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by jimnotgym 1165 days ago
Of course your point a is true, but it doesn't need to be. In other parts of the world cattle are not fed on cereals at all, or minimally. Equally cereal production has been a major cause of native grassland being plowed up, with much of the biomass turning back into CO2. If it were turned back to pasture it would begin to sequester carbon again. Grazing animals could be grown on that pasture, but not at the intensity of a US factory farm.

The answer is that the system is complex and there are no easy fixes.
1 comments
ramblenode 1164 days ago
The problem is that most pasture is not natural; most of it was converted from forest at some point. In that way it is still an environmental tradeoff.

Pasture doesn't really sequester carbon either, and grazing is still a big net GHG emitter because of methane (more potent than C02).

Forest, on the other hand, sequesters carbon, produces oxygen, and creates microclimates that are more hospitable to humans and which buffer against extreme weather changes.

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jimnotgym 1163 days ago
Hang on a minute, 'most' pasture might not be natural, but no arable ground to grow the alternative food is natural at all! And even if 'most' pasture is not natural we should not ignore that significant pasture was natural. Lets take the Great Plains of North America as an example. Ploughing it up to turn it into arable land was not natural and released much carbon.

> Pasture doesn't really sequester carbon either

Simply untrue. In the UK if I had pasture land I could even get paid for the carbon I had added to the soil. Here is a nice quote that says the complete opposite of your unreferenced comment:

"Prairies have the ability to store as much carbon below the ground as forests can store above the ground. When carbon is stored below ground it will remain locked there and be unable to enter the atmosphere."

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/ageconugensc/73/#:~:text=Prai....

I think you are making the same mistake as everyone else by pretending there is a simple solution. Special interest groups, like those who are dogmatically opposed to meat production, are twisting the science just as much as their opposition is.

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