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Comment by throwaway422432 | Hacker News Reader

The land cattle is often raised on is unsuitable for anything else. Poor soil, unpredictable rainfall that can fluctuate between drought and flooding.

Some Australian outback cattle stations may cover millions of hectares, but you're not going to be able to grow anything else out there: too hot and little water and unlike cattle you can't move your pea farm to where the water is.

I would agree that land-clearing (cutting down forests) to raise cattle is unacceptable, as are the use of feed-lots, but I would disagree that we need to eat less meat, and I would personally never give up my grass-fed organic beef.

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The latest research shows that cows destroy even the worst landscapes. They encourage invasive grass spreading which leads to more intense wildfires, which leads to more emissions. Any water spots get destroyed by cattle and consumed, usually before native animals can get there

They're also responsible for ranchers killing predators and the cows themselves out competing for the scarce resources.

Cows are invasive to Australia. They do a lot of damage that folks choose to ignore. They are not the same as native ungulates and there's tons of research proving that.

There's a growing movement in the US to get cattle off of public lands. These are lands that you just described. Why do people want them off the land? Because it's very obvious they hurt the ecosystem.

Meat is a status symbol food. We're told from a very early age that beef is what kings and successful people eat. Rich people even have different vernacular for their status symbol food. Grass fed beef is just beef with a higher environmental cost. It's literally "my status symbol is better than your status symbol. Me more successful cuz I eat grass fed beef."

The simple fact is we likely can't feed 8 billion people sustainably even with the most efficient processes.

There's zero chance we can sustainably feed 8 billion people with our current level of beef consumption. Beef is at least 20x more resources intensive. It's crazy inefficient. Being proud of eating beef is like being proud of burning tires in your back yard or something.

As soon as you say "latest research", you really need to cite your claims.

Meat is not a status symbol food. Culturally/historically eating roasted meat was a family event: The Sunday lamb roast, the roasted pig or bison in an earth oven in Polynesian/Maori/Native American cultures for example. The only status may be the quality of the cut where you're eating Wagyu rather than ground beef.

There are no native ungulates in Australia. There are also no predators except wild dogs (also introduced) and there's a 3000+km fence to keep them out of grazing areas.

All cattle, sheep, goats and pigs in Australia must be tagged with an EID/RFID tag or device. We track where they were bred, raised, sold and eventually killed. There's no cattle just roaming around wherever.

We have kangaroos which are regularly culled because of the lack of predators and they compete with cattle and sheep for the grass, and most people don't want to eat kangaroo. (National symbol and also because it has a strong flavour)

There are also feral pigs, camels and other introduced pest species like rabbits that we try to eradicate.

Feral pigs in particular damage tree roots, destroy water sources and irrigation and are a vector for exotics disease such as African swine fever, Japanese Encephalitis, lumpy skin disease, foot & mouth and all sorts of parasites.

The usual counter is that even then, afforestation is better than grazing lands. And that's a CO2 sink. I don't know specifically about the land down under.

We try and preserve forests and tree lines to counter erosion and salinity, better for raising cattle in the long term.

Just because that land is there doesn't mean we need to have cows on it though. Also don't forget that the methane porduced by cow herds also contributes to climate change.

If we don't raise cows on land that could sustain crops or use that land to produce animal feed, that would necessarily mean there will be less meat to eat. We would in fact need to reduce our meat consumption to account for this. Surely you can see you're contradicting yourself by saying we don't neede to eat less meat but also shouldn't use feed-lots?

I mainly know about what's going on in the Australian industry, but 2/3 of our beef is exported, and that is only likely to increase.

There are projects to develop and market seaweed-based feed to reduce burping:

https://www.csiro.au/en/research/animals/livestock/futurefee...

Grass-fed cattle in Northern Australian mostly eat native grasses as they are more hardy given the environment: Queensland Bluegrass and Mitchell Grass for example.

Yes, feedlots do allow for raising cattle faster and more consistently, but are problematic for runoff.

https://futurebeef.com.au/resources/beef-cattle-feedlot/

https://www.qld.gov.au/environment/agriculture/sustainable-f...

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