How much could this reduce the total environmental food print of cattle? I.e. including all the energy used to grow the crops they eat, the deforestation to make room for the crops + cattle, the waste the cows produce.
Animal farming creates vast damage because of how inefficient it is and seaweed won't address how much feed cows need or that the world is eating more and more meat as countries get richer:
> The energy efficiency of meat and dairy production is defined as the percentage of energy (caloric) inputs as feed effectively converted to animal product. An efficiency of 25% would mean 25% of calories in animal feed inputs were effectively converted to animal product; the remaining 75% would be lost during conversion.
All improvements are good, but I'd like to know if this is more than a distraction to make people feel better about continuing to demand products they know are damaging the environment (e.g. Amazon deforestation).
Industrial farmed animals aren't eating grass, they're eating crops like soy. If you find soy milk and soy-based meat alternatives decent for example, consider eating those directly instead of products from soy-fed cows - it'll be vastly better for the environment with seaweed or not.
In Australia a significant amount (can't remember the specifics) of cattle is raised on land that is unsuitable for crop production. My own experience confirms this. I've seen many cattle farms around Queensland - some with low stocking density and no deforestation, others very poorly managed with no trees at all or full of invasive species.
It's not as simple as eating meat = bad, but that's the message most people are getting. If they respond by stopping eating meat, then great - not the best choice, but a step in the right direction. If they respond by stopping to care where their food comes from then not so great.
> In Australia a significant amount (can't remember the specifics) of cattle is raised on land that is unsuitable for crop production. My own experience confirms this.
72% of all deforestation in Queensland and 94% in the Great Barrier Reef catchment areas is a direct result of land clearing for beef production.
If the beef you're eating was raised on a deforested area (anything from a big fast-food chain almost certainly was) then that's still pretty unethical though. I agree it doesn't mean that beef is inherently unethical. But people will need to be willing to accept higher prices in order to make it ethical.
As unethical as eating soy from a deforested area. Or eating mostly anything with sugar, canola oil or palm oil. But people don't ask those to be in non deforested areas, and they don't ask to increase the price to make sure soil is not destroyed by monocrop cultivation.
That's not entirely true. There is a whole movement around boycotting palm oil for example, just as there is with beef. It certainly could be more widely supported.
It's worth noting that a lot of the soy from deforested areas also goes towards feeding livestock. The soy that humans eat (or drink) tends to be more more ethical on average.
> Most of the food animals eat is not human-grade, and a big part of it are by products of food for human consumption it would not be used anyways.
Food grown in deforested rainforests often isn't human grade because, stripped of the natural forest ecosystem, the land often doesn't have the nutrients to support high-quality agriculture. Don't you think pretty awful that we destroy some of natures most important ecosystems to make room for poor quality agricultural land?
1. Deforest land, for some purpose at most tangentially related to agriculture (presumably to use the wood)
2. Land becomes fairly useless; find most productive usage possible
3. Animal agriculture / grazing fields
That is, I doubt land is being specifically destroyed for this purpose -- there's enough available land to simply use as-is... unless it's already been destroyed as a byproduct of other activity.
For reference, only about 6% of soybeans grown worldwide are turned directly into food products for human consumption.[0] Most goes to feeding animals that are used for human consumption.
> As unethical as eating soy from a deforested area
Exact. Soy monocultures are devastating for environment, is an evil league respect to pastures, that still hold thousands of species. Soy fields have one species for Km and Km. Period.
Pastures in areas that are naturally grassy is fine. Pastures that have been created by deforesting the Amazon are not at all ok (Brazil is the worlds largest exporter of beef - not all of that is Amazonian land, but a lot of it is).
Soy is often grown in deforested rainforest areas too. But as a sibling comment says, only 6% of soy goes towards direct human consumption. The rest is for animal feed.
> As unethical as eating soy from a deforested area.
Not really, though - the GP link says it takes 50 calories of feed to make 1 calorie of Beef, so eating the feed directly would require 50 times less land.
Let me doubt that assessment. That would be true if (1) the 50-to-1 was true (doubt it); (2) what we feed the cattle is human-grade food and (3) 1 calorie of a plant was as nutritious as 1 calorie of meat.
Sure but soy beans are about 10x-20x more energy efficient than cattle at feeding humans so much less deforestation. Skip the middle man and eat your veggies and beans.
Page 7: Beef production is the leading cause of deforestation and land clearing in Australia. A recent GIS analysis undertaken by the Wilderness Society found that 73%
of all deforestation and land clearing in Queensland
is linked to beef production.16 This figure is likely to be an underestimate of the beef industry’s contribution due to the conservative methods used throughout the study. That result is consistent with the Queensland Government’s official tree‐cover reports which regularly attribute over 90% of the state’s forest and bushland destruction to replacement by ‘pasture.’17 Similarly, Australian government data ascribed 72% of national deforestation in 2016 to grazing.18 There are numerous scientific articles that identify cattle grazing as a key driver of deforestation, particularly in Queensland which has the largest cattle numbers in Australia.19
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I will note, I've noticed people sometimes saying "well, you can't grow anything else on that land!" as a defense for animal agriculture. Maybe /we/ can't grow any /crops/, but nature can thrive in such spaces. I think given what we know about Climate Change, it should go without saying that we shouldn't bulldoze every forest and bushland and farm on it in any way we can.
Sorry I typed that out and left to run some chores. I had a second report open from the same organisation and I quoted 73% not 72%, fixed in the parent comment.
