Is it? As a rule of thumb, each layer of indirection in the food chain retains only 10% of the energy from the previous layer.

If we eat the stuff we give to cows (which is what vegetarians do) then we would need only 10% of the land to farm it.

Your phrase "each layer of indirection" made the following analogy pop into my head: eating meat is like using an electron app running in a VM. I suppose "bare metal" would be if we could ourselves photosynthesize, alas.

Being pedantic. If we eat the stuff they feed to the cows I eat we would die. Grass is not human digestible.

My point being the problem is not meat which is a natural part of our diet (and is traditionally raised on land not well suited to crops) but the crazy frankenmeat many are reduced to eating due to overpopulation.

And as you well know, no one is suggesting that, so why is it worth to mention?

Pretty sure the parent comment was suggesting that. Hé even said “it’s what vegetarians do”.

Cows raised for beef are almost always fed corn and soy in feedlots, not let out to pasture to graze on grass.

Indeed, it’s a shame since grass-fed tastes much better and is more environmentally friendly.

Either way, we can’t just “eat what the cows eat” directly and there are a lot more variables to consider.

All meats are causing much more greenhouse gas emissions than vegetarian food. Even cows only eating grass farts a lot, which is a significant contribution (not kidding).

> a natural part of our diet

What has been natural about our diets since the invention of cooking?

What unit of energy? Calories?

They are talking about this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer...

My BS-O-metre just went off big time. First off, this is an extreme generalization that does not pick up local differences. Take the Northeren hemisphere for instance, where meat is in many instances the most effective way to utilize our growing conditions to produce edible food. [1] It's just not possible to efficibely use our climate to make sustainable production of vegetables, so meat is in fact a better way to make the most of our growing conditions.

The alternative would be to let tons of cultured pastures go to waste, and instead develop extremely expensive and wasteful greenhouse altnernatives that would suck our energy reserves dry. That is why meat production is in fact preferrable in the North. It's just not feasible to produce enough food without spending a lot of resources on imports, due to growing conditions that favour greens that aren't edible for humans, so our best option is then meat for local and "short-travelled" sustenance. [2]

Second, there's obviously a place for meat eaters in this biodiversity. Of course, we're "too many" humans (who are of course meat eaters), but on the other hand we're sustaining our current population nicely with progresses made within both environmentally friendly transportation and not to mention advances within industrialized and automated farming. [3] Add to this that the population growth is in fact slowing down. [4]

Long story short, the world has a giant surplus of food. [5] The amount of food here isn't the problem. It's the adverse effects local politics, production and transportation that are the problems the grand level, and to that end you can't as a general rule suggest that veggies are the "best" option. Well, it clearly isn't in the northeren hemisphere.

In the end the moral question is, should we really force people to eat this, that or the other? I mean, there's obviously no harm in making suggestions, but when those suggestions aren't met with enthusiasm, then change isn't liable to happen without the use of force. And I think can all agree that we are nowhere near a Soylent Green situation, so we still have the option to give people a choice.

Personally, my bet are on those developing succulent and protein-rich meat alternatives. The second they can make a product that similar enough, but without the environmental overhead, then people will flock to it.

[1]: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3437e.pdf

[2]: Norwegian language source: https://www.agrianalyse.no/getfile.php/134664-1553523670/Dok...

[3]: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow....

[5]: https://www.dw.com/en/the-global-food-surplus/a-15452289

If you are interested in this, you might want to read the well-researched article of OurWorldInData on food production and its impact. Some things like producing meat locally are, maybe surprisingly, worse solutions than replacing it with vegetables even when these were shipped around the globe.

Transport has a low impact on the total emissions (and also producing beef is sooo bad) that you could e.g. ship a kilogram of peas several times around the globe and the peas would still win emission-wise against a kilogram of locally produced beef. If you pick another metric, like energy content ('calories') or compare emissions per mass of contained protein, beef is still worse.

https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food

Don't you think it's a little unfair to compare peas to meat? First of all, most people aren't going to replace their meat with veggies, and most veggies already have to be imported anyway. Compared to importing other meats, it is of course much better to have the meat produced locally, especially considering that the land can't really be utilized well in other ways. Which is also a question of avoiding dependencies, btw. In any case, beef is just a part of what is produced, as mountaneous areas are for instance better suited to mutton. Then there's the question of sorely lacking amino acids in pea proteins, meaning that it's not really fair to make one-to-one comparisons. Even if there are benefits from replacing all meats with veggies, the taste and texture just can't compare to meat, which again means that very few are going to voluntarily make the switch even for conscientious reasons.

Not at all, the topic of ressource efficiency in the form of the trophic level of different foods was exactly how our sub-thread of the discussion started. I have not argued about any other aspect of meat other than it being a pretty awful way of extracting ressources.

What a coincidence: Max Roser, the founder of Our World in Data, shared an article [0][1] on Twitter about the importance of the choice of diet and local production a mere two hours after my earlier posting.

[0] https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1294928556036956162

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

As it's a fairly long report, do you mind pointing out where in [1] your first claim is demonstrated?

...why is the unit important?

It's a percentage, so why would the units matter?

I don’t think it is controversial. I thought the huge environmental impact of meat eating was common knowledge.

Isn't it rather exaggerated? Doesn't agriculture as a whole cause around 11% of emissions but car driving and heating/cooling causes around 30%?

