Cows are not all fed on grain. A lot of cows are ranched on land that would not be suitable for growing grain crops.
Comment on Why do people still eat beef when we know it's terrible for Earth?
7heo@lemmy.ml 6 months agoYeah so, the amount of meals is correct. But that’s about it. I mean, I can’t say about the taste, to each their own, but one kg of cow meat needs two dozen kg of grain.
That’s about as inefficient as it gets.
As for the leather, the industry doesn’t like products that last a decade, so it isn’t actually using the leather in such a way. Industrial leather boots last a year tops.
Finally, pet food is made out of discarded cuts of meat, the uglies, etc. But also lots of cereals, and vegetables.
So we could really afford eating less meat. It isn’t good for anything. Not for us, not for the other species (certainly not for the cows, that get often half assed butchered in a hasty way because of quotas and profit), and absolutely not for the ecosystem.
But I guess the taste is all that matters.
FaceDeer@fedia.io 6 months ago
Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 6 months ago
Whatever their food is, they need 1kg of beef requires 24kg of grain's worth of energy. This is something they teach in high-school biology now. The higher the food chain, the more energy is lost.
FaceDeer@fedia.io 6 months ago
But as I pointed out, many cattle are ranched on land that cannot grow grain. They can't grow the sorts of crops that humans eat, only the sorts of crops that cattle eat. If cattle weren't being ranched on those lands they wouldn't be producing edible grain instead, or any other food that humans could eat. So the inefficiency is moot when it comes to the amount of nutrition produced, removing the cattle from that land would simply reduce the total amount of food we have available.
Sure, if you remove the cattle then wild animals could come in to replace them, but we should make sure that's not going to result in starvation and poverty if we do that. Many areas of the world have subsistence ranching by the locals.
Zorque@kbin.social 6 months ago
And of course the land couldn't be used for anything else... like natural ecosystems.
Just because land exists doesn't mean it needs to be pillaged to feed our desires.
Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 6 months ago
Interesting. However, a search says that feeding all the grass (or whatever) to cattle takes that food away from existing ecosystems in dry areas and potentially allow exotic weeds to take over land. So we probably don't want this to expand to the point where we intrude on dry ecosystems.
Scrof@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
Billions of trees every year get cut down to make space for cattle pastures, now tell me how destroying entire ecosystems that have been there for potentially thousands of years is worth some particular meat.
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 6 months ago
And billions of acres of pasture could never support trees
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Inefficient?
Cows eat grains that humans can’t digest, or if they can, it takes energy to transform them to something human can eat.
pugsnroses77@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
we use some of the most fertile lands in the midwest that could be used to grow literally anything else to grow vast amounts of soy and corn for cows.
FaceDeer@fedia.io 6 months ago
And in those specific cases, sure, you could do more efficiently by getting rid of the cattle.
The point I'm making is that there's plenty of cattle raised in places that aren't like that.
pugsnroses77@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
sure but a very small amount compared to what people eat. around 50% of american land is just used to grow crops for cattle. if we opted to reduce that, think of how much forest and natural land we could bring back.
iAmTheTot@kbin.social 6 months ago
With respect, you're buying awful boots.
Alto@kbin.social 6 months ago
If we had the same size, I could be wearing my grandfather's steeltoes that are probably a solid 40 years old. People really underestimate how long good footwear lasts when you take care of it.
BassTurd@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I can make hey dude’s last 9 months. If OP can’t make the cheapest leather boots last more than a year, they are using them wrong, or they should buy high end boots for whatever they’re doing.
Fosheze@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Seriously. I bought some dirt cheap full grain leather biker boots 3 years ago; I have given them exactly 0 care, abused the snot our of them daily, and they are still holding up strong. These weren’t even boots meant for working and they still survived trudging through the various slops of all 4 minnesotan seasons for 3 years.
As long as you are buying actual leather and not “genuine leather” then whatever you buy should easily last several years even if not cared for. Well cared for leather goods can last decades.
7heo@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
So, OK, I’m willing to learn: please show me good brands then.
They need to resist to mud (thick mud, the kind with a ton of suction that will keep your soles when you try and move), seawater, rocks and sand, and pretty dense vegetation.
They also need to have steel toe caps, good soles (vibram or equivalent if possible) that don’t sleep and aren’t too hard (wet stone is enough of a removed as it is), and to go higher than my ankle.
The best brand I tried so far was caterpillar, but they lasted only 3 years. That’s a far cry from “a decade or more”.