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> Not all beef is equal. Almost all the beef I eat is from the UK, and most of it grass fed.

I mean, all beef is equal in the sense that it's not an efficient use of resources, including space, to feed cattle vs growing crops that feed humans. That's basically true no matter where the land is.

Anyway, if we are talking about the Amazon, there is absolutely no conversation to be had that doesn't center on beef. Talking about Amazon deforestation specifically being driven by anything other than cattle ranching is so wrong it's evil, and plenty of UK beef also comes from the Amazon.

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Cattle can feed on land that is not suitable for growing crops

Which is an efficiency not required by us at the moment, and a mode of production that couldn't cover even a percent of the entire current or future meat production.

Our problem isn't tetris with land. We have way, way, way more land to produce food crops than we need to feed everyone, we don't need to optimize for the few places where we can raise a few cattle exclusively. We can feed the same amount of people using far less water, land, and power using a vegan-ish diet.

If tomorrow everyone switches to your proposed vegan diet, where does all the saved power, water and land go towards?

growing cattle keeps the land from turning into concrete. If you actually want to conserve land you want to use as much already deforested as possible for growing crops and then never deforest new land. Slowly you should work onto getting conservation NGOs to integrate it into government protected land.

Seems to me like a fools errand to optimize land use. The optimal use in the Americas for example was likely already there 14,000 years ago before humans arrived in Americas. We obviously can't go back, but we can improve land, but optimal ....

Are you seriously arguing that cattle ranching is what's keeping our lands healthy right now? I'm pretty sure just leaving them fallow would be infinitely better for the health of the soil and ecosystems within a few years.

Most of the land cleared recently in Amazon is used to grow plants to feed to cattle. The knock on effects are kinda incredible, most recent Planet Earth series showed a bit.

Ok, then let's move all cattle production to lands that's not suitable for growing crops. I'd be extremely happy with that solution as it will eliminate almost all cattle ranching.

really?

all the supermarkets i go to sell mostly British beef, and the butcher sells mostly local beef. most of of the rest is Irish.

UK seems to be a big importer of animal feed. Local meat does necessarily exclude strip-farming biome half a planet away.

https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/animal-food

I'm actually very surprised by these numbers, namely that all other top five importers except the UK are net exporters. My mental image of Netherlands and Germany (where I eat too much meat) was that of huge net importers, whose plant production output was in large parts an echo of the animal feed imports (feed gets converted into meat and dung...). Perhaps they are only net exporters by market value, but net importers by nutrient amount?

I would guess that imports are a small proportion of all animal feed in the UK. UK cattle are grassfed, albeit usually grain finished. ALso the breakdown does not say feed for what animals rather than where from: as the UK is right next to net exporters I imagine most of it comes from neighbours rather than half the planet away.

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