Then just buy American beef, which is produced without any deforestation.
There are actually a lot of researchers who believe that the Native peoples were keeping the forests back via controlled burns, since grassland is better for hunting and agriculture, and the forests have regrown substantially _since_ most of the indigenous people died via disease.
> In the Eastern Deciduous Forest, frequent fires kept open areas which supported herds of bison. A substantial portion of this forest was extensively burned by agricultural Native Americans. Annual burning created many large oaks and white pines with little understory.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_savannas_of_Nort...
It is extremely fertilizer and pesticide intensive, and entirely engineered. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the fertilizers are also fossil fuel based.
However, my impression this is very unique and produces much less pounds of beef per acre than most places. The cattle breeds there are leaner and half wild. I'm hesitant to speak more definitively because I don't know specific statistics on how ranches in other regions differ. My impression is that the difference are substantial.
True, but these only account for 1% of energy demand[1]. Fertilizer is all about the nitrogen, not the carbon. The carbon for the corn is taken from the atmosphere.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09213...
No one in America has slash and burned a forest to feed cattle for a very long time.