Comment by myshpa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by myshpa | Hacker News Reader

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> The anti-meat take is always lacking in nuance

The pro-meat take is (as always) lacking scientific basis for their claims, and ignores the biggest problems of the field, like biodiversity loss, deforestation, eutrophication/pollution, pesticide/herbicide use, ethical concerns etc. All science points in opposite direction from yours, no science exists supporting your claims.

For scientific rebutal of your opinion see relevant part of the debate "Is livestock grazing essential to mitigating climate change?" between Alan Savory (a big proponent of rotational "regenerative" grazing) and George Monbiot.

I watched it all, but am linking directly to the most relevant part.

https://youtu.be/rhwEaCmQ2XE?t=1235

--- few links ---

If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares

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

Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/

Meat eating could lead to habitat loss for 17,000 species by 2050

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22287498/meat-wildlife-bi...

Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-glob...

How Compatible Are Western European Dietary Patterns to Climate Targets? Accounting for Uncertainty of Life Cycle Assessments by Applying a Probabilistic Approach

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14449

Which Diet Has the Least Environmental Impact on Our Planet? A Systematic Review of Vegan, Vegetarian and Omnivorous Diets

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/15/4110/htm

Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2°C climate change targets

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357

Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

Coming from farm country in Iowa, I'm glad to see Allan Savory's work getting more publicity. Regenerative grazing definitely works. The problem is restoring a distressed ecosystem (typically soils) back to its natural state after desertification has already occurred in an area that livestock continually grazes. There are a few agTech companies looking at doing just that via different GMO seeding products of native grasses and plants, but the cost is still far too high economically coming in at around $50/acre. I don't think any farmer or rancher would argue that we need more free-range livestock and less confinements/stockyards, but it's a slow process.

It strikes me that this post is opinionated and exactly lacking the nuance described in the previous post.

Nobody argues in favor of the meat industry at large. This is about the difference between localized, grass-fed beef which can be raised where crops cannot.

The single largest issue with industrialized meat production is the environmental impact of the feed, which is a non issue if it is provided locally and organic. In fact, organically raised meat and animal products provide benefits to the local biodiversity.

Note: I’m from the EU where you have strict laws on organic production and farm animals have to be almost exclusively fed with grass.

Please look into the effects of manure on the environnement - like the death zone in the Gulf of mexico.

Everyone is arguing for the industrial meat industry at large. Free range meat will not produce anywhere near the same amount as the industrial industry.

Please go look into L214 and 269 if you want to see how regulation is not respected in farms in the EU.

Manure produced by pasture-raised livestock is great! When the herd moves across the grasslands, it is similar to how the vast bison herds contribute back to the grasslands. That manure gets trampled back down into the grassland, where it helps restore the soil. When the grassy area is eaten to a certain point, you move the herd to a new area and let the old one rest.

The problem with feedlots is that the manure accumulates. The ground is eaten until it is nothing (because you have the feed), and then the grass dies. Then the soil gets compacted. Meanwhile, since there is nowhere for the manure to go, and it is not being consumed by the grasses, it ends up become sludge, a source of health problems.

> Everyone is arguing for the industrial meat industry at large. Free range meat will not produce anywhere near the same amount as the industrial industry.

If the meat supply is reduced then so be it. And remember, the higher the quality of the meat, the less of it you need in your diet. But that's far different from a policy stance of zero-tolerance for meat, anywhere and everywhere.

> this is about the difference between localized, grass-fed beef which can be raised where crops cannot

Sure, that's obvious. But we don't need those calories to sustain ourselves.

> the environmental impact of the feed, which is a non issue if it is provided locally and organic. In fact, organically raised meat and animal products provide benefits to the local biodiversity.

Sources?

> strict laws on organic production and farm animals have to be almost exclusively fed with grass

EU is one of the largest importers of soy from deforested Amazon. What part of EU grown beef is organic & exclusively fed with grass?

> Sure, that's obvious. But we don't need those calories to sustain ourselves.

This is completely different topic. You won't change people's habits. I for one would be in great favour of large-scale insect farming as they are way more efficient sources of protein but you are not going to change anybody's habit just by arguing from such a perspective.

> Sources?

On the one hand, most models fail to capture carbon sequestration and purely assess carbon exhaust. This is a fair approximation if your source of feed is based upon the deforestation of the Amazon.

However, for grazing animals decomposing gras will just emit the carbon it has captured throughout its lifetime. And most of all, it will regrow rather swiftly. A recent paper which I could find that took this into account is here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965262...

Quote: "However, although the environmental impacts are well defined in LCAs, most of them do not include carbon sequestration, which is an important limitation when studying real emissions in more sustainable animal production systems. In this context, compensated CF -including carbon sequestration-implies a greater reduction in those systems that are more linked to the territory."

> EU is one of the largest importers of soy from deforested Amazon.

Again, there is a categoric difference between typical highly processed industrial agriculture and organic. Especially Spain has a powerful agriculture lobby with vast lands which only produce crops and meat. Certainly, a lot of things are going wrong and due to subsidies there is so much overproduction that European products are dumping the African market. Destroying the local competition.

On the other hand, the US loves to make people fat by subsidising big Corn. In fact, it is subsidised so much that creating high fructose corn syrup is cheaper than buying sugar canes from abroad. Too bad that the sugar in corn is fructose, which promotes fatty liver disease.

> What part of EU grown beef is organic & exclusively fed with grass?

There is the official EU organic label, which has hard criteria. However, there are many other labels which go even further.

Base EU guidelines: https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/farming/organic-farming/org...

>> biodiversity loss, deforestation, eutrophication/pollution, pesticide/herbicide use, ethical concerns etc

All the arguments in favor of regenerative meat production that I have heard consider, and in fact stress all these issues. Your link was a technical debate about soil carbon storage, (which I suspect regenerative ag proponents would dispute the details of, which would be an interesting thing to get to the bottom of). It doesn't at all cover any of those other more important topics you brought up in this quote. Anyway, a smart guy citing his chosen evidence in a public debate hardly settles any issue either way.

>> no science exists supporting your claims

this is hyperbole, and easily disproved by a quick google search.

"white oak pastures debunked", to avoid finding biased pro-regenerative papers, links to an anti-regenerative writeup: https://civileats.com/2021/01/06/a-new-study-on-regenerative...

which says also: "The new peer-reviewed study looks at the multi-species rotational grazing done on the ranch and found that White Oak’s approach reduced net greenhouse gas emissions of the grazing system by 80 percent. Regenerative practices helped sequester 2.29 megagrams of carbon per hectare annually. To put that into context, sequestering just 1 Mg of carbon per hectare each year on half the rangeland area in California would offset 42 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, roughly the annual emissions from energy use for the state’s commercial and residential sectors."

There's a difference between sequestering and storing carbon.

Also we should not compare "regular" agriculture and "regenerative" farming, but natural ecosystems and "regenerative" farming.

What's better way to protect/repair nature is obvious then.

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