Its quite rare for beef cattle to be 100% range raised.
Beef cattle generally start out in rangeland or pasture where they eat grass with supplementary grain feed for a year or so. Then they get moved to an extremely dense feedlot or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation where they are fed mostly grain based feed for the next 6 months or so.
That's what gives cows the taste most consumers recognize as "prime beef". Eating solely grass-feed is definitely a different taste;I'm not sure most consumers would like it, at least initially (outside of a hamburger).
Not sure why parent was voted down but it's true. The inputs have a lot to do with the outputs. Grass fed beef has its advantages in many ways, but grain fed does as well. Generally, you see a nice balance when a cow is grass fed most its life and then fed grain the last couple months to fatten it up.
Aaron Franklin talks about this in his book and mentions he only uses grain fed beef for BBQ. Grass fed briskets just aren't as tasty and lack the marbling of a prime Angus brisket, in his opinion. But the guy has cooked over 100 briskets each day for over a decade so I imagine it carries some weight.
In my preference for steaks, I like both. But it depends on the cut. For a Ribeye I'll take the grain fed. For a filet I'll take grass.
Given a year on grass and 6 months on feedlot, that already mean that they only use 33% compared to a factory farmed one that only eat grain. A pretty large gain for the climate.
> cattle is raised on land that is unsuitable for crop production
This doesn't really matter - it's about the fact that the cattle are eating crops that could have more efficiently been directly turned into food. Unless you're claiming most Australian cattle aren't given feed? (Hint: pretty much all cattle are given feed, even the "free-range" ones)
> If they respond by stopping eating meat, then great - not the best choice, but a step in the right direction. If they respond by stopping to care where their food comes from then not so great.
In terms of the environmental impact, "caring where your food comes from" is truly, qualitatively nothing compared to stopping eating meat. Why are you trying to push this message?
This is at least a step in the positive direction.
A quick Google tells me that soy has a yield of 2.81 metric tons per hectare, and seaweed has a yield of ~20 metric tons per hectare. Depending on how much of the feed can be replaced by seaweed additive, it's another arrow in the quiver to reduce the environmental impact of food production, the same way that cheap solar and wind don't displace the need for energy efficiency.
I'm not claiming most Australian cattle aren't given feed. I'm claiming it's possible to get beef that was raised almost exclusively on grass that was grown on land that is unsuitable for crop production. (Hint: I have 10s of kilos of it in my freezer)
> In terms of the environmental impact, "caring where your food comes from" is truly, qualitatively nothing compared to stopping eating meat. Why are you trying to push this message?
Caring about where your food comes from is the driver behind avoiding meat for a lot of people. If people don't care about the impacts of the food they eat you will never convince them to stop eating meat. Not sure why you have a problem with this message.
For many of us in the Western World and specifically Canada, water use is a major area of concern as well. Seaweed obviously doesn't use a lot of fresh water to grow, but I'm not sure about the processing. Cattle production still does use a lot of water and we don't raise a lot of cows by the oceans, but this has some interesting applications.
> In Australia a significant amount (can't remember the specifics) of cattle is raised on land that is unsuitable for crop production.
I'm not sure how that makes anything better. It will still require more carbon emissions than growing elsewhere. In fact raising cattle in a spot like you describe still well require growing the feed elsewhere. Wouldn't it be much better to just eat the soup or other crop directly, save the carbon emissions and give the land the cattle are on back to mother nature and turn it into a wildlife refuge?
Factory farms, or intensive animal farming as is the technical name, have animals living on a small space that primarily/only eat crops that has been grown elsewhere. In many cases that is the same crops that humans also eat such as soy.
Cattle raised on land that is unsuitable for crop production eat primarily from the land they graze on. Depending on where in the world it is there might be periods like winter where extra "support food" is added, which amount and type depend on weather and circumstance. Support food is usually silage made from hay, grown on land which is deemed too inefficient for other crops. Hay can also be grown on land needing crop rotations, with or without added fertilizers.
Wildlife refuges are sometimes where I live combined with grazing cattle as a cost (and environment) saving method to keep overgrowth down for which otherwise heavy machinery would be needed. It has also been experimented to use sheep for areas with over land power lines, as those otherwise need regular clearing from fossil gulping heavy machinery.
The distinction between factory farming and everything else is sadly lost in most discussions around meat, and when sold it is not marked in the store to distinguish between the two. Most processed food is also said to contain factory farmed meat. Factory farmed meat is basically always a negative for the environment and the animals, but outside of that we got the whole spectrum.
> In fact raising cattle in a spot like you describe still well require growing the feed elsewhere.
No. Feeding bovine meat cattle with commercial crops is uneconomical. It only happens as a small complement to the main diet or in emergencies. Nearly all of the cattle food grows on the terrain where they are created.
For sure almost all cattle are 'fattened up' at so-called "feed lots" immediately before butchering. In fact "grass fed" is one of those misleading labels that imply one thing but the true way to get what "grass fed" is implying is "grass fed and grass finished."
But it really is that simple at the scale we're producing meat. Factory farming is bad, and it will never be sustainable to produce the amount of meat we need to feed the world.
I have no doubt that free range grass fed beef is fine, but that's not where the majority of people are going to be able to get their meat.
