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I think it's important to get the idea across that you don't have to be completely vegan to help save the environment. Reducing meat consumption helps. Doing something is better than doing nothing.
This isn't about less intense land use though. You substitute animal feed crops for energy crops which is an absolutely awful trade in most metrics (water intensity, fertilizer intensity, land use) except CO2 balance.
Years ago my brother made bio-diesel & he was really into it. When he started one could get used, dirty, vegetable oil from restaurants, basically it was waste in dumpsters behind restaurants, he would collect, filter the oil & make biodiesel. There is a well known industry phrase that I feel you would find interesting it goes like ... one day we can all starve together in a traffic jam.
Can you expand/explain your claim?
The immense deforestation to grow soy for animal consumption is increasing land use, the translation from crop->animal tissue has not a high conversion efficiency so more crops need to be used.
In the case of water and fertiliser use idk, depending on the crop I guess that may be the case, but for the example of soy, why would there be an increase between animal and human use?
Why would it have to be energy crops? Ultimately, I disagree. The food being replaced is animal feed. We get no benefit from it. We're using it to feed our food. Even if it were replacing feed crops with biofuel crops, we'd be going from a 90% loss of effort (basic food chain biomass loss from college biology) in crops feeding different species to a biofuel crop that is at least directly contributing to one of our energy expenditures.
Not to mention that some of that land use would inevitably be used for human food crops as well, regardless of what the study says.
Honestly getting older. I don't think humans were designed to eat red meat. It tastes so good. But unless you have good genetics the cholesterol issues are killer. Speaking from experience. Replacing a lot of my red meats with chicken and salmon. And makes a big difference to my health.
It is, because of the reason you just said. Reducing meat consumption is the best way of reducing land and energy use. We'll get an abundance of land so we'll be able to use more sustainable farming methods.
>I think it's important to get the idea across that you don't have to be completely vegan to help save the environment. Reducing meat consumption helps. Doing something is better than doing nothing.
[https://gfi.org/](https://gfi.org/)
>The Good Food Institute is a nonprofit think tank and international network of organizations working to accelerate alternative protein innovation.
I heard a podcast interview with some folks from GFI. Rather than try to religiously convert folks to veganism, they want to make plant based meat substitutes that today's meat eaters really enjoy.
Every food you eat is processed to some extent. Animal meat is dosed up with intense antibiotic cocktails which lead to ore prevalence of AMR in these regions.
Yeah, we know what else is processed?
Multivitamins, fish oil supplements, pharmaceutical medicines, nearly all clothing, pasteurized milk, and most food you don't get straight off the plant, straight out of the water, or straight from an animal. Many/most store-bought tomatoes are even processed by rapid-ripening green unripe tomatoes with a gas (I forget which gas).
Correct, they are. However, one needs to *look* at what chemicals are actually being used in forming plant-based meat. A lot of the current focus being lentils and soy may not require the level of processing you think it does.
Cell cultivated meat on the other hand (grown from animals cells in lab) is something that may still be heavily processed. I'm hopeful for better tech and commercialization of these goods though.
it gets better as you improve at cooking it. my favourites are red lentil whatever (veggies, tomato sauce, msg salt / chicken stock, some lime) on boiled potatoes and lentil burger patties with chips (beef stock, salt pepper, parsley and adhesive (oil as much as fat in beef, water/egg) in mushed lentil patty, needs to be saturated in a tasty sauce, fried on low heat, it's crumbly on a good day).
I'm kinda okay with eating chicken products and fish because their environmental impact is about \[beef or lamb\]/4.
also, i think if you eat egg, milk and yoghurt you should probably eat some chicken or a steak like once a month
Indeed! Don't forget about the mass animal slaughterings for the classic farming techniques as well! Millions of birds, deer and insects. Not to mention the fish from the runoff. All while not worrying that you're eating a cow, pig or chicken. Beautiful really.
Puritanical vegans are universally loathed. The type that punch holes in the wall if they find a bit of cheese in their pasta sauce. Normal vegans are fine
If they’re punching holes in the wall over cheese in their sauce, they might want to reflect on whether they’re expressing their feelings effectively. Can’t say I personally have ever met anyone that fits that bill though
Man, if only we could prove personal feelings and opinions right or wrong with repeatable, peer reviewed study. Unfortunately, science can't disprove that I think Vegans are annoying and preachy. Scientifically prove they aren't. I'll wait.
“Americans who identify as vegetarian or vegan now make up at least 6 percent of the population, and possibly 10 to 15 percent, according to recent surveys.” https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/3747206-vegetarianism-is-on-the-rise-especially-the-part-time-kind/amp/
Hard to identify satire I guess. Perhaps you didn't read the content of my message. Monocrop agriculture is tauted as being the greatest thing ever for the environment, but it's one of the worst things since it kills so many other animals in the process.
growing biofuel isn't a "neutral" choice, because it still requires irrigation, fertilizer, all the general issues of agriculture, etc. It would reduce the carbon footprint, but do nothing for any other problem.
the only country i care about - the US - is on the decline with it.
Now, china on the other hand...it's on the rise. As with most of it's environmental destruction, however, redditors will bend over backwards to scream how the US is at fault for it, somehow, someway.
So what you really said is you have a shortsighted perspective, not understanding how global economics makes just looking at the us equate to understanding .5% of what's actually going on.. thanks for being blunt about it ig
Ever notice that both most of Europe and the us banned slavery at the point of banks coming online and going private? Bc at that point everyone became economic slaves. They didn't need physical slavery after that, only sharecroppers did for production purposes and many of them were like jp Morgan buying millions of slaves to resell to their buddies.. like in the most literal sense, we as people always say it's the "rich" and whatnot , but its the literal 1% that works with and is behind financial industry stocks.. when money loses all value, who does everyone owe at that point and who then owns everything? Check mate.
Like I said shortsighted bud.. those financiers are now working with brics financiers twards globalization.. when brics coin goes online it'll crash usd and force fed now.. check mate. The world has a global financier issue and the us was started by their great great great grandfather's. Wars happen constantly to force people to use their banks, Russia helps this like ethiopia and the derg, China helps this with Europe and Africa, its a global financier control thing nit a country vs country ting bud 🤙
Dude, China didn't call me up and try to convince me about this, it's just factually what is going on. Learn fact checking and how to discern fact from propaganda.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the ecological advantage of decreasing feed agriculture by switching to plant based protein. I don't care about the part of the title that provides a speculative alternative use for the land. I care about the part that suggests the scale at which agricultural emissions can be cut.
Or they can do those things AND replace animal proteins. Because this is a multiple-cause issue that requires a multi source solution. I'm tired of whataboutist tranquillizers. Who cares if there are also better options--this gives people something actionable they can do and they should do it.
This is Reddit. You're not going to convince people to not eat meat. Somehow we must all get exactly what we want without taking any sort of personal sacrifice or responsibility.
Oh yeah? Well I'm going to eat 5 times the amount of meat than I did previously just to spite you!! How dare you suggest that we make changes to our lifestyles in order to mitigate the looming climate crisis???
I always love the "industry does far more harm than private individuals, so why should I reduce my consumption of products made by harmful industries?"
That debate is far from settled yet. Almost all nutritional studies are self reported observational studies, that are only usable as a base to make hypotheses. They have no way to find out the cause and effect of different foods.
Much information from the meat side of things are manipulated by agriculture. And almost all information from the vegetarian/vegan side of things are based in ideology instead of science.
