There are huge areas of the USA that are not amenable to farming but which can be ranched. Raising cattle on these lands does not necessarily consume any water, food, or arable land that would be productively used otherwise. This form of ranching serves many purposes, one of which is to simulate the effect of millions of grazing animals roaming free over the prairies as they did for millennia until about 150 years ago. Another is to eliminate the need for antibiotics, which are not required when grazing animals are not confined and fed a corn diet, and when sick animals are much more easily culled.
There is such a thing as sustainable ranching, just as there is such a thing as sustainable farming. The trick is to incentivize the right kind of ranching. Unfortunately, your suggestion would probably produce more unsustainable ranching, as it would lower margins across the board such that only the industrialists could turn a profit.
Farmers are critical, underpaid, and deal with a lot of risk. There must be some insurance. But consumers should pay the real price for their goods at the counter.
1 - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/07/tax-meat...
2 - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/opinion/the-myth-of-sustai...
3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_cons...
However you cannot introduce a tax on all produce, when clearly some practices are more sustainable than others. At the current rate of consumption, grass fed cattle might not be enough to satisfy the demand, but if a farm doesn't pollute the environment, then it does not deserve a tax.
In nature there's symbiosis in the food chain, there's symbiosis between predator, cattle and grass, with grass being evolved for grazing, which in turn helps to offset the CO2 emissions of the cattle consuming it, with predators playing an important role in trimming the herd, which would otherwise go out of control. This obviously doesn't have to be a zero-sum game and by the looks of it nature has been way more effective at converting sun's energy into organic matter than we have.
Surely meat is too cheap compared to what it actually costs to produce, but I fear that many people identify meat consumption as this big evil, but without identifying the source of the problem. The problem is with all industrial farming, because we've accelerated farming by burning fossil fuels, turning forests into corn fields and polluting everything in the process. Without cheap fossil fuels or government subsidies, industrial farming practices wouldn't be possible. And it's not sustainable because there is no symbiosis in anything we are doing.
And the other problem is over-population, with capitalism and poverty encouraging continuous growth. You now hear on the news that the population in Europe is aging, which should actually be a great piece of news, except that our current economic climate doesn't cope well with a diminished fertility rate, capitalism relies on constant growth, hence we actually rely on other nations remaining poor and producing imigrants ;-)
And we should be ending the global poverty, which I'm fairly certain that we can, which should flatten that growth curve, but we should also impose a maximum fertility rate of 2 and stop doing commerce with the countries that don't do that. Because we wouldn't need industrial-scale farming, if we wouldn't have 7 billion mouths to feed and Earth is limited.
Give two examples (in the USA).
Can you help me understand why the idea that raising animals cannot be sustainable, when clearly grazing animals can live perfectly well on their own with no care whatsoever from humans (as they have for millennia) on areas of land that are not suitable for farming?
I think the direct answer to your question is that clearly carnivorism is environmentally sustainable, as it has been practiced by millions of various species for hundreds of millions of years.
Maybe your greater question is, "is a constantly growing human population sustainable?" which is outside the scope of this discussion.
If it's hypothetically possible, surely someone somewhere is doing it.
What I like to call an existence proof.
But apart from that, just read the comment you replied to. Human history as well as nature itself are the examples. There used to be millions of grazing animals (probably even an understatement).
Hope beyond hope, I attempted the Socratic method on riprowan, willing him to attempt a quick google before his concern trolling.
Top hit:
http://www.worldwildlife.org/projects/sustainable-ranching-i...
There. Was that so hard?
Buried lead: Once you learn anything about current ranching practices, you realize its at least as bad as current farming practices. Totally unsustainable.
Edit: Hey! Looks like riprowan found google!
Not two things. One thing. Polyface is a farm and a ranch. How can you do sustainable farming without animals?
You were the one asking for examples, so you should have used Google yourself. I thought about replying with a LMGTFY link, but I don't like being a dick.
You say you were trying to get me to think? That works both ways.
> Once you learn anything about current ranching practices, you realize its at least as bad as current farming practices. Totally unsustainable.
"Current" practices. Interesting modifier. I thought we were talking about ranching generally.
Please define what the "current" farming and ranching practices are in the USA. Please be sure that your definition includes the practices of everyone currently ranching or farming in the country. Obviously nobody can provide this definition. So let's drop the "current" modifier.
You challenge the idea that ranching - even in the abstract - can be "sustainable." To me the question is absurd, because animals and carnivores exist sustainably in nature.
