[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]

I definitely think his use of renewable energy is a great step forward.

The trouble is that he seems to keep a lot of ruminants for the amount of land he has. Ruminants produce very potent greenhouse gases that are not offset by sequestration (cited a few times in other sources), so with that plus all of his other animals kept I'd be very interested in independently gathered data (i.e. not marketing materials he wrote himself ) about the GHG production / absorption by his land.

Sadly, I'm struggling to find the number of animals he keeps or anything I could use to run any sort of calculation.

Therefore, this definitely looks like the closest I've seen to sustainable animal agriculture, but its claims are currently unsubstantiated.

[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?

[CuriouslyC]

Non heritage meat breeds are much more efficient at producing meat for a given amount of input. Supplemental feed is mostly used to bring chickens to weight more quickly. Assuming you work, I'm sure you understand doing things you would prefer not to for economic reasons.

Talking about our abundance based on how much food we produce today in this context is like talking about how rich you are when you're spending above your means with a credit card. We're depleting topsoil, depleting aquifers, polluting our water, and breeding blights with our lack of diversity.

You keep talking like it's somehow desirable to remove animals from these food producing systems, but it's not. They work better with animals, and those animals need to be herded and culled to maintain the health of the ecosystem. Everything needs to be in balance.

Why do you think it would be better for the environment to take a bunch of trucks into a forest so you can haul stuff from it to a hundred miles away or more to feed conventional agriculture with all its problems than just have a balanced system initially?