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Doesn't this presume that we would continue to grow the same amount of feed and then allow it to decompose? Whereas a reduction in meat consumption would mean

Doesn't this presume that we would continue to grow the same amount of feed and then allow it to decompose? Whereas a reduction in meat consumption would mean a reduction in total global land use for agriculture, allowing that land to be rewilded. Trapping carbon over a longer term and potentially providing numerous environmental benefits.

kebman 4y ago
It's grass. If you stop growing grass, something else will grow in its place.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- virgildotcodes 4y ago
  The vast majority of cattle are raised on grain, not grass. "The researchers report that grass-fed beef contributes very little to the global protein supply, accounting for just one gram of protein, per person, per day. In comparison, ruminants as a whole contribute 13g of protein to the global average protein intake, per person, per day." "Despite making only a marginal contribution to global protein intake, grazed beef accounts for between a quarter and a third of all greenhouse emissions from ruminant livestock." https://tabledebates.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/fcrn_gnc_report.pdf https://tabledebates.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/fcrn_gn... A related interesting fact - 77% of the world's soy is used for feed: https://ourworldindata.org/soy#:~:text=The%20majority%20(77%25)%20of,processed%20into%20soybean%20'cake' https://ourworldindata.org/soy#:~:text=The%20majority%20(77%....
- rafaelero 4y ago
  This is a very inaccurate picture. Only a minority of cows are grass-fed [1]. [1] https://extension.sdstate.edu/grass-fed-beef-market-share-grass-fed-beef#:~:text=About%204%25%20of%20U.S.%20beef,value%20of%20roughly%20%244%20billion https://extension.sdstate.edu/grass-fed-beef-market-share-gr....
  - nightski 4y ago
    Right but that likely means grass finished? Because from what I understand most U.S. beef is grass fed and then finished at feed lots.
    - virgildotcodes 4y ago
      Thank you, I actually didn't know this! I'd always heard about the proportion of animals that were raised on grain, as well as the percentage of crops used for animal feed, and concluded that in the US at least the majority of cattle were raised in feedlots their entire lives. Turns out you're right, the majority start out on pasture and then are transported to feed lots to fatten up once they reach maturity. According to this[1], due to the fact that grass fed beef fatten up more slowly, end up at a lower overall weight at slaughter, and are kept alive and emitting longer, "a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%", and "the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle)". Further - "Emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas with a large warming effect relative to carbon dioxide per molecule, come from beef cattle in the forms enteric fermentation and manure emissions. We calculated a 43% increase in methane from enteric fermentation (table 2), assuming that cattle finishing on grass had the same daily methane emissions as present-day stocker cattle, who have nearly identical ADG and are fed primarily on roughage." Either way it seems as if grain is an indispensable part of animal agriculture currently, so we have to take that into account when talking about what would happen to land use with or without the cows around. Additionally, it seems that moving away from grain would potentially have even worse impacts on the climate. [1]https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401
  - kebman 4y ago
    And your point is? So it's grains or shrooms, or whatever. Something else will grow and die and be broken down into methane its place. Things don't magically stop growing just because the area is no longer used for cattle grazing. Yet it's often magically missing from statistics and calculations when all is said and done...
towaway15463 4y ago
You’re assuming the current owners of the land are also going to disappear? If not then why wouldn’t they use the land for other productive purposes. If it’s currently farm land then they would simply change crops. Or maybe they would sell it to a developer who will build a car dependent suburb.
- virgildotcodes 4y ago
  If they could find other productive purposes sure, but the point of the change from the environmental perspective is that it would reduce demand for agriculture as a whole, that's the heart of why it would be such a big boon for the environment. According to the FAO[1], grazing land for animals and cropland dedicated to producing animal feed represent almost 80% of all agricultural land globally. "Feed crops are grown in one-third of total cropland, while the total land area occupied by pasture is equivalent to 26% of the ice-free terrestrial surface" Given food conversion ratios[2], where you lose roughly 90% of the energy you put into each step up the food chain, the lower we eat on it the lower the amount of energy input we need, which at the bottom of our food chain are those crops and grasslands. Once we remove the heavily inefficient middlemen which are animals, we are left with a drastic reduction in the amount of agricultural land and output needed. I'm not sure how many of these companies and farmers could find another use for their grassland and farmland, as it's not like people will be able to just up their consumption of food by several multiples, and I'm not sure what other sort of productive purposes beyond food production the majority would be able to find. So yeah, once there's no demand and it's no longer profitable, a large amount of that agricultural land seems like it would just be allowed to lay fallow or be rewilded, which would be really beneficial to the environment for many reasons.[3] [1]https://www.fao.org/animal-production/en/ https://www.fao.org/animal-production/en/ [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level [3]https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/explore-rewilding/what-is-rewilding/why-we-need-rewilding https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/explore-rewilding/what-i...

