[jazzabeanie]

In Australia a significant amount (can't remember the specifics) of cattle is raised on land that is unsuitable for crop production. My own experience confirms this. I've seen many cattle farms around Queensland - some with low stocking density and no deforestation, others very poorly managed with no trees at all or full of invasive species.

It's not as simple as eating meat = bad, but that's the message most people are getting. If they respond by stopping eating meat, then great - not the best choice, but a step in the right direction. If they respond by stopping to care where their food comes from then not so great.

[jamil7]

> In Australia a significant amount (can't remember the specifics) of cattle is raised on land that is unsuitable for crop production. My own experience confirms this.

72% of all deforestation in Queensland and 94% in the Great Barrier Reef catchment areas is a direct result of land clearing for beef production.

Edit: One source was missing.

https://www.wilderness.org.au/images/resources/Beef-Deforest...

https://www.wilderness.org.au//images/resources/The_Drivers_...

[s1artibartfast]

That doesn't negate the point that deforestation is not necessary, and may not be typical.

100% of deforestation could be for beef production, but 99% of beef production could be without deforestation.

[nicoburns]

If the beef you're eating was raised on a deforested area (anything from a big fast-food chain almost certainly was) then that's still pretty unethical though. I agree it doesn't mean that beef is inherently unethical. But people will need to be willing to accept higher prices in order to make it ethical.

[tassl]

As unethical as eating soy from a deforested area. Or eating mostly anything with sugar, canola oil or palm oil. But people don't ask those to be in non deforested areas, and they don't ask to increase the price to make sure soil is not destroyed by monocrop cultivation.

[nicoburns]

That's not entirely true. There is a whole movement around boycotting palm oil for example, just as there is with beef. It certainly could be more widely supported.

It's worth noting that a lot of the soy from deforested areas also goes towards feeding livestock. The soy that humans eat (or drink) tends to be more more ethical on average.

[tassl]

Not because of deforestation, but because threats to orangutans.

Most of the food animals eat is not human-grade, and a big part of it are by products of food for human consumption it would not be used anyways.

[rewq4321]

For reference, only about 6% of soybeans grown worldwide are turned directly into food products for human consumption.[0] Most goes to feeding animals that are used for human consumption.

[0] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/soybeans

[pvaldes]

> As unethical as eating soy from a deforested area

Exact. Soy monocultures are devastating for environment, is an evil league respect to pastures, that still hold thousands of species. Soy fields have one species for Km and Km. Period.

[nicoburns]

Pastures in areas that are naturally grassy is fine. Pastures that have been created by deforesting the Amazon are not at all ok (Brazil is the worlds largest exporter of beef - not all of that is Amazonian land, but a lot of it is).

Soy is often grown in deforested rainforest areas too. But as a sibling comment says, only 6% of soy goes towards direct human consumption. The rest is for animal feed.

[ac29]

> As unethical as eating soy from a deforested area.

Not really, though - the GP link says it takes 50 calories of feed to make 1 calorie of Beef, so eating the feed directly would require 50 times less land.

[tassl]

Let me doubt that assessment. That would be true if (1) the 50-to-1 was true (doubt it); (2) what we feed the cattle is human-grade food and (3) 1 calorie of a plant was as nutritious as 1 calorie of meat.

[stjohnswarts]

Sure but soy beans are about 10x-20x more energy efficient than cattle at feeding humans so much less deforestation. Skip the middle man and eat your veggies and beans.

[wartijn_]

Can you point out from where in that report you've got those numbers? I couldn't find them.

[doytch]

Page 7: Beef production is the leading cause of deforestation and land clearing in Australia. A recent GIS analysis undertaken by the Wilderness Society found that 73% of all deforestation and land clearing in Queensland is linked to beef production.16 This figure is likely to be an underestimate of the beef industry’s contribution due to the conservative methods used throughout the study. That result is consistent with the Queensland Government’s official tree‐cover reports which regularly attribute over 90% of the state’s forest and bushland destruction to replacement by ‘pasture.’17 Similarly, Australian government data ascribed 72% of national deforestation in 2016 to grazing.18 There are numerous scientific articles that identify cattle grazing as a key driver of deforestation, particularly in Queensland which has the largest cattle numbers in Australia.19

---

I will note, I've noticed people sometimes saying "well, you can't grow anything else on that land!" as a defense for animal agriculture. Maybe /we/ can't grow any /crops/, but nature can thrive in such spaces. I think given what we know about Climate Change, it should go without saying that we shouldn't bulldoze every forest and bushland and farm on it in any way we can.

[jamil7]

Sorry I typed that out and left to run some chores. I had a second report open from the same organisation and I quoted 73% not 72%, fixed in the parent comment.

Both reports: https://www.wilderness.org.au/images/resources/Beef-Deforest...

https://www.wilderness.org.au//images/resources/The_Drivers_...

[thinkcontext]

Its quite rare for beef cattle to be 100% range raised.

Beef cattle generally start out in rangeland or pasture where they eat grass with supplementary grain feed for a year or so. Then they get moved to an extremely dense feedlot or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation where they are fed mostly grain based feed for the next 6 months or so.

[ticmasta]

That's what gives cows the taste most consumers recognize as "prime beef". Eating solely grass-feed is definitely a different taste;I'm not sure most consumers would like it, at least initially (outside of a hamburger).

[nemo44x]

Not sure why parent was voted down but it's true. The inputs have a lot to do with the outputs. Grass fed beef has its advantages in many ways, but grain fed does as well. Generally, you see a nice balance when a cow is grass fed most its life and then fed grain the last couple months to fatten it up.