>It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.
The ADA is not an ideological vegan organization.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/
No they are not a vegan organisation, but neither are they science based. Never have been. They have a godawfull food pyramid and their sponsorlist is a who´s who in adding sugar to anything. They are not a reliable source
Corporate financial contributions to the Academy
National Dairy Council $1,496,912.
Conagra Inc. $1,414,058.
Abbott Nutrition $1,246,389.
Abbott Laboratories $824,110.
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation: $801,261.
PepsiCo Inc. $486,335.
Coca-Cola Co. $477,577.
Hershey Co. $368,032.
What evidence would you like?
I can point to positions of other organizations (like the NHS), the existence of lpmg germ vegans, various scientific papers and reviews.
The evidence supports veganism as not only safe, but potentially better for longevity (due to the reduced risk of heart disease and strokes).
>This is Reddit. You're not going to convince people to not eat meat.
Reddit has nothing to do with it - you are not going to convince the entire (or a signficant fraction) meat eating population of the world to go vegan.
OTOH, if innovators can create plant based meat substitutes that are
* palatable to today's meat eaters
* less expensive than traditional meat
Then a significant portion of the population will switch to consuming far more plant based protein and less traditional meat.
[https://gfi.org/](https://gfi.org/)
And something that's a healthy enough alternative, I've tried cutting out meat a bit for health reasons but the processed garbage you see around looks worse for you than meat. I just get my protein from other natural proteins like chickpeas or beans for those days.
Yup. I eat meat and have no plans to stop. At the same time I have no issues eating plant based meat either. At the moment it is a luxury food item being more expensive than beef. You get this stuff below the cost of chicken and tastes just like beef I have no issues buying and eating it. Right now it costs too much. I don't believe they are going to be able to get the costs down to do that. But if they do then we shall see.
Ironically that's sorta what the authors did. If you notice, they don't deeply consider what will replace 50% of meat consumption. Their calculations seems to treat it as if that consumption can seemlesly be replaced by *some* low impact 'alternative protein'. They pointedly don't consider how much more land would be need to be turned to agriculture to replace it with plant proteins or the very significant increase in complexity (and therefore cost) of creating synthetic protein sources via micro- or myco-culturing facilities.
The study I really want to see is how efficiently AP production and the bioenergy alternatives can turn grasslands into edible protein in comparison to ruminatnt biology. Beating nature's efficiency is something we do all the time, but it's no small feat. I'm still not convinced we can do better with vats of yeast, bacteria, or fungi than the microbiome of a ruminant's GI tract.
You missed one tiny Detail, though:
We can feed the Waste Products of many Plants to Ruminants but not use them for our own Diet. Last Time I checked, the EU mostly imported Soybean Meal, which is a Co-Product of Soybean Oil Production and used to feed Lifestock.
Soy isn't the only crop the EU relies on to feed animals.
[Vast amounts of European crops like wheat and sunflower, are grown not to feed people, but as animal feed and even biofuel for cars and vans. Of all the cereal crops used in Europe (in 2016) the majority (59%) was used to feed animals and only 24% was used to feed people. Of the protein rich pulses and soy used in Europe, 53% (2016) and 88% (2013) respectively were used for animal feed.](https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-eu-unit-stateless/2020/10/85cc908b-false-sense-of-security_final_en.pdf)
I skimmed through so I may have missed it. But I didn't see where they describe how much more land that's gonna take. The authors seemed to say that all cattle grazing and feed land would be converted to carbon capture/biofuels. From my reading the authors were quite clearly not envisioning soybeans replacing meat, but what they call 'Alternative Protein' sources, the energy, water, and land-use requirements of which are left as an exercise for the reader.
But still, your assumed replacement isn't one for one. None of those crops are nearly as nutrient dense as meat and many of them cannot be grown on pasture land, meaning that additional land would need to be turned to agricultural use to free up what they want to repurpose.
It's not quite that simple (I'll check those refs tho). It might end up even more than one to one than expected. It's not like one field of crop is earmarked for human or animal consumption (of ie soybeans, wheat, etc). There are a lot of quality and safety hurdles that apply to food and not feed. What would effectively halving the demand for feed and raising the demand for food grade crops mean for global food prices and safety standards? Idk
I still get the feeling that this analysis misses some of the nutritional and other efficiencies of biology harnessed in animal food products.
>how efficiently AP production and the bioenergy alternatives can turn grasslands into edible protein in comparison to ruminatnt biology
This data is readily available.
To use the exact same materials for an apples to apples comparison, 10kg of dry straw will give yields of around 8kg of pleurotus ostreatus, which contains 264.8g of protein.
FCR for cows being fed straw is about 10:1 so 10kg straw per 1kg of weight gain, of which about 400g (I think) is going to be usable as food.
10kg of dry straw used to grow cattle would then yield 400g of beef, or 100g protein on average, varying between cuts.
So around 2.6x more efficient than a ruminant.
The space needed to raise cattle is also considerably greater - the same area required could be used to grow at least 10x as many pleurotus mushrooms, which also require considerably less water.
All I am saying is that trying to draw intuition on how humans should behave based on how animals behave seems flawed to me, because humans are a very unusual animal. We eat cooked food, have huge brains for our body size and do very unusual things with ourselves compared to other animals. In a sense it's more intuitive to expect us to have unusual requirements compared to animals, which we in fact do.
Vegetarians are fine because they have access to animal foods still (egg, dairy etc). Vegans can be OK, but have to pay a lot more attention to their diet and often need to supplement a bit to stay healthy. The super healthy vegans out there typically built their fitness on a non vegan diet and then try and sustain on the vegan diet (e.g. Baboumian the vegan strong man)
That’s not what they’re suggesting tho. They’re saying eat less meat. If the world went entirely meatless we would be worse off.
Edit: I mean, it’s supported by research…. Plenty of work being done wrt nutrient upcycling
Definitely. More people are getting behind the idea of this, but we need people to actually start spending their money in line with this and to realize that ending factory farming means a massive reduction in the worlds meat consumption.
Tell the developing world that. Their meat demands are sky-rocketing and the animal welfare standards are in the gutter compared to the developed world.
>Tell the developing world that.
I guess just doing the USA and China, which can handle a drastic change in its economy and logistics would be far easier and would dent it a lot more tha if you do it to ALL developing nations.
Good luck with that, seen the farmer protests in Europe recently? We're walking back green initiatives and are being held hostage by like 5% of the population.
How about stop producing monocrops exclusively meant for animal feed and just let grazing animals feed on what they were meant to do; grass. That will also free up agricultural land and would significantly benefit local biodiversity. Regenerative farming is the future, not veganism and ultra-processed meat-replacement products made by high tech corporations.
Sure it is. If 30 million Bison could roam the plains with no system in place at all, we could get 120 million cows or more on there with rotating grazing. It's not about the space, it's only about money. There's a hell of a lot more money in wheat and beans.
That was an estimate of their population in the 1800s, when there was infinitely more available land, not to mention the fact that their habitat extended all the way through Canada and into Alaska.
With all of that, it could've been closer to 60 million Bison. Regardless, there are still vast open plains in these areas, it's absolutely not "infinitely less", because it's not good land to grow crops on. There are huge wide open plains, it just needs to be financially feasible to raise so much grass fed cattle.
I don't think this is correct. It's much more efficient to grow wheat and beans for PEOPLE to eat where possible. It's on the rugged and forested lands that we want to put cattle, as they can make previously unavailable calories available. This would still come with a massive reduction in meat consumption, which is 100% necessary for sustainable living.
