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Comment by mark_l_watson | Hacker News Reader

+1 - this is a point a lot of people don't get: it can take roughly 10 times the water and 10 times the energy to produce meat rather than vegetables and grains.

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That's because it's a ridiculous statement. Sure, cattle convert grain calories into meat calories fairly inefficiently. But cattle evolved to eat grass, not grain. Grazing cattle on the prairies is far more environmentally friendly than ripping up that prairie to replace it with a wheat monoculture.

Animals that evolved to eat grains, such as chickens, convert calories much more efficiently.

It's true that grass-fed animals don't have the same environmental impact as grain-fed ones. But the problem is that there's no way to produce enough beef to meet worldwide demand other than concentrated feedlots. And certainly no way to produce it at the low cost that the market demands.

Unless the cost of beef can be adjusted to include all the negative externalities that its production entails (topsoil loss, water and air pollution from fertilizers, pesticides, manure, and diesel fuel, antibiotic resistant super-bugs, public health threats from unsanitary slaughterhouse practices, etc) then meat producers and consumers will benefit from cheaper prices while the environment suffers.

"That's because it's a ridiculous statement"

Only if you consider the truth ridiculous. It's simple biological physics. There are inefficiencies in energy transfer.

Btw, 60% of the Amazon deforestation is caused by cattle ranching.

Sources? Otherwise you're no better than the article...

It's a pretty widely accepted fact google around

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_pr...

BIO 101:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency

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