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Realistically, though, it isn't used for other things. Lack of infrastructure is a decent barrier for many things. Not that I disagree with the last bit - I'm

Realistically, though, it isn't used for other things. Lack of infrastructure is a decent barrier for many things. Not that I disagree with the last bit - I'm mostly vegetarian save for an occasional fish dish.

munk-a 5y ago
If not used by cattle ranching it would be used as a natural preserve - there are huge chunks of the country that aren't fit even for ranching and in those chunks of the country you'll see... nothing. Except a biome that's doing its thing without human intervention. If this land is good for nothing but cattle rearing and we stop cattle rearing then we can return big chunks of it to nature.
- novok 5y ago
  You can do cattle ranching in a regenerative way that would be better than doing nothing and making a place a national park. [0] Are there problems with current chicken, pig and some ruminant ranching? Yes. Does it have to be done this way? No. Are there major environmental issues also with monoculture plant farming that nobody seems to bring up? Yes. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI&t=1s Getting rid of ruminant cattle farming will just make the world worse off as food demand gets redirected to a smaller amount of arable land and missing cattle would accelerate climate change and desertification. Humanity does not have a lack of land to live on, there is plenty to go around. City land is expensive because everyone wants to be on small space.
  - laurencerowe 5y ago
    > Getting rid of ruminant cattle farming will just make the world worse off as food demand gets redirected to a smaller amount of arable land and missing cattle would accelerate climate change and desertification. Humanity does not have a lack of land to live on, there is plenty to go around. City land is expensive because everyone wants to be on small space. Wouldn't getting rid of ruminant cattle farming reduce the amount of arable land required since so much of it is used to grow animal feed? "If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million," 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...
    - bscphil 5y ago
      > Wouldn't getting rid of ruminant cattle farming reduce the amount of arable land required since so much of it is used to grow animal feed? I think this is exactly the point missed by the people in this thread saying that a lot of cattle are raised on otherwise useless land. The presumption is that if you got rid of cattle farming you'd have to replace the lost calories for humans by growing other food on that land or cutting down more forests. But this presumption is false. Even if every bit of land used for raising cattle turned out to be worthless for doing anything else, you'd still have an overall environmental win by getting rid of cattle. Convert not the land used to raise cattle directly but the land used to grow the food they eat to producing vegetables and grains for us.
      - pigeonhole123 5y ago
        I don’t understand your last sentence. Get rid of cows and then give people what? I also think vegetables are very energy inefficient compared to for example potatoes. Not sure how we can defend growing anything with such a minuscule calorie count given the impact of pesticides and herbicides on the environment.
        maccard 5y ago
        > I also think vegetables are very energy inefficient compared to for example potatoes. Not sure how we can defend growing anything with such a minuscule calorie count given the impact of pesticides and herbicides on the environment. Cattle are herbivores, so we're feeding _them_ plant matter for them to convert to meat for us to eat. We're also growing massive amounts of soy and corn just to feed those cattle already, when we could be growing substantially less than that to feed ourselves. > Not sure how we can defend growing anything with such a minuscule calorie count given the impact of pesticides and herbicides on the environment. Not sure how we can defend the current status quo when we're growing many times the amount of crops to feed the animals using those pesticides and herbicides, _and_ pumping said cattle full of antibiotics, but yet here we are.
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    Livestock overgrazing is one of the leading causes of desertification. Can you explain how removing them and simultaneously making the food chain more efficient could worsen the situation? I'm aware that you linked the Allan Savory TED talk, but that's been heavily controversial and many of the studies on it find limited effects beyond any other reasonable strategy.
  - pl-94 5y ago
    The area on which is cattle ranching is better than nothing is a very small portion of the world. People loves to bring this argument, but it is order of magnitude lower than area destroyed by cattle ranching (farms for feeding beefs lead to deforestation, badly managed water leads to desertification).

munk-a 5y ago

If not used by cattle ranching it would be used as a natural preserve - there are huge chunks of the country that aren't fit even for ranching and in those chunks of the country you'll see... nothing. Except a biome that's doing its thing without human intervention. If this land is good for nothing but cattle rearing and we stop cattle rearing then we can return big chunks of it to nature.

novok 5y ago
You can do cattle ranching in a regenerative way that would be better than doing nothing and making a place a national park. [0] Are there problems with current chicken, pig and some ruminant ranching? Yes. Does it have to be done this way? No. Are there major environmental issues also with monoculture plant farming that nobody seems to bring up? Yes. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI&t=1s Getting rid of ruminant cattle farming will just make the world worse off as food demand gets redirected to a smaller amount of arable land and missing cattle would accelerate climate change and desertification. Humanity does not have a lack of land to live on, there is plenty to go around. City land is expensive because everyone wants to be on small space.
- laurencerowe 5y ago
  > Getting rid of ruminant cattle farming will just make the world worse off as food demand gets redirected to a smaller amount of arable land and missing cattle would accelerate climate change and desertification. Humanity does not have a lack of land to live on, there is plenty to go around. City land is expensive because everyone wants to be on small space. Wouldn't getting rid of ruminant cattle farming reduce the amount of arable land required since so much of it is used to grow animal feed? "If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million," 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...
  - bscphil 5y ago
    > Wouldn't getting rid of ruminant cattle farming reduce the amount of arable land required since so much of it is used to grow animal feed? I think this is exactly the point missed by the people in this thread saying that a lot of cattle are raised on otherwise useless land. The presumption is that if you got rid of cattle farming you'd have to replace the lost calories for humans by growing other food on that land or cutting down more forests. But this presumption is false. Even if every bit of land used for raising cattle turned out to be worthless for doing anything else, you'd still have an overall environmental win by getting rid of cattle. Convert not the land used to raise cattle directly but the land used to grow the food they eat to producing vegetables and grains for us.
    - pigeonhole123 5y ago
      I don’t understand your last sentence. Get rid of cows and then give people what? I also think vegetables are very energy inefficient compared to for example potatoes. Not sure how we can defend growing anything with such a minuscule calorie count given the impact of pesticides and herbicides on the environment.
      - maccard 5y ago
        > I also think vegetables are very energy inefficient compared to for example potatoes. Not sure how we can defend growing anything with such a minuscule calorie count given the impact of pesticides and herbicides on the environment. Cattle are herbivores, so we're feeding _them_ plant matter for them to convert to meat for us to eat. We're also growing massive amounts of soy and corn just to feed those cattle already, when we could be growing substantially less than that to feed ourselves. > Not sure how we can defend growing anything with such a minuscule calorie count given the impact of pesticides and herbicides on the environment. Not sure how we can defend the current status quo when we're growing many times the amount of crops to feed the animals using those pesticides and herbicides, _and_ pumping said cattle full of antibiotics, but yet here we are.
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  Livestock overgrazing is one of the leading causes of desertification. Can you explain how removing them and simultaneously making the food chain more efficient could worsen the situation? I'm aware that you linked the Allan Savory TED talk, but that's been heavily controversial and many of the studies on it find limited effects beyond any other reasonable strategy.
- pl-94 5y ago
  The area on which is cattle ranching is better than nothing is a very small portion of the world. People loves to bring this argument, but it is order of magnitude lower than area destroyed by cattle ranching (farms for feeding beefs lead to deforestation, badly managed water leads to desertification).