The regenerative ag conversation is really overhyped. Its a way to justified the continuation of an industry plagued by environmental issues and ethical issues. The numbers don't work out in terms of how much land would be needed to effectively use regenerative ag at anything close to current meat consumption and there is still no agreement on whether it actually even works, mostly just meat industry advocates sitting behind flimsy science with a friendly sounding non profit sitting in front of the meat groups.
The idea that we need to slaughter cattle to regenerate land is pretty flawed if nothing more because if this was actually effective, we could simply reintroduce bison and other animals that are natural to a given local and not need to constantly pump meat out of that same land. Meat production will slowly decline as consumers have more ethical, environmentally friendly, cost effective, healthy, and savory enough alternatives. Impossible and Beyond are the mvp and this is only going to accelerate. Especially if we are eventually start to price GHG.
We have 100s of farmers that we personally work with - some of them with less than 2 hectares of land, who are using livestock to help in their agriculture. Without livestock they will be paying through their nose for biofertilizer and other inputs.
They sell male calves and older cattle and also eggs, chicken etc. But not much else.
In all likelihood these farmers probably do far less damage to the environment and also "consume" far less plastic packaging and produce far less non-recyclable waste than the average person living in an apartment in a city. Also, the overall pollution per person in the household of a farmer is likely a lot less as well.
If we're really looking to "leave no trace" on the land as much as we can, that could definitely include a roaming head of 100m bison or so IMO. The way they interact with the carbon cycle could be a net positive.
You're talking about manure usage here, not meat consumption. You don't need cattle for regenerative agriculture.
Compost can do just fine in this case. Also if you want to boost nitrogen on the soil you can do by using FAA (a KNF entry) based on fish, instead. Anyways, the second link you sent says that they have controlled grazing to prevent the cattle from destroying new growth. As the text says: plants can do it all.
The “four wheels” of ZBNF are ‘Jiwamrita’, ‘Bijamrita’, ‘Mulching’ and ‘Waaphasa’.
- Jiwamrita is a fermented mixture of cow dung and urine (of desi (Indian) breeds), jaggery, pulses flour, water and soil from the farm bund.
- This isn’t a fertiliser, but just a source of some 500 crore micro-organisms that can convert all the necessary “non-available” nutrients into “available” form.
- Bijamrita is a mix of desi cow dung and urine, water, bund soil and lime that is used as a seed treatment solution prior to sowing.
- Mulching, or covering the plants with a layer of dried straw or fallen leaves, is meant to conserve soil moisture and keep the temperature around the roots at 25-32 degrees Celsius, which allows the microorganisms to do their job.
- Waaphasa, or providing water to maintain the required moisture-air balance, also achieves the same objective.
All sorts of livestock is used - not just cattle. Goat manure, for instance, is very good in some circumstances and is quite expensive.
As with everything, all things have to be done in moderation. A certain acreage of land can only support so many plants, animals and humans.
I was only countering the narrative that livestock=evil because it damages the environment based on one single parameter - methane emissions.. which is also something that is being addressed by different types of feeds etc.
the demand will always be there. Humans like to eat meat. I doubt very many will give up the privilege, esp. when others are not.
So any solution that improves the production of meat should be a good outcome. Ideally, lab grown meat (of the same quality and taste as from a cow) with low emissions is the best, but we aren't anywhere near that level of tech yet.
> the demand will always be there. Humans like to eat meat. I doubt very many will give up the privilege, esp. when others are not.
I guess that's why we're all doomed to a broken planet. As long as we keep using "well, no one else is going to change" as an excuse we'll inherit the world we deserve.
Any plan that relies on self-imposed austerity measures of billions of people from disparate groups is doomed to failure. We need to quietly change the math behind the scenes by internalizing externalities legally - long enough for green tech to get enough investment dollars to be cheaper than dirty tech even if those rules change later.
This is mostly already happened with solar / wind power, though we need some improvements on battery tech to get grid-scale adoption. The levelized cost of wind is lower than any alternative, and solar is getting close. I’m sure the situation has improved in the last two years, but here is a report from 2018:
> Any plan that relies on self-imposed austerity measures of billions of people from disparate groups is doomed to failure
True, but if people who otherwise realize the necessity of the change are unwilling to subject themselves to any inconvenience, what hope do we have of ever making the kinds of organized societal changes that are necessary? If you are unwilling to make a tiny change like reducing your meat consumption, you're probably the kind of person who would never vote for a government that forces you to.
The argument is simply way to excuse your own behavior.
I completely disagree. Individual restraint will not do the trick. Your limited time and energy is better spent working on creating mandatory, systemic behavior change. It is not hypocritical to, for example, vote for closing tax loopholes while using the very same.
Absolutely. There are some many direct and indirect subsidies (fossil fuels, defense, farm) that actively encourage and reward actions with huge negative externalities.
Placing the onus for all these problems squarely on the consumer is misguided and ineffective. Even if a large percentage of the population gave up meat, it would not be nearly sufficient to curb C02 emissions and prevent further climate change. Such that, both innovation and policy changes targeting the private sector are needed.
Reducing methane from cattle is important, finger wagging at consumers is a red herring that will deepen partisan divides.
There's nothing partisan in choosing to eat meat, unless you choose to make a partisan issue. As it stands, livestock are a significant contributor towards global CO₂ emissions, and going in with the mindset that "this isn't useful unless innovation and policy changes come about" is the same as saying that it's not worth worrying about a car purchase because you have loans already that are difficult to pay off.
There will always be someone telling us we're "doomed to a broken planet." Some people aren't going to subscribe to your brand of Catastrophism or your solution to the problem.
