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How does that make the co2 and methan go away? Every cow produces it. And do you have a conflict that you are able to pay higher prices for meat than a lot of

How does that make the co2 and methan go away? 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?

throwaway69123 5y ago
He offsets the carbon by mixing in some veal
- bafumio 5y ago
  I think I heard of it but never been able to buy it
CaptArmchair 5y ago
> Every cow produces it. 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.
- bafumio 5y ago
  I try to do the same with meat. I can easily afford it and do it seldom. 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?
  - CaptArmchair 5y ago
    > 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?
    - TheCapeGreek 5y ago
      Making your product available to the widest amount of people possible can also drive the mass-production practices talked about in this thread. So it's not just people being poor, it's that poor people are a huge market!
      - airhead969 5y ago
        The US govt subsidizes many grains and provides socialism to farmers to make soda and burgers cheap, at the cost of healthcare and the climate. Often, fast food is only what poor people can afford.
        CaptArmchair 5y ago
        True enough. I wouldn't call it "socialism" though. The reality is that individual / independent farming isn't economically viable since farmers have to compete with these large factory farms. 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 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.
elp 5y ago
Is there something specific about cows that produces more methane than other animals? 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?
- akvadrako 5y ago
  If cows are fed an unnatural diet instead of grass they fart a lot. So wild animals don't have the same issue.
  - elp 5y ago
    Do you have a source for that? From my brief looking it seems like its the other way around (https://beef.unl.edu/reduce-methane-production-cattle https://beef.unl.edu/reduce-methane-production-cattle)
- maxerickson 5y ago
  A huge portion of beef calories come from mechanically harvested feed (pasture crops and soy and corn). The emissions related to those calories would go away.
  - Ancapistani 5y ago
    Beef production accounts for 9% of US corn production: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States#Production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_... 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”.
tasssko 5y ago
The issue here is there is no balance in the discussion. we push people to be vegan and they become radical environmentalists but the vegan lifestyle for the average person is filled with processed foods with no discussion of the environmental impact of food processing. Busy people have no time for some of the food preparation required to be vegan. There is no balance of conversation at all. 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.
- bafumio 5y ago
  You do? Do you get the cheapest meat available? Where do you live?
bryanlarsen 5y ago
Cattle on ranchland can easily be CO2 negative. Soil is a great carbon sink. So as long as the quality of the soil is increasing, we're removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Cattle and Buffalo are great for the soil, unlike other grass consumers like sheep. 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.

How does that make the co2 and methan go away? 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?

throwaway69123 5y ago

He offsets the carbon by mixing in some veal

bafumio 5y ago
I think I heard of it but never been able to buy it

CaptArmchair 5y ago

> Every cow produces it. 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.

bafumio 5y ago
I try to do the same with meat. I can easily afford it and do it seldom. 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?
- CaptArmchair 5y ago
  > 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?
  - TheCapeGreek 5y ago
    Making your product available to the widest amount of people possible can also drive the mass-production practices talked about in this thread. So it's not just people being poor, it's that poor people are a huge market!
    - airhead969 5y ago
      The US govt subsidizes many grains and provides socialism to farmers to make soda and burgers cheap, at the cost of healthcare and the climate. Often, fast food is only what poor people can afford.
      - CaptArmchair 5y ago
        True enough. I wouldn't call it "socialism" though. The reality is that individual / independent farming isn't economically viable since farmers have to compete with these large factory farms. 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 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.

elp 5y ago

Is there something specific about cows that produces more methane than other animals? 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?

akvadrako 5y ago
If cows are fed an unnatural diet instead of grass they fart a lot. So wild animals don't have the same issue.
- elp 5y ago
  Do you have a source for that? From my brief looking it seems like its the other way around (https://beef.unl.edu/reduce-methane-production-cattle https://beef.unl.edu/reduce-methane-production-cattle)
maxerickson 5y ago
A huge portion of beef calories come from mechanically harvested feed (pasture crops and soy and corn). The emissions related to those calories would go away.
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  Beef production accounts for 9% of US corn production: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States#Production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_... 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”.

tasssko 5y ago

The issue here is there is no balance in the discussion. we push people to be vegan and they become radical environmentalists but the vegan lifestyle for the average person is filled with processed foods with no discussion of the environmental impact of food processing. Busy people have no time for some of the food preparation required to be vegan. There is no balance of conversation at all. 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.

bafumio 5y ago
You do? Do you get the cheapest meat available? Where do you live?

bryanlarsen 5y ago

Cattle on ranchland can easily be CO2 negative. Soil is a great carbon sink. So as long as the quality of the soil is increasing, we're removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Cattle and Buffalo are great for the soil, unlike other grass consumers like sheep. 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.