Ditching meat isn’t the answer for climate change. Better farming is | Hacker News Reader

Ditching meat isn’t the answer for climate change. Better farming is

washingtonpost.com

59 pointsmooreds77 comments

Not sure a pig farmer has the best perspective on this. I've been on farms in my area, that have land that is not usable for farming, too many rocks, too hilly, etc. The land has enough natural rain-fall and grasses that grow on it to sustain sheep/cattle where there would otherwise be nothing but a fire hazard come the dry season (California).

In this one and perhaps not common scenario, I think eating meat from these sources, slaughtered humanely, is reasonable. This obviously is not enough meat even for locals in my area to be having burgers daily, so a huge reduction in meat consumption is needed even if one wants to continue eating meat 'responsibly'.

This article unfortunately does not mention that grass-fed meat has different omega-3/omega-6 ratios than factory farmed, and eating smaller quantities of grass-fed meat is healthier than larger quantities of factory farmed. Not sure any meat industry person, even sustainable, is going to mention that cutting back from typical American consumption is a good thing.

Eating higher quality meat will always be healthier than factory farmed lower quality, quantity needn't be part of that statement; it's what else you eat that causes problems, not unprocessed, high quality meat.

Quantity is important (according to my food scientist friend, so I don't have a cite-able source).

Only four/five generations ago we (humans) weren't having 120g of meat every day.

> I've been on farms in my area, that have land that is not usable for farming, too many rocks, too hilly, etc. The land has enough natural rain-fall and grasses that grow on it to sustain sheep/cattle where there would otherwise be nothing but a fire hazard come the dry season (California).

Australia has a huge cattle industry for similar reasons, lots and lots of space, but much of the land is not suitable for crops. Cattle will survive, but not many.

Anna Creek Station in South Australia is the size of Israel (!!!), and the land can only support like 10,000 to 20,000 cattle. If you look at photos of Anna Creek Station you'll know why, it's mostly arid, almost desert-like. You can't grow any crops there.

> Australia has a huge cattle industry for similar reasons, lots and lots of space, but much of the land is not suitable for crops. Cattle will survive, but not many.

Is the amount of water that cattle consume a consideration?

Oh definitely! During drought times it's cheaper to shoot the cows on the field than to feed them.

Here's a good article around water-costs for cattle farmers in Australia: https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2017-08-21/feedlot-restric...

Lot of dodgy things are happening, it's a political scandal pretty much ignored because it's so complex https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-23/water-buybacks-everyt...

I am not sure the fire hazard argument hold. Would you remove any Californian forest for that reason?

Only a very small portion of earth is not able to generate a forest when left alone

Sheep in hills cause erosion. It seems like quite a big problem. A lot of the land that is unusable for farming should probably be left alone. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/meet-the-greatest-threat...

"Ditching meat isn't the answer", "Writing meat off completely is taking the easy way out", by someone who runs "a small, family-operated pig farm", and writes about how "beneficial and rewarding" sustainable farming can be. I'm not sure if they notice they make their living killing pigs.

Another point: in the sentence

>Commercial meat production got to be the monster it is because corporate interests monopolized the market and began seeing animal life as a commodity — something to be produced and traded at the lowest cost possible, at the expense of the environment, animal welfare and working conditions for farmhands.

it seemed very odd—grotesque, even—to include "working conditions for farmhands" in the 3 main costs of seeing animals as just commodities, in a purportedly enlightened article. And animal welfare seems to come a distant second to the effect on the environment—by which I think they mean, having horrible factory farms everywhere etc.

Putting human well-being above animals in work, sustenance, and sustainability is not odd or grotesque. Animal welfare secures the future of humanity, which seems enlightened to me, though the author doesn't engage in that pretense or emotional language.

I disagree. Killing animals just because humans have been doing is not the answer. I'd rather go with plant-based diet than ignoring the harm even small family farms do to animals, and the environment.

Animal husbandry is an answer to human survival, among other things.

Does there have to be one answer, to such a strong degree, that this mode of survival needs to be treated like a science-fiction oddity?

