I heard something to do with Nitrogen and …cow farts(?) I am really unsure of this and would like to learn more.

Answer -

4 Parts

  • Ethical reason for consuming animals
  • Methane produced by cows are a harmful greenhouse gas which is contributing to our current climate crisis
  • Health Reasons - there is convincing evidence that processed meats cause cancer
  • it takes a lot more calories of plant food to produce the calories we would consume from the meat.

Details about the answers are in the comments

    • Wilzax@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That field could be used to grow a different crop than grass, which would use less water per calorie of human food produced

      • ValiantDust@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Also, hardly any cows just eat grass these days. That’s not how you get a lot of meat as fast and as cheap as possible. Also, since cows need a lot of grass, I a lot less area would remain for other crops even if they did (since grass needs way more area for the same amount of calories than stuff like soybeans). So it’s actually a good thing, they aren’t just eating grass.

          • ValiantDust@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            If that is the case, then they are more the exception than the rule. (Do you by chance have any source on that? Because I’m pretty sure here in Germany that’s not the case) Also, at least Switzerland produces less beef than it consumes, so that’s not exactly sustainable. I don’t know about the other two.

          • rog@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            Funnily enough, having cattle on that land only further fucks it up by causing erosion that can take decades to resopve even after the cattle is removed.

          • dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            There are of couse exceptions and areas where cattle can graze all year, and the need to deforest areas isn’t as large as other places. However, for the majority of beef production, there are less enviornmentally friendly cattle food implemented. So maybe the solution should be that only the areas that can produce beef sustainably should be allowed to consume it? I would assume that that would be an unpopular policy, so I find it to be a much better solution to reduce the beef consumption even in the areas with sustainable producion and rather let those areas export the excess production.

      • Wooki@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Who waters the grass to feed cows? You farm them in a suitable region!

        • hobs@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          They actually graze in national forest land in the US. I spent a lot of time tracking wolves to prevent the ranchers and the forest service from shooting wolves so they could safely graze deep into national forest land, destroying the local ecosystem, just as the rivers and bears and caribou started to recover after the reintriduction of wolves.

          • buzziebee@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I think extrapolating from poor US environmental regulations to say that no where in the world is it sensible to produce dairy or beef is a bit of a false equivalence. We also don’t have lead pollution in our water, but saying no one should drink tap water because it has lead in it in a certain part of the US is also silly.

            I’m all for alternative protein sources and sustainable agriculture, but eliminating meat consumption likely isn’t the best approach. The US, Brazil, and a bunch of other countries using stupid practices like slash and burn agriculture really need to develop and enforce more sustainable practices via regulations and enforcement.

    • Cynicivity@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Unless you are a small hobby farm, you’re not putting your cows out on pasture alone to raise them for meat. Most grasses are deficient in one or more vital nutrients that the cows need to grow. Most cows today are fed TMR (Total Mixed Rations). These are diets carefully mixed with different grasses, grains, hays, and mineral supplements. There are different metabolic diseases that cows can get when eating diets deficient in different nutrients. Cows that are sick don’t want to eat, and cows that don’t eat don’t grow. To a farmer, that’s like burning money.

      • roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        that’s true in a few parts of the world. it may not be valid at all, depending where op is from. in general livestock is the most sustainable land use food.

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’d also like to know, but I imagine that at a small enough scale, it’s mostly letting a few animals live on otherwise unused land, and mostly just protect them. This imagined ideal would disappear extremely quickly, scaling even to village level, and not relevant to modern farming

            • roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              This is exactly what happens. The highest quality land in a country is used for tillage. The less productive parts are used for grazing. This is how farmers make the most money. They’d be fools to use productive land for grazing and grow crops on poor land.

        • KitsuneHaiku@ttrpg.network
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          1 year ago

          This is so wrong. I don’t even know where to begin. We grow so much alfalfa (huge waste of water) and soybeans in the US to support our own and other countries’ meat farming, then we ship it across the world. You could find this out with a simple Google search. This is willful ignorance.

          Greenhouse gas emissions - Meat accounts for nearly 60% of all greenhouse gases from food production

          Water usage - it takes over 1800 gallons of water to produce e just one pound of beef.

          In order to help, you don’t even have to go vegan. Reducing meat consumption is helpful too with something like “meatless Monday”

          • Misconduct@startrek.website
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            1 year ago

            I live in AZ. You know the desert state? The state that catches on fire a lot? Yeah. We’ve had Saudis taking our water, for FREE, to grow food for their cattle back home for YEARS. It’s SO infuriating to see them asking us to conserve water and then looking the other way as we get drained for nothing.

            They’re not even the only ones dipping into our water either. It’s ridiculous.

          • roastpotatothief@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            greenhouse gases and water usage are different issues i didn’t address here.

            the usa is one of the “few parts of the world” i was talking about, that it is a bad example of sustainable farming.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            animals are fed parts of plants that people can’t or won’t eat. all of the studies about the ecological impacts ignore this fact and then attribute the water used to produce, say, cotton to beef.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            85% of soybeans are pressed for oil for human use.

            and those water use stats include things like the water it takes to raise feed crops. it would make sense, except that we mostly feed livestock plants or parts of plants that people won’t eat. for example, we raise cotton for textiles, and the seed would be industrial waste if we didn’t feed it to cattle. why do we count the water used to make jeans in the water used to make beef? it’s just dishonest.

        • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          livestock production in the UK and Ireland is still linked to rainforests abroad since chickens, pigs and cows are often fed imported soybeans. Brazil is the world’s largest soybean exporter, and much of its crop is grown on deforested land.

          Many people might also be surprised to learn that Ireland and western regions of Great Britain are home to rainforests: temperate forests sometimes called Celtic or Atlantic rainforests. And, like their tropical counterparts, UK and Irish rainforests are threatened by grazing livestock, particularly deer and sheep.

          https://theconversation.com/livestock-grazing-is-preventing-the-return-of-rainforests-to-the-uk-and-ireland-198014

        • Gebruikersnaam@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          If it is anything like here they supplement the feed with a ton of soy beans, which is causing huge problems in Brazil. iirc 87% of soy is used for cattle.

        • jeffw@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Just globally. Not sure about specific countries. Virtually all of the Amazon deforestation, for example

            • jeffw@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              We can’t have more cows if they don’t have food. We need to cut down trees to grow other stuff to feed the cattle. Global demand for beef is rising, mainly due to increases of standards of living in Asia.

              So how do we raise more cattle without more farmland to grow food for them?