Well, maybe I'm wrong and technology will outpace our looming problems. I hope that's the case but it would be foolish to depend on it, don't you think? It seems to me that your brand of thinking is one that comes to down to a simple mater of believing what it is convenient for you to believe.
You at least see how hypocritical that is, right? The Western world got to fulfill our gluttonous desires -- now, when it comes time for the developing world to get their turn at the table, we wag our fingers and say "Sorry, that's bad for the planet!"
I don't see the hypocrisy. We did stuff one way. then we learned new stuff about how we do stuff, so we decided that we should change. It's fairly normal for an individual to grow and learn from their mistakes, why do you have to call "hypocrite" when it's time for the society to grow?
The OP is lamenting that western countries got to enjoy the fruits of their emissions. The cost, however, is externalized.
Now that developing nations have started to get richer, western nations cannot say that they ought to now make a sacrifice and stop consuming meat, because doing so _is_ hypocrisy.
On the one hand yeah, I do get it. On the other hand there's a very real possibility that not changing our ways now will result in a significantly worse future for literally everybody.
My recent observations of HN is that many here take their own experience, and extrapolate that they are common and therefore anybody else could've also done it, and would be willing to.
But there's empirical evidence that not many people want to stop eating meat. Look at how few vegetarians there are, compared to non-vegetarians. Do you really think those people don't know it's possible to live healthily as vegetarians?
I routinely encounter people who believe it is not possible to live healthily as vegetarians. I hired a developer who was a Hindu a couple of years back and half my team could not believe that he had never eaten meat, in part because he was very active and healthy.
Yeah, I can also confirm this. I live in the midwest, so I've encountered these people more than a few times. Even on HN you'll see a lot of people arguing that vegetarianism is actively unhealthy if not downright unsurvivable without supplements.
The answer is somewhere in the middle, is it not? I am in the camp that we've over indexed on meat products in the weest(we eat too much of it) but I also believe that knife cuts both ways.
Humans evolved eating meat - just a whole lot less of it than we do today. It was a luxury, something you got once in a while, when an animal could be caught. I believe if we all went back to this intake level (90% vegetarian) we, and the planet, would be better off.
On average ancient hunter-gatherers got about 30% of their calories from meat. But it varied widely by location. People living in colder areas ate more meat because there often weren't any edible plants to be found.
>Look at how few vegetarians there are, compared to non-vegetarians
So how do you explain that many people become vegetarians even though they checked all the boxes of "knowing it is possible but yet not willing to change"?
I was in that category until I was not. Why?
I knew it was possible (like almost everyone) and I didn't want to stop eating meat. But it isn't just an information, it's a belief (how the knowledge affects you, exactly).
What makes people believe they can't or don't want is mostly a product of culture/habits. It's really easy to change that, especially as it's become a hot topic. Not everyone changes at once, but it's quite viral (when people stop eating meat around you, the possibility of change doesn't seem abstract anymore). Idem when restaurant start offering good options in their menus (not a mere salad).
The issue is not of "knowing" but of "realizing". You can't distinguish people who are in one camp or the other as if those who change their eating habits become whole different persons, all the sudden.
>Do you really think those people don't know it's possible to live healthily as vegetarians?
Yes! I actually do think that! Anecdotally, almost every time someone, especially the 50+ crowd, finds out I eat a vegan diet they ask "are you getting enough protein?!". My answer is usually "do you think about how much protein you're eating right now?" and the answer is always no, people don't think about their diets period, even the easy tracking stuff like macronutrient intake. Given the obesity epidemic going on in the US right now, many people don't know how to live healthily as omnivores.
I think most of us think it is possible to live healthily as vegetarians, but much more difficult. Meat from other mammals contains almost all the nutrients we need in a convenient and properly balanced format. In particular the protein quality and digestibility is higher than in most plant sources.
For those of us who are active athletes, there are a lot of anecdotes about people who tried vegetarian or vegan diets and found they had trouble recovering from workouts or healing from injuries. I suspect many vegetarians suffer from subtle, sub-clinical nutritional deficiencies
and that makes me hesitant to give up meat.
There are around 300 million vegetarians in India. That is close to the population of the United States. Whatever health problems you think they may suffer from it isn't the ability to procreate.
I gave up meat 6 years ago. All of my non subtle clinically diagnosed health problems went away.
I did it because I couldn't think of killing animals anymore and the wonderful side effects of obesity, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure all went away.
Most of the benefits you mention come from weight loss, and almost any intervention that can cut weight during the first years would report similar improvements.
Plenty of people lose weight, drop blood sugar and drop blood pressure by going keto. And some with a more extreme carnivore diet.
The real comparison here would be to have "2 people like you" 6 years ago and have two interventions. One going vegetarian and another going keto or carnivore, and see where there are now.
There's more to life than procreation. How many of those 300 million vegetarians are still able to perform at a high level in strength and endurance into their 50s and 60s?
Assuming equal caloric intake there is no reliable evidence that eating meat increases obesity, blood sugar, or blood pressure. Rather the opposite.
I post this hesitantly because it's probably some subtle bias (possibly selection/observation bias), but: the vegetarians and vegans I know personally, they all look borderline unhealthy and seem to lack energy in a subtle ways. Also, my wife sometimes watches cooking vloggers, and I can usually tell at a glance whether the particular tuber is a vegan/vegetarian blogger or not: the ones who are also give this impression of health problems and lethargy. This observation makes both of us hesitant to go vegetarian (though we try to reduce the amount of meat we consume).