I can respect that. Slaughterhouses are not pretty places. The weirdness is when you consider that the animals only exist because people raised them for their meat, is it really less cruel for these animals to never exist at all? I think we have to accept that both man and nature can and must be cruel at times.

> is it really less cruel for these animals to never exist at all?

I’ve seen this question asked time and time again, and it makes no sense to me. People commit suicide out of (often transient) emotional pain, and less frequently out of physical pain. If we who have the capability to envision a better future decide to opt out of suffering via death, why do you imagine that a chronically-suffering animal’s life is better than not facing that suffering in the first place?

>chronically-suffering animal’s life

I don't think most farm animals are suffering through their entire life. They seem pretty all right to me. Factory chicken farms should be banned but not all meat.

Well, i've seen pigs pens, i've seen an old sow half eaten by her children, i assure you, even the worst chicken farm is nothing compared to an average pig factory.

All factory farms should be banned. You mentioned chickens, a sibling comment mentioned pigs, and I’ll add cows. They’re all horrible places. Animals “raised” in factory farms are better off never having existed.

Small farms are a different story and a mixed bag.

> is it really less cruel for these animals to never exist at all?

Yes, without question.

I also advocate for a plant-based diet, but your comment misses something about it mentioned in the article:

> Often, pea, soy and potato crops don’t resemble natural ecosystems — they are vast monocultures that rely on large machinery, intensive processing and global distribution, just like the industrial system that produces meat on a large scale.

So yes, let’s end factory farming, and start with the factory farming of animals. Let’s also not pretend that large-scale monocular farming of plants is a silver bullet.

Regenerative farming is the thing to aim for at the moment. That will reduce both awful conditions for animals and the harm to our ecosystems. It affects animal factory farms to a greater extent. Fighting for a globally plant-based food source can be done in parallel, just don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Human can survive well without meat. Even if you don't want to go full vegan, fish is another option, fish are way less intelligent than farm animals.

I'm all for human survival and well-being, but this is more like convenience: it tastes good, easy to get and cheap. We can at least change to make it not cheap and easy anymore. Values in our economy are artificial anyway. It's not like we have much else to innovate for the next centuries, besides making more internet apps and going to Mars.

> fish are way less intelligent than farm animals

There is no concrete evidence of this. A lot of sea creatures, including fish, have skin cells that can create polarized light and some seem to have developed communication systems with pulses of polarized light.

Just the other day it was found that some fish can pass the mirror test, didn't you see that?

The prevailing theory is that ratio of brain mass to body mass is more telling than the absolute size of the brain. Fish may fare worse on this metric but I suspect it's just an area where we have very little understanding yet.

Being vegetarian or vegan is not so hard. It is one of many fundamental changes that society should pursue to avert the current ecological crisis and mitigate species loss.

> The prevailing theory is that ratio of brain mass to body mass is more telling than the absolute size

A bit weird nitpicking when you yourself make an insubstantial claim about some "prevailing" theory. I think we can both agree that reducing meat consumption is the right thing to do, it's just sometimes to convince people you need to show some leeway.

Why don't you go check it out yourself?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalization_quotient

check what? You posted some links that explain a metric which was theorized to measure intelligence. That wasn't what I requested source for (it's a theory). I asked for a source that says this theory is the prevalent theory.

Btw I never made any comment about fish's brain size, I said they're generally less intelligent than farm animals, which wikipedia agrees with, fits the brain ratio theory too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_intelligence#Brain

Thanks for derailing the conversation anyway, at the end, there is no such thing as a fish

Fish is still meat even if it has long been said otherwise so that certain religious people can cheat on their dietary restrictions.

Dont care, the premise here is that if you think eating animal products is inhumane because of animal suffering, then there is some logic in switching to suposedly less inteligent food sources

Not sure how the ad hominem is reasonable here (if ever).

If a medical professional made a medical suggestion based on their expertise, would you summarily dismiss it because they've got skin in the game?

Should we stop listening to vegan-positive arguments coming from vegans too?

  "Writing meat off completely is taking the easy way out."

Why not take the easy way out?

Right? This isn’t 12th grade gym class, it’s an impending global catastrophe.

