I heard something to do with Nitrogen and …cow farts(?) I am really unsure of this and would like to learn more.
The basic problem is that to get 1000 calories of beef, you need to feed the cow something like 10,000 calories. So growing a cow is actually growing an entire field of wheat/corn/etc., then feeding it to the cow, then eating the cow.
Farming all of those crops for the animals takes up a lot of land, consumes fresh water, produces wastes, and uses oil/gas (for farm equipment directly, or to produce things like fertilizers) which produces co2. Cows also produce methane (that’s the fart thing) which is a bad greenhouse gas.
You could just eat the wheat/corn/etc. directly (most of the time) and skip the meat step therefore saving a massive amount of environmental impact.
Meat sure is tasty though.
pfannkuchen_gesicht@lemmy.one 1 year ago
Because you need considerably more resources to grow meat than you need to to grow a nutritionally equivalent amount of vegetables.
TwoFace211@feddit.ch 1 year ago
Wilzax@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That field could be used to grow a different crop than grass, which would use less water per calorie of human food produced
Cynicivity@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Unless you are a small hobby farm, you’re not putting your cows out on pasture alone to raise them for meat. Most grasses are deficient in one or more vital nutrients that the cows need to grow. Most cows today are fed TMR (Total Mixed Rations). These are diets carefully mixed with different grasses, grains, hays, and mineral supplements. There are different metabolic diseases that cows can get when eating diets deficient in different nutrients. Cows that are sick don’t want to eat, and cows that don’t eat don’t grow. To a farmer, that’s like burning money.
jeffw@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Most deforestation today is to grow animal feed.
tetraodon@feddit.it 1 year ago
You forget that most land was forested (even in Europe) before humans decided that grass was more useful than trees.