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Beef and dairy drive 41% of biodiversity damage linked to global farmland
- 8by3 2mo agoNot to mention that beef/dairy production is a primary source of methane which is 80x more potent than Co2, but constantly under reported due to its shorter half life. Yes in the long run that matters, but its all the more reason that we should reduce animal agriculture right away as the payback is much faster than limiting Co2.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- enquirewithin 2mo ago[flagged]
- krige 2mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_emissions fossil fuels contribute 33% farm animals contribute 30% Not astronomically; marginally. Anyone who's been around herbivore farm animals will tell you they fart. A lot. Then again, farm plants are a further 18%.
- tempfile 2mo ago> farm plants are a further 18% Apparently mainly rice growing. I knew paddy fields were bad, but I didn't know they were that bad. Per calorie I am sure it is more like a tenth that of ruminants, perhaps less, but still worth replacing with other carbohydrates.
- Llamamoe 2mo agoAll the more so since rice is relatively poor in nutrients.
- orwin 2mo agoRice is better than wheat or corn, just because of the fiber content and relatively low glycemic index. Complete rice also carry lisine (although less than beans) which is a really hard amino acid to get on a vegetarian diet.
- BobaFloutist 2mo agoI don't have any numbers handy, but my impression is that the vast majority of rice people eat is white rice.
- Llamamoe 2mo agoBread, pasta, potatoes, white rice, whatever are almost all starch. When cooked their glycemic index is all similarly high. And rice is unusually poor in vitamins and minerals. Even brown rice is nowhere near as good a fiber source as vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, seeds. If you want an actually excellent staple crop, buckwheat is about the only truly outstanding one.
- enquirewithin 2mo agoIsn’t it the case that much of the land used to grow rice is good for little else?
- tempfile 2mo agoIt is possible that that land shouldn't be used for anything. If we ate less animal products, there would be more than enough land to grow everything we need.
- dev_l1x_be 2mo agoWith corn based feeding.
- Llamamoe 2mo ago> Then again, farm plants are a further 18%. Yeah, but they also provide 80% of the world's calories to animals' 20%
- modo_mario 2mo agoThose fossil fuels emit what otherwise wouldn't be available in the carbon cycle. A cow that's fed on gras and farts emits nothing that that gras didn't pick up and contributes virtually nothing to climate change in the long term.
- lotsofpulp 2mo agoI imagine the fertilizers used for the grass to support the quantity and quality of the cows’ output require quite a bit of fossil fuels. Otherwise, I wonder if non fertilizer supported grass could support sufficient cows to satiate demand (which has not even peaked yet).
- modo_mario 2mo agoOh true and we consequently need to eat less cow meat, more different meat and/or have less people. but focusing on that is shifting blame in an innefectual way of course. Pointing at cow farts puts the pressure on the individual and seeks to dampen effects in the short term. Pump up less or no fossil fuels with actual long term thinking and those fertilisers will automatically become more expensive. At that point tho our oversized animal herd becomes harder to support and beef becomes automatically a lot more expensive whilst at the same time the manure becomes more important.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- ZeroGravitas 2mo agoAlways worth noting that the fertilizers don't require fossil fuels, just currently use them as they are cheaper if you ignore the externalities and alternatives haven't got the scale yet. Pro-fossil fuel types will regularly claim fossil fuels are a hard requirement for fertilizer.
- lotsofpulp 2mo agoI have often read the Haber-Bosch process credited with making the population explosion and drastic decreases in hunger possible, making it one of the most impactful discoveries in human history.
- enquirewithin 2mo agoI didn’t say animal agriculture, I said “cow farts”. The animal agriculture figure listed on that Wikipedia page includes all ruminant livestock (mainly cattle, sheep, and goats). Also, from that Wikipedia article: There is accumulating research and data showing that oil and gas industry methane emissions – or from fossil fuel extraction, distribution and use – are much larger than thought.[35][36][37][38][39] Still, my “astronomically dwarfs” looks to be overstating it by a wide margin.