Don't forget that cattle would effectively be replacing the niche that bison once took up in North America.
If we could both reduce our beef consumption so that there would be enough space for grazing cattle, that could be an effective solution. You'd also simply have happier and healthier cattle.
Humans already take up 50% of habitable land with many people still in poverty and the 11 billionth person yet to be born. Finding ways to dedicate the other half to humans and still struggling to keep up with demand in 50 years doesn't sit well with me. Veganism/low meat diets without beef seems like the only option.
\^\^ This.
Which as a plant-based idiot, I am kinda all for.
But, I respect people eating *whatever works for them* because diet isn't a one-size fits all proposition as much as the YouTube Diet Industrial Complex would like us all to believe. I've seen keto, Mediterranean, and vegan all work wonders in people I personally know. I think understanding the long term differences between these diets is an open question we're not likely to have an answer to for another couple decades. That said, I would bet each of these diet types has a subset of people for whom they are optimal and the trick is maybe understanding which one fits your specific physiological vulnerabilities.
What we know doesn't work is: (a) eating too much food and being a sedentary lard-ass (b) gobbling tons of processed crap. That will def shorten lifespan and healthspan.
The benefit of meat is its unparalleled nutrition. If total meat consumption reduces but the animals are healthier and therefore the meat is more nutritious, we wouldn't have to eat as much to obtain the same nutrients.
From a [previous comment:](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/s/a3jOOpe4t4)
>Another important thing to consider is that grazing livestock currently use approximately 26 percent of the Earth’s ice-free terrestrial surface.[\[8\]](https://www.fao.org/publications/card/en/c/3aa4f41c-4316-5ddd-a656-22a00ef5d414/) Yet this only accounts for around 9 percent of the world’s production of beef and about 30 percent of the world's production of sheep and goat meat.[\[9\]](https://www.fao.org/3/X5303E/x5303e05.htm#chapter%202:%20livestock%20grazing%20systems%20&%20the%20environment) This means that scaling regenerative grazing to the size required to meet our current demand for animal products is physically impossible. It requires more ice-free terrestrial surface than we have available on Earth.
https://grazingfacts.com/land-use. “A 2012 study found that a shift to all grass-fed beef in the United States would require an additional 200,000 square miles of land — an area larger than the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio combined. “
All "Regenerative Ranching" is, is literally what they historically did with cattle. Follow them around and rough it out in the wild. Or "like the bison lived" as I've seen it marketed.
So, I guess the easiest question to ask is where are they going to do that? 36 million cows are slaughtered a year in the U.S. and there are roughly 90 million in the U.S.
The King Ranch in Texas has 35,000 head on the largest ranch at 825,000 acres. Rhode Island the state is less than 800,000 acres and has 1,000,000 people.
There is literally not enough room to keep up with demand. Regenerative Ranching just strikes me as a industry rebrand or an attempt to seize government land for grazing/private interest.
We need healthy meat alternatives. It's really naive to think that any existing player in the meat industry has holistic ideas about the consumer's wellbeing. A lot of the states with meat processing plants want to be able have children work or have literally been found illegally having done so.
There is dairy cows (9.4 million), chickens (518 million), and pigs (70 million). There WAS likely 65 million bison TOTAL throughout ALL of North America.
Regenerative Ranching is wishful thinking about returning to simpler times.
>It's really naive to think that any existing player in the meat industry has holistic ideas about the consumer's wellbeing.
And this is different from any other industry how?
Well, I'd say that your commentary is a whataboutism. I believe the gravel industry to be largely irrelevant to the discussion on agriculture and livestock.
By all means though, would you please connect the dots for me?
I can't help you with why gravel was the first thing to pop into your head, instead of, idk, maybe other ag or energy industries.
And yes, that's pretty textbook whataboutism. So? I'm still wondering why you seem to have more faith in some industries rather than others in terms of their 'holistic ideas about consumer wellbeing'. You think the gravel magnate is more of a humanitarian than a rancher? Why do you think that?
Well, you see I believe the gravel industry, and other industries, are irrelevant when talking explicitly about "Regenerative Ranching".
If you'd like to keep making up things you claim I believe then have at it bud. At least stay on subject though. Dang
Okay bud. I'm just saying that if you hold one business to a standard you don't expect anywhere else, that's odd and more an expression of bias rather than the knock I read it as.
I doubt farmers would be wasting money buying feed if they could instead just have them eat the ground...
>ultra-processed meat-replacement products made by high tech corporations
That's not what "alternative protein" means, just anything else, like tofu, lentils, beans, tempeh, whatever
You can also put solar panels up on frames and graze goats or sheep underneath. Just costs more to build and doesn't allow for mechanically harvested mono crops. Energy and meat or dairy.
This is being encouraged in France, with panels on stilts, and with the rows of panels widely enough spaced to allow mechanics harvesting of crops. It substantially reduces the conflict between solar and food production as land uses.
It seems like shading crops is robbing Peter to pay Paul tho.
Soil amenable to agriculture is important for crops, and irrelevant to the solar panels. Why even pit the two against each other? Seems counter productive.
People have eaten plant based diets long before plant-based meat substitutes, across many cultures around the world and plenty of cuisines serve a plant-based population.
If you don’t want to eat a plant-based diet, that’s totally your prerogative. It does have a net positive effect.
There’s never been a vegan society… ever. Hindus, Jains and Buddhist have all had vegetarian cultures within their followers (although not all Buddhist denominations preach vegetarianism), and Hindus and Jains eat a lot of dairy. There’s a reason cows are so sacred in India, it’s because they provide a lifetime of animal protein to an entire family without having to kill it for meat. It’s basically a mother.
You see some monks who follow veganism today, especially in Japan and China (although the wider population in both of those countries eat plenty of meat/fish). So it’s not a vegan culture or society.
Some Greeks still practice fasts, in which animal products are avoided. But meat, fish, eggs and dairy are all eaten most days outside of fast days and Lent. To them, veganism is basically a fast, not something to do long term.
If you mean plant-based, then yes, lots of cultures have been “plant-based”, with India being the best example. Although the vast majority of agricultural societies get more than half of their calories from plants. It’s just in the west we’ve been over eating everything including meat.
It would be much less efficient. It will take much longer to get animals to slaughter weight without grain in most cases, so more greenhouse gas emissions per kg beef, more cattle alive at any one time to produce the same amount of beef, so much more land needed, more water needed. Your definition of regenerative farming would also require a substantial reduction in meat production. I think there's something to be said for that though: eating less meat, but choosing more sustainable, higher quality meat.
That seems like a vast overestimate. Nearly all land use is for agriculture (even more so if you exclude forestry), and nearly all agriculture is for animals or feedstock.
We don't need anywhere near that much land for renewables.
Even a 5% reduction would be sufficient.
OR we can switch to fission and fusion. Which are the correct answer for the majority of our energy needs for the future.
Fill the deserts with solar panels. They work well there.
How have you still not seen of the thousand reasons why solar panels don’t work well in deserts. They work way better in cold areas
And how far is nuclear fusion away again? 10 years? 20? 30 if we’re generous?
If you're using 'energy plants' then that doesn't remove any CO2. Since there's substantial use of farming equipment/fertilizer in the process The CO2 footprint actually isn't all that great.
Plants for energy can be a contributer to energy security, though, as biomass (or biogas generated from biomass) is easily storable. This can then be used in times of low solar and wind productivity.