Aaron Franklin talks about this in his book and mentions he only uses grain fed beef for BBQ. Grass fed briskets just aren't as tasty and lack the marbling of a prime Angus brisket, in his opinion. But the guy has cooked over 100 briskets each day for over a decade so I imagine it carries some weight.

In my preference for steaks, I like both. But it depends on the cut. For a Ribeye I'll take the grain fed. For a filet I'll take grass.

[MiroF]

Here's the thing, "grass fed" beef is still fed grain. You're looking for "grass finished", which is quite rare.

[scoot]

The parent commenter is speaking specifically from experience in Australia.

Since CAFO is a USDA term, I assume your comment (or the source of it) relates to the USA.

[thinkcontext]

A CAFO is a feedlot with 1k+ animal units (1 animal unit = 1 head of beef cattle), Australia has plenty of those. Here's a list of the top 25

https://www.beefcentral.com/top-25-lotfeeders-list/

I believe it is true that cattle get more nutrition from grass in AU than US but I haven't seen numbers that break it down.

[belorn]

Given a year on grass and 6 months on feedlot, that already mean that they only use 33% compared to a factory farmed one that only eat grain. A pretty large gain for the climate.

[MiroF]

> cattle is raised on land that is unsuitable for crop production

This doesn't really matter - it's about the fact that the cattle are eating crops that could have more efficiently been directly turned into food. Unless you're claiming most Australian cattle aren't given feed? (Hint: pretty much all cattle are given feed, even the "free-range" ones)

> If they respond by stopping eating meat, then great - not the best choice, but a step in the right direction. If they respond by stopping to care where their food comes from then not so great.

In terms of the environmental impact, "caring where your food comes from" is truly, qualitatively nothing compared to stopping eating meat. Why are you trying to push this message?

[bobthepanda]

This is at least a step in the positive direction.

A quick Google tells me that soy has a yield of 2.81 metric tons per hectare, and seaweed has a yield of ~20 metric tons per hectare. Depending on how much of the feed can be replaced by seaweed additive, it's another arrow in the quiver to reduce the environmental impact of food production, the same way that cheap solar and wind don't displace the need for energy efficiency.

[MiroF]

It's a very small amount of seaweed in the feed.

[jazzabeanie]

I'm not claiming most Australian cattle aren't given feed. I'm claiming it's possible to get beef that was raised almost exclusively on grass that was grown on land that is unsuitable for crop production. (Hint: I have 10s of kilos of it in my freezer)

> In terms of the environmental impact, "caring where your food comes from" is truly, qualitatively nothing compared to stopping eating meat. Why are you trying to push this message?

Caring about where your food comes from is the driver behind avoiding meat for a lot of people. If people don't care about the impacts of the food they eat you will never convince them to stop eating meat. Not sure why you have a problem with this message.

[ticmasta]

For many of us in the Western World and specifically Canada, water use is a major area of concern as well. Seaweed obviously doesn't use a lot of fresh water to grow, but I'm not sure about the processing. Cattle production still does use a lot of water and we don't raise a lot of cows by the oceans, but this has some interesting applications.

[ajmurmann]

> In Australia a significant amount (can't remember the specifics) of cattle is raised on land that is unsuitable for crop production.

I'm not sure how that makes anything better. It will still require more carbon emissions than growing elsewhere. In fact raising cattle in a spot like you describe still well require growing the feed elsewhere. Wouldn't it be much better to just eat the soup or other crop directly, save the carbon emissions and give the land the cattle are on back to mother nature and turn it into a wildlife refuge?

[belorn]

Factory farms, or intensive animal farming as is the technical name, have animals living on a small space that primarily/only eat crops that has been grown elsewhere. In many cases that is the same crops that humans also eat such as soy.

Cattle raised on land that is unsuitable for crop production eat primarily from the land they graze on. Depending on where in the world it is there might be periods like winter where extra "support food" is added, which amount and type depend on weather and circumstance. Support food is usually silage made from hay, grown on land which is deemed too inefficient for other crops. Hay can also be grown on land needing crop rotations, with or without added fertilizers.

Wildlife refuges are sometimes where I live combined with grazing cattle as a cost (and environment) saving method to keep overgrowth down for which otherwise heavy machinery would be needed. It has also been experimented to use sheep for areas with over land power lines, as those otherwise need regular clearing from fossil gulping heavy machinery.

The distinction between factory farming and everything else is sadly lost in most discussions around meat, and when sold it is not marked in the store to distinguish between the two. Most processed food is also said to contain factory farmed meat. Factory farmed meat is basically always a negative for the environment and the animals, but outside of that we got the whole spectrum.

[marcosdumay]

> In fact raising cattle in a spot like you describe still well require growing the feed elsewhere.

No. Feeding bovine meat cattle with commercial crops is uneconomical. It only happens as a small complement to the main diet or in emergencies. Nearly all of the cattle food grows on the terrain where they are created.

[joncrane]

For sure almost all cattle are 'fattened up' at so-called "feed lots" immediately before butchering. In fact "grass fed" is one of those misleading labels that imply one thing but the true way to get what "grass fed" is implying is "grass fed and grass finished."

[rbg246]

I drive past fields of legumes in western Victoria out near Horsham that gets shipped up to Queensland to feed feedlot cattle.

It's certainly not insignificant

[dunefox]

> If they respond by stopping eating meat, then great - not the best choice, but a step in the right direction

How is that not the best choice?

[bluntfang]

> It's not as simple as eating meat = bad,

But it really is that simple at the scale we're producing meat. Factory farming is bad, and it will never be sustainable to produce the amount of meat we need to feed the world.

I have no doubt that free range grass fed beef is fine, but that's not where the majority of people are going to be able to get their meat.