Worth noting that being vegetarian does not necessarily equal healthy. There are plenty of vegetarians who are just eating mac and cheese. My sister, when in high school, became iron anemic due to poor food choices while being vegetarian.
That is a crazy high efficiency, when you think about it. A quarter of all food this animal receives through its entire life ends up as milk. The rest is used for growing cells, keeping it alive and warm, moving around.
Back of the napkin says that I've eaten my bodyweight in food in less than 2 months.
Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize for the green revolution and understood the misguidance of efficiency as a strategy better than anyone. As a tactic it works under the strategy of managing population, as he said in his acceptance speech:
> "The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only. . . Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the “Population Monster”. . . Since man is potentially a rational being, however, I am confident that within the next two decades he will recognize the self-destructive course he steers along the road of irresponsible population growth."
We haven't curbed population growth. It's slowing, but we're in overshoot, which leads to collapse, and most projections still show us growing through 2100.
Luckily, have examples like Mechai Viravaidya in Thailand, who helped lower their population growth from around 7 children per couple to below 2 through voluntary means -- think the opposite of China's One Child Policy -- leading to greater stability and abundance. His TEDx talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/mechai_viravaidya_how_mr_condom_ma....
> Luckily, have examples like Mechai Viravaidya in Thailand, who helped lower their population growth from around 7 children per couple to below 2 through voluntary means -- think the opposite of China's One Child Policy -- leading to greater stability and abundance.
South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines follow the same general population decline curve from the 1960s to now, that Thailand has followed. They all began at close to the same change rate circa 1960, all between 2.9% and 3.3%. Thailand's drop has been more pronounced since 2000 than Vietnam, however that can properly be attributed to the huge difference in standard of living between the two (the decline in Thailand matches the decline also seen in South Korea).
Did most countries in Asia have their own Mechai Viravaidya? They all simultaneously drop from 1960 onward. Or is this person getting credit for something that was happening regardless and has a lot more to do with increased economic prosperity? Which is something we already know is the primary natural change agent for lowering population expansion. Thailand's GDP per capita skyrocketed after 2001, whereas eg Vietnam and the Philippines followed slower trajectories (until recently). Thailand actually saw an increase in its population growth change rate in the 1990s (1993-2001), before the economic boom that began in 2001 pushed it back down again. The population change rate in Vietnam and Thailand were nearly identical until Thailand's economic boom began in 2001 (also, Thailand's rate wasn't much lower than Indonesia circa 1998-2000, they've split both economically and on that pop change rate from 2001 forward).
It's worth noting that continued population growth is an inherent assumption in today's economic climate and really for the past century or two. Just look at all the alarmist headlines around Japan's stagnating population.
While a huge environmental win and globally necessary, nations are incentivized to strive for continuing population growth as wellfare, pension systems and arguably the entire economy has been relying on a growing population for "sustainability".
Imagine, in 50 or so years, a fairly substantial human colony is established on another planet, and it figures out how to become self-sustaining.
This self-sustenance act is what we need to refine - not the going to Mars bit, of course - but what I am trying to say is that the pressure is on to find self-sustaining ways to feed humans (hint: grow local or gtfo) at the very high end of the privileged technologically elite spectrum of the human misery scale, i.e. SpaceX versus the slums.
If we can get to Mars and sustain, we can change the way humans on Earth live, in extraordinary ways. I'd even be willing to wager a bet that in 100 years, ones sovereign citizenship is going to be irrelevant - what will count, is whether you can make water towers into rocketships.
(I don't see SpaceX as a rich mans game - I truly believe its a human response to the human disaster you talk about. If we can move manufacturing and food production into space, we may very well have a chance to turn things off in 100 years, and let Mother Earth just grow again ..)
First of all, 50 years is at least an order of magnitude off for realistic colonization of another planet. Secondly, there's plenty of land here on earth that is uninhabited and hostile that we could try self-sustaining colonies in first.
the difference between a space colony and earth is that on earth we have a global economic system that demands infinite growth, and high disparity between producer countries vs consumer countires, which is the opposite sustainability
just look at how many articles about how we generate more food than we know what to do with, yet people still starve or go hungry all around the world, or the vast differences between what is called the "global south" vs "north"
i highly doubt we need a colony on another planet to teach earth how to be sustainable; the problem is the existing system refuses to change fast enough to make a difference
Without excrement from animals you need synthetic fertilizer, whose production causes massive production causes massive environmental damage eg emissions and algae bloom.
There's also the "classic" option, discovered some 200 years before synthetic fertilizers - crop rotation that includes some form of legumes. IMO with the current state of agriculture and food production we went into a local maximum that is very unsustainable and bad for the environment.
There's a reason we had to switch away from that. The crop rotation cycle isn't an efficient use of land. Synthetic fertilizers exist for a reason -- the human race wants and needs an excess of food. No one wants to switch to a model of food scarcity.
This is an all too easy narrative. Synthetic fertilisers might simply have caused an arms race for short term, higher efficiency which destroyed less efficient production techniques.
That does not make it long term efficient, see research on sustainable farming[0].
Every addition of a new consumer in a food chain brings with it a high rate of energy loss. The cow will need to use its energy to live, only a small portion of the energy is left in the steak you eat. 75% is a good approximation.
In general, the shorter the food chain, the more efficient it is. This is a universally known fact.
