Red meat has a huge carbon footprint because cattle requires a large amount of land and water.
https://sph.tulane.edu/climate-and-food-environmental-impact-beef-consumption
Demand for steaks and burgers is the primary driver of Deforestation:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/marcel-gomes-interview
If you don’t have a car and rarely eat red meat, you are doing GREAT 🙌 🙌
Sure, you can drink tap water instead of plastic water. You can switch to Tea. You can travel by train. You can use Linux instead of Windows AI’s crap. Those are great ideas. Also, don’t drive yourself crazy. If you are only an ordinary citizen, remember that perfect is the enemy of good.
most people don’t want to eat grass or soy cake. letting cows graze, and feeding soycake (the byproduct of soybean oil production) to pigs and poultry is a conservation of resources.
If only we mastered farming, allowing us to plant a wide variety of crops. But alas, we are left eating grass.
not all land is suitable for crops. letting cattle graze it is fine.
You’re delusional if you believe most of the meat you consume comes from cows eating naturally growing grass in areas no other crops can grow.
this is a strawman
The only way this is a strawman is if your statement is a non sequitur. Otherwise, my reply very much holds.
You can’t counter “raising enough cows to supply our current meat demand takes a lot of resources we could be eating instead” with “its okay for them to eat grass :D” unless the implication is that eating grass is sufficient to meet that demand.
Otherwise, you’re just commenting that cows eat grass. Which congrats, I guess? I think I know some middle school students who might be surprised by the information?
this conversation didn’t happen.
In that case, thanks for informing us that cows can eat grass. We are very proud of you. We absolutely had that knowledge already, but still, thanks for your effort.
Don’t bother with this fucking guy. They’re in every thread about eating less meat arguing that eating meat is best. I’ve already gotten tricked into replying several times in the past.
Don’t feed the trolls.
Good news is that overall arable farmland usage goes down the less meat you eat. Don’t need to use all the same land, you have flexibility to move around production
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115
I don’t think that has ever happened.
It’s worth noting that soybean meal is not a byproduct. When we look at the most common extraction method for soybean oil (using hexane solvents), soybean meal is still the driver of demand
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0926669017305010
This is even more true of other methods like expelling which is still somewhat commonly used
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/9/5/87
some studies show soybean oils being as much as half the value of the crop, despite being just 20% of the weight.
If we assume that’s the case, half of revenue is still not a byproduct, it’s a coproduct. The other half is still pretty relevant to its value and usage. If 50% of your revenue disappears from something, you’re going to be making a lot less of it
i think at this point we’ve devolved into arguing semantics. you’re not going to convince me soybean is a viable crop unless you can press it for oil, and i don’t think i can convince you it’s a viable product unless the meal is fed to livestock. but i hope you have a good night!
What are you talking about? Soy is great. Soy beans, soy curls, tofu, soy milk, soy sauce, miso. All kinds of great soy products.
hexane solvents are not the most common method of oil extraction. you have been misinformed.