> You can't grow crops on it - not enough water.

This is false. You can grow crops almost anywhere in the U.S. using water intensive techniques.

You won’t be able to do it at scale while funneling all the profits through a single entity though. It can only be done with smaller farms and more attention from a larger number of specialized farmers. We know more about how to do this now than any time in history.

If you want to have a single entity collect all the profits you need a one-size-fits-all methodology, and cattle grazing is that.

So that’s the trade off. An existential one for big beef companies.

Cattle also destroy the plants that maintain soil health and allow you to store water in the landscape, so it’s a vicious cycle. Fairly easily undone building berms and planting pioneer species.

Just to add a bit, a lot of cattle grazing area is just vast swaths of federal land ranchers release cattle on. Historically the cowboys would sort the cattle by their brands and then to the slaughter houses. The land has no other use and are extremely vast and remote areas.

On the show Alaska the Last Frontier, they use federal land to let their cows graze during the summer.

If that were the only way we produced meat, I would be far less opposed to consuming it.

Mass production in unhealthy factory styles is the majority source. Any incentive to end that process is a net gain in my view.

Considerably more water is used to raise cattle than plants. And then the plants that they feed on also need water.

Efficiency isn't really an argument that is going to get people to change their preferences. Case in point, Electron apps. Even if beef becomes the Electron of the food world, you know a ton of people are still going to consume it.

You don't think water shortages will change people's preferences?

No. I live in Mexico City, where it is not unheard of for the government to outright cut off the city water supply for days to account for shortages.

People's preferences haven't changed. Beef continues to be very popular, as do public fountains. The choice not to consume meat (at least here) is mostly associated with pretentious, upperclass people who like yoga and are keenly interested in social justice (there is even a word for this type of person: fresas, which literally means strawberries but here means, well, that type of person).

Eating or not eating meat is more about adopting cultural, class, and identity signifiers than any real correlation with the local water situation.

So what you're saying is that continuing your current beef consumption is a neutral activity, while trying to cut back due to environmental impact is simply virtue signalling? Maybe the people trying to cut back are ahead of the curve. Maybe those people realize that if the worst effects of climate change and population growth come to pass, that cutting back now could mean the impact on beef supply in the future is mitigated. I guess, in that case, the "unpretentious, lower class people who hate yoga" would have those tree huggers to thank.

Peoples' preference for war hasn't changed either (most people don't want it), but we still find ourselves in conflict at every turn. That's because you can't go too long without confronting the objective physical reality of scarcity of resources.

>is simply virtue signalling

No, more like life style participation.

>I guess, in that case, the "unpretentious, lower class people who hate yoga" would have those tree huggers to thank.

We need many countries to make national-level policies about this. The Instagram people are a smug drop in the bucket.

>we still find ourselves in conflict at every turn. That's because you can't go too long without confronting the objective physical reality of scarcity of resources.

That correlation seems made up. Has there been an increase of scarcity-driven wars? Most wartorn places don't seem to be resource scarce.

Thank you for prolonging my enjoyment of meat then! I now feel like the celebrities promoting cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions while flying private jets all over the world. At least someone is getting to enjoy themselves.

Higher efficiency should eventually result in a lower price, as mentioned in the article. Prices do affect consumer behavior.

Give me insect protein or give me death!

Cattle _can_ be extremely environmentally destructive.

I was always angry to see them out grazing on public lands in the Sonoran desert where they trample emerging small cactus and graze down the nurse plants small saguaro need to get started. They also trash sensitive riparian areas. There was no animal like that there, cattle should not be in that area in my opinion, most especially on public ground.

However environments that natively supported animals of that size, plain or grass type areas, no problem, lease it out. Cattle actually do environmental good in these areas helping to keep brush down and building grasslands.

Unfortunately this isn't most of the public ground in the Western US.

Yes it would be nice to separate the two issues. We can all agree that Western ranchers should not be subsidized by the federal government to destroy fragile desert ecosystems. I own cattle that graze on my own land and other land I rent from private owners in the Midwest, so this subsidy always seemed a bit unfair.