I will drop some helpful links for you if you doubt this:
Absolutely true. We can definitely be treating the land better.
The only reason we need industrial fertilisers, is because its packaged so well and easy to distribute. But if we weren't raping the soil in the first place, we wouldn't have this problem.
Industrialized farming needs to be revolutionised by the same technique that computing went through: a DIY revolution.
If you don't have a garden, now is the time to start. Everyone should have a garden.
A garden and a few chickens. Getting 4-6 eggs per day is simply fantastic, and the hens are great at eating up harmful insects and weeds that would otherwise harm the output of the garden. They also fertilize the land in a very natural way.
Manure and synthetic fertilizer both have similarly severe, but somewhat different, environmental impacts. Synthetic fertilizer requires large amounts of energy to produce, but manure generally needs to be applied much more inefficiently to achieve the same effect because of its relatively low nitrogen content and the inability to control its release. It also has transportation issues [1].
However, these types of impacts are trivial in comparison to the 1.9% energy efficiency for beef. Regardless of the fertilizer used, we would use just under 1/50th of it if we consumed the plants directly, along with the same savings in land and water.
Only a small amount of fertilizer usage in the US is waste based. In 2015 13M tons of nitrogen based synthetic fertilizer was used, on top of that 4M tons each of phosphate and potash fertilizer. For waste based fertilizer compost, dried manure and sewage total 600K tons. That doesn't even take into account that the raw weights aren't directly comparable.
There is more than enough liquid manure, forcing farmers to pay for its removal (at least in Europe, that is). Also, it can be used only at certain points in time to avoid food poisoning.
> How much could this reduce the total environmental food print of cattle? I.e. including all the energy used to grow the crops they eat, the deforestation to make room for the crops + cattle, the waste the cows produce.
Quite a bit. Most of the deforestation you are mentioning happens for monocrop cultivation, from which livestock consume (mostly) the leftovers. That's usually hidden in data by using total weight, but the reality is that 86% of the dry matter consumed by livestock are not edible by humans [1].
>All improvements are good, but I'd like to know if this is more than a distraction to make people feel better about continuing to demand products they know are damaging the environment (e.g. Amazon deforestation).
Both are compatible. You can be against the Amazon deforestation and pro-reduction of emissions of current cattle. Most of the beef consumed in the US (~90%) is raised in the US.
> Industrial farmed animals aren't eating grass, they're eating crops like soy. If you find soy milk and soy-based meat alternatives decent for example, consider eating those directly instead of products from soy-fed cows - it'll be vastly better for the environment with seaweed or not.
Ahhh... No, thanks. It will also be vastly worse for my health.
> Most of the deforestation you are mentioning happens for monocrop cultivation, from which livestock consume (mostly) the leftovers.
This is incorrect. Humans can and do eat soybean meal. About 98% of soybean meal is used for animal feed and only 1% is used to produce food for people.[0] For soybeans as a whole, only about 6% grown worldwide are turned directly into food products for human consumption.[1]
> Ahhh... No, thanks. It will also be vastly worse for my health.
The peer-reviewed science we have suggests that higher soy consumption correlates with increased lifespan and positive health outcomes. Can I hazard a guess that you think MSG is bad for your health too? These are antiquated views.
> "So far, the evidence does not point to any dangers from eating soy in people, and the health benefits appear to outweigh any potential risk. In fact, there is growing evidence that eating traditional soy foods such as tofu, tempeh, edamame, miso, and soymilk may lower the risk of breast cancer, especially among Asian women. Soy foods are excellent sources of protein, especially when they replace other, less healthy foods such as animal fats and red or processed meats. Soy foods have been linked to lower rates of heart disease and may even help lower cholesterol."
> The peer-reviewed science we have suggests that higher soy consumption correlates with increased lifespan and positive health outcomes.
Couple of things here:
(1) Correlation is not causation
(2) Garbage in, garbage out -> referring to most observational studies.
> Can I hazard a guess that you think MSG is bad for your health too? These are antiquated views.
I don't know if it is bad for my health long term, even though I guess yes. I don't think there are good studies pointing in either direction. It is definitely not healthy short term for me, since I get bad headaches and flushes when I eat something with MSG.
The problem is that there should be good studies when adding something humans don't consume into their diet. Humans have consumed meat for hundreds of thousands of years, yet now it is the source of all evil. We haven't consumed rapeseed at all yet its oil is labeled "healthy". In my book skepticism is a virtue.
Cattle responsible for 15 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions that humans cause."
It's the methane, chickens are much less damaging. The outsided damage cattle does is because if the biochemistry in the stomache, which this feed addresses (Lamb is terrible too, but less popular)
At the end of the day this is signalling. We all know that the best thing we can do is eat a local, veg-friendly (vegetarian/vegan) diet. That also doesn't mean that people are going to do it, or can. But at least it's one form of a step in the right direction.
War doesn't have to be waged and won in a single battle. Every little step helps if it truly reduces emissions.
> At the end of the day this is signalling. We all know that the best thing we can do is eat a local, veg-friendly (vegetarian/vegan) diet.
Local doesn’t belong in there. As a reductio ad absurdum would it be better to eat a diet of nothing but imported NZ lamb or to grow all food locally at McMurdo Base in Antarctica? Grass is next to free. Ocean shipping is the most efficient means of transport for bulk freight there is. To grow food at McMurdo you’d need to heat the environment, insulate it and light it half the year.
Eat local is class signaling, not environmentalism.