- shiandow 2mo agoYou would be wrong, they are about equal in size, both accounting for about a third of the anthropogenic emissions.
- mklarmann 2mo ago[flagged]
- throwawayffffas 2mo agoI would argue animal emissions do not matter at all, methane survives about a decade in the atmosphere. Eventually breaking down to co2, co2 that was already in the atmosphere to begin with. Fossil fuel emissions are the ones that matter.
- aqme28 2mo agoNot following your logic. A decade is a long time for such a powerful greenhouse gas.
- firebot 2mo agoLook up the methane cycle. Methane is a flow gas. CO2 is a millennial gas that can stick around for millennia.
- aqme28 2mo agoYeah, exactly. I didn’t say anything to dispute that so I’m not sure what your point is. The time it spends as methane before turning back into CO2 is really bad
- throwawayffffas 2mo agoThere were cows a decade ago as well. The herd size dictates a level in the atmosphere it does not constantly increase the amount of methane in the atmosphere, there is an equilibrium. Increasing herd sizes increases that equilibrium level and that is partially responsible for the overall increase. But there are mitigations that can be applied there are feed additives that reduce the cow related methane emissions to 1%. Overall point is cow farts can be a drop in the bucket in the overall scheme of things, all we have to do is modify their diet slightly. Should we do it yes. Is it a huge issue no. Industrial methane leaks are a bigger problem, that methane when it breaks down will turn into co2 that was not there to begin with contributing to global warming permanently.
- pcrh 2mo agoIt isn't the "cow farts" that produce most methane, but rather the anaerobic processing of cow dung emanating from feed lots, dairy operations, etc. Grass-fed beef cattle whose dung is "recycled" in a more natural way in the fields produce the same emissions as would wild ruminants such as antelope, bison, etc. The biodiversity problem in the above refers mostly to new land clearances intended for farming, including for feedstock. This is minor in N. America and Europe, mostly as the clearances were done decades or over a century ago.
- enquirewithin 2mo agoThis Wikipedia article linked to elsewhere in this discussion gives the impression that the agricultural methane emissions are primarily a result of enteric fermentation by ruminant livestock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_emissions
- pcrh 2mo agoThat's the source of emission by the cow or steer. Industrial processing of the dung produces vastly more. Table 3 in this source [0] shows enteric vs manure methane emissions are 158 vs 137 kg CH4/yr for dairy cows, who are mostly fed in feedlots, and 58 vs 2.4 for meat and other cattle, in the US and Canada. So the CH4 emissions range 65-fold from 2.4 to 158 depending on how the cattle are farmed. [0] Revised methane emissions factors and spatially distributed annual carbon fluxes for global livestock. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/pmid/28959823/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/pmid/28959823/
- enquirewithin 2mo agoI see, thanks.
- firebot 2mo agoIt's mainly burps. They chew their cud. Cows produce around 50 kg CH4 per head per year. There's around 1.5 billion cattle. That's around 75 teragrams (million metric tons). Humans release about 410 teragrams altogether. About 40 percent is agricultural. And another 40 percent is from fossils, namely natural gas. The top 100 natural gas leaks release over 20 teragrams of methane a year. That's just the leaks. That's 400,000,000 cattle worth of methane just pissed into the wind.
- guerby 2mo agoDo you have a reference for the leaks? I read leaks were underestimated but I didn't find recent studies about it. Thanks!
- firebot 2mo agoThe figure comes from methane satellites and other methods (planes, drones, etc.) Pulse.ghgsat.com as I recall. It's down these days(discontinued). It used to be free. They used to do reports on what they found. I think their stuff is all commercialized now. :\ Pulse was pretty cool. They had a global map where you could see various emissions going back years and years and years and you could watch it unfold over time. The closest thing I've found to that is ESA Copernicus browser looking at the sentinel(s) data: https://browser.dataspace.copernicus.eu/ https://browser.dataspace.copernicus.eu/ Or tabulate it yourself: https://climatetrace.org/compare https://climatetrace.org/compare Change the gas to CH4. Now add up the top 20 where it indicates it's from the oil or gas industry? I got to 20 megatons(Tg) adding just the first 13!
