And eating less meat, so we can do with less agricultural production.
The problems that frequently lead to the argument for cutting meat consumption for ecological reasons are all actually concerns with industrialized meat production practices, not with meat production itself. We don't need to cut meat production, we need to change how we raise, process, and distribute the meat. Raise thousands of cows in concrete pens in a remote area will always require too many inputs and produce too many unwanted outputs because it's not part of a larger ecosystem.
Ruminants like cows and sheep play a vital role in managing pasture and creating fertilizer. Chickens play a vital role in pest management and creating compost. Chickens and hogs both play a role in making productive use of waste products, eating food scraps and garden waste that would otherwise be lost.
Heck, we couldn't even have egg and milk production at all without producing meat or culling animals along the way. Only 50% of eggs hatched are female, we have to do something with the males. And dairy cows will only produce milk for 6-12 months after giving birth, meaning there are calves that need to play a part in the system as well.
That doesn't even get to the challenges of trying to raise crops without animal byproducts. Where does all the fertilizer come from?
The entire model of industrial meat production is unsustainable by design. Animals can be raised as part of a larger system that includes growing most, if not all, if the animals' food on site. Having to plant massive fields of feed crops so they can be trucked across the country to industrial meat farms raising animals in crowded lots and concrete boxes is an insane approach.
Can you elaborate? I don't see how this is superior to leaving it fallow?
I have a few acres fallow and am right next to a quaint organic farm and I do see quite a few more bees in my tall grass and wildflowers than I do in their grazed land...
As a result, traditional Greek cuisine has lots of lamb and goat meat.
"Historically, Pag had more forested areas than it does today. The island used to be covered with oak and pine forests, but due to centuries of human activity, including grazing, deforestation, and the collection of firewood, much of the original forest cover has been reduced. Over time, the vegetation has adapted to the island's specific conditions, such as strong winds and limited freshwater sources."
The land is rocky to grow anything on exactly because of those lambs and goats. They don't give the land the change to reforest.
We tend to underestimate the damage that has already been done before we came here.
Are you suggesting that ruminants transport rocks to the site?
"including grazing, deforestation, and the collection of firewood"
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316721412_Blame_it_...
"The authors analyze archaeological and ecological evidence to understand the relationship between human populations, goat herding, and land degradation. They argue that the widespread adoption of goat herding practices played a significant role in the process of desertification. Goats are known to be browsers, preferring to consume a variety of vegetation, including shrubs and trees. This selective feeding behavior, combined with the increasing human population and expansion of agricultural practices, led to the overgrazing of vegetation and subsequent soil erosion.
The paper highlights that the degradation of vegetation cover and loss of soil fertility had cascading effects on the ecosystem. Reduced vegetation cover resulted in increased exposure of soil to wind and water erosion, leading to the expansion of arid and desert regions. The loss of vegetation also had a detrimental impact on biodiversity, as many plant and animal species dependent on these ecosystems faced habitat destruction and population decline."
Grazing, done correctly, is beneficial to the land too. E.g. grazing brings dungs to the land. The dungs give nutrients to both plants and insects. Stamping the land aerate the soil and exposes insect for birds, hence limiting pest. Birds spread seeds. Everything is in balance. Food is ultimately created from sunlight.
Industrial farming, on the other hand, simplifying heavily, is converting fossil fuels into food.
That means meat is going to be expensive and you'd rather eat avocado toast instead. Unless demand suddenly drops or we scale growing meat from a lab.
So long as affordable, healthy, accessible alternatives exist, of course.
You can't have real agriculture without manure.
Fossil guano is a finite, scarce and very expensive resource, and human manure is not so desirable as replacement by several reasons so, how do they expect to feed their green miracle exactly?.
How efficient is the conversion food-to-meat is irrelevant if you omit half of the products obtained. This food also will turn into leather, milk, workforce and manure, so the calculus is flawed from the start.
Per leathers: one, we don't have to completely eliminate cattle. Two, synthetics exist. Three, alternatives are being made/investigated [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dovecote [1] https://www.felsie.co.uk/ (and others, if you google around)
However, I think this is another example of something that is 'just too small to matter' in terms of feeding the world's population today. Often I see 'nice' stories about e.g. using human waste to fertilise fields, that quite frankly do not (usually) scale at all well. We (UK) use tractors to shovel and spread manure - 10s, 100s of tons of the stuff - a dovecote or 10 really isn't going to help, and certainly won't be economic.
It seems a bit like someone telling me I should use an abacus to increase my compute power - 'they were a good idea in the past, why aren't you using them now?'
Compost can help. I don't know how much that would scale in any case.
Is true that we can produce some fertilizers chemically, but we need to invest huge amounts of energy for this; After Wikipedia >1% of all the energy that we humans use in the planet is spent just to make ammonia, and many of this is used to make urea. If I'm not wrong we need also natural gas to feed the process, so this energy came basically from non renewables. Is part of the solution but not a miracle cure.
I think in my area they try to use manure to produce methane.
Source? Preferably reputable
We feed a lot of grains to aninals as feed. That food coupd be used to feed people. We could certainly downsize meat producting by 70% withiit any adverse impacts -most people eat way too mich meat
PS: There is some strange disbelief below, people think without manure cropping will bot work - this is plainly fanasyland - most of farmland never sees 'natural' fertiliser.
"A recent study by USDA, Economic Research Service identified opportunities for increasing the use of manure as a fertilizer. In 2020, farmers applied manure to less than 8 percent of the 240.9 million acres planted to seven major U.S. field crops."
In uk "In 2019, organic manure was applied to 26% of the area of tillage crops"
This is easilly accessible information.
You'd need to cite some sources for that. And explain where the millions of tons of animal manure go.
Here in Northern Europe 100% of manure from housed animals is used, either spread as manure or, increasingly, used for biomethane
That's the wrong statistics to look it - 100% of waste coffee is used. They already have it, good management will figure out a way to use it.
But you cannot make an argument that we have to keep drinking coffee because fertiliser industry will collapse without waste coffee.
There are thousands of studies about impacts of intensive animal faming on landscape, economy, health and society in general, they are all negative. This was settled like 40 years ago.
You said
> Only a small percentage of manure is reused as fertiliser because transporting it is expensive, and messy
That's straight up false, for Northern Europe anyway.
You are right that it can be done badly, as can many other things. I'd say you are actually arguing against badly regulated animal farming (especially since you mention the US), rather than animal farming per se.
If you reduce meat production, you'll hike up prices, likely pricing out those with autoimmune diseases that barely survive already. So technically you are true like in "you can still eat meat in theory", but in practice those folks won't be able. Now where is the good faith in that argument?
You're saying a lot of stuff and I'm going to need more evidence to be convinced as to your position. For what reason would meat prices increase if people ate less meat?