[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?

[TollingSteady]

The problem is that this balanced system you bring up does not seem to exist for commercial meat. Having animals like modern broiler chickens are simply an environmentally wasteful way to get calories.

Supplemental feeding of commercially grown oats, for example, means that these animals are not only using resources on the land they're raised on, but they're also directly contributing to the crop monocultures we both agree are unsustainable. Humans could eat these oats directly, which is much more efficient than passing them through other animals first.

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Vegetables, crops, etc. can be grown effectively and less wastefully without farmed animals. Insofar as animals are necessary to a natural ecosystem, it's the native species with lower impact rather than the extremely modified modern livestock that consume massive quantities of input at produce large amounts of GHGs and other unwanted waste.

As for your last sentence, it's disingenuous to act like animals (including the animals in your example who require supplemental feed) aren't the ones consuming the majority of the feed and therefore are the reason for most of those trucks moving conventionally grown crops.

It seems like the most sustainable system is relying on plants: preferably grown in the same country, preferably grown in less intensive organic means, but even plants that don't meet these two criteria are still more sustainable than the best current forms of animal agriculture.

Consider that transportation is only 11% of a food's total greenhouse gas emissions, and dropping red meat and dairy for a single day of the week is better for the environment than making your entire diet 100% local food. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18546681/)

By all data I can find, trying to run plant calories/protein through the inefficient process of creating animal protein, which necessarily involves much higher GHG emissions and calorie waste, is not a good idea — even with a local farm using carbon sequestering.

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But again, given that 99% of U.S. farmed animals live on factory farms (https://sentientmedia.org/u-s-farmed-animals-live-on-factory...), if you're already eating according to the morals you've claimed in this post, our diets will be extremely similar. I'm assuming anyone who avoids animal agriculture we all agree is unsustainable (by not getting meat/cheese at regular restaurants or at general grocery stores, by avoiding baked goods containing factory farmed eggs and dairy, by eating plant-based when you're anywhere that's going to use these kinds of animals) will have much more in common with a vegan than with those following the Standard American Diet, so I'd still have a lot of respect for your commitment.

[CuriouslyC]

If an animal does work to improve an ecosystem, how is that wasteful? I'm not sure what part of "the animals are beneficial" you're missing. We don't need to stop raising animals, we need to change our agricultural practices so that the animals are always just a single part of a larger system that is in balance.

It seems like your problem here is the capitalist society that demands a race to the bottom, pushing farmers to farm in a way that damages the earth. Perhaps you can redirect some of that simmering rage to the root causes of the things that you don't like.

[TollingSteady]

I've still seen no evidence that farmed animals (those that produce commercially viable quantities of meat/milk) do work to improve ecosystems.

As far as I can tell, even in the best case scenario, they consume intense amounts of resources and output a lot of unwanted byproducts, such as greenhouse gases, that are not removed by the farming system.

I honestly believe that current animal agriculture is a root cause of what I'm against, such as increasing global warming. There seem to be less bad forms of animal ag, but I've yet to see any proof that there are good versions.

I think you overestimate my feelings on this topic though. I feel compelled to act with my conscience, but if there were hard data that any of these systems are net positive for the ecosystem, I'd definitely reconsider my stance.