I'm disgusted with that fact that governments are still subsidizing animal products. Move the subsidies to plant-based options and make it easier to take the easy way out. We're literally and figuratively paying as a society for the privilege to raise and slaughter animals when it's 99% unnecessary.

Not sure why this is being downvoted - meat industry is generally subsidised and protected to allow consumers to enjoy cheap meat.

However, most western people are eating way too much meat even from the health perspective - and paying for this is shorter lives and medical bills. There is no perspective on this where eating this much meat is a good thing.

It's actually relatively easy - most countries don't have the land to produce enough plant-based calories, and have plenty of meat-based calorie production.

Why would a government bankrupt an existing and well known and visible sector, to be replaced by imports? Lots of people would be pissed.

> most countries don't have the land to produce enough plant-based calories, and have plenty of meat-based calorie production.

Citation needed. How can a country have enough land for plants to feed pigs and cows that humans will later eat, but not enough land for plants to feed the humans?

As explained elsewhere, lots of the land cows and pigs and sheep and etc. inhabit and graze on is unsuitable for regular crops due to the terrain, fertility, or simply crop rotation.

There isn't enough arable land to support everyone on a vegetarian diet

You are trying to tell me that growing food for animals to eat, and then eating the animals, somehow takes less arable land than directly growing foods for humans to eat?

That's just not plausible.

And yet it's true. 2/3rds of pasture is not suitable for agriculture and would be worthless without ruminants. The corn-fed cattle industry in the US is a result of energy being cheap and labor being expensive. Less than 20% of beef is farmed that way.

They're also forgetting about fish and other wild-caught animal food sources

> And yet it's true. 2/3rds of pasture is not suitable for agriculture and would be worthless without ruminants.

So it's worthless with ruminants. So what? Why not just leave it alone/fallow?

Also, how much water does it take to grow those ruminants and also the animals they feed?

Huh? Vegetarian/Vegan diets use a fraction of the land compared to a omnivores diet.

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

That land is called marginal land, or pasture. You can't grow crops there economically r do anything else really. Removing the grazing animals from the land changes nothing and does not improve the environment at all. That land would be worthless if not for grazing animals.

I'm not sure there is enough arible land to support the human population without grazing animals. I suspect anything is possible with enough technology and money, but matthewmorgan is correct in being concerned.

Read the article.

One third of all pasture is suitable for growing crops.

Removing grazing animals from the land can allow for reforestation and increase biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

> Removing grazing animals from the land can allow for reforestation and increase biodiversity and carbon sequestration

Ok. How much land could be reforested that way? Most grazing happens in places that are naturally pasture and were never forest like Texas and Argentina. Northern cali isn't exactly known for beef.

2/3rds of land used for grazing being unsuitable for farming sounds like a lot to me.

EDIT: drooly, HOW MUCH land would become forested if cattle were removed? Because if it's like 1 acre then its not really a good argument for banning all meat. Also I explicitly said I DO think we could survive on an all vegetarian diet I just don't see any reason to do it.

Your point is was that “you can’t do anything else with the land” - which is flat wrong. We can allow it to reforest. Which is doing something.

Your claim that the human population cannot survive on a vegetarian diet is also wrong. The article I linked explains why.

Again, if you read the article you'd be able to answer these questions.

Here's the math:

- 2.89 billion hectares of land is used for pasture, one third of which (870 million hectares) is suitable for growing crops.

- 538 million hectares is used for growing crops to be eaten by animals.

So, by removing meat from our diet we could free up 1.4 billion hectares of land JUST for crop land for human consumption, while allowing the other 2 billion hectares of non arable pasture to reforest - which would have significant impact on carbon sequestration and biodiversity.

Keep in mind that 1 billion hectares of land is the size of North America plus Brazil.

It is estimated that the entire human population would only need 1 billion hectares of land to survive (on an all plant-based diet). This means that ultimately 3 billion hectares of land could be reforested. The reduction in the farming and food shipping industry's carbon emissions would also have significant impact on reversing climate change.

Many cattle pastures are cleared forests. In the east bay hills of northern California, there are significantly fewer trees where cows graze because they eat any small shoots, preventing new trees from growing. Forest is not worthless, it supports biodiversity and captures carbon.

