6 ms·

And eating less meat, so we can do with less agricultural production.

himinlomax 3y ago
Pasture farming on marginal land is part of the solution. Industrial meat farming is part of the problem. They're two different things.
- alex_duf 3y ago
  But would pasture farming on marginal land scale to the level of consumption we have today?
- CalRobert 3y ago
  "Pasture farming on marginal land is part of the solution" Can you elaborate? I don't see how this is superior to leaving it fallow? I have a few acres fallow and am right next to a quaint organic farm and I do see quite a few more bees in my tall grass and wildflowers than I do in their grazed land...
  - a_c 3y ago
    Lands are not equal. They all have different conditions. Some land for example can't grow food but is good for grazing. Grazing, done correctly, is beneficial to the land too. E.g. grazing brings dungs to the land. The dungs give nutrients to both plants and insects. Stamping the land aerate the soil and exposes insect for birds, hence limiting pest. Birds spread seeds. Everything is in balance. Food is ultimately created from sunlight. Industrial farming, on the other hand, simplifying heavily, is converting fossil fuels into food.
    - CalRobert 3y ago
      I don't understand how that shows human involvement in these landscapes is necessary.
  - danielheath 3y ago
    Greece has lots of land that's either too steep for humans to walk on, or too rocky to grow anything but grass on, or both. As a result, traditional Greek cuisine has lots of lamb and goat meat.
    - myshpa 3y ago
      Pag in Croatia too ... it's called "island of paski cheese" iirc ... it's mostly rocky desert with patches of grass and herds of islands and goats, but leave the island and suddenly the landscape is green and lush. "Historically, Pag had more forested areas than it does today. The island used to be covered with oak and pine forests, but due to centuries of human activity, including grazing, deforestation, and the collection of firewood, much of the original forest cover has been reduced. Over time, the vegetation has adapted to the island's specific conditions, such as strong winds and limited freshwater sources." The land is rocky to grow anything on exactly because of those lambs and goats. They don't give the land the change to reforest. We tend to underestimate the damage that has already been done before we came here.
      - myshpa 3y ago
        herds of sheep and goats, chance to reforest
      - danielheath 3y ago
        > The land is rocky to grow anything on exactly because of those lambs and goats. Are you suggesting that ruminants transport rocks to the site?
        myshpa 3y ago
        Ruminants deplete the vegetation on the land, leading to erosion caused by wind and water, which gradually erodes the top layer of soil, leaving behind only large rocks.
        danielheath 3y ago
  - himinlomax 3y ago
    Dairy is important for human nutrition because it has an excellent level of production of valuable proteins per acres and that can be done on marginal land that can't really be used for anything else anyway. You could get those proteins from soy, but that would have to be done on farm land, with fertilizer, irrigation and so on. How are those bees going to fare there? And that's assuming grazing is entirely hostile to bees, which it's arguably not that much considering how it doesn't require pesticides. You know, the thing that kills insects.
  - SuoDuanDao 3y ago
    as always, it depends on practices. Here's a pretty good presentation on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z75A_JMBx4&t=783s&pp=ygUbY2F0dGxlIGNhcmJvbiBzZXF1ZXN0cmF0aW9u https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z75A_JMBx4&t=783s&pp=ygUbY2...
- Lutger 3y ago
  They are, but pasture farming implies eating less meat. We are currently near a billion cows worldwide, we don't have marginal land for all of them. That means meat is going to be expensive and you'd rather eat avocado toast instead. Unless demand suddenly drops or we scale growing meat from a lab.
  - Reason077 3y ago
    Meat being more expensive would reduce consumption, but that probably isn’t a bad thing in terms of health outcomes. Many people eat too much meat anyway. So long as affordable, healthy, accessible alternatives exist, of course.
alex_duf 3y ago
I think that's by far the biggest lever given how inefficient meat is at converting land area & water to calories.
- censor_me 3y ago
  [dead]
pvaldes 3y ago
The big plot hole in this master plan that many people apparently can't see or accept. If we remove the production of meat, this will severely harm the production of vegetables. They are connected. You can't have real agriculture without manure. Fossil guano is a finite, scarce and very expensive resource, and human manure is not so desirable as replacement by several reasons so, how do they expect to feed their green miracle exactly?. How efficient is the conversion food-to-meat is irrelevant if you omit half of the products obtained. This food also will turn into leather, milk, workforce and manure, so the calculus is flawed from the start.
