Industrial agriculture is reshaping the world, from our atmosphere to our dinner plates. Familiarize yourself with the current landscape: Meet your meats.
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Industrial agriculture is reshaping the world, from our atmosphere to our dinner plates. Familiarize yourself with the current landscape: Meet your meats.
May 31, 2017
American poultry and livestock consumption through history
The Natural Resources Defense Council’s meat-eating study
The climate price of meat production
The growing demand for meat products worldwide
OECD’s global per-capita meat consumption data
The Nation that Eats the Least Meat per Capita
The concentration of animal agriculture in the U.S.
The Chinese government’s unease over the country’s shifting meat-eating habits
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Also, it would be helpful if you'd define "meat." A vegan would include fish and seafood in this category, but you don't seem to. Are you including only beef, pork and chicken? What about turkey, duck, venison, goose, lamb, goat, bison and other meats -- are they included in your figures? Do you account for consumption from personal hunting? Let us know your parameters and assumptions.
Thank you.
Other stats cited are also wrong. . The 18% number for emissions is from LS 2006, which is a fabrication that attributed all land use change to livestock and used the IPCC numbers for the transportation sector which were only for tail pipe emissions not LCA's for the transport sector. Most beef cattle are not in CAFO's. Most beef cattle are on cow//calf and stocker operations. (68 mill out of the 82 mill head of beef cattle are on grass NOT in CAFO's). Beef cattle isn't vertically integrated like pigs and chickens. So the article doesn't even understand the numbers and stats it cites.
which recommends swapping beans for beef as a way to significantly reduce GHG. Researchers include Gidon Eschel, who contributed to FAO's Livestock's Long Shadow, the seminal work linking livestock production to climate change and Joan Sabaté, a leader in the field of human, as opposed to global health. For a bean geek like me, this is very exciting news.
You should look at the USDA meat consumption numbers adjusted for loss, which is the ACTUAL consumption, at 5.6oz per day. The numbers you have here are what's produced, live weight. You're being misleading. You're also not mentioning the devastating impact of vegetable and grain production on our soils. So if we eat less meat, what do we eat more of? Will that really be better? How about switching to grass-fed herbivores that can utilize non arable land, which we can not grow crops on in the first place. US cattle currently graze on 85% non arable land - meaning we would not be able to crop it. Cattle don't spend their entire lives in a feed lot, the way chickens and pigs spend their entire lives in a CAFO - and they eat 100% grain, not the same situation as beef. You need to consider land use! Also, rice and almonds for example, are horrific in terms of environmental impact - why did you happen to leave these out. In my opinion, this is a very naive and overly simplistic article - please go a level deeper in your analysis and recommendations.
Also, it is possible to be vegan and not consume rice and almonds. I didn't receive a lifetime supply of those two items when I became vegan...
And why do we have to do anything at all with non arable land? Just let it return to a natural state.
Though I'm all for growing less soy and dent corn, as well as palm oil trees, but's that's because I get my cooking fats from lard pigs and use eggs for emulsifiers. I don't need the vegetable fats or other additives.
Regardless, pretty much all tilled Ag is devastating for soil ecosystems. Plows tear apart the mycorrhizal fungi. Most organic Ag is tilled, heavily irrigated, and done leaving ground exposed. There are better no- till ways to grow organic produce but these methods aren't widely practiced. And, no, hydroponics don't provide eco friendly solution because their nutrient solutions are agrochemicals derived from industrial processes...Just take a look at where the phosphorus comes from...plenty of sentient animals died to mine that phosphorus.
So you're just providing cliches rather than real arguments...especially since livestock can be grazed in intact natural ecosystems like grasslands, and silvo pasture...and this is where the vast majority of the globe's ruminants are being raised.
So this isn't a simple dialectic of "meat bad" and "plants good." All food production comes down to soil health. What's promotes soil health is what should be championed. Industrial Ag doesn't promote soil health...a lot of organic Ag involving tillage doesn't either. Why is soil health so important from a GHG perspective? Because healthy soils build up and sequester carbon. More carbon in the soil makes soil retain more water. More water retention combined with continuous cover creates favorable soil ecosystems for methane oxidizing bacteria . Thus healthy soils are banks for carbon,water AND methane.
Thus what we should be doing is reduce and eliminate consumption of factory farmed livestock using industrially farmed crop by-products for feed..while simultaneous eating MORE meat from producers using regenerative and integrated forms of farming/ranching that improve soil health. We should also be encouraging more farmers to use non-till organic methods. How do you do this? With your consumer dollars.
Additionally land isn't interchangeable. Farming and ranching are land specific. You need to do the appropriate form of ranching and farming on the appropriate piece of land. In some places ranching makes the most sense (eg grassland ecosystems), in other places integrated farming makes the most sense, and in some places (eg more humid environments), livestock aren't as essential for sustainable food production.
But even arable land has to be re-supplied with nutrients, and be protected from erosion. The best way to do this, especially in more brittle environments, is with integrated livestock. Ruminants build soil a lot faster than conservation systems without ruminants because they increase soil ecosystem biodiversity plus provide minerals without the needs for inputs, especially phosphorus. Tilled Ag systems destroy soil ecosystems, and when left exposed lead to a lot of soil erosion. At the current rate, farms are losing topsoil, there won't be any soil left if 50 or sixty years. Integrated livestock also can be used to grazed down cover crops and crop residues....and again, crop residues are portions of crops that aren't digestible by humans. So again the efficiency argument again fails, if you have depleted soils that are input dependent for any yields.
THANK YOU for this awesome infographic! I found you on Marion Nestle's Food Politics Blog :)