[spacephysics]

You should see the cartel Monsanto has on agriculture

This is just one more reason we should push for sustainable farming, including meat products.

livestock naturally bring nitrogen and other nutrients back into the soil when grazing. Then use that land to grow plants, move the animals where plants pulled the nutrients from the soil, rinse and repeat.

Also reduces the need for harmful fertilizers that impact the ecosystem

[hooverd]

"sustainable farming" would require eating less meat though. It would probably be much better quality meat.

Sidenote: Monsanto no longer exists. It's Bayer AG now. You can get a direct flight from St Louis to Frankfurt now thanks to this acquisition.

[myshpa]

But animal ag is far from sustainable, unfortunately.

Climate change, resource depletion, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, pollution, overpopulation, soil erosion, and overfishing are all symptoms of ecological overshoot.

Agriculture is a key culprit in most of those symptoms, and animal ag accounts for 80% of all agriculture.

Animal ag is directly responsible for majority of deforestation, is a major driver of biodiversity loss, has twice the greenhouse gas emissions than plant based foods, uses much more fresh water, pollutes the waters and causes dead zones in oceans, overfishing threatens us with empty oceans in 2040's, destroys our soils, etc. etc.. The reforestation potential of animal ag lands is so huge, that we could store our entire 1.5C carbon budget in those lands.

We can free up the area a size of Africa (cca 9 Indias) by switching to plant based diets, and use it for reforesting/rewilding.

If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares - https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

Reforestation potential of pastures (and abolishment of animal ag) would allow us to store the entire 1.5C carbon budget by rewilding/afforesting previously forested pastures. It would also stop biodiversity loss, which is a very serious problem in this day and age. - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4

Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture (and reforesting) has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century - https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Beef, soy for animal feed and palm oil are responsible for 60+% of tropical deforestation - https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation

Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss - https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-glob...

The way we eat could lead to habitat loss for 17,000 species by 2050 - https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22287498/meat-wildlife-bi...

Livestock and climate change: what if the key actors in climate change are... cows, pigs, and chickens? - ttps://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Livestock-and-climate-change%3A-what-if-the-key-in-Goodland-Anhang/6704c7a0777c82357704d82b9ae8007c1197cb07?p2df

The global production of food is responsible for a third of all planet-heating gases emitted by human activity, with the use of animals for meat causing twice the pollution of producing plant-based foods - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-gre...

Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216

Mass Extinctions and Their Relationship With Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration: Implications for Earth's Future - https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022EF00...

[slothtrop]

Lack of sustainability is contingent on increased encroachment of land and emissions, and that is contingent on growing demand overtaking gains in technological efficiency. The demand is growing as a matter of policy: immigration to prop up the GDP. Growing demand for just about anything will increase emissions, pollution and land encroachment - some just exacerbate things faster than others. That does not mean all other products are "sustainable".

The only "sustainability" is where demand does not outstrip the effects of innovation. No one is moving to North America to eschew animal products, vehicles, detached homes, gadgets and other conveniences. Living as we do is what makes it a better life. It's certainly not for the healthcare. Notwithstanding, the bulk of the global increase in demand is coming from East Asia as they lift themselves out of poverty.

In the short-run, marginal changes in consumer habits can have some effect (which matters if there is a sense of urgency for staving off carbon emissions), but in the long run it's a moot point. Seaweed infused feed makes methane a solved problem, and land-use for cattle has been decreasing in the U.S. (it's increased in South America, which exports to China).

This is why govts are rolling out "greener home" grants and the like, there's low-hanging fruit to help lower emissions quickly in effort to meet whatever target they currently have. They could also disincentivize purchasing SUVs, which should not matter that much to manufacturers as they sell the alternatives anyway. More than one way to lower a carbon footprint, some of which are more palatable to consumers. Broadly speaking they are unwilling and unlikely to switch to veganism.

[myshpa]

Few assumptions and oversimplifications, let's address them one by one:

> Lack of sustainability is contingent on increased encroachment of land and emissions, and that is contingent on growing demand overtaking gains in technological efficiency.

Sustainability is not solely dependent on one aspect but is the result of a combination of factors, including land use, resource management, environmental impacts, and ethical considerations. Even with improved technological efficiency, the sheer scale of demand for animal products still pose significant sustainability challenges.

> The demand is growing as a matter of policy: immigration to prop up the GDP.

