CuriouslyC 5y ago

Traditional agriculture is garbage, and you holding it up as some sort of solution to the incoming environmental catastrophe is dangerous. Eliminating animals will provide a short term band-aid, but the problem will fester under the surface as we continue to destroy fertility and poison our water, until we get laid low by rolling famines. The solution is distributed permaculture, with animals integrated (referred to as silvopasture). Silvopasture produces much more food per acre than conventional row crops, and when permaculture principles are followed, requires minimal or no use of fertilizers and sprays. In addition, it builds soil fertility and retains water. The animals in the system naturally fertilize the plants while controlling pests and weeds. As long as the dominant mode of agriculture is thousand acre farms growing monoculture commodity crops, sprayed with gallons of chemicals, which are then trucked back and forth across the country from processing plant to factory to store, we're going to continue to erode our future food supply.

TollingSteady 5y ago
I completely agree, crop farming as it currently exists trades a lot of long term sustainability and ecological responsibility in exchange for high output. However the problem is that the large majority of these monoculture crops go to animals. Reducing animal agriculture not only means less direct GHG emissions from animals, it also means a huge reduction in the amount of crops required to feed the same number of people. In the US, 41% of land is used for animal agriculture, while only 19.8% is used for food humans eat. (Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/) "The 7 billion livestock animals in the United States consume five times as much grain as is consumed directly by the entire American population." + "For every kilogram of high-quality animal protein produced, livestock are fed nearly 6 kg of plant protein." (Source: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-m...) If you're worried about greenhouse gas emissions, stop paying into animal agriculture. If you're interested in reducing the need for monocrops, reducing land use, and creating more sustainable plant farming, your best choice is still to go vegan.
- CuriouslyC 5y ago