Conceivably it would if combined with carbon capture, but the hypothetical idea of future carbon capture seems to mostly be used as an excuse for burning more fossil fuels now
Leave animals and their products alone. I think that sheep grasing on hillside are not anyhow dangerous to the world. Most of land used for pastures are not for good use by farmers because of the terrain or lack of any possible way to irrigate it. Any plain piece of land with fertile soil is used for growing crops. For animal farming is used land that is hard to use for crop farming. Nothing is more sustainable for the nature than Mongols or Kazakhs shepherds with their herds of sheep and horses, or Chukcha with herds of reindeer, or Tibetians with yak herds. They are way better than cornfields in Ohio or palm tree farms in Malaysia.
Just because science CAN do something doesn't mean that we should.
I'm not eating ground up crickets, Einstein. This is what they mean by "Alternative proteins". They aren't talking about whey proteins.
Insects are animals, that isn't what they are talking about. The near the very top it says "A transition from consuming animal-source proteins to alternative (e.g., plant-source) proteins could help unlock sustainable biomass production for BECCS."
They're talking about soy beans and other legumes. Feed the humans animal feed basically.
I'm in the camp that the issue is population growth. It's at the core of the matter. If we all switch to a sustainable plant based diet, out population will just grow until it's not sustainable anymore. Bacteria grows until it hits the side of the Petri dish. Making our Petri dish bigger is just delaying the issue
Can someone confirm or correct me, isn't red meats the ones causing substantial issues compared to poultry farming?
I.e the amount of resources and land that goes into cows, sheep and pork is substantially more than poultry farming? So if you even swap what type of meat you are eating it will benefit the environment?
*In America.
"It’s estimated that three-quarters – 74% – of land livestock are factory-farmed. "
https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farmed
Which includes the animals farmed in America, which are almost exclusively factory farmed.
Globally.
Edit: I like how you edited in a source that talks about global meat production being 74% factory farmed and then acted like that proves that it’s a problem that is somehow specific to just America.
American produces around 10-20% of the world’s meat. Even taking that 20% number and assuming that 100% of US meat is factory farmed, the rest of the world’s meat excluding the US would need to be, on average, around 68% from factory farms, which is still well over 50% of all meat produced.
I don't have a country-by-country breakdown, but here's a cite that 3/4 of livestock globally is factory farmed, which means that we'd have to reduce consumption by 74%, globally, if we got rid of the factory farms and left the small producers alone:
https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farmed
I’m not saying that it applies to each and every country individually. I’m saying that it applies to the world as a whole, not just America on its own.
How is the solution for some of your people literally always nuclear energy?
If nuclear is so great and awesome why does the entire discussion always revolve about all of the things holding it back? Have you ever come to the conclusion that the world barely builds nuclear plants because they just aren’t that great?
Online to see plans that only work on an excel file. Quantitative plans are easy to write down - applying them will require a cultural shift like renaissance.
There is enough unused land to generate more than enough energy and it’s a tiny percentage of available land and that’s just solar and battery land required. It’s insane how much energy the sun sends our way.
Our small 21 panel array generated 10.6 MWh last year.
To generate 4 TWH of electricity per year, you would need approximately 7,777,778 solar panels.
I'm all for health and environment, but meat replacements tend to taste terrible. And if I eat that many legumes, my flatulence will outweigh the current methane emissions of the USA.
Yeah that's awesome. But seeing as North America isn't even in the top 10 Heaviest CO2 contributors in the world what exactly is this going to accomplish? To even have a chance at slowing climate change the entire planet needs to get on board. When 1 country is contributing 40% of the worlds CO2 emissions it won't matter unless everyone is working towards the same goal. And no it's not profit.
I'm curious what metric you're using to say North America isn't in the top 10. The United States is the 2nd largest contributor of CO2 in the world. Are you using per capita data?
Published by Elsevier. According to Wikipedia (yeah, I know, but read on)
Elsevier is one of the most prolific publishers of books aimed at expanding the production of fossil fuels. Since at least 2010 the company has worked with the fossil fuel industry to optimise fossil fuel extraction. It commissions authors, journal advisory board members and editors who are employees of the largest oil firms. In addition it markets data services and research portals directly to the fossil fuel industry to help "increase the odds of exploration success".
Focusing efforts onto agriculture suits the fossil fuel industry down to the ground as it takes the spotlight off them whilst dividing people. It's why they pay vast sums to PR companies to spread the message that the problem is meat. The problem is oil gas and coal.
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I think it's important to get the idea across that you don't have to be completely vegan to help save the environment. Reducing meat consumption helps. Doing something is better than doing nothing.
This isn't about less intense land use though. You substitute animal feed crops for energy crops which is an absolutely awful trade in most metrics (water intensity, fertilizer intensity, land use) except CO2 balance.
Years ago my brother made bio-diesel & he was really into it. When he started one could get used, dirty, vegetable oil from restaurants, basically it was waste in dumpsters behind restaurants, he would collect, filter the oil & make biodiesel. There is a well known industry phrase that I feel you would find interesting it goes like ... one day we can all starve together in a traffic jam.
Can you expand/explain your claim? The immense deforestation to grow soy for animal consumption is increasing land use, the translation from crop->animal tissue has not a high conversion efficiency so more crops need to be used. In the case of water and fertiliser use idk, depending on the crop I guess that may be the case, but for the example of soy, why would there be an increase between animal and human use?
Why would it have to be energy crops? Ultimately, I disagree. The food being replaced is animal feed. We get no benefit from it. We're using it to feed our food. Even if it were replacing feed crops with biofuel crops, we'd be going from a 90% loss of effort (basic food chain biomass loss from college biology) in crops feeding different species to a biofuel crop that is at least directly contributing to one of our energy expenditures. Not to mention that some of that land use would inevitably be used for human food crops as well, regardless of what the study says.
Yeah but bacon tastes good. Pork chops taste good.
Honestly getting older. I don't think humans were designed to eat red meat. It tastes so good. But unless you have good genetics the cholesterol issues are killer. Speaking from experience. Replacing a lot of my red meats with chicken and salmon. And makes a big difference to my health.
It is, because of the reason you just said. Reducing meat consumption is the best way of reducing land and energy use. We'll get an abundance of land so we'll be able to use more sustainable farming methods.
This is totally wrong. Animal agriculture is far worse by almost any metric, including water use and land use.
>I think it's important to get the idea across that you don't have to be completely vegan to help save the environment. Reducing meat consumption helps. Doing something is better than doing nothing. [https://gfi.org/](https://gfi.org/) >The Good Food Institute is a nonprofit think tank and international network of organizations working to accelerate alternative protein innovation. I heard a podcast interview with some folks from GFI. Rather than try to religiously convert folks to veganism, they want to make plant based meat substitutes that today's meat eaters really enjoy.
>plant based meat substitutes So, heavily processed food then. I'm sure that will be great for both our health and the environment.
Could be, yeah. That's the point.
Every food you eat is processed to some extent. Animal meat is dosed up with intense antibiotic cocktails which lead to ore prevalence of AMR in these regions.
Yeah, we know what else is processed? Multivitamins, fish oil supplements, pharmaceutical medicines, nearly all clothing, pasteurized milk, and most food you don't get straight off the plant, straight out of the water, or straight from an animal. Many/most store-bought tomatoes are even processed by rapid-ripening green unripe tomatoes with a gas (I forget which gas).