- Mumps 3y ago
  Dovecots [0] have been used for (likely) millenia. And, because of migration, the birds can ultimately bring nutrients in from disparate locations - as opposed to purely localally grazing livestock. Per leathers: one, we don't have to completely eliminate cattle. Two, synthetics exist. Three, alternatives are being made/investigated [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dovecote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dovecote [1] https://www.felsie.co.uk/ https://www.felsie.co.uk/ (and others, if you google around)
  - bainsfather 3y ago
    I have learned something new today (re manure from dovecotes). However, I think this is another example of something that is 'just too small to matter' in terms of feeding the world's population today. Often I see 'nice' stories about e.g. using human waste to fertilise fields, that quite frankly do not (usually) scale at all well. We (UK) use tractors to shovel and spread manure - 10s, 100s of tons of the stuff - a dovecote or 10 really isn't going to help, and certainly won't be economic. It seems a bit like someone telling me I should use an abacus to increase my compute power - 'they were a good idea in the past, why aren't you using them now?'
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  This is plainly not accurate - manure from most aninals, especially pig farms, is a hazardous easte to dispose of. Only a small percentage of manure is reused as fertiliser because transporting it is expensive, and messy. Often it needs to be processed before it can be used safely. You can gooogle 'industrial farm US' and see pictures of ani als standing knee deep in their own poop. Also it is illegal to take photos of factory farms in some states. We feed a lot of grains to aninals as feed. That food coupd be used to feed people. We could certainly downsize meat producting by 70% withiit any adverse impacts -most people eat way too mich meat PS: There is some strange disbelief below, people think without manure cropping will bot work - this is plainly fanasyland - most of farmland never sees 'natural' fertiliser. "A recent study by USDA, Economic Research Service identified opportunities for increasing the use of manure as a fertilizer. In 2020, farmers applied manure to less than 8 percent of the 240.9 million acres planted to seven major U.S. field crops." In uk "In 2019, organic manure was applied to 26% of the area of tillage crops" This is easilly accessible information.
Gustomaximus 3y ago
Something like 85% of livestock feeds are byproduct of something that would be grown anyway. E.g like when they make coconut milk/ fibre for humans, they take the coconut leftovers and grind it down for cattle. That byproduct exists regardless of livestock eating it.
meerita 3y ago
Do you realize it's not just about meat but also about the excessive farming practices used to produce vegetables? Animals naturally fertilize the earth.
flagrant_taco 3y ago
This goes against so many basic principles of human dietary needs and sustainable agricultural practices. The problems that frequently lead to the argument for cutting meat consumption for ecological reasons are all actually concerns with industrialized meat production practices, not with meat production itself. We don't need to cut meat production, we need to change how we raise, process, and distribute the meat. Raise thousands of cows in concrete pens in a remote area will always require too many inputs and produce too many unwanted outputs because it's not part of a larger ecosystem. Ruminants like cows and sheep play a vital role in managing pasture and creating fertilizer. Chickens play a vital role in pest management and creating compost. Chickens and hogs both play a role in making productive use of waste products, eating food scraps and garden waste that would otherwise be lost. Heck, we couldn't even have egg and milk production at all without producing meat or culling animals along the way. Only 50% of eggs hatched are female, we have to do something with the males. And dairy cows will only produce milk for 6-12 months after giving birth, meaning there are calves that need to play a part in the system as well. That doesn't even get to the challenges of trying to raise crops without animal byproducts. Where does all the fertilizer come from?
- kiliantics 3y ago
  All those animals need to eat. Most crop farming is done to feed livestock rather than humans. That's a lot of wasted land use which could be habitat for wild ecosystems if we just cut down our meat consumption.
  - flagrant_taco 3y ago
    Is love to see us move to a different style of meat production, but very much too the same goals you mention. The entire model of industrial meat production is unsustainable by design. Animals can be raised as part of a larger system that includes growing most, if not all, if the animals' food on site. Having to plant massive fields of feed crops so they can be trucked across the country to industrial meat farms raising animals in crowded lots and concrete boxes is an insane approach.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 3y ago

