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by himinlomax 1172 days ago
That water claim was based on a flawed accounting that's been repeated over and over so much without source. The debunking was posted right here on HN a few years back, don't have time to find it for now, maybe later.

Other than that, what you describe only applies to industrial farming, not grazing cattle. Cows graze pasture, they shit and piss in pasture, it's almost a closed cycle except for the added salt the herder usualy gives them.

2 comments

> That water claim

What water claim? That cows consume water and excrete concentrated urine? I don't know what you're debunking without a source, but appears to be a straw man.

> industrial farming, not grazing cattle

Grazing requires orders of magnitude more land compared to cramming cows into small cages, which decreases the amount of food you can derive from this already (very) expensive food source.

I love beef, but that doesn't change the fact that it's an incredibly wasteful source of food and it ultimately unsustainable compared to plants, fish, eggs etc.

I'd like to know if you think any of the claims on this page are incorrect and if so what evidence you have against them https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food