[glastra]

How about we don't change the diet but change where the food comes from?

When talking about meat and damage to the environment, the only relevant figures are the ones associated with animal feed (e.g. water consumption per kg of meat).

Pastured animals, by definition, don't eat feed coming from the monoculture industrial agriculture that is depleting the soil and consuming all those resources, and which is also used to feed humans, sadly.

[the8472]

No matter what you feed them, compared to other livestock animals cows are a fairly inefficient at turning feed into meat, meaning you need to dedicate more land to agriculture when it could be forest instead and thus a better carbon sink.

[wtdata]

> meaning you need to dedicate more land to agriculture

I don't understand why most people have this wrong idea. In a lot of places, the grazing pastures are naturally occurring, they aren't planted there.

It feels like people want to destroy the natural landscape of countries like Argentina, just because it's now fashionable to say they don't eat meat.

Even goats, everyone goes around claiming they have such an ineficient CO2/Kg meat index. Well, around here, goats are fed almost all the year by going into the forest and cleaning the shrubs and small vegetation there... besides feeding the goats for free, it also cleans the forest for free: something we would have to do otherwise in order to prevent fires in the summer.

[glastra]

Out of curiosity, which animals are more efficient? Do you have a source on that?

There are, as far as I know, regions where the soil is only capable of growing pasture, hard to plant trees in.

[the8472]

for the first two questions refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio

> There are, as far as I know, regions where the soil is only capable of growing pasture, hard to plant trees in.

I assume that those areas would not be sufficient to cover current meat and dairy demands. If they were there wouldn't be any deforestation or soy fields for animal feed. And non-grazed grasslands is still going to release less methane than grazed lands.

[chrisco255]

More than 90% of a beef cow's body weight comes from pasture land grass and hay.

When's the last time the Midwestern plains area of the United States was forest? Before the beef industry, 50-100 million bison roamed the plains. It turns out that ruminants like bison and cows are essential components of a grassland ecosystem.

[markstos]

But killing them for food is not.

[chrisco255]

Yes it is. They are prey animals and they literally evolved to be prey. Incidentally we also killed off most of the major predators around the world so there are few wolves, saber tooth cats, etc to keep population numbers controlled.

[glastra]

Great link, thank you.

Regarding deforestation and so on, I think we must also take into account that "industrialized" non-pastured husbandry (is that the correct term?) is probably cheaper and easier than the greener alternative.

Sadly, it's usually a matter of profits and not a matter of environmental friendliness.

[tom_mellior]

You can't produce as much meat from pastured animals as with industrial techniques. If humanity went all-pastured, meat prices would go up, many wouldn't be able to afford as much meat as now, and we would have changed the average person's diet.

This would also create incentives to cut down forests to create more "pasture", and that would be pretty terrible.

[saagarjha]

> When talking about meat and damage to the environment, the only relevant figures are associated with animal feed (e.g. water consumption per kg of meat).

Cows fart.

[glastra]

It's the burps, actually.

And it's not nearly as dangerous as publicized.

Methane's lifespan in the atmosphere is much, much lower (think two orders of magnitude) than carbon dioxide [0], for example.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane

[the8472]

The methane turns into CO2. Which means for the amount of carbon they release it's strictly worse than the same amount of carbon released as CO2.

[glastra]

Yes, you are right. I have conveyed my point only half-way and I apologize.

What I meant is that methane is known to have a bigger heating effect than other greenhouse gases, like x28 that of CO2 if I recall correctly. This is used as part of the anti-ruminant argument, when comparing the effect of methane expelled by animals to the rest of greenhouse gas emissions.

However, if you take into account the reduced lifespan, that 28-time increase is definitely less relevant.

[the8472]

From the WP article you linked:

> Methane in the Earth's atmosphere is a strong greenhouse gas with a global warming potential (GWP) 104 times greater than CO2 in a 20-year time frame; methane is not as persistent a gas as CO2 and tails off to about GWP of 28 for a 100-year time frame

And once you take positive feedbacks into account additional emissions can be problematic even within "short" timeframes.

[glastra]

Absolutely, I never said methane was without effect.

However, its effects on global warming are greatly exaggerated by environmentalists and/or those with vegan ideologies.

In my opinion, focus should definitely not be on meat consumption.

Anyway, as a disclaimer, I follow a carnivore diet consisting of only animal products. You can expect me to be heavily biased.