The question is, what are the practices that will allow animals to continue to exist in nature, with humans as one of their predators?
Also, what sort of environmental impact will exist if farm animals go away? Where will all the animal manure come from to grow sustainable produce? Sustainable farming requires animals. Imagine if all the US heartland was sustainably fertilized. That's a lot of manure, man. There used to be a couple million (sustainable) bison that provided that manure. Humans sustainably ate them for tens of thousands of years. Then came fences and the end of bison herds. To replace them, it'll take a few million head of cattle.
Nobody here was arguing that "current" ranching practices (whatever that broad term means) are "sustainable." I am simply pointing out that there exist millions of acres of ranchable but not farmable land in the USA which can obviously support edible grazing animals sustainably without competing even with even one acre of arable land; and that sustainable farming requires grazing animals. If you question these obvious facts, then I suppose we're done here.
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Oh, also. It's "buried lede."
Gah. Thanks.
Okay, I no longer know what we're arguing about. Topic drift.
OP [Chris Newman] says comparing "organic" to "conventional" farming is apples to oranges and that a particular critic [a commenter on his blog?] is omitting too much from his argument, that conventional isn't sustainable either.
We somehow got to...
"Raising cattle on these lands does not necessarily consume any water, food, or arable land that would be productively used otherwise."
I know of no example of that being the case. I'll re-search when I circle back to this issue (that advocacy stuff I mentioned). The "sustainable" ranches I've looked at are less impactful, but still not sustainable. Also, you omitted "impact on other species and ecosystems" from your definition.
The closest I can think of are the sheep left to their own to over winter in New Zealand and brought in for slaughter. The valleys keep them contained.
I've seen serious proposals for switching to bison, because they do less harm than cattle (bite off food rather than pull up), but I haven't followed up. But even then bison will destroy riparian and wetlands habitat. Maybe use drones? Or pay for more cowboys? Or get comfortable with more predators also on the range? I dunno.
In a separate comment:
"I agree with you on most of your points including that grass-fed beef is not sustainable at the current rate of consumption, but that does not mean that it isn't sustainable at a lower rate of consumption / higher price."
Okay.
I wrote about vat grown meat and ranching becoming a niche source of protein.
"Even if all of this comes to pass, why will the resulting ranching industry be unsustainable?"
Well. We might be close in opinion here.
I ask myself "What would sustainable look like?" (As productive as What is art? What is morality?)
Sustainable means:
#1 Given best available science, what accounting system measures everything important, no externalities?
#2 What is the fair market price for resources and services consumed and accrued?
I honestly don't know how to get from where we are to something sustainable. In sum, all of our activity is exceeding the current carrying capacity of our earth. And we lie to ourselves about how much stuff costs.
"...what are the practices that will allow animals to continue to exist in nature, with humans as one of their predators?"
Husbandry or hunting? No matter...
Nature's gone. It's now garden earth, where we actively manage the whole thing, intentionally or not.
Aside:
Else where you mention the necessity of manure for farming. Huh.
You assume some level of sustainable ranching is possible. Whereas I assume farming without manure is possible (and desirable).
Try doing sustainable farming without animals. It can't be done. Animals are a requirement for sustainable farming.
http://www.yellowstonegrassfedbeef.com/node/100
QED. I'm sure if you bother to research this you'll find many others.
If you stop and think about your question more deeply I think you'll unask it.
Organic produce farming requires manure. Something like 1/4 of the land mass of the USA requires grazing animals to maintain an ecological balance.
That manure and those animals are requirements, not luxuries.
Sustainable produce farming requires sustainable animal farming, because nature is inherently symbiotic.
I should have replied "Sustainable ranching is harder than you'd think." I might remove my comments this afternoon, after you've and had a chance to see this apology.
I've worked with ranchers to conserve wildlife, especially apex predators. Indeed, I predict ranching will become a niche source of protein as vat-grown meat comes online (20 years) and taxpayers decide to stop subsidizing it (10 years?). The draughts, draining aquifers, and scourge of wildfires will also make ranching less viable. But I can't guess the timeline of climate change on ranching.
If you've met any (independent) ranchers, you'd see they know their world is coming apart.
Apologies always accepted here. No problem.
> I predict ranching will become a niche source of protein as vat-grown meat comes online (20 years) and taxpayers decide to stop subsidizing it (10 years?).
Even if all of this comes to pass, why will the resulting ranching industry be unsustainable?
Corn that is subsidized by the government with your taxes. And where corn grows, nothing else does ;-)