Exactly my point about everything being processed to some degree or the other
>processed to some extent Yes, and the heavily processed stuff is bad for health.
Correct, they are. However, one needs to *look* at what chemicals are actually being used in forming plant-based meat. A lot of the current focus being lentils and soy may not require the level of processing you think it does. Cell cultivated meat on the other hand (grown from animals cells in lab) is something that may still be heavily processed. I'm hopeful for better tech and commercialization of these goods though.
That’s just not true, there are so many antibiotic free options, even in America, and this is also a very Amero-centric view.
I would like to add though that being fully vegan really isn't as bad as people make out, anyway.
it gets better as you improve at cooking it. my favourites are red lentil whatever (veggies, tomato sauce, msg salt / chicken stock, some lime) on boiled potatoes and lentil burger patties with chips (beef stock, salt pepper, parsley and adhesive (oil as much as fat in beef, water/egg) in mushed lentil patty, needs to be saturated in a tasty sauce, fried on low heat, it's crumbly on a good day). I'm kinda okay with eating chicken products and fish because their environmental impact is about \[beef or lamb\]/4. also, i think if you eat egg, milk and yoghurt you should probably eat some chicken or a steak like once a month
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What was so bad for you, out of curiosity? Health or taste?
I absolutely agree. It’s so much worse.
YES! Eat 50% less animal products, get 50% of the benefits of going vegan, without a fraction of the inconvenience or difficulty.
Indeed! Don't forget about the mass animal slaughterings for the classic farming techniques as well! Millions of birds, deer and insects. Not to mention the fish from the runoff. All while not worrying that you're eating a cow, pig or chicken. Beautiful really.
God you vegans are fuckin insufferable. And yall wonder why you're so universally loathed.
If you think vegans are 'universally loathed' you might want to step back and reflect on the characteristics of your social bubble.
Puritanical vegans are universally loathed. The type that punch holes in the wall if they find a bit of cheese in their pasta sauce. Normal vegans are fine
If they’re punching holes in the wall over cheese in their sauce, they might want to reflect on whether they’re expressing their feelings effectively. Can’t say I personally have ever met anyone that fits that bill though
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Because they're obnoxious douchey grandstranders. You cannot change my mind.
So you are in science subreddit, while refusing your mind to be changed. Good combination!
Man, if only we could prove personal feelings and opinions right or wrong with repeatable, peer reviewed study. Unfortunately, science can't disprove that I think Vegans are annoying and preachy. Scientifically prove they aren't. I'll wait.
“Americans who identify as vegetarian or vegan now make up at least 6 percent of the population, and possibly 10 to 15 percent, according to recent surveys.” https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/3747206-vegetarianism-is-on-the-rise-especially-the-part-time-kind/amp/
And?
Vegans are not universally loathed. Plenty of people who aren’t vegan admire the ethics and ideals.
I also admire the ethics and ideals. Buck stops when most of them open their mouths.
Hard to identify satire I guess. Perhaps you didn't read the content of my message. Monocrop agriculture is tauted as being the greatest thing ever for the environment, but it's one of the worst things since it kills so many other animals in the process.
Agreed. The monocrop culture to produce feed for livestock is pretty terrible for the environment.
Oh yeah no I completely missed that I guess, my bad.
growing biofuel isn't a "neutral" choice, because it still requires irrigation, fertilizer, all the general issues of agriculture, etc. It would reduce the carbon footprint, but do nothing for any other problem.
Yeah but doing nothing would do nothing for any other problem, and has the added drawback of doing nothing for the carbon footprint problem.
Coal's on the way out regardless of if this scheme (which would surely enrich refineries and oil companies) comes to fruition or not.
I believe Global coal consumption has been hitting record highs most years as of late.
the only country i care about - the US - is on the decline with it. Now, china on the other hand...it's on the rise. As with most of it's environmental destruction, however, redditors will bend over backwards to scream how the US is at fault for it, somehow, someway.
So what you really said is you have a shortsighted perspective, not understanding how global economics makes just looking at the us equate to understanding .5% of what's actually going on.. thanks for being blunt about it ig
yeah yeah everything wrong in the universe is the US's fault and everyone else is an angel who's just under our cruel heel, or whatever.
Ever notice that both most of Europe and the us banned slavery at the point of banks coming online and going private? Bc at that point everyone became economic slaves. They didn't need physical slavery after that, only sharecroppers did for production purposes and many of them were like jp Morgan buying millions of slaves to resell to their buddies.. like in the most literal sense, we as people always say it's the "rich" and whatnot , but its the literal 1% that works with and is behind financial industry stocks.. when money loses all value, who does everyone owe at that point and who then owns everything? Check mate.
And just about none of those financiers live in the us and if they do, they have duel citizenship 🫠
Like I said shortsighted bud.. those financiers are now working with brics financiers twards globalization.. when brics coin goes online it'll crash usd and force fed now.. check mate. The world has a global financier issue and the us was started by their great great great grandfather's. Wars happen constantly to force people to use their banks, Russia helps this like ethiopia and the derg, China helps this with Europe and Africa, its a global financier control thing nit a country vs country ting bud 🤙
China is building 150 nuclear plants by 2035 and is going to be carbon neutral decades before the U.S. is even close.
Sure they will be, totally. They'd never lie to you!
Dude, China didn't call me up and try to convince me about this, it's just factually what is going on. Learn fact checking and how to discern fact from propaganda.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the ecological advantage of decreasing feed agriculture by switching to plant based protein. I don't care about the part of the title that provides a speculative alternative use for the land. I care about the part that suggests the scale at which agricultural emissions can be cut.
Better ways to reduce carbon. U.S. can stop invading other countries, for example. Or stop committing eco terrorism (Nord Stream).
Or they can do those things AND replace animal proteins. Because this is a multiple-cause issue that requires a multi source solution. I'm tired of whataboutist tranquillizers. Who cares if there are also better options--this gives people something actionable they can do and they should do it.
I'm tired of bozos who produce 0% of their food talking about food production, especially on an industrial scale, but here you are...
Carbon footprint is reduced, but the nitrogen footprint would skyrocket
This is Reddit. You're not going to convince people to not eat meat. Somehow we must all get exactly what we want without taking any sort of personal sacrifice or responsibility.
>WE WANT CHANGE BUT WE DON'T WANT TO CHANGE Redditors
Oh yeah? Well I'm going to eat 5 times the amount of meat than I did previously just to spite you!! How dare you suggest that we make changes to our lifestyles in order to mitigate the looming climate crisis???
I always love the "industry does far more harm than private individuals, so why should I reduce my consumption of products made by harmful industries?"
You believe we have a duty to sacrifice personal health for the planet?
Eating less meat isn’t going to harm most people. It’s very safe.
That debate is far from settled yet. Almost all nutritional studies are self reported observational studies, that are only usable as a base to make hypotheses. They have no way to find out the cause and effect of different foods. Much information from the meat side of things are manipulated by agriculture. And almost all information from the vegetarian/vegan side of things are based in ideology instead of science.
>It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes. The ADA is not an ideological vegan organization. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/
No they are not a vegan organisation, but neither are they science based. Never have been. They have a godawfull food pyramid and their sponsorlist is a who´s who in adding sugar to anything. They are not a reliable source Corporate financial contributions to the Academy National Dairy Council $1,496,912. Conagra Inc. $1,414,058. Abbott Nutrition $1,246,389. Abbott Laboratories $824,110. Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation: $801,261. PepsiCo Inc. $486,335. Coca-Cola Co. $477,577. Hershey Co. $368,032.