- modo_mario 2mo ago>Yes in the long run that matters, but its all the more reason that we should reduce animal agriculture right away as the payback is much faster than limiting Co2. The long run is the thing that really matters. A faster payback only serves to cover the impact of those that want to keep pumping up oil and gas in the meantime(also to make synthetic fertiliser) for a few decades. It shifts focus from that on cow farts. As if the rotting plant matter and wild animal life that could replace it didn't emit any methane.
- 8by3 2mo agoWe don't have time anymore for A or B, we need to do both things now. End the fossil fuel industry and change our diets. If we don't radically decrease emissions by ~2030 we are ensuring +2C by ~2050. And +2C is going to be fugly. We've already passed +1.5C, 2030 is in four years, less even. https://tuhat.net/@sbr/p/change-for-the-climate https://tuhat.net/@sbr/p/change-for-the-climate
- DarkNova6 2mo agoI never understood this argument. With Oil & Gas you release green house gases that have been sealed away back into the air. For methane produced by farming all components remain in a cycle. Everything released by animals eventually finds its way back to plants, which get eaten, which become exhaust of animals, etc. This sounds to me more like a spin by big oil to finger point at another industry.
- nDRDY 2mo agoThis is literally backwards - plants absorb CO2, not methane! The obsession with CO2, specifically emitted by fossil fuel use, for me indicates geopolitical motivations (for both standpoints).
- Flashtoo 2mo agoThe methane will eventually break down and be part of new plants, but in the meantime it will heat the planet much more than if it hadn't been there. Think of it this way: industrial scale cattle farming essentially makes and feeds biochemical reactors that turn hydrocarbons into a gaseous form that maximizes their global heating effect. Consider the counterfactual where we don't stuff billions of fart machines full of corn.
- orwin 2mo ago> The methane will eventually break down and be part of new plants To be exact, excess methane go in the high troposphere, where it is broken down in CO2+H2O (the half life is very short, I don't remember which is which but it's either 5 or 20 years). So in any case, it accelerate climate change.
- pizzaiolo 2mo agoIt's not exactly a closed loop, though. A lot of crops are grown using fossil fuel-derived fertilizer.
- AngryData 2mo agoHowever cows also are primarily fed alfalfa which produces its own fertilizer.
- dnautics 2mo agomethane has less ir absorption than co2 and (as you said) a shorter half life.
- sudo_cowsay 2mo agoBut it's also not like we can just stop eating steak and milk.
- techterrier 2mo agoTheres a billion or so Indians that might suggest otherwise
- bitlad 2mo agoIndia is among the largest beef exporter in the world.
- savolai 2mo agoDoes this make the vegetarians not exist?
- lotsofpulp 2mo agoMilk products are very prominent in many Indians’ diets. I wouldn’t be surprised if India’s milk consumption per capita is the highest in the world, given a large proportion of Indians avoid meat, so they might source more protein/fat from milk products. If it’s not, it’s probably just poverty holding back consumption. Edit: upon second reading, I realize techterrier was probably refuting only the steak part of sudo_cowsay’s comment
- shrubby 2mo agoIt's also poverty holding back millionaire consumption. There was a research, which I can't be arsed to google with mobile, that compared western vegan diet and Indian omnivore and, yup you guessed it, the western version was less costly in terms of future proof. But as with the zillionaires the human predicament depends on weather we muster the courage to limit ourselves or die to the extinction that's already manifesting itself in forms like forest fires, droughts and crop losses.
- slau 2mo ago
- pvaldes 2mo agoAnother way of saying the same would be: Agriculture causes almost 60% of the biodiversity damage linked to global farmland. Yep, is the miracle of literature. An hectare of cattle allows more biodiversity than the same hectare of lettuce.