We also grow a ton of crops to use as animal feed. If we only raised meat with natural grazing we'd produce a lot less, it would cost more and we'd heavily mitigate the climate cost. And switch all that feed production to growing human edible plants.

“Sunday is meat day” is harder to screw up than the complex diets that healthy vegans need to plan out.

Animal welfare doesn't move people who want their Big Macs and don't have to think about how it got to their mouths.

Climate change, pandemic risks, and antibiotic resistance are the main existential risks of animal agriculture. That's why I don't eat meat: because it's immoral to put others and yourself at unnecessary risk.

It's like FF ICEs: there's no innovating our way out of something that's fundamentally irredeemable.

No one has to eat meat. It's a choice, be it laziness, willful ignorance, or selfishness.

FF ICE = fossil fuel internal combustion engine

Maybe reducing meat consumption is a good middle ground? Red meat especially seems to have known health risks but even ignoring that the inhumane raising of animals for mass automated slaughter necessitated by huge meat consumption is very much worth addressing as is the climate impact.

I really cannot wait to see lab grown meat or plant based meat become credible alternatives - I am not holding my breath but I am moderately optimistic for a breakthrough.

> I run a small, family-operated pig farm in Upstate New York.

Article has the same feel as a fossil fuel company defending natural gas or something. Obviously this is a smaller farming operation than most fossil fuel companies which probably means their GHG emissions aren't huge, but still a vested interest in the status quo.

I've slowly transitioned to chicken once a week or less and no mammals at all. It's great! A lot cheaper and still lots of tasty options — plus tons of restaurants are making it increasingly easy to order vegetarian.

Look at any argument for dealing with climate change and you’ll find which lobby or interest the person or group belongs to. Nobody wants to change, but they all want climate change to stop or slow down. This is going to be the biggest failing of humans in the 20th and 21st centuries, endangering many more humans than several COVID-19-like pandemics put together and the existence of many other species. And it’s not because of lack of warning or time.

I agree. Just saying "it's not my fault, it's the others: they are the culprit, not me" is what led us here. Without reducing meat consumption (and many other actions), the crisis won't go away

I don't like this fact: but it seems there's nothing more nutritious for many human geno/phenotypes than meat IMO.

It seems the world is waking up to this. And as such, farming is waking up to using more sustainable, health promoting methods (e.g. ditching factory farming).

The folks at beyond-meat & various institutions will tell you it's 'unhealthy', but I've never been healthier than when I'm eating mostly meat.

Sorry, are you saying that "meat is the most nutritious" is a fact or simply your opinion?

Easier access to high-quality and safer protein sources was one of the main forces fueling the emergence and evolution of the homo genus. So speaking very generally, yes, protein is a very impactful part of our diet.

The word "nutritious" is too vague imo, though, so I don't really know that I'd say that.

The crux of this seems to be that ditching meat isn't a silver bullet and we can make meat consumption less environmentally damaging and consume less meat without abandoning it.

But there are no silver bullets anywhere, so the point does not impress at all. It doesn't really detail great reasons to not make this one of the less-than-silver bullets.

At what point do we all just stop kidding ourselves and admit that the “answer for climate change” doesn’t exist?

Yeah it’s been a fun ride and all, but we’ve got a HUGE bill coming due over the next 2 or so generations. There’s probably nothing we can do to change that.

Rephrase your last sentence as “There’s nothing we will do to change that” and I’ll completely agree. The amount of apathy on this is astonishing.

Definitely true that we're going to and already feeling the effects of climate change.

I also hear a kind of despair and giving up in your comment (maybe you feel it's just "the truth"?) but I know that attitude can be dangerous. It's like sitting in a house on fire and saying "why bother to run? my life is already ruined and there's nothing I can do to change that."

There are lots of plans and good shots we have at limiting the effects of global warming to 1.5C provided we take collective action. My favorite effort is the one at Rewiring America[1] which gives really actionable advice for both consumers and policy makers: electrify everything (cars, heating/cooling, stoves, driers, etc) and power it all by renewable electricity. They show in a pretty straightforward way that this will actually save us all money, eliminate the most significant carbon emissions, create jobs, and give us better standards of living than we currently have with fossil fuels. It's pretty inspiring and gives me a lot of hope which is necessary in difficult times.

