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Comment by 2000UltraDeluxe | Hacker News Reader

2000UltraDeluxe

Not at all. Those fields are now fertilized with cow manure, though. Without the cattle, you'd need more artificial fertilizer for the crops you intend to feed humans with.

Would it be good for the environment? Quite possibly. Would it result in more fertilizer available on the market? Not really.

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The cows need to consume food which has to be grown to produce manure. They don’t magically produce hydrogen, phosphorus and potassium on their own.

Most commercial cattle aren't pasture fed, they aren't free ranging it in a field eating whatever they forage. Hobby and small farms, sure, but the operations that raise the most heads the cattle generally spend the bulk of their life standing in a dirt pen (a feedlot) eating from a trough. They're then fed a mix of corn, soy, ruffage (grasses).

Here is an example of a feedlot https://www.bilaterals.org/IMG/jpg/33a3ab67aa6bbe3184c0441d2...

The cattle come to a side and eat from troughs like this https://cdn.farmjournal.com/s3fs-public/styles/840x600/publi...

It takes 2.5~ pounds of grain and 1,850~ gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef.

So why not argue for a return to pasture and grass fed and finished cattle then? A lot more people would be willing to agree with you. Intensive use of feedlots has only been going on since the 60s due to an increased demand for beef. The message should be to moderate our consumption of beef and give the cattle a better life at pasture rather than crammed into a feedlot.

There are roughly 1 billion head of cattle in the world, depending on the soil and climate you need anywhere from 2-25 acres per head of cattle to 100% grass feed them (in areas where this is done, obviously 25 acres of desert isn't going to feed a cow).

Even if we assume an average of 3 acres per head, you're looking at 3 billion acres of land just to keep beef going (never mind the 785 million pigs and 33 billion chickens).

If you entirely pasture feed, you're going to get lower slaughter weights too as their weight at slaughter averages about 1,200 pounds compared with about 1,350 pounds for feedlot animals, you'd end up needing something like 30% more cattle to get the same amount of meat https://awellfedworld.org/grazing/

I guess you just completely missed where I said we could moderate our beef consumption. Try again.

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