Pasture farming on marginal land is part of the solution. Industrial meat farming is part of the problem. They're two different things.

alex_duf 3y ago
But would pasture farming on marginal land scale to the level of consumption we have today?
CalRobert 3y ago
"Pasture farming on marginal land is part of the solution" Can you elaborate? I don't see how this is superior to leaving it fallow? I have a few acres fallow and am right next to a quaint organic farm and I do see quite a few more bees in my tall grass and wildflowers than I do in their grazed land...
- a_c 3y ago
  Lands are not equal. They all have different conditions. Some land for example can't grow food but is good for grazing. Grazing, done correctly, is beneficial to the land too. E.g. grazing brings dungs to the land. The dungs give nutrients to both plants and insects. Stamping the land aerate the soil and exposes insect for birds, hence limiting pest. Birds spread seeds. Everything is in balance. Food is ultimately created from sunlight. Industrial farming, on the other hand, simplifying heavily, is converting fossil fuels into food.
  - CalRobert 3y ago
    I don't understand how that shows human involvement in these landscapes is necessary.
- danielheath 3y ago
  Greece has lots of land that's either too steep for humans to walk on, or too rocky to grow anything but grass on, or both. As a result, traditional Greek cuisine has lots of lamb and goat meat.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    Pag in Croatia too ... it's called "island of paski cheese" iirc ... it's mostly rocky desert with patches of grass and herds of islands and goats, but leave the island and suddenly the landscape is green and lush. "Historically, Pag had more forested areas than it does today. The island used to be covered with oak and pine forests, but due to centuries of human activity, including grazing, deforestation, and the collection of firewood, much of the original forest cover has been reduced. Over time, the vegetation has adapted to the island's specific conditions, such as strong winds and limited freshwater sources." The land is rocky to grow anything on exactly because of those lambs and goats. They don't give the land the change to reforest. We tend to underestimate the damage that has already been done before we came here.
    - myshpa 3y ago
      herds of sheep and goats, chance to reforest
    - danielheath 3y ago
      > The land is rocky to grow anything on exactly because of those lambs and goats. Are you suggesting that ruminants transport rocks to the site?
      - myshpa 3y ago
        Ruminants deplete the vegetation on the land, leading to erosion caused by wind and water, which gradually erodes the top layer of soil, leaving behind only large rocks.
        danielheath 3y ago
- himinlomax 3y ago
  Dairy is important for human nutrition because it has an excellent level of production of valuable proteins per acres and that can be done on marginal land that can't really be used for anything else anyway. You could get those proteins from soy, but that would have to be done on farm land, with fertilizer, irrigation and so on. How are those bees going to fare there? And that's assuming grazing is entirely hostile to bees, which it's arguably not that much considering how it doesn't require pesticides. You know, the thing that kills insects.
- SuoDuanDao 3y ago
  as always, it depends on practices. Here's a pretty good presentation on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z75A_JMBx4&t=783s&pp=ygUbY2F0dGxlIGNhcmJvbiBzZXF1ZXN0cmF0aW9u https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z75A_JMBx4&t=783s&pp=ygUbY2...
Lutger 3y ago
They are, but pasture farming implies eating less meat. We are currently near a billion cows worldwide, we don't have marginal land for all of them. That means meat is going to be expensive and you'd rather eat avocado toast instead. Unless demand suddenly drops or we scale growing meat from a lab.
- Reason077 3y ago
  Meat being more expensive would reduce consumption, but that probably isn’t a bad thing in terms of health outcomes. Many people eat too much meat anyway. So long as affordable, healthy, accessible alternatives exist, of course.

alex_duf 3y ago

I think that's by far the biggest lever given how inefficient meat is at converting land area & water to calories.

censor_me 3y ago
[dead]

pvaldes 3y ago

The big plot hole in this master plan that many people apparently can't see or accept. If we remove the production of meat, this will severely harm the production of vegetables. They are connected. You can't have real agriculture without manure. Fossil guano is a finite, scarce and very expensive resource, and human manure is not so desirable as replacement by several reasons so, how do they expect to feed their green miracle exactly?. How efficient is the conversion food-to-meat is irrelevant if you omit half of the products obtained. This food also will turn into leather, milk, workforce and manure, so the calculus is flawed from the start.