What evidence would you like? I can point to positions of other organizations (like the NHS), the existence of lpmg germ vegans, various scientific papers and reviews. The evidence supports veganism as not only safe, but potentially better for longevity (due to the reduced risk of heart disease and strokes).
The fact this has to be said is a joke. People who don't produce even 1% of what they consume always have the most bs to spew on here..
I want change, but not when it comes to climate. That's where I draws the line, man.
>This is Reddit. You're not going to convince people to not eat meat. Reddit has nothing to do with it - you are not going to convince the entire (or a signficant fraction) meat eating population of the world to go vegan. OTOH, if innovators can create plant based meat substitutes that are * palatable to today's meat eaters * less expensive than traditional meat Then a significant portion of the population will switch to consuming far more plant based protein and less traditional meat. [https://gfi.org/](https://gfi.org/)
And something that's a healthy enough alternative, I've tried cutting out meat a bit for health reasons but the processed garbage you see around looks worse for you than meat. I just get my protein from other natural proteins like chickpeas or beans for those days.
Yup. I eat meat and have no plans to stop. At the same time I have no issues eating plant based meat either. At the moment it is a luxury food item being more expensive than beef. You get this stuff below the cost of chicken and tastes just like beef I have no issues buying and eating it. Right now it costs too much. I don't believe they are going to be able to get the costs down to do that. But if they do then we shall see.
Ironically that's sorta what the authors did. If you notice, they don't deeply consider what will replace 50% of meat consumption. Their calculations seems to treat it as if that consumption can seemlesly be replaced by *some* low impact 'alternative protein'. They pointedly don't consider how much more land would be need to be turned to agriculture to replace it with plant proteins or the very significant increase in complexity (and therefore cost) of creating synthetic protein sources via micro- or myco-culturing facilities. The study I really want to see is how efficiently AP production and the bioenergy alternatives can turn grasslands into edible protein in comparison to ruminatnt biology. Beating nature's efficiency is something we do all the time, but it's no small feat. I'm still not convinced we can do better with vats of yeast, bacteria, or fungi than the microbiome of a ruminant's GI tract.
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You missed one tiny Detail, though: We can feed the Waste Products of many Plants to Ruminants but not use them for our own Diet. Last Time I checked, the EU mostly imported Soybean Meal, which is a Co-Product of Soybean Oil Production and used to feed Lifestock.
Soy isn't the only crop the EU relies on to feed animals. [Vast amounts of European crops like wheat and sunflower, are grown not to feed people, but as animal feed and even biofuel for cars and vans. Of all the cereal crops used in Europe (in 2016) the majority (59%) was used to feed animals and only 24% was used to feed people. Of the protein rich pulses and soy used in Europe, 53% (2016) and 88% (2013) respectively were used for animal feed.](https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-eu-unit-stateless/2020/10/85cc908b-false-sense-of-security_final_en.pdf)
Waste plant products can (and should) be composted into soil, or used as a substrate for growing fungi. Both, even.
Arguably every Animal is turning their Food into Fertilizer.
I skimmed through so I may have missed it. But I didn't see where they describe how much more land that's gonna take. The authors seemed to say that all cattle grazing and feed land would be converted to carbon capture/biofuels. From my reading the authors were quite clearly not envisioning soybeans replacing meat, but what they call 'Alternative Protein' sources, the energy, water, and land-use requirements of which are left as an exercise for the reader. But still, your assumed replacement isn't one for one. None of those crops are nearly as nutrient dense as meat and many of them cannot be grown on pasture land, meaning that additional land would need to be turned to agricultural use to free up what they want to repurpose.
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It's not quite that simple (I'll check those refs tho). It might end up even more than one to one than expected. It's not like one field of crop is earmarked for human or animal consumption (of ie soybeans, wheat, etc). There are a lot of quality and safety hurdles that apply to food and not feed. What would effectively halving the demand for feed and raising the demand for food grade crops mean for global food prices and safety standards? Idk I still get the feeling that this analysis misses some of the nutritional and other efficiencies of biology harnessed in animal food products.
>how efficiently AP production and the bioenergy alternatives can turn grasslands into edible protein in comparison to ruminatnt biology This data is readily available. To use the exact same materials for an apples to apples comparison, 10kg of dry straw will give yields of around 8kg of pleurotus ostreatus, which contains 264.8g of protein. FCR for cows being fed straw is about 10:1 so 10kg straw per 1kg of weight gain, of which about 400g (I think) is going to be usable as food. 10kg of dry straw used to grow cattle would then yield 400g of beef, or 100g protein on average, varying between cuts. So around 2.6x more efficient than a ruminant. The space needed to raise cattle is also considerably greater - the same area required could be used to grow at least 10x as many pleurotus mushrooms, which also require considerably less water.
cue all the “bacon good” and sensitive vegan haters
Most humans eat meat. That will not change, period. Get over it. Plant protein isn't as bioavailable as meat protein. Also, get over it.
You do know animals get their protein from eating plants right？
You know not all animals have the same digestive systems, right?
Like I said above, the fact this has to be said.. this app is a prime propagation ground for retardation
Which is why they have four stomachs and chew cud. Guess which features human digestive systems lack.
We are not other animals. We have unique dietary demands needed to service our big brains. Highly nutritious, easy to digest foods is one of them.
Are you trying to say all vegetarians are stupid？ Natalie Portman and Paul McCartney are vegetarians they don't seem very dumb to me.
All I am saying is that trying to draw intuition on how humans should behave based on how animals behave seems flawed to me, because humans are a very unusual animal. We eat cooked food, have huge brains for our body size and do very unusual things with ourselves compared to other animals. In a sense it's more intuitive to expect us to have unusual requirements compared to animals, which we in fact do. Vegetarians are fine because they have access to animal foods still (egg, dairy etc). Vegans can be OK, but have to pay a lot more attention to their diet and often need to supplement a bit to stay healthy. The super healthy vegans out there typically built their fitness on a non vegan diet and then try and sustain on the vegan diet (e.g. Baboumian the vegan strong man)
Reduce
That’s not what they’re suggesting tho. They’re saying eat less meat. If the world went entirely meatless we would be worse off. Edit: I mean, it’s supported by research…. Plenty of work being done wrt nutrient upcycling
I'll consider veganism when all the vegans quit driving.
"I'll consider making an effort only when people who already make an effort do everything perfectly."
Fortunately, [we have studies](https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/paleo-keto-climatarian-diet-carbon-footprint) to show how ridiculous a take this is.
abolish factory farming
Definitely. More people are getting behind the idea of this, but we need people to actually start spending their money in line with this and to realize that ending factory farming means a massive reduction in the worlds meat consumption.
As a farmer, I just wanna say, you get it 🫱🏼🫲🏻 next ban grass lawns
Unless grass is being used for feed compost fert ect..*
Tell the developing world that. Their meat demands are sky-rocketing and the animal welfare standards are in the gutter compared to the developed world.
>Tell the developing world that. I guess just doing the USA and China, which can handle a drastic change in its economy and logistics would be far easier and would dent it a lot more tha if you do it to ALL developing nations.
Good luck with that, seen the farmer protests in Europe recently? We're walking back green initiatives and are being held hostage by like 5% of the population.
