Whatever their food is, 1kg of beef requires 24kg of grain’s worth of energy. This is something they teach in high-school biology now. The higher the food chain, the more energy is lost. Stopping such production would be pretty beneficial to the environment, but whether we should is a complicated question.
But as I pointed out, many cattle are ranched on land that cannot grow grain. They can’t grow the sorts of crops that humans eat, only the sorts of crops that cattle eat. If cattle weren’t being ranched on those lands they wouldn’t be producing edible grain instead, or any other food that humans could eat. So the inefficiency is moot when it comes to the amount of nutrition produced, removing the cattle from that land would simply reduce the total amount of food we have available.
Sure, if you remove the cattle then wild animals could come in to replace them, but we should make sure that’s not going to result in starvation and poverty if we do that. Many areas of the world have subsistence ranching by the locals.
Are we just going to ignore the millions of acres of vast grasslands that supported like 50 million buffalo in the US 200 year ago? Healthy grassland ecosystems and ruminants are a thing.
Interesting. However, a search says that feeding all the grass (or whatever) to cattle takes that food away from existing ecosystems in dry areas and potentially allow exotic weeds to take over land. So we probably don’t want this to expand to the point where we intrude on dry ecosystems.
It’s just a matter of land management. Many of those grassland areas used to have other large grazing animals on them, so as long as the cattle herds aren’t bigger than those old herds it should be sustainable.
Billions of trees every year get cut down to make space for cattle pastures, now tell me how destroying entire ecosystems that have been there for potentially thousands of years is worth some particular meat.
Or even land that is suitable for growing grain, but they’re kept being fed almost entirely on grass, for better quality, better health (and less cow farts, lol), rather than cost cutting nasty to bulk them up.
Well, if we’re talking pure food-production efficiency, then if the land is capable of growing grain then it’s probably better to grow grain there and feed the grain directly to humans.
But upvote anyway for responding to a year-and-a-half-old thread, this is the oldest necro response I’ve received yet on the Fediverse. :)
Well, if we’re talking pure food-production efficiency, then if the land is capable of growing grain then it’s probably better to grow grain there and feed the grain directly to humans.
Well in that case perhaps we should do just algae and worms.
Or maybe we should consider more than “pure food-production efficiency” in such a crude manner.
Perhaps we should consider nutrition and health (of those eating the food, and the environment), more than just crude bulk quantity.
Grain based diet would ruin our immune systems, and the health of the soil, without animal fertilizer.
Cows are not all fed on grain. A lot of cows are ranched on land that would not be suitable for growing grain crops.
Whatever their food is, 1kg of beef requires 24kg of grain’s worth of energy. This is something they teach in high-school biology now. The higher the food chain, the more energy is lost. Stopping such production would be pretty beneficial to the environment, but whether we should is a complicated question.
But as I pointed out, many cattle are ranched on land that cannot grow grain. They can’t grow the sorts of crops that humans eat, only the sorts of crops that cattle eat. If cattle weren’t being ranched on those lands they wouldn’t be producing edible grain instead, or any other food that humans could eat. So the inefficiency is moot when it comes to the amount of nutrition produced, removing the cattle from that land would simply reduce the total amount of food we have available.
Sure, if you remove the cattle then wild animals could come in to replace them, but we should make sure that’s not going to result in starvation and poverty if we do that. Many areas of the world have subsistence ranching by the locals.
And of course the land couldn’t be used for anything else… like natural ecosystems.
Just because land exists doesn’t mean it needs to be pillaged to feed our desires.
Most ranchland is, in fact, a “natural ecosystem.” They just send cattle out to graze on it.
The point I’m making here is about food efficiency, though, not about land use.
Are we just going to ignore the millions of acres of vast grasslands that supported like 50 million buffalo in the US 200 year ago? Healthy grassland ecosystems and ruminants are a thing.
Exactly. Nah, we just gotta have man made monoculture everywhere, or a desert, right? So that, in the end, it just amounts to deserts anyway. Yay. 😶
Interesting. However, a search says that feeding all the grass (or whatever) to cattle takes that food away from existing ecosystems in dry areas and potentially allow exotic weeds to take over land. So we probably don’t want this to expand to the point where we intrude on dry ecosystems.
It’s just a matter of land management. Many of those grassland areas used to have other large grazing animals on them, so as long as the cattle herds aren’t bigger than those old herds it should be sustainable.
Billions of trees every year get cut down to make space for cattle pastures, now tell me how destroying entire ecosystems that have been there for potentially thousands of years is worth some particular meat.
Yeah. Different issue.
Cant paint all beef with that bad brush.
And billions of acres of pasture could never support trees
Or even land that is suitable for growing grain, but they’re kept being fed almost entirely on grass, for better quality, better health (and less cow farts, lol), rather than cost cutting nasty to bulk them up.
Well, if we’re talking pure food-production efficiency, then if the land is capable of growing grain then it’s probably better to grow grain there and feed the grain directly to humans.
But upvote anyway for responding to a year-and-a-half-old thread, this is the oldest necro response I’ve received yet on the Fediverse. :)
Well in that case perhaps we should do just algae and worms.
Or maybe we should consider more than “pure food-production efficiency” in such a crude manner.
Perhaps we should consider nutrition and health (of those eating the food, and the environment), more than just crude bulk quantity.
Grain based diet would ruin our immune systems, and the health of the soil, without animal fertilizer.