[TollingSteady]

Animal agriculture produces more carbon waste than the entire transportation sector. "Regenerative" animal agriculture is a myth, as fields can only sequester a small percent of the carbon emissions produced by ruminants, and they eventually reach a saturation point where they stop sequestering any.

Additionally, factory farms are pretty much the only option to make animal products available anywhere close to the quantity required. Community farms have significantly lower output at a higher cost, and therefore animal products prices would presumably skyrocket.

There are plenty of delicious and easily available vegan recipes that require 0 veggie burgers, if you're interested in reducing your carbon footprint.

Obviously your actions are up to you, but community farms like you suggest just aren't feasible at scale.

[jxidjhdhdhdhfhf]

But that seems fine. People would still have access to meat, it would just be at a much higher price. The price should reflect the ecological cost anyways.

[TollingSteady]

If we cut subsidies and internalized the externalities (i.e. heavy carbon tax on all meat used to offset the GHG emissions), it would be theoretically feasible to make meat carbon neutral.

I'd imagine taking these minimum steps toward environmental sustainability would either a) greatly exacerbate food insecurity in America or b) make meat into a luxury that only the top 10% can afford to eat at all.

Either way, I suppose it would be an effective way to let the market reduce animal agriculture.

If you'd like to help this come about, please consider boycotting the current animal agriculture industry until it reforms, as this kind of carbon-neutral meat currently does not exist.

[msandford]

The great plains of 100 years ago would beg to differ. It was very common for black soil to be 4 plus feet deep. If that wasn't a lot of sequestered carbon I don't know what is. Ironically all that sequestered carbon was released back to the air by intensive cropping not by ruminant animals.

[TollingSteady]

I completely agree, natural habitats with native flora and fauna tend to settle into balanced ecosystems. As far as I can tell, that's not what you're arguing for, though, as that is not at all what modern animal agriculture is similar to.

As far as crops, the majority of what we grow is fed to animals. For example, according to the USDA, approximately 70% of U.S. soy is used as animal feed. If you're interested in reducing crop farming, go vegan. (Source: https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/coexisten...)

As far as the limited abilities of carbon sequestering, "Grazing management could potentially, and under very generous assumptions, offset between 20-60% of annual average emissions from the grass-fed only sector," meaning that even all grass fed beef is still going to involve horrifying amounts of GHG emissions, completely ignoring the cost/land use that would make it otherwise unfeasible. (Source: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-grazing-livestock-climate-impa...)

Bonus link for more info on ruminants and carbon sequestering: "https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/animal/article/abs/m..."

[msandford]

Doing regenerative ranching can be net carbon sequestering provided that you model your operation on nature a certain amount. People are doing it successfully.

Another way to be responsible re food is to only buy good grass fed beef. As a bonus cows can make use of grass on land that's too poor for traditional farming.

[TollingSteady]

The source I cite for only 20-60% of GHG emissions being sequestered includes grass-fed beef. It seems like buying grass-fed beef is still environmentally unsustainable.

Your claims don't seem to match any of the evidence I've seen, but I'd be interested in discussing them further if you could provide sources.

As far as poor soil, a) current animal agriculture is mostly making use of usable soil & farmed crops, so this currently seems like a moot point, and b) this gets back to the above issue of being completely unable to scale. Unless you're being careful to only eat meat about once a month, I don't understand how the use of only poor soil is supposed to produce enough meat to feed everyone who would want it.

[msandford]

There are several ways to approach the problem.

One is to look from first principles and analyze how the great plains came to be. It should be obvious that the carbon didn't just sequester itself. Therefore if one were to mimic the roaming herds of bison closely enough (and how close is close enough is up for debate) then it should absolutely be possible to be net sequestering. I'm having trouble finding a good source for this.

There's a guy named Gabe Brown from North Dakota who is consistently increasing the amount of organic matter (and thus carbon) in the soil of his farm. I don't know how you'd interpret his results as anything other than sequestering.

https://www.sandyarrowranch.com/2019-fall-winter-update/

Finally there are places that are trying to study this rigorously as there's huge money to be made if you can offer guilt-free beef. Might that taint their results? Yup, but they might also be right.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90368127/is-it-possible-to-raise... https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-regenerative-land-and-l...