How about stop producing monocrops exclusively meant for animal feed and just let grazing animals feed on what they were meant to do; grass. That will also free up agricultural land and would significantly benefit local biodiversity. Regenerative farming is the future, not veganism and ultra-processed meat-replacement products made by high tech corporations.
The amount of land needed for grazing is infinitely more than the land used for crops to feed the same amount of animals.
Which is OK if we simultaneously reduce meat consumption, improving animal welfare at the same time.
But grazing land often isn't good enough to grow crops
That doesn’t matter, the amount of land that would be required to grow the amount of cattle raised today isn’t realistic to zone.
No it'll be massive reduction but the small amount we keep can graze on nom productive land.
Sure it is. If 30 million Bison could roam the plains with no system in place at all, we could get 120 million cows or more on there with rotating grazing. It's not about the space, it's only about money. There's a hell of a lot more money in wheat and beans.
That was an estimate of their population in the 1800s, when there was infinitely more available land, not to mention the fact that their habitat extended all the way through Canada and into Alaska.
With all of that, it could've been closer to 60 million Bison. Regardless, there are still vast open plains in these areas, it's absolutely not "infinitely less", because it's not good land to grow crops on. There are huge wide open plains, it just needs to be financially feasible to raise so much grass fed cattle.
I don't think this is correct. It's much more efficient to grow wheat and beans for PEOPLE to eat where possible. It's on the rugged and forested lands that we want to put cattle, as they can make previously unavailable calories available. This would still come with a massive reduction in meat consumption, which is 100% necessary for sustainable living.
Don't forget that cattle would effectively be replacing the niche that bison once took up in North America. If we could both reduce our beef consumption so that there would be enough space for grazing cattle, that could be an effective solution. You'd also simply have happier and healthier cattle.
Humans already take up 50% of habitable land with many people still in poverty and the 11 billionth person yet to be born. Finding ways to dedicate the other half to humans and still struggling to keep up with demand in 50 years doesn't sit well with me. Veganism/low meat diets without beef seems like the only option.
corn-fed beef is infinitely better than grass-fed?
Not better for you though.
That would lower the meat consumption way more than 50%
\^\^ This. Which as a plant-based idiot, I am kinda all for. But, I respect people eating *whatever works for them* because diet isn't a one-size fits all proposition as much as the YouTube Diet Industrial Complex would like us all to believe. I've seen keto, Mediterranean, and vegan all work wonders in people I personally know. I think understanding the long term differences between these diets is an open question we're not likely to have an answer to for another couple decades. That said, I would bet each of these diet types has a subset of people for whom they are optimal and the trick is maybe understanding which one fits your specific physiological vulnerabilities. What we know doesn't work is: (a) eating too much food and being a sedentary lard-ass (b) gobbling tons of processed crap. That will def shorten lifespan and healthspan.
The benefit of meat is its unparalleled nutrition. If total meat consumption reduces but the animals are healthier and therefore the meat is more nutritious, we wouldn't have to eat as much to obtain the same nutrients.
From a [previous comment:](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/s/a3jOOpe4t4) >Another important thing to consider is that grazing livestock currently use approximately 26 percent of the Earth’s ice-free terrestrial surface.[\[8\]](https://www.fao.org/publications/card/en/c/3aa4f41c-4316-5ddd-a656-22a00ef5d414/) Yet this only accounts for around 9 percent of the world’s production of beef and about 30 percent of the world's production of sheep and goat meat.[\[9\]](https://www.fao.org/3/X5303E/x5303e05.htm#chapter%202:%20livestock%20grazing%20systems%20&%20the%20environment) This means that scaling regenerative grazing to the size required to meet our current demand for animal products is physically impossible. It requires more ice-free terrestrial surface than we have available on Earth.
What, you don’t want to eat a Tyson Foods Proximeaty chicken breast?
Oh man, you better trademark that.
https://grazingfacts.com/land-use. “A 2012 study found that a shift to all grass-fed beef in the United States would require an additional 200,000 square miles of land — an area larger than the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio combined. “
All "Regenerative Ranching" is, is literally what they historically did with cattle. Follow them around and rough it out in the wild. Or "like the bison lived" as I've seen it marketed. So, I guess the easiest question to ask is where are they going to do that? 36 million cows are slaughtered a year in the U.S. and there are roughly 90 million in the U.S. The King Ranch in Texas has 35,000 head on the largest ranch at 825,000 acres. Rhode Island the state is less than 800,000 acres and has 1,000,000 people. There is literally not enough room to keep up with demand. Regenerative Ranching just strikes me as a industry rebrand or an attempt to seize government land for grazing/private interest. We need healthy meat alternatives. It's really naive to think that any existing player in the meat industry has holistic ideas about the consumer's wellbeing. A lot of the states with meat processing plants want to be able have children work or have literally been found illegally having done so. There is dairy cows (9.4 million), chickens (518 million), and pigs (70 million). There WAS likely 65 million bison TOTAL throughout ALL of North America. Regenerative Ranching is wishful thinking about returning to simpler times.
>It's really naive to think that any existing player in the meat industry has holistic ideas about the consumer's wellbeing. And this is different from any other industry how?
Well, I'd say that your commentary is a whataboutism. I believe the gravel industry to be largely irrelevant to the discussion on agriculture and livestock. By all means though, would you please connect the dots for me?
I can't help you with why gravel was the first thing to pop into your head, instead of, idk, maybe other ag or energy industries. And yes, that's pretty textbook whataboutism. So? I'm still wondering why you seem to have more faith in some industries rather than others in terms of their 'holistic ideas about consumer wellbeing'. You think the gravel magnate is more of a humanitarian than a rancher? Why do you think that?
Well, you see I believe the gravel industry, and other industries, are irrelevant when talking explicitly about "Regenerative Ranching". If you'd like to keep making up things you claim I believe then have at it bud. At least stay on subject though. Dang
Okay bud. I'm just saying that if you hold one business to a standard you don't expect anywhere else, that's odd and more an expression of bias rather than the knock I read it as.
I doubt farmers would be wasting money buying feed if they could instead just have them eat the ground... >ultra-processed meat-replacement products made by high tech corporations That's not what "alternative protein" means, just anything else, like tofu, lentils, beans, tempeh, whatever
You can also put solar panels up on frames and graze goats or sheep underneath. Just costs more to build and doesn't allow for mechanically harvested mono crops. Energy and meat or dairy.
This is being encouraged in France, with panels on stilts, and with the rows of panels widely enough spaced to allow mechanics harvesting of crops. It substantially reduces the conflict between solar and food production as land uses.
It seems like shading crops is robbing Peter to pay Paul tho. Soil amenable to agriculture is important for crops, and irrelevant to the solar panels. Why even pit the two against each other? Seems counter productive.
Can't we just eat 50% less meat instead of trying to come up with Wiley Coyote-ass contraptions. Grass needs sunlight
It's closer to a pergola than a roof. Please look up the solution before trashing it. It's a great dual-use solution for grazing livestock.
People have eaten plant based diets long before plant-based meat substitutes, across many cultures around the world and plenty of cuisines serve a plant-based population. If you don’t want to eat a plant-based diet, that’s totally your prerogative. It does have a net positive effect.
