3 ms·

Cattle production in the U.S. is not comparable to other countries.

by femiagbabiaka 5y ago

gruez 5y ago
Why not?
- femiagbabiaka 5y ago
  The United States and China are the dominant producers and consumers of meat. And even between these two countries, apples to apples comparisons are not helpful as production practices are not the same.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >apples to apples comparisons are not helpful as production practices are not the same. How are the production practices different? How do the differences relate to resource usage?
    - femiagbabiaka 5y ago
      the differences are too many to put succinctly, they're (IMO) way behind in standards on every level as a result of exponential growth in meat consumption that is practically unprecedented. I'd start here: https://sci-hub.se/10.1126/sciadv.aar8534 https://sci-hub.se/10.1126/sciadv.aar8534
- zhengyi13 5y ago
  Scale, I suspect. Cattle production in the US is something like 20% greater than Brazil, the next highest producer according to the first source[1] I found, producing literally 1/5 of the world's total beef. There's piles more data out there, and probably a lot more to say, but this is probably the answer to a first approximation. 1: https://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-production-ranking-countries-0-106885 https://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-production-ranking-co...
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Cattle production in the US is something like 20% greater than Brazil, the next highest producer according to the first source[1] I found, producing literally 1/5 of the world's total beef. That's not really surprising when US has 2.26x the arable land of brazil. If you normalize for that, brazil is actually 84% more intensive than the US. The European union is even more intensive.
    - femiagbabiaka 5y ago
      what does "intensive" mean, and what does arable land have to do with cattle production?
      - gruez 5y ago
        I think you're missing the point. GP claims that since the US is the top producer in the world, it's somehow different from the other countries because of "scale". That doesn't make any sense because it doesn't account for land use. Suppose there are 3 equally sized countries (A, B and C), with identical geography and livestock raising practices. Suppose A and B decided to form a union (eg. united AB or AB union). Now you can say AB union has twice the "scale" of C, and therefore you can't compare the production between AB and C. This is despite that in actuality the situation in all 3 countries are identical, "scale" doesn't have anything to do with it, and the the increased "scale" is basically due to arbitrary categorization. Normalizing livestock by arable land attempts to normalize this, since available land does have a material impact on how livestock would be raised.

Cattle production in the U.S. is not comparable to other countries.

gruez 5y ago

Why not?

femiagbabiaka 5y ago
The United States and China are the dominant producers and consumers of meat. And even between these two countries, apples to apples comparisons are not helpful as production practices are not the same.
- gruez 5y ago
  >apples to apples comparisons are not helpful as production practices are not the same. How are the production practices different? How do the differences relate to resource usage?
  - femiagbabiaka 5y ago
    the differences are too many to put succinctly, they're (IMO) way behind in standards on every level as a result of exponential growth in meat consumption that is practically unprecedented. I'd start here: https://sci-hub.se/10.1126/sciadv.aar8534 https://sci-hub.se/10.1126/sciadv.aar8534
zhengyi13 5y ago
Scale, I suspect. Cattle production in the US is something like 20% greater than Brazil, the next highest producer according to the first source[1] I found, producing literally 1/5 of the world's total beef. There's piles more data out there, and probably a lot more to say, but this is probably the answer to a first approximation. 1: https://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-production-ranking-countries-0-106885 https://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-production-ranking-co...
- gruez 5y ago
  >Cattle production in the US is something like 20% greater than Brazil, the next highest producer according to the first source[1] I found, producing literally 1/5 of the world's total beef. That's not really surprising when US has 2.26x the arable land of brazil. If you normalize for that, brazil is actually 84% more intensive than the US. The European union is even more intensive.
  - femiagbabiaka 5y ago
    what does "intensive" mean, and what does arable land have to do with cattle production?
    - gruez 5y ago
      I think you're missing the point. GP claims that since the US is the top producer in the world, it's somehow different from the other countries because of "scale". That doesn't make any sense because it doesn't account for land use. Suppose there are 3 equally sized countries (A, B and C), with identical geography and livestock raising practices. Suppose A and B decided to form a union (eg. united AB or AB union). Now you can say AB union has twice the "scale" of C, and therefore you can't compare the production between AB and C. This is despite that in actuality the situation in all 3 countries are identical, "scale" doesn't have anything to do with it, and the the increased "scale" is basically due to arbitrary categorization. Normalizing livestock by arable land attempts to normalize this, since available land does have a material impact on how livestock would be raised.