[Kingcoal]

http://news.independent.co.uk/environme ... 062484.ece

A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.

[TheTurtle]

The cow itself is blameless. The cattle industry, however, is not.
(nor, of course, those of us who demand ever bigger burgers).



{ I moved this thread to the Environment forum rather than Energy Geopolitics.}

[Zardoz]

Ranching, the report adds, is "the major driver of deforestation" worldwide, and overgrazing is turning a fifth of all pastures and ranges into desert.Cows also soak up vast amounts of water: it takes a staggering 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk.

Wastes from feedlots and fertilisers used to grow their feed overnourish water, causing weeds to choke all other life. And the pesticides, antibiotics and hormones used to treat them get into drinking water and endanger human health.

The pollution washes down to the sea, killing coral reefs and creating "dead zones" devoid of life. One is up to 21,000sqkm, in the Gulf of Mexico, where much of the waste from US beef production is carried down the Mississippi.

This is very old news. We first started hearing about this at least thirty years ago. It was an obvious problem back then, and has grown many times worse since.

Click on the list of items under "Environmental Impacts" on the left:

Agriculture and Environment: Beef

[NEOPO]

Yup.
Ecovillagers and homesteaders alike should consider rabbits and chickens instead and not only for the environmental reasons but also for the quality of the manure.

[FoxV]

well part of the good news to all of this, is that a lot of this increase in beef production comes from the increased wealth around the world.

With the coming Grand Deperssion, there will be a huge drop in beef consumption. (Especially in the US where everyone is expected to subsitute beef for tree bark so the CPI can still look good to foreign bond holders ).

[Pretorian]

Yup.
Ecovillagers and homesteaders alike should consider rabbits and chickens instead and not only for the environmental reasons but also for the quality of the manure.

Ecovillagers can actually make eco-houses with the cow-manure mixed with clay and ..sand (?) It doesnt stink and it doesnt need an AC during the summer. I dont know why rabbits cac can be better than cow's but chicken crap is too strong , it is burning the soil. Too many chickens=waistland.

[AWPrime]

What is worse?

Milk cow or Meat cow?

[gego]

What is worse?

Milk cow or Meat cow?

Depends on how the beef cattle are raised.

Beef cattle in a feedlot are probably the most damaging, followed by a dairy operation, followed by grass fed beef.

The real problem is human overpopulation.

Before you go out to save the environment by banning cows from the world, you might want to consider that cows walking around on a pasture are future meals that do not now require some sort of immediate preservation like refrigeration, canning or smoking. In a serious SHTF situation, a rural family with a small herd of beef cattle and a house milk cow may survive while they might not if they attempted to survive on gardening and hunting alone.

If you want to influence how cows are raised, you can order grass fed beef over the internet instead of buying grocery store meat. You can also stop using dairy products if you object to the damage caused by dairy farms.

[Clouseau2]

Beef is pretty much the least efficient usage of agricultural resources to feed people, in terms of water, energy, space, the amount of food needed to make the beef, etc. And on top of that cow farts are killing the planet.

If you take one 7 minute shower a day with an efficient shower head, you would save more water by not eating 1 pound of beef raised in an arid climate than not showering for an entire year.

[Concerned]

well part of the good news to all of this, is that a lot of this increase in beef production comes from the increased wealth around the world.

With the coming Grand Deperssion, there will be a huge drop in beef consumption. (Especially in the US where everyone is expected to subsitute beef for tree bark so the CPI can still look good to foreign bond holders ).

LOL much like Oil looks like beef too is "fungible". I love that word economists throw it in like hey look no problem. Yesterday I was eating beef now Im eating grass and treebark that fungible supply and demand stuff is great.

It's happening with fish too, no fish heck just substitute with boiled jellyfish. Yum yum.

[gego]

Beef is pretty much the least efficient usage of agricultural resources to feed people, in terms of water, energy, space, the amount of food needed to make the beef, etc. And on top of that cow farts are killing the planet.

If you take one 7 minute shower a day with an efficient shower head, you would save more water by not eating 1 pound of beef raised in an arid climate than not showering for an entire year.

Land used for beef production is often not suitable for grain production, but it is suitable for grass production to feed cows, so to that extent beef production is a net gain from land usage, not an inefficient use of grain. As to the water issue, I think that is bogus. There may be a lot of water tied up in cows, but in goes in and comes out, right back into the land, except for the water weight of the cow that goes to slaughter. The water never disappears. On a pasture not overpopulated by cows, there is no runoff of cow urine; it just goes back into the soil or evaporates into the air to return as rain. When humans eat the cows the water is then tied up in humans, so again, the real problem is not the cows but the excess of humans.

On the face of it, this statement about more water in 1 pound of beef than a whole year's worth of showers is absurd. Even if the entire pound of beef were water, I bet one shower's worth of water weighs more than 1 pound.

[NEOPO]

Yup.
Ecovillagers and homesteaders alike should consider rabbits and chickens instead and not only for the environmental reasons but also for the quality of the manure.

Ecovillagers can actually make eco-houses with the cow-manure mixed with clay and ..sand (?) It doesnt stink and it doesnt need an AC during the summer. I dont know why rabbits cac can be better than cow's but chicken crap is too strong , it is burning the soil. Too many chickens=waistland.

I am going to ingore this and allow you to continue to believe that you are correct....K?

[Pretorian]

well I was spending at least 2-3 months a year in such a... eco-villages, or minifarms, when I was growing up. Did u grow up on a farm too?

[NEOPO]

yeah your right and I am wrong....... moooooo

[Ludi]

The ecology here in my area has been devastated by cattle over the years. It used to be Tallgrass prairie, now it's mostly short and mid-grass, scrub oak, and the ever-encroaching Ashe Juniper (called "cedar").

