That's a story that's often repeated here on HN. But it doesn't hold up much under scrutiny. American pasture lands, for instance, are not normally arable lands (cannot be used for cropland). And meat animals use less resources per pound of protein that vegetable sources. Certainly less plowing.

I'm always stunned by the idea that somehow raising millions of cattle is destroying the planet, yet the millions of buffalo that roamed the prairie before we arrived were natural and therefor good.

> And meat animals use less resources per pound of protein that vegetable sources.

What? There's literally hundreds of scientific articles out there that establish the opposite, e.g. [1]

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

Edit: Where do you think the protein in cattle comes from? Isn't it… plants? That the cattle eat? Once eaten, the cattle expend some energy to live and then we kill them for meat.

By not eating animals, you cut out the middleman and waste less energy.

That premise is only accurate if you are planning to have everyone consume livestock feed. If that is the plan, then you shouldn't be fixating on beef, you should be going after almost all crops we grow, which produce just as few calories per acre as beef, and even lower protein per acre. Depending on where you draw the line, your argument effectively requires all farms to only grow a small number of very high calorie crops like field corn and potatoes.

I'm sorry, but you are completely wrong. There are many plants that produce much more protein per acre than beef: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_protein_per_unit_area_o...

Edit: I can't reply to child anymore, max comment depth reached. Anyway, I think my work here is done :) I am not demanding we stop growing lettuce, I am demanding we stop raising cattle for proteins. We can keep growing lettuce for vitamins / minerals. As for the so-called "absurd fake figure" for protein/meat land utilization, that figure is from 1970's. I'm willing to concede that number may have risen slightly with the use of antibiotics as growth stimulator ;)

P.S.: Legumes are a whole family of plants, divided into 11 major types.

You can't say "you are completely wrong" and then support that by showing I am right. You showed 5 crops that produce more protein per acre than an absurdly low fake figure for beef. That's precisely what I said, that we would have to cut down to just a small handful of highest value crops. 5 is a small handful, we currently grow thousands. You know full well lettuce produces fewer calories and less protein per acre than beef. But you are not demanding that we stop growing lettuce, just beef. Your demands are inconsistent with the premise you use to support them.

> American pasture lands, for instance, are not normally arable lands (cannot be used for cropland).

This is a fair point but unfortunately intensive animal agriculture (in feedlots) dominates US and world beef production which requires the growing of corn and other grains to feed entirely or supplement grass-fed beef, introducing further environmental impacts.

feedlots do not dominate US beef ranching. It is regularly used but the average head of cattle spends less than six months in a feedlot per it's average 1.5-2 year lifecycle. Even so advocating that feedlots are replaced by grass fed cattle is much more likely to happen and the growth of the grass fed beef industry shows that it is/can happen.

>Exactly, environmental destruction caused by the beef industry

Not in Canada or the US. We have vast prairies that used to be inhabited by millions of bison. Now a fraction of it is inhabited by cattle instead.

>water requirements vs other types of protein.

How is temporarily using local water in the US, which is returned to the natural water cycle, causing deforestation in South America or Africa or Asia?

>This is a huge blanket statement to make as well as being factually inaccurate.

Then provide contradictory evidence. I can not exhaustively prove every single ranch in the US isn't clear cutting forests. You only need to provide a single example to disprove me. Please do.

I wasn't sure about this so I did a quick google. There may have been an estimated 20-30 million bison at one point across North America. And currently something close to 80-90 million cattle today in the US alone. To answer why this is bad and bison were fine you have to remember how these creatures are being used. The cattle will be concentrated today in ways the bison never were, so the impact will be less diffuse. Second, the industrial processes around cattle production will use fuel to grow feed, pump water, and transport the beef product that previously would have stayed in the ecosystem when the bison died. These externalities are what cause the problem apparently.

No one single ranch is necessarily causing problems. It's a collective issue. No single person needs to withdraw enough water from the well to run it dry, a town can do it one cup at a time without anyone intending to cause his neighbor to go thirsty.

None of that has anything to do with the subject of discussion though. How are those US ranchers burning down the amazon? US beef consumption and production are completely irrelevant to the developing world burning forests to produce their beef, which again is what the article we're discussing is talking about.