[TollingSteady]

I'd imagine the Great Plains had a much higher plant:animal ratio than commercial animal agriculture will be able to achieve. Plus the animals involved were native species adapted to the environment, not imported animals bred to maximize meat/milk output. I doubt we'll be able to reach a conclusion about this without more data, though.

Gabe Brown definitely does seem like he's achieving carbon sequestering, which is great! I have no doubt that carbon sequestering exists and is effective — my problem is that it neither matches nor exceeds the carbon output of e.g. cattle. So even with maximally effective carbon sequestering practices, there's still on net large GHG emissions. (See 20-60% figure from above.)

As far as the links you provide, here's the direct quote from the conclusion of the FastCompany site: "...better management techniques can be helpful but not as much as many think, and that the term 'regenerative' is so vague that it risks becoming greenwashing. Another study, from the Food Climate Research Network in the U.K., found that better management of livestock only sequesters carbon under some conditions and even then may be temporary and not necessarily large enough to offset the negative impact of raising the animals."

The second link seems to be marketing copy from General Mills, which as you note I might tend toward being suspicious of. Their sponsored study seems to contradict both the FastCompany site and all the other studies I've read. Definitely something to look more into on my part, though: will update here after reading more thoroughly.

Thank you for the interesting links, and for being willing to engage in good faith.

[TomatoDash]

Your sequestration suggestion should be compared to the most effective non-meat alternative, which is land area effective plant based protein production combined with reforestation of much current pasture https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-opportunity-costs-food

[CuriouslyC]

Traditional agriculture is garbage, and you holding it up as some sort of solution to the incoming environmental catastrophe is dangerous. Eliminating animals will provide a short term band-aid, but the problem will fester under the surface as we continue to destroy fertility and poison our water, until we get laid low by rolling famines.

The solution is distributed permaculture, with animals integrated (referred to as silvopasture). Silvopasture produces much more food per acre than conventional row crops, and when permaculture principles are followed, requires minimal or no use of fertilizers and sprays. In addition, it builds soil fertility and retains water. The animals in the system naturally fertilize the plants while controlling pests and weeds.

As long as the dominant mode of agriculture is thousand acre farms growing monoculture commodity crops, sprayed with gallons of chemicals, which are then trucked back and forth across the country from processing plant to factory to store, we're going to continue to erode our future food supply.

[TollingSteady]

I completely agree, crop farming as it currently exists trades a lot of long term sustainability and ecological responsibility in exchange for high output.

However the problem is that the large majority of these monoculture crops go to animals. Reducing animal agriculture not only means less direct GHG emissions from animals, it also means a huge reduction in the amount of crops required to feed the same number of people.

In the US, 41% of land is used for animal agriculture, while only 19.8% is used for food humans eat. (Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/)

"The 7 billion livestock animals in the United States consume five times as much grain as is consumed directly by the entire American population." + "For every kilogram of high-quality animal protein produced, livestock are fed nearly 6 kg of plant protein." (Source: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-m...)

If you're worried about greenhouse gas emissions, stop paying into animal agriculture.

If you're interested in reducing the need for monocrops, reducing land use, and creating more sustainable plant farming, your best choice is still to go vegan.

[CuriouslyC]

You're obviously arguing from a point of bias, with an agenda that ignores facts. Animals form an integral part of the optimal, zero input agricultural system (as demonstrated by natural environments). The problem isn't eating animals, the problem is a system of agriculture that is self destructive and stupid. You can't have a balanced ecosystem without animals, and eating them is the best method for population control.

You can rail all you want on factory farmed meats, and I'm with you on there, but to go from "factory farmed meats are bad" to "people shouldn't eat meat" is fallacious as hell. That would be like going from "drinking too much water will kill you" to "people shouldn't drink water".