- tovej 2mo agoYou think cows are the only animals that require food production from farms?
- facecalm 2mo agoThe miracle would be to read the article which states the biodiversity damage is 14 times higher per calorie than plant-sourced foods. Which means you could reduce the 40% to 2-3% if you would replace it totally.
- plaguna 2mo agoSadly, this being Hacker News, it won't catch much attention and will be quickly flagged by people who have too much karma. But I think we are making progress, slowly, sadly too slowly, with the current summer we are having in Europe, of the impact of our past actions in the weather. And make no mistake, eating so much meat and drinking so much milk, is a huge impact we are inflicting on our planet. Please do not comment with "I do X" or "In our house, we avoid doing Y" - it is not about you and me, it is about society. I am convinced, you are convinced, we need everyone to be convinced.
- Yizahi 2mo agoIt will be flagged because of the manipulative headline.
- hdgvhicv 2mo agoEveryone apart from a few stragglers agree the climate is changing. Most people agree the world won’t change its behaviour on its own to stop that. So we can thus incentivise change (things like renewables being far cheaper than fossil fuel) globally, and adapt to reality. There are a vocal minority whining about how we need to stop eating beef or milk annd stop using energy and there are those who make beef and milk more sustainable and make generating energy sustainable. I have time for the latter. The former can go hand out with the coal rollers.
- jcattle 2mo agoHow do you make beef and milk more sustainable? I'm honestly wondering. To me it seems similar to saying: we can make coal power plants more efficient. Equivalent to more "efficient" (however you want to define that) forms of animal husbandry. It doesn't change the fact that you're still burning coal, while you could be putting up solar.
- hdgvhicv 2mo agoThe goal isn’t to burn coal, it’s to generate electricity or heat, so make the alternative ways better and you win. Your force people to stop heating their homes they’ll revolt. You give them a better alternative they’ll take it. > How do you make beef and milk more sustainable? This is the right question. And is being answered, along with other improvements in farming. I have no idea about the specifics, as I’m not a farmer. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030225007234 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002203022... https://discoverwildscience.com/the-dutch-are-growing-floating-farms-and-the-cows-dont-seem-bothered-4-317451/ https://discoverwildscience.com/the-dutch-are-growing-floati... Far too many so-called environmentalists are far more concerned with stopping life rather than practical methods to reduce and eliminate harm, and they get ignored - and worse fought back against. “If you build a solar farm generating 100MWh rather than an ethanol farm generating 50MWh that’s bad because the it’s a supper slope to banning beefburgers”
- nobodywillobsrv 2mo agoSeems causally false.
- tempfile 2mo agoWhat does that mean?
- pjmlp 2mo agoThing is, will be anything left after we destroy the planet with war, data centers, rare earth minerals mines, nuclear and battery waste?
- chickenbig 2mo agoDoes this mean we should be advocating for more intensive cattle rearing? Stockyards and special breeds may not be the worst way to meet demand and reduce environmental impact (measured by CO2/methane emissions as well as biodiversity loss, for instance).
- tempfile 2mo agoI despair. Is it that hard for us to imagine eating less meat?
- choo-t 2mo agoIt's far easier do avoid producing so much meat. A vegetarian diet is perfectly healthy.
- pcrh 2mo agoStockyards are the worst offenders. This is due to how the dung is processed, which releases a lot of methane. Grass-fed cattle have much lower net emissions of greenhouse gasses.
- goda90 2mo agoManaged grazing along with other regenerative techniques can sequester carbon in the soil. Factory farms have the problem of concentrated dung disposal which usually leads to letting it sit in methane producing conditions and also feed for intensive operations usually comes from non-regenerative crop farming which uses more fossil-fuel fertilizer and depletes the soil.
- chickenbig 2mo agoA concentrated problem is one that could have a concentrated solution. Sewage farms use microbes to generate the methane which goes back into the gas grid e.g. https://www.stwater.co.uk/news/news-releases/severntrentinvestsinthreenewbiomethanegastogridplants/ https://www.stwater.co.uk/news/news-releases/severntrentinve...
