[sewercake]

they begin the article by saying pasture raised, organic meat is better for the environment than single-crop, fertilizer grown crops, through a reduction in emissions and and increase in biodiversity and health of the soil. It does not compare it to the obvious alternative of more sustainably grown crops, using crop rotation, cleaner sources of energy for farm equipment, etcetera.

[bootlooped]

It's a common argument I've heard against vegan/vegetarian diets to compare the best possible scenario of meat production, no matter how uncommon, to the average case of plant production.

I see it as equivalent to trying to discredit the value of college by pointing out Bill Gates.

[tyu1000]

Cultivated land, regardless of how it's cultivated, is generally way worse for habitat conservation than pasture land because you are by definition destroying the native flora to plant food crops.

Here in the Canadian prairies, the ranches are by far the best conservators of native ecosystems because cows can graze on the same plants that bison did for the last millenia.

My province of Saskatchewan is one of the biggest producers of pulse crops in the world (chickpeas, lentils, etc..) but has also some of the worst habitat destruction worldwide (less than 3% of native grasslands remaining) precisely because so much land was plowed under to produce those crops.