[TollingSteady]

I grew up eating 3 eggs every morning and drinking chocolate milk daily. My very favorite food (and the first thing I'd order at any restaurant) was steak. I apologize if I've made it seem like I have some personal stake in plants; I only stopped supporting animal agriculture because as an adult I realized that it seemed unethical and unsustainable.

If you are able to provide sources showing that sustainable, ecologically-sound animal agriculture exists, please do link me, as I'd be very personally interested.

And just to clarify: I am under the impression that all forms of animal agriculture that currently exist are environmentally and morally negative, in their current forms. My opinion would more be that the fact is "burning coal is bad", so my opinion is "let's switch to renewables." I am only trying to act in alignment with my conscience, even though it can be inconvenient.

It seems we do have a lot of common ground, though; if you're already boycotting factory farmed meat, eggs, and dairy, we'll have way more in common than different.

[CuriouslyC]

Integrating animals into a food system correctly results in a net increase in carbon retention, even if they themselves produce greenhouse gasses. This is because they help provide soil fertility while controlling the growth of weeds so that trees and other larger, longer lived food plants aren't competing for resources. If the animals didn't do it, you'd need to use pesticides, or a mower, or something else that has more downsides and isn't edible.

There are a lot of permaculture farms integrating animals, fruit/nut trees and crops, but the most famous one is polyface farm (https://www.polyfacefarms.com/).

Ultimately, until agriculture is supplanted by ecosystem creation, and it becomes something that most of the population has some minor role in (if only to save compost for, and help harvest from your local food forest), we're going to be destroying the environment to feed people. Not eating factory farmed meat will slow it down a little bit, but the problem will still be there festering away, until we change our ways or population levels drop an order of magnitude.

[rhesa]

Another excellent example is Mark Shepard on his New Forest Farm.

He successfully replicated the oak savannah that covered a lot of the US before the Europeans tore it up, but using species that are useful for humans.

Like you're saying, the animals are an integral part of that system: reducing pests, mowing and pruning, cleaning up waste etc.

[TollingSteady]

Thanks for the link! This was definitely interesting to dig into. It looks like the farms' claim for carbon offset is sequestration. I don't doubt that they do this, but sequestration is only able to store a maximum of 20-60% of carbon emitted, with most studies placing it around 20% (see my source in the other comment thread, and also https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987). Given the inefficiency of animal protein and the lack of independent data pointing to this style of farming being eco-neutral, polyface's claims read more to me like marketing copy than evidence of being carbon-neutral.

Polyface seems to have a few other issues, such as using the same breeds of meat (broiler) chickens as used in factory farms. I need to dig into more data on this particularly, but their chicken farming doesn't seem to meet sustainability standards.

He also feeds his animals grain grown from outside the farm, meaning that this doesn't make sense as a "closed loop" sustainable system, even ignoring the other concerns.

[Note: this is not intended to come off as overly negative, I'm just attempting to analyze what I see as shortcomings in this example. After looking more into it, I would still classify this as ecologically net negative, and less sustainable than a plant-based diet based on the GHG emissions of the animals. If you have further data to provide on this example though, I would definitely be willing to revise my position.]

Your conclusion paragraph seems a bit pessimistic, given the reality of how much food we currently produce — "According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the world produces more than 1 1/2 times enough food to feed everyone on the planet. That’s already enough to feed 10 billion people, the world’s 2050 projected population peak... the bulk of industrially produced grain crops (most yield reduction in the study was found in grains) goes to biofuels and confined animal feedlots rather than food for the one billion hungry." from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241746569_We_Alread...

So it seems to me as though reducing or eliminating animal solves the problems you bring up: to have the same amount of food available to humans, we'd need to farm less crops, which means we could e.g. start switching to lower-yield organic farming without compromising human nutrition, and diversifying a lot of current corn/wheat/pasture land into more nutrient dense vegetables.

Theoretically, a plant-based agricultural system taking compost and natural land replenishment from wild (native) animals & plants as inputs and producing a variety of plant foods as outputs would be lower GHG emissions, lower pesticide use, lower soil erosion, all while supplying a higher number of people food.

What am I missing?