I listened to a really interesting podcast about regenerative farming, its calculated that there is enough land in the UK to feed the whole population organically and ethically, with a modest reduction in meat consumption.
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I listened to a really interesting podcast about regenerative farming, its calculated that there is enough land in the UK to feed the whole population organically and ethically, with a modest reduction in meat consumption.
Caporegime
I thought that would be obvious if it didn't scale. It's not just about people becoming vegan though, you've taken issue with someone not doing things to the same standard you are. From what I've seen, Crizzy isn't trying to convert people to it, nor is he virtue signalling.
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Just to play devils advocate, how can you be sure there isn't pesticide overspray or carried by the wind from nearby farms? Unless you've audited all the nearby land and found out what all the farms use in the areas you buy your meat from, there isn't any way you can say it's pesticide free.
However it does sound like you've made all reasonable attempts to buy pesticide free meat, that's all you can do, i'm just splitting hairs.
Soldato
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I'm not vegan, how dare you, I'm 100% carnivore, I'm on the carnivore diet, I only eat meat.
Caporegime
Apologies, that should have said doing things to the same standard you are.
Soldato
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sorry I edited, check out my cow-maths above
Soldato
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my post about virtue signalling was aimed at johno, who literally spent page after page arguing environment for vegan and then when I challenged him on a couple of points just said "well I don't really care about the environment anyway, I just care about animals getting hurt"
Soldato
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Obviously, the world is covered in crap chemicals so you can't avoid them entirely, my point was more that the producers of MY food don't use pesticides and therefore don't needlessly kill wildlife to produce my food. It is an unfortunate side effect that I probably still have to consume pesticides in my food because of the vegans though.
It's actually a good point and similar to what @jigger raised earlier on in the thread about eating sustainability caught fish (which still still has me thinking).
The amount of net deaths for half a plate of veg and half a plate of grass fed beef might well be less than a full plate of veg.
It's not completely not clear cut though as I understood that cattle will sometimes require supplemental feed, derived from crops. So how do you really know unless you've farmed it yourself?
I try and look at thinks as logical as possible, I tend not to get emotionally involved as when it comes to animals I'm quite indifferent and never really had an emotional connection to any animal before.
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You have the approach that would be more influential than the hot heads that normally spout veganism. I congratulate you
Soldato
That can be caused by a couple of different reasons.
1. Rotational grazing
2. Growing the grass for crop (silage, hay)
That doesn't mean it's not being used.
Just curious here, do you ever have to supplement your grass fed cattle stock with hay at all? From the research I'm looking at it seems uncommon that grass fed cows live 100% off the grass where they graze, and it's common to have to supplement their food, such as hay (or similar feed which can be classified as grass), especially at times like in the winter?
Your post indicates this isn't the case and grass fed beef relies purely on the grass growing on the land where the animals live.
So I just wondered what your experience is with this?
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Soldato
Enjoy polluting the environment on your little drive to the beach
8kw solar array, into this ,how's your life going ?
Soldato
Generally "grass fed" can mean either mostly grazed grass with supplements or all grass and "grass conserved pasture" e.g. hay and silage (which is technically grass anyways, just cut and stored)
So a grazing animal that is then housed in Winter and fed hay or silage is considered grass fed (again, technically true as per above)
Man of Honour
The vast majority of cattle farming is not entirely grass fed.
As mentioned. It's not scalable in the UK.
Its much more an issue in dairy though.
You also have the issue of the carbon footprint of cattle. Even waste gas is significant
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They ought to harness such a great renewable energy source
Soldato
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I don't keep cows, just ducks and chickens, I'm also not in the UK so stuff grows here year round.
Having said that, hay IS grass, so in terms of environmental/wildlife impact its the same thing, how that affects my maths above I'm not 100% sure but even if it doubles the land requirement (which it shouldn't as grass grows in the UK something like 8 months out of 12) then the math still seems to check out ok. Water use also falls off drastically.
That stems from a UN report which the authors came out and admitted was incorrect from the get go, it initially said that meat accounted for something like 14% of global emissions placing it higher than transport, later estimates have placed it as something like 6% globally and in developed countries like the US and UK it could be as little as 3%. Reducing or even eliminating meat consumption would actually make hardly any difference to emissions because food stuffs would still be being "transported" to take up the slack.
Energy and transport are such a massive thing that even small changes make a big difference, the tiny proportion of people going vegan makes no difference at all.
Plus, yes most supermarket beef is not grass fed, I'm advocating people seek out grass fed as it is better for the environment (no pesticides).
Supermarkets are driven entirely by profit so if you take the lazy way out and only buy supermarket food then you're not going to be achieving anything in terms of environment regardless of meat or vegan food.
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Soldato
I don't dispute that. I was merely explaining "grass fed" and also clarifying that it doesn't just mean grazed grass as @Crizzy had mentioned "supplemented by hay" which I wanted to point out that this, along with silage, is grass.
Already answered above by another poster...
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