The demand for animal products is influenced by various factors, including cultural preferences, dietary habits, advertising, and economic factors. While GDP growth and immigration can play a role in shaping demand, they are not the only drivers, and sustainability issues related to animal agriculture go beyond immigration policies.

> Growing demand for just about anything will increase emissions, pollution, and land encroachment - some just exacerbate things faster than others. That does not mean all other products are 'sustainable'

Some industries might indeed have more significant environmental impacts, and in the case of animal agriculture, the evidence points to its significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and water pollution and biodiversity loss.

You can't solve all of these with algae:

- Greenhouse gas emissions (methane, CO2, N2O)

- Deforestation (50% of pastures used to be forests)

- Land degradation

- Water pollution

- Water overconsumption

- Loss of biodiversity

- Antibiotic resistance

- Ocean dead zones

- Inefficient land and resource use

- Ethical concerns

- Contribution to zoonotic diseases

- Air pollution

- Eutrophication

- Soil erosion

- High energy consumption

- Chemical runoff from pesticides and fertilizers

- Destruction of habitats and ecosystems

- Inequality in global food distribution

- Public health risks from foodborne illnesses

- Nutrient pollution

- Strain on waste management systems

- Overfishing (40-70% of plankton gone, sharks 90% gone, fish almost gone in 2040's)

[slothtrop]

> not solely dependent on one aspect

That's why I mentioned more than one.

> Even with improved technological efficiency, the sheer scale of demand for animal products still pose significant sustainability challenges.

That is exactly what I said. Demand is outstripping rate of innovation.

> The demand for animal products is influenced by various factors, including cultural preferences

Most immigrants have that cultural preference, dietary habit, etc.

> advertising, and economic factors

Weakly for staple products, but consumers will spend less on meat when finances are tighter.

> While GDP growth and immigration can play a role in shaping demand, they are not the only drivers, and sustainability issues related to animal agriculture go beyond immigration policies.

It is overwhelmingly the strongest driver. It's not even close. So far the U.S. population has grown by 1,706,706 since 2022. What's more likely, that the growing demand for animal products is a cultural shift, or that there are more people demanding animal products?

Clearly the cultural shift among the middle class and affluent has been a) marginal increase in vegan and vegetarian identity, b) recent enthusiasm between both omnivores and vegans/vegetarians for plant-based products. Despite the latter, the actual vegan demographic does not budge much. If it did, demand for animal products would steadily fall - it does not. It grows. This is not because carnivore dieters are deciding to eat an extra steak to spite you.

> You can't solve all of these with algae:

Moot point if the demand is not growing faster than technological innovation.

Immigration and developing countries growing wealthier is inextricably linked to what you deem as unsustainable.

[bubsie]

Those sources are cool and all but I like cheese /s

[myshpa]

Vegans have cheese. Salty and fatty, melts. You should try it. There is no magic ingredient in cow (dog, giraffe, lion, bat, dolphin) milk that we couldn't get from plants instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI

https://www.vegancheese.co/discover (1700+ cheeses from all over the world)

[NoZebra120vClip]

To call other things "cheese" that aren't cheese is torturing the very definition of the word, much like "milk", which, of course, as a precursor to cheese, has been traditionally understood, inconveniently for you, as excretion from mammary glands.

A lot of of cheesemakers have also traditionally depended upon rennet, a product of animal stomachs, so in the effort to replace it as a coagulant, the definition of "rennet" has itself been tortured to expand as much as possible until vegans are happy with fake, highly-processed, chemically-treated foods.

I was reading the bag of my Chipotle burrito the other night, and it listed all 51 ingredients they use in their restaurant (even water is listed in here), and my eyes alighted on "gypsum". I nearly spit out my steak and pinto beans when I discovered that there's basically drywall in Chipotle's food. It turns out that gypsum (calcium sulfate dihydrate) is a coagulant for soy products, and so if a restaurant doesn't use soy, and doesn't produce fake, highly-processed, chemically-treated vegan foods, then it doesn't need to use drywall.

[myshpa]

> To call other things "cheese" that aren't cheese is torturing the very definition of the word, much like "milk"

Yes, if it doesn't have torture, blood, puss, pesticides, antibiotics and estrogens in it, it can't be called milk or cheese. Why torture? How else would you call forced impregnation, year after year, and forced separation of mothers and calves? Just to shorten the cow's life from 25+ years to 5 and then turn her to burgers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI

> has been traditionally understood, inconveniently for you, as excretion from mammary glands

Inconveniently for you, soybean, almond, coconut, rice, oat, hemp, even poppy milk was used for centuries, millenia even, all over the world.

