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Comment by wumpus | Hacker News Reader

I thought the main problem with cows was feed lots feeding 10 calories of grain to make 1 calorie of meat, not methane.

Cow feed is generally not human edible: https://www.milkmeansmore.org/what-do-cows-eat/

Most places that grow feed corn could also grow human-edible corn. Remember that I'm talking about feedlots for beef.

This implies that the land used to grow cow feed couldn't be used to instead grow human-consumable crops or left fallow as a carbon sink. I'm not aware of any studies showing that.

You make a strong argument. I think this is a case where we'll find the global optimum somewhere in the middle.

Deforesting the amazon to grow corn for cows is something I'm sure we can all agree is bad.

Should we use livestock to eat cover crops and waste products like corn husks and cobs? This way we reuse waste and produce high quality protein to supplement our diets.

Should we graze cattle on natural grasslands like the great plains? Especially in rotation with human foods, like the cover crops mentioned before?

I'm pretty sure that feedlot studies say that the usual situation in the US is that 1/2 of beef calories come from a 10:1 ratio of human edible calories.

So sure, go for 100%-grass-and-not-human-edible-food-fed beef, but that's not the current system.

If you check out the link, most of the cow feed is a by-product of other industrial processes and would go to waste otherwise.

Lets not forget the transportation of fresh meat is not negligible, the cooling and the fuel costs will add greatly to carbon emissions. Preserved foods and not relying on luxuries such as refrigeration would go a long way to sustainability and heath.

Do you have a source that shows that it's not negligible? The carbon and water cost of 10 calories of grain is pretty large.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... The EPA site shows transportation and electricity as the main contributions to carbon.

The grains are not the issue, the subsidies in the US are so strong that they are not a real factor. There is so much excess food produced they export it to other countries for instance. https://modernfarmer.com/2019/01/congress-finally-passed-a-n... https://abcnews.go.com/US/dairy-farmers-dumping-milk-amid-co... https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/15/business/milk-dumping-cor... Fresh food is often wasted, and the dumping of milk is to prevent the prices from going too low. This was happening before corona as well, this paper is a pretty good summary from a marxist perspective on overproduction. https://www.e-ir.info/2016/07/07/agricultural-overproduction...

Again, you apparently are willing to confuse the transportation cost of beef with the transport cost of everything.

Nice reference to Marxism.

Transportation and cooling of meat in particular is nothing compared to the land area of North America and South America combined that we devote to growing crops to feed livestock.

https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture

Is it negligible that transportation of fresh meat, its cooling or freezing are not at all factors in carbon production? I would like to see how its calculated.

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