So if we all stopped eating meat we could cut emissions but a couple of % but if we all stopped driving and turned our heating down/up we could actually make a real difference?

Edited with real numbers from https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/

Wish there was a good tool to give you an answer on this, or a way to poke around and be curious. http://energyliteracy.com/ gets close but it's USA only.

This article suggests livestock greenhouse gas emissions are equivalent to the entire transportation sector. Basically because methane and carbon dioxide have different effects on warming: https://www.ecowatch.com/which-is-worse-for-the-planet-beef-...

I found that infographic very enlightening. Thanks for sharing.

I have absolutely no idea what anything means in that chart.

If you have a good source I would be delighted to read it.

Quick googling: “ Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories”

It’s not just about emissions. It’s also about the massive amount of land required to produce meat vs. crops for human consumption.

Re: cutting out meat vs. driving, only one of those activities is necessary to survive for the very high percentage of the population who don’t have access to public transit.

And in particular it's about the amount of virgin forest being cut down in places like Brazil to satisfy the global export market for beef cattle.

But how much of that agricultural land is pastures unsuitable for growing things for human consumption?

You can probably give corn to people instead of cows in the US (yay more HFCS!) but you can't ask the sheep and goat herders to graze themselves.

Also the vast scrubland used for ranching in the western-US is not a great place for agriculture due to water availability.

Agriculture causes around 10%, while transportation, including freight and flights causes around 30%.

Among the most effective things you can do yourself with minimal impact of your way of life is choosing to eat less meat.

Edit: the numbers I remembered was for Europe. Globally food production is 25%

These are USA numbers correct? My numbers are whole world numbers.

Most I can tell your numbers are just entirely made up, I've never heard of any serious study ever estimating global green house gas emissions from agriculture under 10%.

https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/

>Globally, the primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions are electricity and heat (31%), agriculture (11%), transportation (15%), forestry (6%) and manufacturing (12%). Energy production of all types accounts for 72 percent of all emissions.

Thanks I updated my OP with those numbers.

Please don't start on this theme again. Your posts are fine otherwise, and we value you as a user! But this was a big problem before and it's best if it doesn't start up again.

Even in your exam it's not "either/or"- we need to get everything down a notch because realistically we not getting to 0% anywhere

The article isn’t about vegetables being good “for you”.

It’s about a college cafeteria experimenting to reduce carbon emissions and the amount of land required to serve meals:

> Last year, University cafeterias (separate from the colleges) announced a 33% reduction in carbon emissions per kilogram of food purchased, and a 28% reduction in land use per kilogram of food purchased.

Something I dont think very many people realize is that cattle are raised on land that is unsuitable for practically any other purpose.

They aren't ranching in Manhatten. Leasing land for grazing brings in about $70 an acre while doing it for crops will bring in around $280 an acre. Development of course would bring in amounts that are several orders of magnitude higher. Where cattle are raised, raising cattle is the only purpose available. This is why ranches are out west in the US or in the outback in Australia.

If the world stopped raising cattle, a lot of steppes around the world would go back to being completely useless. We wouldnt free up valuable land.

Which is entirely irrelevant because 90%+ of cattle produced for meat do not graze, they are fed industrial produced corn and soy in crowded feedlots. We don't have the physical space on earth for all the cattle we currently produce to graze naturally.

Thats not hugely relevant though, quoting from the wiki article:

"Grazing systems supply about 9 percent of the world's production of beef"

The overwhelming majority of cows live on maize, soy, barley etc.

Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding#Grazing

I’d be interested to read more about this. Any sources you’d recommend?

> Meat-heavy diets not only risk our health

That meat is bad for our health is a myth perpetuated by the health industry, as well as by bad research that isn't accounting for processed meat vs. high quality unprocessed meat, nor do the studies account for confounding factors like other unhealthy food that many meat eaters eat.

Dr. Georgia Ede is someone to look up on YouTube who's been spending her time debunking bad research on meat.

> but that of the planet, as livestock farming on a massive scale destroys habitats and generates greenhouse gases.

Monocultures are really terrible, and based on the latest thought leaders and their knowledge, the trend needs to move towards allowing animals to roam the land again - which helps aerate and maintain the quality of soil.

My guess for future is free-roaming animals in their natural habitat, and vertical farming for vegetables, etc.

Switching to "allowing animals to roam" doesn't seem remotely viable or likely path in the current state of the world. There just doesn't seem to be any incentive which can compete with the maximization of profit.

The truth is over the top?

It implicitly distorts the contribution of agriculture to greenhouse gas emissions relative to other sources. And it ignores the health effects of going meatless.

What most people miss is that methane (ie from cows) is more than an order of magnitude as impactful as carbon dioxide.

This source says methane is 84x the impact of carbon dioxide: https://www.edf.org/climate/methane-other-important-greenhou...

That article you linked also says that the largest source of man-made methane is the oil and gas industry.

Because no vegetable farm ever caused habitat destruction or environmental damage...

It's interesting how your response to the point that farming plants is far more efficient and sustainable than farming animals is "but some vegetable farms are bad for the environment, too!"

You've accused me of hypocrisy based on your claimed experiences with other people. How charming.

In any case, sure, sustainable animal farms exist. Could they meet the meat demands of the US? Popular consensus is no, and [0] lists many authorities who urge a reduction in meat consumption, but I'd be happy for you to convince me otherwise.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat...

That's obviously not true, and also obviously not the point being argued.

Terrible straw man argument