- avesi 2mo agoThere's more nuance here than reducing consumption of beef and dairy. Moving over to regenerative farming practices instead of factory farming will also improve the situation.
- soupspaces 2mo agoHow about regenerative economics? I hate it.
- graemep 2mo agoThere is quite a bit in between too. Grass vs grain fed cattle, for example.
- dqv 2mo agoYes and doing regenerative practices all the way to the end would naturally force this reduction in consumption. It would be really good, because the land used to grow feed could be redirected to other more efficient uses.
- testemailfordg2 2mo agoUnfortunately, the priority is increasing efficiency and ROI, rather than sustainability. This leads to centralization and operations at a scale which are not sustainable, without external input or causing damage to existing nature. De-centralization and sustainable practices are the only way forward, as it has been for centuries before us on this earth. Maybe space is the place for these kinds of centralised and intensive practices, like being planned for data centers.
- concinds 2mo ago"Efficiency and ROI" can be applied to financial but also to environmental impact. Producing more with less [land use/fertilizer/water use] is also a form of efficiency, and it's good, but it requires vast capital that mom & pop farms don't have + strong government incentives. De-scaling is only an agrarian nostalgia fantasy, it's incompatible with reaching climate goals.
- dev_l1x_be 2mo agoBeef & dairy the industrial way drive this. Several studies and decade long experiments show the positive impact of the non-industrial alternatives.
- imjonse 2mo agoAnd which do the vast majority consume because that is the only one satisfying industrial scale consumption needs?
- dev_l1x_be 2mo agoI am pretty sure that stakeholder capitalism has an answer to this that might not be aligned with the ecology of Earth or what the meat consumers see as the right answer.
- greyw 2mo agoNon-industrial sounds to me like higher prices. If so, probably a non-starter for poor folks.
- AngryData 2mo agoIt isn't very much more for home grown grass beef, it is giant corporate margins and their bureaucracy overhead that necessitate industrial farming to compete out against these smaller farms.
- whyage 2mo agoPlenty of people (including me) are vegan, healthy, and happy. As omnivores above the poverty line, we can all make conscious and conscientious choices about what we eat. Going vegan is one of the most effective ways to combat global warming (if you're not in a position to donate large sums of money toward climate change research or mitigation).
- firebot 2mo agoGive it a couple decades. Most 'vegans' stop being vegan well before that. I'll let you Google why they do.
- pastage 2mo agoI am not vegan, will never be, but I have known vegans for more than two decades and they are doing fine. We need to make it easy to make the right choice about food, and one way to do that is to stop making meat meat meat the ONLY cool thing. I am fine with vegans serving me tasty food, they make alternatives easier. If you do not want to be a full time vegan just switch to 3 out 7 days of the week or something like that.
- PxldLtd 2mo agoI gather this is a vague snarky comment loosely implying that vegans don't get enough B12. If so, it's a profoundly ignorant point that shows you don't have any knowledge of a typical vegan diet nowadays.
- expedited123 2mo agoYep, B12 is a solved issue. It's pretty cheap to supplement. I do want to mention that you do also have to look out to get enough of : Omega 3, Calcium, Iodine, Iron, Selenium, Protein. Takes a bit of work at the start to adapt but it's very doable, and it's not like Omnivores don't have comparable deficiencies from not eating enough plants and fruit. Not to mention other problems that come with eating animal products... I only supplement with Omega 3, Vitamin D, B12, Iodine (although sometimes I go for wakame). Have been on a plant-based diet for around 4 years now, feeling healthy.
