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Comment by raptorraver | Hacker News Reader

It's not cow but how. Modern agriculture methods are very destructive for the environment. The biggest problem isn't even the greenhouse emissions but the way we are destroying the living topsoil by our methods and then trying to fix the problem with fossil fuel based systems - diesel based tilling and fertilisers. Veganism can't solve those problems either. Luckily there is a growing movement of regenerative agriculture which focuses on the soil health and maximing the carbon sequestering to the soil. It also makes much more sense from the financial point of view for the farmer.

https://regenerationinternational.org/why-regenerative-agric...

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Veganism doesn't solve every issue, but it makes them better almost immediately. For the problem you mention, we would need to farm substantially less with Veganism. Feed ratios for cows is around 7:1 when I checked last. So it absolutely is cow.

You're propably correct about the feed ratio but cows eat grasses and hay that aren't consumable by humans. In warm countries that's not a problem, people could grow there crops that humans can eat, but in big parts of world (like here in north where I live) grasses are best thing to grow. Also grasslands are best carbon sink we currently have (https://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/climate/news/grasslands-mo...) and you can't have those without ruminants.

Also it's good to remember how much food we waste each year. We could easily feed the world already now but it doesn't seem to be priority for the people in charge.

That said I'm on a same side with vegans, I don't like the current way we produce food and I'd like to see a big systemic change there. But I think vegans don't take into account how complex problems we are dealing with - nature, agriculture's economics and eating habits and nutritional requirements of humans.

> grasses are best thing to grow

The article talks about Grasslands.

Farming cows on grass is something else (not grasslands) and fertisers are used and imported feed (or finishing feed in many countries). Without looking at the whole system you can't make any judgement.

~55% of New Zealand is being used for sheep and cattle.

The environmental cost of that is unbelievable.

Grass is not good. PS: I'm not a vegan.

Even in the US grassfed is less than 1%. It's just not sustainable.

We can still farm ruminants on open grasslands where those are appropriate ecosystems, but that will mean cutting meat production by, I don't know, 99.99% or so. Which is fine, it's not healthy to eat a hamburger every day.

> The biggest problem isn't even the greenhouse emissions but the way we are destroying the living topsoil by our methods and then trying to fix the problem with fossil fuel based systems - diesel based tilling and fertilisers.

You're talking about ammonia. This is currently irreplaceable in terms of scaling, certainly it would be impossible to feed 8 billion people without. Just look at how much more land-use "organic" plots require.

There are innovations in the works to synthesize ammonia without fossil fuels, but I don't see a future without fertilizer.

Remember guano? us here had to import a ton of Asian "legal slaves" to harvest it, and most of them died... of course people want to go back to harvesting guano, because that is so "pro earth", let's ignore the human cost of it.

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