> and my eyes alighted on "gypsum"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsum#Food_and_drink

So you probably don't drink beer, eat baked goods or farmed mushrooms too. Got it.

Btw, there are other coagulants, like nigari, epsom salt, calcium chloride, lemon juice or vinegar ... Not everybody is scared of 1 tbsp of gypsum in several kg of tofu, so that's why they probably use it. In my view it's much better than contents of someone's stomach. But I'm me.

I wonder what other poisonous chemicals were there. Do you have the list? :)

Btw, do you know, that there's l-cystein in most flours on the market, and that's often made from human hair?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/ma...

Our food industry is so ingenious.

[dao-]

> Salty and fatty,

Almost never protein though. You want good protein for a healthy diet. Of course you can get it through other ingredients, but most of the time, today anyway, you do lose something when just replacing cheese with vegan cheese, unfortunately.

> There is no magic ingredient in cow (dog, giraffe, lion, bat, dolphin) milk that we couldn't get from plants instead.

Agreed.

[myshpa]

> Almost never protein though

True.

> You want good protein for a healthy diet. Of course you can get it through other ingredients, but most of the time, today anyway, you do lose something when just replacing cheese with vegan cheese, unfortunately.

That seems like a strange argument to me. Why insist on obtaining the protein specifically from cheese? Not that it would be hard to add some protein powder to it; why has the protein come from the cheese?

If it tastes good, it doesn't matter as long as you get enough protein from somewhere. We already get 63% of protein and 82% of calories from plants. It's not hard to go all the way.

[Zpalmtree]

this but unironically

[gen220]

("We" below refers to the US, and an increasing proportion of the world that is adopting US farming practices).

There's a good-natured argument to be made that plant-based diets are more sustainable, because we don't generally farm meat sustainably and ensuring that your meat was farmed sustainably is difficult and expensive.

But it's important to underline that sustainable is an insufficient target in the U.S. in 2023. The motion we need is regenerative.

I don't think regenerative farming can be done efficiently without ethical use of livestock.

This is all to say: if you view the health and quality of our food chain as a higher priority than the ethical concerns of consuming meat, you should reconsider your approach to diet construction.

That being said, it's an expensive lifestyle, and will remain expensive as long as our society continues to subsidize processed foods. If we want to generalize a healthier food chain, we have to change the incentive structures that led us here.

[myshpa]

Alan Savory? Regenerative holistic farming? It's mostly bullshit (not my words), apparently.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36826277

[ben_w]

Can you elaborate what you mean by "regenerative"?

I'm anchoring on things like crop rotation for soil nitrogen, but that doesn't feel quite right for your comment, somehow?

[gen220]

It’s a bit of a ramble, but to give you the oeuvre: the problem is that our fruits, vegetables and legumes are not as nutritious today as they were decades ago. The hypothesis motivating regenerative agriculture, is that the explanation for this fact is that we treat soil as a lifeless medium for growing crops, rather than as an organic contributor to a natural ecosystem.

Relevant to this thread, Animals are a core component of a natural ecosystem. This includes grazers, insects and predators. Healthy soil is living soil, full of bacteria that literally digest their environment into free nutrients for a crop to draw from. If we aim to fuel human civilization from the earth, there’s no free lunch — an equal amount of nutrients have to be returned to the earth, and animal husbandry (and consumption) are the historical solutions to this problem.

Regenerative agriculture is agriculture that works in harmony with a living soil and its ecosystem. It means consuming more perennials than annuals, growing polycultures (e.g. the three sisters) instead of monocultures, using crop rotation to let soil lay fallow while it’s used to service the needs of animals.

It’s basically the application of permaculture principles to agronomy.

Other people in this thread have fixated on the climate aspect, and while this is certainly one big motivation for regenerative farming, IMO an equally large one is health — we are fundamentally not as healthy today as our grandparents were at the same age (in terms of cancer incidence, fertility issues, chronic inflammation, diabetes, etc.), and the food chain is an obvious place to scrutinize.

In theory, could you synthesize the perfect cocktail of organic molecules to fertilize soil for healthy crops?

Perhaps, but consider this: would it be less expensive and carry fewer negative externalities than maintaining a herd of animals that have literally co-evolved with these crops for millennia? Especially when you account for the ancillary benefits cattle husbandry (seasonal access to dairy, meat and leather as the herd is culled, etc.)?