Every individual cow does produce CO2 and Methane. But that's not causing rapid climate change. The root cause is perceiving cows - or meat in general - as a commodity.
Factory farming, raising and keeping tens of thousands of animals, has little to do with the historically intricate relationship between individual humans and cattle. It's about producing as much of a resource as possible in order to compete on an open market. In such a model, CO2 and Methane are costs to the farm that need to be externalized as cheaply as possible.
Not to mention externalized costs further down the chain to the customer such as the waste of unsold produce, single use plastic packaging, transport and so on.
> And do you have a conflict that you are able to pay higher prices for meat than a lot of other people?
Not OP. I buy meat from a local butcher or farm.
No. I don't have that conflict for several reasons.
First, I rather buy quality meat once a week which I consume sparingly, then cheap, processed meat daily or even multiple times a day. So, that evens the costs out for me.
Second, I choose to pay a higher price. Why? Because that's closer to the true cost of keeping and raising healthy cattle on a small, sustainable scale. What I get is a quality product.
Third, I make self-cooked meals on a daily basis. I'm a stickler for good, tasty food. Choosing to approach meat more carefully prompted me to adapt my diet and replace the dishes I used to make. This is a positive experience since there's an absolute wealth of dishes out there that don't require meat. The meat I do buy and prepare only get minimally wasted (e.g. freezing portions, making stock,...)
Fourth, I don't support a model where the abundant availability of meat globally is taken for granted, even though the environmental and social costs are clearly there. My effort is entirely insignificant on a global scale, but at least it makes me sleep just ever so slightly better at night. That's more then enough for me.
60-100$ price for bio beef is not a problem.
My internal issue has more to do with the conflict of me being able to afford the best meat on the market but a lot more can't.
Can I tell poor people to stop buying cheap meat while still consuming it myself?
Aren't the more interesting questions: why are so many individiuals poor? can't afford to buy produce at an "ethically reasonable" price point?
Most farmers running factory farms at the behest of large private corporations who define what the farmer can and can't do because they invest in these farms. Factory farms aren't diverse farms: they produce only one specific commodity e.g. meat, dairy, grain, soy beans,... The price the farmer can get is entirely defined by those large commercial interests.
Just think about the notion that farmers, by contract, need to buy seeds from these corporations. Seeds which are protected by intellectual property law. As a result, the practice of seed saving - which is thousands of years old - has become a liability as there's a risk of patent infringement. As a result, farmers aren't just forced to buy seeds, they have to buy those seeds every year, and they can't really choose between suppliers by contract.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_saving
Such practices render farmers into anything but employees in name. It would be "socialist" if the farmer retained their freedom and their vote in how the farm is run. Legally speaking, they still do have that freedom and that agency as a legally independent business. But in practice, the exploitative nature of the economic relationship between farmers, the markets and these corporations has turned that pretty much into a meaningless concepts.
In that regard, the subsidization of agriculture doesn't benefit the farmers. It benefits those corporations through these entirely skewed market dynamics.
Methane is a more difficult problem. It's mostly soluble with specific supplements and other mechanisms, but it's an expensive process that ranchers won't pay for unless there are proper incentives.
Assuming we stopped cow farming completely and the fields were turned into wild live reserves of bison or something would emissions magically go down? Or do they no longer count as anthropogenic so we can magically ignore them?
The emissions related to those calories would go away.
If we have a magic wand and that disappeared entirely tomorrow, that would simply be allocated to other areas. There’s a reason sodas in the US are sweetened with HFCS and our gasoline is cut with ethanol produced from corn - because of lobbying efforts to subsidize corn production, which has driven down costs, which in turn made it profitable to use corn in ways where it wouldn’t otherwise make sense. Europe uses ethanol derived from sugar beets, which is significantly more efficient in terms of CO2.
It’s significantly more complex than “if we reduce beef consumption, we’ll reduce corn consumption”.
I guess I didn't try to spell the whole thought out, but I wasn't trying to claim that beef consumption is an island, I was thinking about how CAFO style animal husbandry supports a lot more animals than pure grazing would.
Regarding the comment about me paying higher prices, I can't agree. I spend an aggregate of about £1.50 / head on meat per day which is much less than if I decided to buy any processed soy or processed plant protein.
Do you get the cheapest meat available?
Where do you live?
Every cow produces it.
And do you have a conflict that you are able to pay higher prices for meat than a lot of other people?