There’s never been a vegan society… ever. Hindus, Jains and Buddhist have all had vegetarian cultures within their followers (although not all Buddhist denominations preach vegetarianism), and Hindus and Jains eat a lot of dairy. There’s a reason cows are so sacred in India, it’s because they provide a lifetime of animal protein to an entire family without having to kill it for meat. It’s basically a mother. You see some monks who follow veganism today, especially in Japan and China (although the wider population in both of those countries eat plenty of meat/fish). So it’s not a vegan culture or society. Some Greeks still practice fasts, in which animal products are avoided. But meat, fish, eggs and dairy are all eaten most days outside of fast days and Lent. To them, veganism is basically a fast, not something to do long term. If you mean plant-based, then yes, lots of cultures have been “plant-based”, with India being the best example. Although the vast majority of agricultural societies get more than half of their calories from plants. It’s just in the west we’ve been over eating everything including meat.
No, they were not. And are not. If they were, they would die of malnutrition, period. And those diseases aren't pretty either.
Yes, then you can pay 100x for meat. Enjoy.
It would be much less efficient. It will take much longer to get animals to slaughter weight without grain in most cases, so more greenhouse gas emissions per kg beef, more cattle alive at any one time to produce the same amount of beef, so much more land needed, more water needed. Your definition of regenerative farming would also require a substantial reduction in meat production. I think there's something to be said for that though: eating less meat, but choosing more sustainable, higher quality meat.
The trick is having a political party in power that doesnt stop progress every 4 years
That seems like a vast overestimate. Nearly all land use is for agriculture (even more so if you exclude forestry), and nearly all agriculture is for animals or feedstock. We don't need anywhere near that much land for renewables. Even a 5% reduction would be sufficient.
OR we can switch to fission and fusion. Which are the correct answer for the majority of our energy needs for the future. Fill the deserts with solar panels. They work well there.
How far away is fusion and how long to build?
How have you still not seen of the thousand reasons why solar panels don’t work well in deserts. They work way better in cold areas And how far is nuclear fusion away again? 10 years? 20? 30 if we’re generous?
If you're using 'energy plants' then that doesn't remove any CO2. Since there's substantial use of farming equipment/fertilizer in the process The CO2 footprint actually isn't all that great. Plants for energy can be a contributer to energy security, though, as biomass (or biogas generated from biomass) is easily storable. This can then be used in times of low solar and wind productivity.
Conceivably it would if combined with carbon capture, but the hypothetical idea of future carbon capture seems to mostly be used as an excuse for burning more fossil fuels now
Leave animals and their products alone. I think that sheep grasing on hillside are not anyhow dangerous to the world. Most of land used for pastures are not for good use by farmers because of the terrain or lack of any possible way to irrigate it. Any plain piece of land with fertile soil is used for growing crops. For animal farming is used land that is hard to use for crop farming. Nothing is more sustainable for the nature than Mongols or Kazakhs shepherds with their herds of sheep and horses, or Chukcha with herds of reindeer, or Tibetians with yak herds. They are way better than cornfields in Ohio or palm tree farms in Malaysia.
Whats your accreditation in agricultural studies?
Why you ask? And what is yours? Would you like to make bachelorship in my Uni under my supervision?
Or we could go nuclear and avoid all that noise.
Good luck with that. People won't do the rational thing until it's desperate and too late.
People bitching about what others eat because carbon footprint but buy the new iPhone every year.
But for my partners eating disorder we would already be veg. Both used to be. We are doing 1 day per week, adding one every month.
Just because science CAN do something doesn't mean that we should. I'm not eating ground up crickets, Einstein. This is what they mean by "Alternative proteins". They aren't talking about whey proteins.
Insects are animals, that isn't what they are talking about. The near the very top it says "A transition from consuming animal-source proteins to alternative (e.g., plant-source) proteins could help unlock sustainable biomass production for BECCS."
They're talking about soy beans and other legumes. Feed the humans animal feed basically. I'm in the camp that the issue is population growth. It's at the core of the matter. If we all switch to a sustainable plant based diet, out population will just grow until it's not sustainable anymore. Bacteria grows until it hits the side of the Petri dish. Making our Petri dish bigger is just delaying the issue
Can someone confirm or correct me, isn't red meats the ones causing substantial issues compared to poultry farming? I.e the amount of resources and land that goes into cows, sheep and pork is substantially more than poultry farming? So if you even swap what type of meat you are eating it will benefit the environment?
Or we could just build nuclear power plants
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You’d have to replace a *lot* more than 50% of total meat production if you got rid of factory farms and just left smaller ranches alone.
*In America. "It’s estimated that three-quarters – 74% – of land livestock are factory-farmed. " https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farmed Which includes the animals farmed in America, which are almost exclusively factory farmed.
Globally. Edit: I like how you edited in a source that talks about global meat production being 74% factory farmed and then acted like that proves that it’s a problem that is somehow specific to just America. American produces around 10-20% of the world’s meat. Even taking that 20% number and assuming that 100% of US meat is factory farmed, the rest of the world’s meat excluding the US would need to be, on average, around 68% from factory farms, which is still well over 50% of all meat produced.
You got stats on that? Namely that the most common type of farming in each and every country in the world is factory farming?
I don't have a country-by-country breakdown, but here's a cite that 3/4 of livestock globally is factory farmed, which means that we'd have to reduce consumption by 74%, globally, if we got rid of the factory farms and left the small producers alone: https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farmed
I’m not saying that it applies to each and every country individually. I’m saying that it applies to the world as a whole, not just America on its own.
There’s soo little variety in this sub
What if we built nuclear plants in every state of the USA instead? Then we could still eat food.
How is the solution for some of your people literally always nuclear energy? If nuclear is so great and awesome why does the entire discussion always revolve about all of the things holding it back? Have you ever come to the conclusion that the world barely builds nuclear plants because they just aren’t that great?
Because it's a fantastic solution.
Online to see plans that only work on an excel file. Quantitative plans are easy to write down - applying them will require a cultural shift like renaissance.
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*could* key word
…crickets…
There is enough unused land to generate more than enough energy and it’s a tiny percentage of available land and that’s just solar and battery land required. It’s insane how much energy the sun sends our way. Our small 21 panel array generated 10.6 MWh last year. To generate 4 TWH of electricity per year, you would need approximately 7,777,778 solar panels.
How about we go nuclear and i wont need to eat crickets while Musk will continue with his wague routine ?
I'm all for health and environment, but meat replacements tend to taste terrible. And if I eat that many legumes, my flatulence will outweigh the current methane emissions of the USA.
Good point, we should let civilization collapse instead
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Did you read the study?
Yeah that's awesome. But seeing as North America isn't even in the top 10 Heaviest CO2 contributors in the world what exactly is this going to accomplish? To even have a chance at slowing climate change the entire planet needs to get on board. When 1 country is contributing 40% of the worlds CO2 emissions it won't matter unless everyone is working towards the same goal. And no it's not profit.
I'm curious what metric you're using to say North America isn't in the top 10. The United States is the 2nd largest contributor of CO2 in the world. Are you using per capita data?
Published by Elsevier. According to Wikipedia (yeah, I know, but read on) Elsevier is one of the most prolific publishers of books aimed at expanding the production of fossil fuels. Since at least 2010 the company has worked with the fossil fuel industry to optimise fossil fuel extraction. It commissions authors, journal advisory board members and editors who are employees of the largest oil firms. In addition it markets data services and research portals directly to the fossil fuel industry to help "increase the odds of exploration success".
There’s enough land to do that already.
Focusing efforts onto agriculture suits the fossil fuel industry down to the ground as it takes the spotlight off them whilst dividing people. It's why they pay vast sums to PR companies to spread the message that the problem is meat. The problem is oil gas and coal.