Don't forget places like Chad and Niger. Antartica is, as the parent post said, a reductio ad absurdum, but I often pay attention to how global warming (or even just bad years and seasons) affects agriculture and animal husbandry in places like Chad and Niger because it's a forewarning of what might happen to the north of Nigeria (the north is our breadbasket). We also import grain from places that are now having bad season after bad season and it does affect.
If, in the near future, food transportation relies on mostly clean or renewable energy, then it shouldn't be unsustainable to grow and import our pearl millet from a different country or even continent. It would also promote trade, which is sometimes desperately needed.
As long as the methods of production and transportation are sustainable and environmentally friendly, what would the issue be?
As a more realistic example, I think you can buy locally grown tomatoes in Finland all year round these days, or if not at least pretty close to it. A large portion of them are grown in Närpes, where day length dips below 5 hours in December. Keeping those greenhouses lit and warm is in no way ecological.
The guys in Närpes has an impressive thing going, but they're simply an excellent example on how you can produce things locally if you have a lot of space and cheap electricity available. That doesn't automatically mean it's more efficient in regards to CO2 emission, so you're pretty much proving the grandparent's point; they could probably grow food on Antarctica too.
Almost all power plants waste huge amounts of low grade waste heat (typically ~90C water), fossil fuel plants also give off considerable amounts of CO2 which can be used to enrich the atmosphere of a greenhouse. It's a shame there isn't more joined up thinking when these things are planned.
That's not strictly true. Eating (extremely) locally has lower costs with regards to at least packaging and transportation. As an added benefit eating in-season foods means that industry, regardless of size will conform to a cheaper form of growth and cropping.
What you said isn't strictly true either. Transporting a train load of food across the country emits less CO2 per unit than a farmer driving a van load of their produce to a farmer's market. Scale drives down price and emissions.
> Eat local is class signaling, not environmentalism.
It's true, but it shouldn't be applied litterally either. It's perfectly reasonable to consume locally produced and cheaply available food and it's quite logical to encourage local production assuming it is financially viable and results in a reduction in total CO2 emissions.
I can imagine it could even result in increased meat consumption for a few select individuals living in areas where agriculture isn't viable.
> We all know that the best thing we can do is eat a
> local, veg-friendly (vegetarian/vegan) diet.
I do not know that. First I am not sure vegan diet is better than balanced diet. Second, I am not sure "local" is always better. Keep in mind that "local" is all over the globe, and some places may be a gardener's paradise, in others you will struggle to grow anything.
I was under the impression that the local part is hit or miss due to the efficiency differences between large national/global supply chains and small local ones.
Buying local is not necessarily better. A small farmer who hauls 50 pounds of tomatoes to the local farmers market can be far less efficient than an industrial farm shipping 2 tons from 1000 miles away to your local super market.
Good questions. As someone who's enjoyed eating beef for most of my life, I feel compelled to recommend Impossible Burger "meat" as a legitimate alternative. No, it's not exactly the same, but it is delicious (unlike, say, Beyond Burgers, which taste to me like a failed experiment).
Thats an interesting question for sure. Would need to be calculated against the current energy needs, hopefully an increase in seaweed feed leads to a decrease in soy bean farming.
I'd rather eat the seaweed or soy directly, but this could be an improvement.
> How much could this reduce the total environmental food print of cattle?
Poore and Nemecek did a pretty comprehensive survey of the climate impact of different foods https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987 in 2018. Their underlying data suggests that methane accounts for about 38% of the total CO2 equivalent impact of beef herds. So if this is true, beef would still be highly damaging, but materially improved over where it sits now.
I don't think it's fair to call this a mere distraction when you account for the sheer impact of methane on climate change. Quibbling about energy efficiency is besides the point. Play around with this - https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=45&...
I do not need arguments to support my opinion that most soy products are garbage. I have tasted most of them and that is my verdict. Exceptions include soy sauce and miso.
There is also some research that suggests soy is unhealthy, but since I am not interested in a debate on the validity of such research, I will not link to any of it.
Re "Amazon deforestation" — those lands haven't been deforested because of the western country's consumption of meat, they've been deforested because people are starving, and they need to put food on the table, and be lifted out of poverty.
And countries, such as Brazil, are only now doing what the western countries have been doing all throughout the 19th and the 20th century. I know this sounds terrible, but you have no right to demand that Brazil stops the deforestation, and in fact you have no sway either, because you are not buying the result of their agriculture anyway.
If western countries want the deforestation of the Amazon to stop, the cold, harsh reality is that they should subsidize the price for it.
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As for making personal changes, if eating soy makes you feel any better, sure, do that, but stop shaming people for eating meat. Because in the large scheme of things, switching from meat to soy does mostly nothing for the environment.
The reason is that, going vegan, as an individual, only saves you a couple of $ in CO2 emissions per year. That's right. All of your efforts are only worth a couple of $ per year in CO2 emissions. And even if you think that's worth it, those emissions would be re-allocated to industry anyway.
Also, ironically, the behavior of people going green changes. If you have an electric car, for example, you might feel the need to ride it more, to make more trips. Because it's cheaper, and you've been a good citizen, you've earned it. And when that happens, and it does, your net emissions might not go as low as you'd think. Never mind that the subsidies for electric cars are yet again subsidies for the rich.
Go carless first, then we can talk about not eating meat ;-)
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Real change will come from technological progress. It always came from technological progress. Remember whales? Whales were not saved by political activism, by individuals refusing to use whale oil. Whales were saved because cheap replacements for whale oil became available.