kebman 4y ago

It's grass. If you stop growing grass, something else will grow in its place.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
virgildotcodes 4y ago
The vast majority of cattle are raised on grain, not grass. "The researchers report that grass-fed beef contributes very little to the global protein supply, accounting for just one gram of protein, per person, per day. In comparison, ruminants as a whole contribute 13g of protein to the global average protein intake, per person, per day." "Despite making only a marginal contribution to global protein intake, grazed beef accounts for between a quarter and a third of all greenhouse emissions from ruminant livestock." https://tabledebates.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/fcrn_gnc_report.pdf https://tabledebates.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/fcrn_gn... A related interesting fact - 77% of the world's soy is used for feed: https://ourworldindata.org/soy#:~:text=The%20majority%20(77%25)%20of,processed%20into%20soybean%20'cake' https://ourworldindata.org/soy#:~:text=The%20majority%20(77%....
rafaelero 4y ago
This is a very inaccurate picture. Only a minority of cows are grass-fed [1]. [1] https://extension.sdstate.edu/grass-fed-beef-market-share-grass-fed-beef#:~:text=About%204%25%20of%20U.S.%20beef,value%20of%20roughly%20%244%20billion https://extension.sdstate.edu/grass-fed-beef-market-share-gr....
- nightski 4y ago
  Right but that likely means grass finished? Because from what I understand most U.S. beef is grass fed and then finished at feed lots.
  - virgildotcodes 4y ago
    Thank you, I actually didn't know this! I'd always heard about the proportion of animals that were raised on grain, as well as the percentage of crops used for animal feed, and concluded that in the US at least the majority of cattle were raised in feedlots their entire lives. Turns out you're right, the majority start out on pasture and then are transported to feed lots to fatten up once they reach maturity. According to this[1], due to the fact that grass fed beef fatten up more slowly, end up at a lower overall weight at slaughter, and are kept alive and emitting longer, "a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%", and "the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle)". Further - "Emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas with a large warming effect relative to carbon dioxide per molecule, come from beef cattle in the forms enteric fermentation and manure emissions. We calculated a 43% increase in methane from enteric fermentation (table 2), assuming that cattle finishing on grass had the same daily methane emissions as present-day stocker cattle, who have nearly identical ADG and are fed primarily on roughage." Either way it seems as if grain is an indispensable part of animal agriculture currently, so we have to take that into account when talking about what would happen to land use with or without the cows around. Additionally, it seems that moving away from grain would potentially have even worse impacts on the climate. [1]https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401
- kebman 4y ago
  And your point is? So it's grains or shrooms, or whatever. Something else will grow and die and be broken down into methane its place. Things don't magically stop growing just because the area is no longer used for cattle grazing. Yet it's often magically missing from statistics and calculations when all is said and done...

towaway15463 4y ago

You’re assuming the current owners of the land are also going to disappear? If not then why wouldn’t they use the land for other productive purposes. If it’s currently farm land then they would simply change crops. Or maybe they would sell it to a developer who will build a car dependent suburb.

virgildotcodes 4y ago
If they could find other productive purposes sure, but the point of the change from the environmental perspective is that it would reduce demand for agriculture as a whole, that's the heart of why it would be such a big boon for the environment. According to the FAO[1], grazing land for animals and cropland dedicated to producing animal feed represent almost 80% of all agricultural land globally. "Feed crops are grown in one-third of total cropland, while the total land area occupied by pasture is equivalent to 26% of the ice-free terrestrial surface" Given food conversion ratios[2], where you lose roughly 90% of the energy you put into each step up the food chain, the lower we eat on it the lower the amount of energy input we need, which at the bottom of our food chain are those crops and grasslands. Once we remove the heavily inefficient middlemen which are animals, we are left with a drastic reduction in the amount of agricultural land and output needed. I'm not sure how many of these companies and farmers could find another use for their grassland and farmland, as it's not like people will be able to just up their consumption of food by several multiples, and I'm not sure what other sort of productive purposes beyond food production the majority would be able to find. So yeah, once there's no demand and it's no longer profitable, a large amount of that agricultural land seems like it would just be allowed to lay fallow or be rewilded, which would be really beneficial to the environment for many reasons.[3] [1]https://www.fao.org/animal-production/en/ https://www.fao.org/animal-production/en/ [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level [3]https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/explore-rewilding/what-is-rewilding/why-we-need-rewilding https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/explore-rewilding/what-i...