Mumps 3y ago
Dovecots [0] have been used for (likely) millenia. And, because of migration, the birds can ultimately bring nutrients in from disparate locations - as opposed to purely localally grazing livestock. Per leathers: one, we don't have to completely eliminate cattle. Two, synthetics exist. Three, alternatives are being made/investigated [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dovecote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dovecote [1] https://www.felsie.co.uk/ https://www.felsie.co.uk/ (and others, if you google around)
- bainsfather 3y ago
  I have learned something new today (re manure from dovecotes). However, I think this is another example of something that is 'just too small to matter' in terms of feeding the world's population today. Often I see 'nice' stories about e.g. using human waste to fertilise fields, that quite frankly do not (usually) scale at all well. We (UK) use tractors to shovel and spread manure - 10s, 100s of tons of the stuff - a dovecote or 10 really isn't going to help, and certainly won't be economic. It seems a bit like someone telling me I should use an abacus to increase my compute power - 'they were a good idea in the past, why aren't you using them now?'
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
This is plainly not accurate - manure from most aninals, especially pig farms, is a hazardous easte to dispose of. Only a small percentage of manure is reused as fertiliser because transporting it is expensive, and messy. Often it needs to be processed before it can be used safely. You can gooogle 'industrial farm US' and see pictures of ani als standing knee deep in their own poop. Also it is illegal to take photos of factory farms in some states. We feed a lot of grains to aninals as feed. That food coupd be used to feed people. We could certainly downsize meat producting by 70% withiit any adverse impacts -most people eat way too mich meat PS: There is some strange disbelief below, people think without manure cropping will bot work - this is plainly fanasyland - most of farmland never sees 'natural' fertiliser. "A recent study by USDA, Economic Research Service identified opportunities for increasing the use of manure as a fertilizer. In 2020, farmers applied manure to less than 8 percent of the 240.9 million acres planted to seven major U.S. field crops." In uk "In 2019, organic manure was applied to 26% of the area of tillage crops" This is easilly accessible information.

Gustomaximus 3y ago

Something like 85% of livestock feeds are byproduct of something that would be grown anyway. E.g like when they make coconut milk/ fibre for humans, they take the coconut leftovers and grind it down for cattle. That byproduct exists regardless of livestock eating it.

meerita 3y ago

Do you realize it's not just about meat but also about the excessive farming practices used to produce vegetables? Animals naturally fertilize the earth.

flagrant_taco 3y ago

This goes against so many basic principles of human dietary needs and sustainable agricultural practices. The problems that frequently lead to the argument for cutting meat consumption for ecological reasons are all actually concerns with industrialized meat production practices, not with meat production itself. We don't need to cut meat production, we need to change how we raise, process, and distribute the meat. Raise thousands of cows in concrete pens in a remote area will always require too many inputs and produce too many unwanted outputs because it's not part of a larger ecosystem. Ruminants like cows and sheep play a vital role in managing pasture and creating fertilizer. Chickens play a vital role in pest management and creating compost. Chickens and hogs both play a role in making productive use of waste products, eating food scraps and garden waste that would otherwise be lost. Heck, we couldn't even have egg and milk production at all without producing meat or culling animals along the way. Only 50% of eggs hatched are female, we have to do something with the males. And dairy cows will only produce milk for 6-12 months after giving birth, meaning there are calves that need to play a part in the system as well. That doesn't even get to the challenges of trying to raise crops without animal byproducts. Where does all the fertilizer come from?

kiliantics 3y ago
All those animals need to eat. Most crop farming is done to feed livestock rather than humans. That's a lot of wasted land use which could be habitat for wild ecosystems if we just cut down our meat consumption.
- flagrant_taco 3y ago
  Is love to see us move to a different style of meat production, but very much too the same goals you mention. The entire model of industrial meat production is unsustainable by design. Animals can be raised as part of a larger system that includes growing most, if not all, if the animals' food on site. Having to plant massive fields of feed crops so they can be trucked across the country to industrial meat farms raising animals in crowded lots and concrete boxes is an insane approach.
2000UltraDeluxe 3y ago