[ogre_codes]

> Most of our meats don't come from animals living on mountain ranges, that's too expensive.

It's also an ecological mess. Cows aren't native to North American mountain ranges and are tremendously destructive. Also, native predators get hunted to protect the non-native cattle which causes an even bigger environmental mess.

> On the flip side, that same 2 acres if farmed can easily feed about ~2 cows.

Yes? But it's a terrible practice. The cows end up piled atop each other in big barns waste deep in their own shit. Then they end up draining the barns into massive shit ponds which have to be filtered with large RO systems. The densely packed cattle are in such poor health they are over-medicated to prevent disease and that medication ends up in the food chain.

Pasture raised beef is just much better. I'd just as soon we limited how much total beef was raised and did it in pastures rather than corn-fed barn raised beef. Its more humane and while it's not been proven, the large amounts of antibiotics in barn raised beef is almost certain to have effects on humans who eat that beef.

[cogman10]

There are alternatives which split the difference between humane and productive. Generally what small time farmers will do is keep cows in pastures that don't have enough food to feed them but do have enough area for them to roam. They'll then use their farming ground to produce enough hay to feed the cattle.

But that said, small time farmers are getting priced out by factory farms. Unfortunately, the dollar is king when it comes to meat production.

The worst part is that there's no real way for a consumer to fix this problem. You can significantly reduce or eliminate your meat consumption and that won't affect factory farms. Remember, they are the cheap meat. So who gets the brunt of reduced consumption? Generally smaller operations as they end up priced out of the market.

The only 2 ways I know of to really hurt factory farmers is for either lab grown meat to be less expensive or for government regulations to outlaw the practice. If the quality of lab grown meat is high enough, however, you are going to see major issues with small time farmers being priced out of the cattle industry completely.

[ogre_codes]

Agree on pretty much all points.

I just can't stand shit farming.

> The worst part is that there's no real way for a consumer to fix this problem.

About all you can do is buy local grass fed or go vegetarian. As you say, it's not a huge thing, but at least I'm not participating.

> Generally smaller operations as they end up priced out of the market.

I would love to see some legislative reform on the large scale use of antibiotics in meat raising. That wouldn't necessarily help smaller farmers, but it might push larger scale farms into somewhat less heinous practices.

[jelliclesfarm]

we need shit farming. 2 reasons: 1. grazing. grasslands sequester more carbon than even forests. 2. phosporous. if you go to iowa. the farmers feed pig shit to grow corn and then feed the corn to the pigs so they'd shit. it's the only way. Soil P is a non renewable resource. when we run out of P, we cant farm anymore.