Of course the blame should properly go to the (bad) ranchers, not the cattle. The cows can't help being cows. (Though I suppose one could say the same of the ranchers)

[MrBill]

Yup.
Ecovillagers and homesteaders alike should consider rabbits and chickens instead and not only for the environmental reasons but also for the quality of the manure.

Rats breed faster and, heck, they'll eat anything! Plus you can feed them to your snakes. They are not a good source of manure however, and rat urine is quite toxic. Still, trade-offs have to be made. Or how about just reducing the amount of animal protein we consume? Then we could have cows, horses, chickens, pigs and rabbits as well as other domestic and wild game.

[Doly]

Or how about just reducing the amount of animal protein we consume?

Done that already. You'd be surprised how much energy raising animals consumes.

[MrBill]

Or how about just reducing the amount of animal protein we consume?

Done that already. You'd be surprised how much energy raising animals consumes.

yes, but they are a niche species just like any other. they can effectively live on marginal land in conjunction with nitrogen producing pasture that along with manure can regenerate soils depleted by cropping as part of a natural rotation. what needs to go is feedlots and all the associated problems they can cause. as well as cattle farming where it is not suitable either due to the climate or the land. this may mean raising less cattle for meat consumption, but not necessarily no cattle. also, red meat contains a lot of energy per ounce and is a good source of essential amino acids. a fact often overlooked by vegans for example. if post peak oil means more manual work then a valuable source of protein cannot be excluded from our diet either.

[gego]

Done that already. You'd be surprised how much energy raising animals consumes.

Holy cow!

[edpeak]

MrBill,

red meat contains a lot of energy per ounce and is a good source of essential amino acids. a fact often overlooked..

Before responding to the above let me say I think it's important not to get into a negative vibe over issues like this, so before giving the counter-point in favor of a plant-based diet, I don't want people to feel that they are bad unless they are 100% vegan (or 100% plant-based diet, another term..)...we each need to do the best we can, and even eating less meat, while still not being 100% plant-based in diet, is a step in the right direction, not just from an environmental or human health or animal suffering point of view, but from a peak oil point of view, that is even putting aside the health advantages and other advantages...

Because looking at "how much energy an ounce has" turns out to be the wrong question.. Just like "when will be run out of oil?" turns out to
the wrong question to ask, here too looking only at how much
an ounce contains is the wrong question.

It's the wrong question, despite the fact that an oz
of raw beef without the fat trimmed has 5gr of protein
and 79 calories (and even if you trim the fat, then 1oz
has 46 calories and 6gr of protein) while 1oz of raw almonds
have 6gr of protein and 163 calories (way more) and for
1oz of pistachios, also 6gr of protein (and 157 calories,
again way more than the beef)..(nutritiondata.com source)

..so it's not hard to give examples where the planet-based dietary choice comes out ahead on calories, ahead (or a "tie" if we let the beef cheat by trimming ;-) on protein, and that's on top of anti-oxidants and fiber and, and, and other advantages...but nevertheless, it's still the wrong comparison, so I won't tout this comparison as the final words on why we need a plant-based diet..

Energy profit and net energy and the like are analyses we are familiar with.. So why is "how much protein or calories in 1oz" the wrong question?

Imagine I have something with 10 times more calories and 10 times more protein, per ounce, than beef...but....there's just one catch...I need 100 times the acres (per ounce) to grow this magical stuff.....would we prefer this stuff to beef?

Heck no!

So the real question is, how many calories per acre,
and how many grams of protein per acre, can we grow,
with this food versus that food. Given the population
at 6.5 billion and growing....giving the water shortage
(which is yet another reason why plant-based diets
are critically needed and superior to meat in diet) and
so forth, we need to get the most bang for the buck..sounds
tough, sounds macho, bang for the buck....you'd thing
beef's gonna win this macho battle...but no ,the toughest
most macho "most bang for the buck" turns out to be plant
based diets...

With meat like beef you are talking about getting roughly only
1,200 calories per acre per day...about 6000 calories of grain can be produced per acre per day. Which is the better choice for
a world with high populations trying to feed itself,
in a world with lots of stressed systems, and needing
efficiency? (http://chemistryandphysics.astate.edu/j ... ity8-1.htm is one source..these are rough figures since you get
different numbers from pigs as from cows, etc, and
different numbers for oats versus other grains..)

This surprised me intially but in hindsight it's clear why: it's more efficient to get
calories and protein directly, and the "cycle" is through
an animal..and the same is true for grams of protein
per acre -- meat gets you less protein per acre...water usage is another angle, it takes much more water per acre to produce meat..

EDpeak

P.S. google cache found this
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:AuF ... .veggie.ca
/otr/hunger.html+%22calories+per+acre%22+pimentel&hl=en
&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4&client=firefox

The following information comes from research conducted by David Pimentel (Cornell University Professor); Henry Kendall (Nobel Prize-winning physicist and MIT physics professor)

when asked how many people the earth could support if society took all the environmental steps recommend (cutting fossil fuel use, adopting sustainable agriculture, and taking care of other ecological issues, Pimentel responded, “Under those conditions of sustainability, I think we could support a maximum of 2 billion people over the long term.” Two billion people is barely more than one-third of today’s population.

when asked how many people we could expect to feed if the entire world switched to a well-balanced vegan diet, Pimentel responded “Right now, only 4 billion of the world’s 5.6 billion people are adequately nourished, but if the entire world switched to a vegan diet, our current food production could properly nourish 7 billion people.”

We're too close to 7 for comfort, unfortunately..but if we're
not suicidal then at the least I would hope we can move in the
direction of the plant-based diet to get closer being able
to have a "soft landing" for water, population, energy, and
other crises, than a "hard landing"....