- throwthrowuknow 2mo agoWe need a new caveat cliche for these headlines like how people love to reply “in mice” to health research. For environmental research it’s almost always “in the 3rd world”
- rimworld 2mo agocow farts lol
- imjonse 2mo agoEven on a site like HN, where rational and logical thinking is held in high esteem, and where few could be suspected of climate change denialism, a factual statement such as this one from the article: "On average, animal-sourced foods are associated with eight times more carbon loss and 14 times more biodiversity loss per calorie than plant-sourced foods." is very likely to be countered by listing personal preferences, anecdata, concern for vegans' health or mockery of that lifestyle choice, and generally nitpicking. Honest admissions like 'I am part of the problem and will maybe try doing something about it' are very rare.
- catlike0076 2mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnism
- soco 2mo agoIndeed, that's the same answer when topics like public surveillance or dependency-inducing media are debated. It's difficult to criticize a problem, when you're a part of the problem, respectively paid to be the problem.
- znnajdla 2mo ago[flagged]
- pastage 2mo agoThe key is "maybe try doing something", does not mean to destroy our culture. My child choose to be vegetarian but I just can not be bothered. I am too lazy. That does not mean I do not try to adapt. You can find the things that are wonderful with other ways of life.
- vrganj 2mo agoYou think there's no point in living if you can't eat meat and milk? Is there really nothing else going on in your life? I'm sorry.
- 2mo ago
- christophilus 2mo agoWe have around 27 million cattle (in the US) today. There were something like 30-50 million bison in the US before we almost eradicated them. Were the bison equally bad? Or is the problem that we’re feeding these ruminants unnatural diets? Incidentally, I’d love to see the Great Plains return to huge roaming ruminant populations, and find a way to build our meat industry around that.
- j16sdiz 2mo agoI think the problem is how we keep the cattle. In natural environment, they cohabitant with other animals. They migrates. When we farm them, we remove anything not our primary product.
- simonsarris 2mo agoThat is not how we keep cattle in the United States. In the US about 82% of grazing land is rangeland, which continues to support the natural ecosystems (prairies, shrublands, steppes, etc). In places like Ireland, where cows have existed for 6000 years, they're also part of the ecology by any meaningful metric. There are a lot of more recently arrived species considered native! Mice, hedgehogs, rabbits, and red deer all came later.
- toasty228 2mo agoWhat do you even mean lol This is how cattle is kept in the US: https://www.hcn.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/sucked-dry-thumb.jpg https://www.hcn.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/sucked-dry-th... I'd love to read your definition of "natural ecosystems", is it something like "a system in nature", with "nature" meaning "on planet earth"?
- simonsarris 2mo agoThat's a feedlot for finishing. Throughout its life, a cow will spend 70-80% of its life in pasture. Feedlots are only efficient for the finishing of the cow.
- friendzis 2mo agoOne of the biggest biodiversity-related threats - as in able to trigger cataclysmic-level event - is IMO commercial honey production. Farm honeybees are essentially one breed, which is in itself a huge problem as a single pathogen/parasite can quickly wipe them out globally. On top of that, honey farmers move their hives all over the place, effectively displacing any wild pollinators present in vast areas. Commercial honey is farmed in the most ecologically risky way.
- toasty228 2mo agoThat's a drop in the bucket Total insect mass dropped by 70% in Europe in 30 years, no insects = no pollination, no pollination = no flower = real mass scale extinction of pretty much everything that lives on earth since 80%+ of plants need pollinators.
- friendzis 2mo agoIt's related. Yes, there are other factors like insecticide use, habitat destruction, monoculture farming, etc. Bees are not the only factor, bet they are one of the factors. In the "old days" beehives were stationary and found certain equilibrium with the rest of the ecosystems. Diminishing honey returns on additional hives placed practical limits on honey farm sizes. However, these days commercial hives are literally transported all over the place following flowering plants, one hive serves serves a significantly larger area than in the past. The colonies can grow larger and denser, they outcompete other insects and starve them, suppressing numbers and diversity. On top of that they spread diseases while being treated, putting further strain on wild ecosystems. That's a huge threat. If for whatever reason there was a mass colony collapse event or we simply stopped migratory beekeeping, huge areas would become under pollinated, collapsing food supplies over night.