The article is wrong. I don't get how this could make it to the top.

It has nothing to do with greenhouse emissions, but with nitrogen compound emission. See https://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2022/06/whats-all-the-fuss... (the first english source I could find)

The source is mostly cattle. Which doesn't make up for Ukrainian grain.

> The source is mostly cattle. Which doesn't make up for Ukrainian grain.

I would expect that the more food shortages become severe, the more different types of food become fungible.

You might think this happens only in extreme cases, but as a "poor" Uni student I don't remember eating expensive food very often. And I was living in one of the richest countries on earth.

Single parents, people in disadvantaged communities etc., even in first-world countries, have the problem of putting food on the plate, and they don't really have the luxury to think about what type of food that is.

Beef prices have been extremely high for a while now, having over doubled since the pandemic started, and going up 5x since 2010. The people suffering from food insecurity haven't been eating beef as a staple. It's a luxury.

Industrial beef is fed grains that could be instead used to feed humans (or, at least the land used to produce these grains can instead produce human food). This is a far more efficient use of calories. People worried about food insecurity should be looking at reducing meat production for this very reason.

My argument is that if all beef in the world magically disappeared this minute due to an evil curse, food prices would go up across the board, regardless of food categories. I may be wrong.

> It's a luxury.

IMHO it's not a luxury in the same way that caviar and champagne are, it's a luxury in the same way that fresh greens are a luxury compared to frozen peas.

Momentarily, for sure.

Medium or long term though, practically all other domesticated animals are more efficient than beef on a per-calorie basis. Chickens in particular, are substantially more efficient. Best case, replacing beef with chicken could increase meat yields by 10x, worst case, by 3x.

https://awellfedworld.org/feed-ratios/

> practically all other domesticated animals are more efficient than beef on a per-calorie basis

yes, this is true, although some of those, like chickens which you mentioned, or pigs that are mentioned in the link you shared, are dependent on grains - unlike beef, which can be grass-fed.

But there are more animals besides beef that can be grass-fed, and they might be more efficient than beef.

It would be interesting to know the feed conversion ratios of goats and sheep for example.

The problem of goats and sheep is that, in a regenerative faming context, their manure is not perceived to be as effective as cow manure.

For this reason, would be interesting to measure both feed conversion ratios AND manure production ratio.

Knowing the effectiveness of manure in a regenerative farming context is very important, unless we want to continue depending on fertilisers made from petroleum which is just as bad as burning gasoline in terms of global warming.

Most ranchland is ill-suited to other uses.

Many are wondering if this is by design. Generate a crisis and then solve the problem with an approach that gives you what you want. Force the little people to eat bugs and only fly on planes rarely. Tie your wallet and passport to what you buy, where you go etc and fence them in.

I think the source is dairy farming specifically. So cattle yes, but kept for milk rather than for beef?

So if these farmers would switch to agriculture it would be a solution right? Although fertilizers come with their own set of problems if I remember correctly.

How does a car compare to a cow?

About 45% of these emissions come from farms, 12% from cars. The national speed limit was lowered from 130 to 100 km/hr to deal with this issue (happened a few years ago)

Plants turn CO2 into proteins and sugars. One of two things happens. Either the cattle eat the plants and process them or the plants rot and produce CO2 and Methane which quickly becomes CO2.

Animals eat the plant some of the CO2 is stored as fat and protein. The remainder is exuded in the form of cowshit and farts. The cowshit goes back to the soil and into plants. The Methane produced quickly becomes CO2 which is, AGAIN, used by the plants to produce plant growth. How is a single atom of carbon actually created in any of this? Sure ,if animal numbers suddenly expand rapidly, you get a very very minute increase in Methane levels. The effect is indiscernible in reality.

The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country with a huge farming export surplus, with a very large industry (and lobby) behind them. This also isn’t about plantations, but livestock. Cows mostly. So nothing related to fertilisers at all.

A few years ago a judge ruled that the way the government calculated the emissions were incorrect, and now the government is basically forced to act. As these livestock farms account for a huge amount of nitrogen compound emissions, the most pain will be felt here. This was known for many years though, but now the reality is here and shit hit the fan.

In general, I think all this is also a symptom of the general distrust in the government, frustration that has been building up, and there’s quite some overlap in this protesting community and the “covid is a hoax” group. It attracts some very weird people.

The point is that the world is facing a massive food shortage this year, and anything that reduces food supply will result in more starvation in the third world.

This just just not good timing.

Wouldn’t reducing the number of cows increase total food supply? I’m not saying that NL should reduce their cow supply, but your logic seems flawed.

Even for dairy production, cows consume a lot more calories than they provide on the other end. If fewer calories are going to feed cows, then more would be available for other uses.

That depends entirely on what the cattle are being fed. If they are grazing pasture that cannot be planted in row crops (e.g. too hilly, too gravelly), or if they are eating the waste products of other food production (e.g. corn stalk silage), then they are eating calories that would never have been available for human consumption.

