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A huge portion of beef calories come from mechanically harvested feed (pasture crops and soy and corn). The emissions related to those calories would go away.
by maxerickson 6y ago
A huge portion of beef calories come from mechanically harvested feed (pasture crops and soy and corn).
The emissions related to those calories would go away.
- Ancapistani 6y agoBeef production accounts for 9% of US corn production: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States#Production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_... If we have a magic wand and that disappeared entirely tomorrow, that would simply be allocated to other areas. There’s a reason sodas in the US are sweetened with HFCS and our gasoline is cut with ethanol produced from corn - because of lobbying efforts to subsidize corn production, which has driven down costs, which in turn made it profitable to use corn in ways where it wouldn’t otherwise make sense. Europe uses ethanol derived from sugar beets, which is significantly more efficient in terms of CO2. It’s significantly more complex than “if we reduce beef consumption, we’ll reduce corn consumption”.
- maxerickson 6y agoThe methane from the cattle that didn't exist would go away. I guess I didn't try to spell the whole thought out, but I wasn't trying to claim that beef consumption is an island, I was thinking about how CAFO style animal husbandry supports a lot more animals than pure grazing would.