this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023

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This land isn’t for you or me. It’s for the meat industry. | Almost half of the continental US is used for meat production. There’s something better we could do with it. (www.vox.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Most of the US is empty and fertile unlike other parts of the world, land use is not really the biggest issue with meat farming

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Empty... to humans but not to native species that living there. Grazing still affects those ecosystems there. From the article

As the cattle graze, they tend to disrupt ecosystems and do a lot of damage to the land. They eat or destroy plants consumed by native species, like turtles, which can lead to biodiversity loss. Their manure pollutes rivers and streams, and as they move about, they erode soil.

[...] analyzed decades of BLM data and found that about half of the acreage it oversees that has been assessed fails to meet the agency’s own land health standards (in Nevada, it’s an alarming 83 percent). PEER points to livestock grazing as the primary source of land degradation.

There's an opportunity cost in using all that land. If we let land go back to its natural state we can sequester quite large amounts of carbon

A 2020 study published in the journal Nature Sustainability highlights the immense environmental potential of changing how we farm and eat. Researchers found that if all high-income countries shifted to a plant-based diet from 2015 to 2050, they’d free up enough land to sequester 32 gigatons of carbon dioxide — the equivalent of removing nine years of all those countries’ fossil fuel emissions from the atmosphere. Globally, if we shifted to plant-based diets over that same time period, the land saved could sequester the equivalent of 16 years of global fossil fuel emissions.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

What's the environmental cost of growing all that soy, corn and oats for an US wide vegetarian diet?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A lot less than farming meat which requires all the cost of growing that and ensuring the animals are fed and watered until slaughtering.

[–] commie 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

animals are mostly fed plants or parts of plants that people can't or won't eat. the field that grows soybeans for oil has those same soybeans made into soy meal or soy cake and it would be industrial waste if it wasn't fed to animals.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yep, because it would be too expensive to have whole crops grown for them only for us to consume then thereafter. That said, they still require a lot of water until they're slaughtered.

Like it or not, farming meat is more high energy and wasteful than farming plants. For example, plants are suitable for vertical farming, using less land.

[–] commie 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

even the water estimates are overstated, and for the same reason: animals eat grass and that counts against their water use. animals are fed cottonseed, which is a byproduct of the textile industry, and the water is counted against them. the methodology for measuring these thingsis fucked: animals help us conserve resources.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I... really disagree with the last statement. They don't help conserve, they consume resources. This includes swathes of land that should be reserved for native flora and fauna to feed back into the eco system. What you're describing isn't a circular economy but rather a system put in place to minimise cost and maximise output. The evidence of this is in the article of this post where much of the land is farmland for meat production.

Alternatively, growing different types of plants in cycles can help rejuvenate the soil and put nutrients back in. Meat production ignores this.

[–] commie 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They don’t help conserve, they consume resources.

these aren't mutually exclusive. if the cottonseed would otherwise be wasted, then feeding it to cows IS conserving resources, even if cows, on the whole, consume more than they help conserve.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What would cottonseed be used for if not fed to cows? How would it be wasted? Genuinely curious since I'm not American.

Also, this line of debate completely details the original topic which is that almost half of the land in the US is used for meat production.

[–] commie 1 points 2 years ago

cottonseed is also pressed for oil, but it's not very commonly used. it could be crushed for compost, I suppose. regardless, it's a byproduct of the textile industry, so any use at all is reclaiming resources that were overspent in cotton production.

[–] commie 1 points 2 years ago

What you’re describing isn’t a circular economy but rather a system put in place to minimise cost and maximise output.

what i'm describing is an intricately interdependent economy. i agree that a circular one sounds better, being able to sustain a lifestyle without any foreign inputs. that doesn't change whether, at the moment, it's better that wefeed cottonseed to cows than throw it away.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

From the article

But not all agriculture is equally land-intensive. Meat-heavy diets require far more land than low-meat and vegetarian diets.

But not only that it also requires crop land for plant-based diets. From a different source

If everyone shifted to a plant-based diet we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%.

[...]

If we would shift towards a more plant-based diet we don’t only need less agricultural land overall, we also need less cropland.

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

[–] commie 1 points 2 years ago

If everyone shifted to a plant-based diet we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%.

no, we wouldn't.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Sounds like you didn't even read the first paragraph of the article

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Although the article talks about biodiversity, people may have other concerns and i thought i would note them