These farms will be closed over an 8 year period (hopefully), and farms have been closed over the past years as well. It’s just the protests that are happening now, the actual effects are spread over years and years.

Why are you hopeful about closing farms? I don't understand that.

Because it makes very little sense for a country as small and densely populated to heavily subsidise this industry and have such an export surplus, even more so for livestock. This is not a healthy industry, economy at all.

I think this is an utterly ridiculous situation to be in, and the whole argumentation from the farmer’s side is ridiculous. I understand their concerns, but this process has been going on for years, decades, and at this point they’re just mostly spreading FUD.

Udderly ridiculous.

Because we have too many in the Netherlands, it's that simple. We are a tiny country where nearly every area that isn't used for housing or industry is used for farming. Go to any other European country, you have large forested areas, mountains, etc. That hardly exists in the Netherlands because we're all farm.

The reduction in farm animals isn't going to happen within a year (there are not even very concrete plans yet), this will likely be a very long process.

The Dutch protests are not about third world countries.

I don't care what the protests are about, I'm saying why it is a terrible idea.

And you're wrong, and ignoring people who are trying to educate you. Ramping down the number of Dutch cattle over 8 years or whatever is not taking affordable food out of the mouths of poor people in the third world.

> Considering the imminent food shortages

There are no imminent global food shortages. Wheat futures are literally crashing right now because the entire thing was FUD-driven financial speculation: https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/futures/W00

There are (and are going to be) local food shortages, in countries which relied on ukraine specifically as they need new supply lines, and the speculation has done the opposite of helping by pricing them out.

And then also in other low-wealth countries which the speculation has also priced out, there the speculation alone creates the food shortages.

If there is less cattle, less farmland is needed to grow fodder. That farmland is then available for growing food for people. This way the same amount of farmland can feed more people.

Reducing cattle farming increases the efficiency of food production.

Sri Lanka is a recent case study.

Same applies to closing down nuclear reactors and coal mines over the last decade in some countries in Europe.

Perhaps nuclear can still save us

No, the article is about cow shit.

It’s important to note that much of the food produced by these farms is exported, so national food prices may not be affected as much as you would think.

But people in those countries, where Netherlands has traditionally exported food, might suffer food shortages?

It depends on how the world is going to react. If cattle farms shut down, large swathes of land suddenly become available to more efficient food production as the need for farm animal feed decreases.

Huge amounts of food is being processed into animal feed which in turn ends up producing relatively little food. I like my meats as much as the next guy, but in a world hit by a food shortage caused the Russian invasion, using more arable land to feed people instead of cows seems like the obvious choice.

We’re talking about an 8 year period, and all things considered, we’re not that big a player for cow meat exports. But it has a significant impact on a small and densely populated country.

Depending on what’s grown it can be affected if it’s part of a global marketplace. Oil for example doesn’t care where it’s produced but a drop in production anywhere will cause a spike in prices everywhere except for places that subsidize the price (Venezuela and Iran for example).

This is true, and it’s why I said “as much as you think”. There seems to exist a narrative that these farmers are producing “our” food, which is incorrect.

Traditionally exported, or still today?

What foods do they produce that isn't consumed in the Netherlands?

People are gonna starve because of these closures.

Maybe. People are going to drown if we do not act to reduce nitrogen emissions

(And eating less meat would significantly reduce emissions, but that seems unlikely to happen on a large scale)

Who knows where we will be in another few years ...

"... 44% of consumers in Germany follow a low-meat diet, which is a significant increase from 2014 (26%). Similarly, 6% of US consumers now claim to be vegan, up from just 1% in 2014" [from 2017]

https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4959853/top-trends-in-pr...

"The number of vegans in Great Britain quadrupled between 2014 and 2019"

"The 400% increase of vegans in the UK is shocking, but the 1,500% increase in plant-based food sales in the UK is even more shocking. "

"In 2022, research by ProVeg found that 51% of Germans had reduced their meat intake in the previous year"

"In 2022, research commissioned by ProVeg Netherlands found that 28% of Dutch people want to see a future without meat, and 20% would like to see the government ban slaughterhouses"

" Research conducted in 2021 by Rakuten found that 82% of consumers in the US have tried plant milk, 40% have tried other vegan dairy alternatives, 62% have tried plant-based meats and 22% have tried vegan egg replacements. Key motivations included health (35%), wanting to try a food trend (41%), and concern for animals (23%). The same research found that 5% of respondents said that they only consume plant-based foods""

https://www.vegansociety.com/news/media/statistics/worldwide

Yes, its almost as if the actions of the last few years were planned to cause a massive catastrophic societal collapse that will have us begging for smart cities, green passes and all the other technocratic essentials that have been long in the planning. Technocrats are lucky, I guess.