[1] https://www.rewiringamerica.org/

Disagree about your comment saying I sound like I’ve given up.

I’ve never driven a car, don’t use AC and run heat as little as possible, don’t use a clothes drier, live in a tiny apartment, eat plant-based, never fly in a plane, won’t have kids.

I think I’m the only one trying and everybody else has given up!

Well if that's what it feels like to you no wonder you sound hopeless! :)

I also have never owned a car, ride my bike, eat mostly vegetarian, and eschew travel by planes! Solidarity!

And definitely feel your frustration with people. I think if there was clear guidance and leadership, financial help to make good climate decisions, and it became part of a cultural expectation that making bad climate decisions like buying a new fossil car or gas hot water heater was a faux pas then we'd progress toward climate solutions a lot faster.

Working as a therapist with people with addictions, I feel a clear analogy with people trying to change their behavior — lots of behaviors are quite deeply rooted both in people's psyches as well as our culture.

Yeah dang sorry. Didn’t realize Rewiring America was working on making ovens and clothes dryers more efficient. Brighter days ahead!

> From the @WhiteHouse event today: "Rewiring America and Coalition for Green Capital report released Monday found that by switching to heat pumps for space or water heating, 65 million U.S. households could save a total of as much as $27.2 billion a year."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/05/17/...

You're not going to have kids? How do you feel about those having more than 2? And more than 4? I do not think your approach is sustainable but at least you seem to tackle it from the correct angle.

I think everyone should think long and hard about having any kids. There’s no risk of everyone deciding they shouldn’t have kids, so lack of population is not a worry at all.

I meant the opposite. It is pointless for people who understand the danger of overpopulation to not have kids as long as there is a crowd of others who don't and who raise a bunch of kids. And tell them to do the same. I am not saying I know how to resolve this but don't you think there is a problem with this approach?

Disappointed this isn't about vertical farms in cities.

Something the anti-meat people might forget is that the majority of plants by weight is going to be cellulose which is something indigestible by humans. You can feed some animals with the waste plant material (or with plants that can be grown more efficiently than human edible ones) and then eat them. The flexibility here gives you options and options are important for maximizing efficiency.

uhhh... yeah let's go with the easy way out?

"Writing meat off completely is taking the easy way out" I wish there was an easy way out.

The artificial meat market still hasn't been able to address the adverse health effects of isoflavones, and other adverse health effects of phytoestrogens. I'm not referring exclusively to endocrine disruption[5]. There's lots of sources showing negative effects on the brain[1][2][3][4]. These 'impossible meats' are not a good solution.

I've heard all of the "eat the bugs" rhetoric regarding addressing the protein needs of a growing third world. Why not address the issues of unsustainable overpopulation first?

[1]http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/soyiso/...

[2]http://rense.com/general3/soy.htm

[3]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3074428

[4]http://thyroid.about.com/cs/soyinfo/a/soy.htm

[5]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3443604

Uh, more efficient protein production is part of addressing overpopulation? Or do you mean we shouldn't "allow" quite as many girls to grow up?

Maybe just stop having so many babies.

First off, no one is going to argue beyond/impossible meat is necessarily healthy, but these two brands (currently leading the artificial meat market) contain just a small percentage of the isoflavones content found in soy-based products like tofu.

Moreover, the negative late-life cognitive effects ("brain shrinkage") referenced by your second source are just as likely correlated to a lack of B12 and DHA (both vital for brain health) not present naturally in soy but are easily supplemented via other plant-based sources. In fact, lots of modern tofu products are enriched with one or both. The uncontested health benefits of tofu when compared to meat far outweigh the single flimsy correlational 30-year study concluding "tofu shrinks your brain!".

Also just worth noting, you cite four references showing negative effects of isoflavones on the brain, but 4 is about thyroid health, 5 is about reproductive health.

Mentioning overpopulation is a sure way to get downvoted here. Somehow the local crowd prefers to see the planet densely covered with salad to pack as many Homo Sapiens as possible. I am not sure why or what for...

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