> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Food grown in deforested rainforests often isn't human grade because, stripped of the natural forest ecosystem, the land often doesn't have the nutrients to support high-quality agriculture. Don't you think pretty awful that we destroy some of natures most important ecosystems to make room for poor quality agricultural land?
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
100% of deforestation could be for beef production, but 99% of beef production could be without deforestation.