Ironically, renewable energy might not be very green at all. Maybe we should address the fact that solar panels are super inefficient, taking up massive land use, and their recycling is super expensive. Instead of investing more in nuclear energy, money is being diverted on solutions that may in fact be worse for the environment than cleaner fossil fuels (e.g. gas).
We are currently unable to replace fossil fuels with cleaner alternatives, because "renewable" energy isn't up to snuff, and because of nuclear-phobia, which prevents investments in nuclear power.
But sure, let's all eat soy, that will save the planet.
> they've been deforested because people are starving, and they need to put food on the table, and be lifted out of poverty.
And countries, such as Brazil, are only now doing what the western countries have been doing all throughout the 19th and the 20th century. I know this sounds terrible, but you have no right to demand that Brazil stops the deforestation, and in fact you have no sway either, because you are not buying the result of their agriculture anyway.
Brazil is a net exporter of food, so there goes that narrative. I am certain there are people starving in Brazil, but this is much more of a distribution problem than a "didn't cut down enough trees in the Amazon" problem.
> solar panels are super inefficient
No longer true, renewables are pretty cost competitive and nuclear is looking less and less good by comparison every day. I say that as a big believer in nuclear power.
> Brazil is a net exporter of food, so there goes that narrative
Yes, but it doesn't export that food to western countries. In the US for example, less than 10% of beef is imported, and most of that is from Mexico and Canada.
Believe it or not, western countries grow their own meat, and in the west the CO2 and methane emissions for growing meat has been pretty steady, and is a moderate slice of the carbon emissions' pie.
> No longer true, renewables are pretty cost competitive
Renewables are only cost effective because that cost is subsidized. It's a sham IMO.
> Yes, but it doesn't export that food to western countries.
I don't understand why that matters? Brazil doesn't export to the US because of its FMD problem among its cattle.
> CO2 and methane emissions for growing meat has been pretty steady, and is a moderate slice of the carbon emissions' pie.
Beef production accounts for 1/3 of all agricultural emissions in the US. Obviously it's not the primary or even a huge share of overall emissions, because there are so many other human activities like driving and using electricity that we are doing all the time.
> Renewables are only cost effective because that cost is subsidized. It's a sham IMO.
Yeah, it is ridiculous that we subsidize industries to such an extent! Good thing beef and milk production are not subsidized at all...
It matters because convincing people to eat soy in the western world does absolutely nothing for the Amazon forest. It's a false narrative.
It's also untrue that the Amazon forest is deforested because of meat production, and that stopping meat production will prevent deforestation, but that's an argument for another day.
> "Good thing beef and milk production are not subsidized at all... "
Sure, stop subsidizing it. I'm all for it ;-)
That won't do much either, but at least we'll get that off the table. And I'm as anti-subsidies as it gets, because it prevents free market competition, with subsidies becoming yet another privilege for the incumbents and the rich. So yeah, let's get rid of that shit.
> It matters because convincing people to eat soy in the western world does absolutely nothing for the Amazon forest. It's a false narrative.
First, I think the reason to stop eating as much beef is because of the GHG impact of doing so. That occurs regardless of whether the beef is raised in Brazil or otherwise.
There is a global meat market, so convincing people in the Western world shifts the demand.
> That won't do much either, but at least we'll get that off the table.
Are you kidding? Removing the subsidies would have an absolutely massive impact on the affordability of meat and dairy, at least in the US. For every 30 cents of milk sold, the US govt pays dairy farmer the equivalent of 70 cents - ie. 70% of the earnings dairy farmers make are from subsidy.
If animal feed were not subsidized to the extent it was, meat would be significantly more expensive.
I strongly favor removing agricultural subsidies. Renewables are actually competitive enough now that they cost essentially the same, the problem is the switching cost requires up front capital.
I am pretty sure Amazon deforestation affects the rest of the world too.
While I don't completely agree with the need of deforestation of the country, I upvoted you because I agree with the rest of the message. Specially, I agree other countries are using the moral superiority card after getting a early start causing the current climate crisis.
Cow burps and farts are methane, which is a enormously potent greenhouse gas. The energy- (and water-) intensiveness of eating beef is significant too, no argument there.
> All improvements are good, but I'd like to know if this is more than a distraction to make people feel better about continuing to demand products they know are damaging the environment (e.g. Amazon deforestation).
I think you're on the money. This is the equivalent of us wanting to keep driving around in 2.5ton SUVs by justifying to ourselves that it’s a hybrid
Animal farming creates vast damage because of how inefficient it is and seaweed won't address how much feed cows need or that the world is eating more and more meat as countries get richer:
> The energy efficiency of meat and dairy production is defined as the percentage of energy (caloric) inputs as feed effectively converted to animal product. An efficiency of 25% would mean 25% of calories in animal feed inputs were effectively converted to animal product; the remaining 75% would be lost during conversion.
> Whole milk: 24%
> Beef: 1.9%
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-efficiency-of-meat...
All improvements are good, but I'd like to know if this is more than a distraction to make people feel better about continuing to demand products they know are damaging the environment (e.g. Amazon deforestation).
Industrial farmed animals aren't eating grass, they're eating crops like soy. If you find soy milk and soy-based meat alternatives decent for example, consider eating those directly instead of products from soy-fed cows - it'll be vastly better for the environment with seaweed or not.